John Hilbert on Edward Winter’s Chess Notes

Edward Winter’s Chess Notes

Appreciation by John Hilbert

The Ides of March this year brought disturbing news: Chess Notes, the repository of all things chess historical, the standard for serious chess history discussion and scholarship, would soon undergo a sad modification. As announced in Chess Note 11763, the chess world’s arbiter of chess truth, integrity and respect for nearly forty years (in its initial print form since January 1982), as of March 31, 2020, would no longer be regularly updated.

I’ve always found it odd, if not bizarre, that sophisticated chess players, who expect unfailing accuracy in game scores, who bristle at calling chess a “mere game,” and who deeply appreciate accurate and brilliant analysis by expert practitioners and theorists, metamorphose into hopeless bumpkins when it comes to the same issues in terms of accuracy, precision, and truth, regarding the game’s history. Imagine a game annotated with comments as slipshod as “and 16.e5 is probably a move seen before, played by someone or another,” or as irreverent as “this move was once played by that Morphy guy,” or as insultingly vapid as “better is something else.” No one would stand for such annotations, much less applaud them. Yet they excuse, when they don’t actively condone, such lack of discipline, such disrespectful frivolity, when it comes to stories, yarns and anecdotes about the game and the great players of the past. Fortunately, for those who feel that chess and its practitioners deserve far more, there has long been a quiet, thoughtful, hopeful place in a chess world filled with tawdry babel.

March 2020 saw over 50 separate Chess Notes posted, while over the last fifteen and a half years, perhaps an average of 45 a month or more. Since March 31, 2020, a period of three and a half months at the time of this writing, only 16 Chess Notes have appeared. This curtailment is a misfortune for the chess community. Not only have those seriously committed to refining our knowledge of the past effectively lost a brilliant source of information, as well as an exchange of ideas and knowledge, but the broader chess community no longer has a website with regularly updated, new material to turn to for carefully documented and vetted chess entertainment. An unfortunate truth is that no other website has the long-standing, proven accuracy that year after year has been made available, free of charge, through the extraordinary contributions made by Chess Notes and the site’s associated feature articles. And there likely never will be another such place so forcefully dedicated to seeing chess and chess players remembered with precision and respect.

The most important section is entitled Chess Notes Archives. There one finds, through the end of March 2020, the index for 8,384 Chess Notes available online (an earlier 3,411 appeared only in printed form) as well as a host of feature articles. An added and much needed bonus on this page is the ability to search the thousands of Chess Notes and hundreds of feature articles for key terms. In addition, don’t neglect to explore the Chess Notes Factfinder, which can be reached from this page, and which presents a meticulously accumulated index of Chess Notes by subject, replete with hot links to each subject. The material, and the ability to search through it, is in itself a monumental achievement. More than that, anyone writing on a chess subject does so at his or her risk, if they do so without carefully conducting searches here, and reflecting on the results.

Dipping into Chess Notes and feature articles is to find a cornucopia of games, photographs, discussions, humor, corrections, announcements, questions and other chess-related materials, all with properly cited sources, carefully prepared for casual readers, serious students, and working chess historians. It is a treasure trove of chess scholarship, introduced with wit and verve, of factual, documented material presented objectively. A lifetime could be spent enjoying the Chess Notes alone, and yet also presented, again free of charge, are over 300 articles - enough material for many books, had the desire been there to publish them in paper form - that taken together form the richest and most far-ranging source of extraordinary chess history material ever assembled.

The feature articles by Edward Winter collectively dwarf the production of any other serious chess historian. Some are relatively short, while others are small books in themselves. (For example, take together FIDE: The Prehistory, and Chess: The History of FIDE.) To describe them all is impossible, certainly in a short piece such as this, but I will suggest some areas readers might enjoy exploring. Of course, my personal selections are subjective and don’t do justice to the full breadth of examples even within my own self-formed categories:

• Sensational, but true, incidents and mysteries in the chess world: Who knew accuracy and truth could be so much fun? Among my favorites here are the following: Chessplayer Shot Dead in Hastings; A Chess Whodunit; Mysteries at Sabadell, 1945; Adams v Torre - A Sham?; The Mysterious Frederick D. Rosebault (at one time an embarrassing business associate of Capablanca’s); The Capablanca-Pokorny Fiasco; Chess and the Wallace Murder Case; Chess and Murder; The Death of F.D. Yates.
   
• Extraordinary discussion of games: their history, their authenticity, their annotations: One might usefully preface a meditation on these games by reviewing the ethics of a broader subject: Copyright on Chess Games. After this, plunge into the debates and find out as much of the truth as is known so far, regarding the following fifteen games or sets of games: Analytical Disaccord (regarding Capablanca – Bogoljubow, Moscow, 1925); Capablanca v Fonaroff; Steinitz v von Bardeleben; Morrison v Capablanca, London, 1922; Reti v Tartakower, Vienna, 1910; Capablanca v Fine: A Missed Win; Grimshaw v Steinitz; Fischer v Gligoric Training Match (1992); Nimzowitsch v Alapin; Rosanes v Anderssen, Breslau, 1863; An Alekhine Blindfold Game; Macdonald v Burn, Liverpool, 1910; A Brilliancy by Hermann Helms; Anderssen v Dufresne: The Evergreen Game; Paulsen v Morphy, New York, 1857.
   
• Exploring famous and infamous anecdotes and sayings: A perennial problem with chess writing is the reliance on unsubstantiated stories and sayings by the greats of the past. The same stories and sayings get recycled, often regardless of the truth. A few of the more common, outlandish, disrespectful and slanderous: A Nimzowitsch Story (Nimzowitsch and the “smoking threat” anecdote); Breyer and the Last Throes (regarding White’s game after 1.e4); Steinitz versus God; The Pride and Sorrow of Chess; Chess Anecdotes; The Cambridge v Bedlam Chess Story; 'The Mozart of Chess.'
   
• Overwhelming demonstrations of errors, gaffes and comic (when not criminal) behavior: Chess Notes and feature articles have never been shy about defending the facts when confronted with shoddy work. Consider, for instance, The Facts about Larry Evans, which states in its opening lines “We offer a representative sample of Larry Evans’ innumerable gaffes and scurrilities. In the opening vignette he is to be witnessed not only in a pitiful muddle over the key points about a tournament game (from an event in which he participated) but also denouncing us as ‘unscrupulous’ for writing something which a) we did not write, and b) nobody else wrote either.” Or read A Sorry Case and, of course, Raymond Keene: Cuttings (Facts about Raymond Keene), not to forget the dozen other feature articles about Keene referenced at the conclusion of this one.
   
• Extraordinary discussions of historical matters, and materials rarely seen: Writing books about any of these subjects without first examining carefully these pieces is a serious mistake: See, for instance, Edge, Morphy and Staunton, as well as the associated PDF of Frank Skoff’s 16-page letter, and Edge Letters to Fiske. (Originally appearing in 2000, and updated as recently as April 16, 2020.) Difficult subjects are taken head-on, as for example Was Alekhine a Nazi? and The Termination (on the stoppage of the 1985 World Championship Match with Kasparov trailing Karpov 3-5; see other detailed articles on Kasparov, including Kasparov’s Child of Change, and Reflections on Garry Kasparov). A few of my other favorites: Alekhine on Carlsbad, 1929; Seven Alekhine Articles; Alekhine’s Death; The Genius and the Princess (on Capablanca and Olga Capablanca Clark); Capablanca v Alekhine, 1927; Reminiscences by Capablanca; Hans Frank and Chess; Attacks on Howard Staunton; Capablanca’s Death; Akiba Rubinstein’s Later Years; Bent Larsen (1935-2010); Lasker v Janowsky, Paris, 1909; Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Aliens; Brad Darrach and the Dark Side of Bobby Fischer.
   
• Entertaining and accurate discussions of lesser known chess figures: The list is legion, far longer than any selection can suggest. A few that come to mind include the following: Disappeared (regarding the unfortunate David A. Mitchell); Chess Prodigies (including of course Samuel Reshevsky, but giving dozens of alleged prodigies, in alphabetical order, with more than enough information provided and clearly sourced for someone to begin an authoritative book - with proper attribution, of course); A Forgotten Showman (Samuel Rosenthal); James A. Leonard; Interregnum (organized chess and its re-emergence after World War II, 1945-1948, another worthy subject for book-length treatment); 'Genius' (the problemist Philip Hamilton Williams); The Fox Enigma; Alfred Kreymborg and Chess; A Great Chess Figure (Sidney N. Bernstein); The Chess Wit and Wisdom of W.E. Napier; Who was Birdie Reeve?; Professor Isaac Rice and the Rice Gambit; Franklin Knowles Young; Anthony E. Santasiere; The Chess Historian H.J.R. Murray;  and James Mortimer: Chessplayer and Playwright.
   
• Honest, objective reviews and discussions of books: The variety here is as impressive as in every other category. There are those that are rightfully negative: A Catastrophic Encyclopedia; Karpov’s Chess is My Life; Kasparov and his Predecessors; Capablanca Book Destroyed. And those that are rightfully positive: Jeremy Gaige (in addition to Gaige’s own “self-obituary,” later shared with the chess community after his death); as well as Petrosian and his games. And some are mixed, at times involving multiple books: Instant Fischer; The Games of Alekhine; Chess Jottings; The Kings of Chess. All are honest, objective, and worth reading as much today as when the books were released - hardly the norm, historically, among chess reviewers.
   
• Ethics and suggestions on writing seriously about chess and its history: Taken together, and in no particular order, these form a master class in writing about the game, and as a group are my favorite, reread many times for enlightenment, enjoyment, and, at times, rueful recognition of my own mistakes: Historical Havoc; Wanted; A Publishing Scandal; Copying; Koltanowski; Chess and the English Language; 'Fun'; Chess Journalism and Ethics; Chess History Research On-Line; Chess History: Photograph Collections; How to Write about Chess (tongue in cheek, but all the wittier, and memorable, for that); Chess: the Need for Sources; Hype in Chess; Unintelligible Chess Writing; Gaffes by Chess Publishers and Authors; Advice for Chess Journalists; Chess Punctuation; Chess Awards.

Themes run throughout this vast collection of exceptional material, not the least being the intention infusing so much of what is written here: giving proper respect and recognition to chess figures by accurately seeking and documenting the facts concerning them. It seems a straightforward enough standard. Yet its execution demands discipline and hard work, as well as fairness and precision, qualities more often found in the chess world on the board than off it. Ponder the following suggestion from Fischer Mysteries: 

Indeed, the largest single category of loose ends regarding Bobby Fischer arguably relates to remarks attributed to him without any precise, reliable source. A major contribution to the cause of chess truth, and to Fischer’s memory, would be a webpage featuring only those quotes which are known to be correct and for which exact citations are supplied.

And then - from 'Fun' - contemplate what for me rings truest, and saddest, of all:

And so it is that much of chess history is not history at all but lurid figments. Anyone criticizing such output risks being labelled a spoilsport or humourless pedant, but a far heavier price is paid by our game’s greatest practitioners, for they are condemned to star ad infinitum in seedy anecdotes which are the product of mindless inter-hack copying or brutal distortion. Any aspect of their lives is considered fair game for sheep and jackals alike, this being the time-honoured process whereby chess history is made ‘fun.’

Chess history deserves far better, and one of the finest voices ever to call for it, to defend it and further it, has left a genuine monument to its practice. One to which the rest of us are, rightfully, forever indebted. 

Biographical note on John Hilbert

This article by John S. Hilbert first appeared in July 2020 on Olimpiu G. Urcan's Patreon webpage, and is reproduced here with permission. Dr Hilbert is the United States' leading chess historian. His 14 books include Shady Side: The Life and Crimes of Norman Tweed Whitaker, Chessmaster (which won the inaugural Book of the Year award of the Chess Café, in 2000), Napier: The Forgotten Chessmaster (1998), Essays in American Chess History (2002) and Young Marshall (2003). More recently (in 2017) he wrote, jointly with Olimpiu G. Urcan, W.H.K. Pollock: A Chess Biography, which was his fifth book for McFarland & Company, Inc. He is currently working on a biography and games collection concerning George H. Mackenzie.