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The alleged blindfold chess expert Richard Rooke Rookewarden came to public attention in an article entitled ‘On Blindfold Play and a Post-Mortem’ by Charles Tomlinson on pages 380-388 of the August 1891 BCM. Professor Charles Tomlinson related an extraordinary story of Richard Rooke Rookewarden, who was known in private circles as a remarkable blindfold player, being able to play as many as 12 games simultaneously without sight of board or men, and with ease.
After his death his brother, who was a skilful anatomist, examined the brain of the great blindfold player. Microscopic examination of the organ of locality revealed the astonishing fact that the molecules had arranged themselves into forms somewhat resembling chessboards...
Full details of the story are to be found here.
In Bobby Fischer’s Conquest of the World’s Chess Championship Reuben Fine wrote:
‘A German wit in fact once wrote a book entitled Instructions to Spectators at Chess Tournaments. The book consisted of three hundred blank pages and one other page on which was written: KEEP QUIET.’
As discussed in Chess Notes, the German publication was no more than a little pamphlet, published by Adolf Roegner of Leipzig.
In this feature article Edward Winter presents reports on people playing games against ghosts.
In Historic British Ghosts P.W. Sergeant wrote: ‘I have only come across one alleged instance, very trivial. A well-known chessmaster among my friends appeared to be troubled at one time with such a visitant. The books on chess in his library would be found lying on the floor, would fall out of the shelves at night; always and only chess books, though there were more books on other subjects... The manifestation did not last for more than a very few weeks.’
Olivia Segura Ortiz (Mexico City) sent Edward Winter this photograph of a painting commissioned by her grandfather, Dr Alfredo Lejarza, to depict his fight for the life of a dangerously ill boy in a game of chess against Death.
Nearly two decades ago a 753-page paperback, ISBN 0-9666673-0-1 and ‘Printed in Iceland’ was advertised. No publisher, editor or date of publication was indicated. It was almost impossible to find a purchase outlet, but Edward Winter managed to procure a copy and analysed it extensively, comparing it with Fischer's original (genuine) book. He quotes our own research on this book:
Via Frederic Friedel (Hamburg, Germany) we learn that Garðar Sverrisson, who may be regarded as Fischer’s closest confidant in Iceland, states that Fischer would never have considered bringing out a book such as My 61 Memorable Games without consulting him. Mr Sverrisson writes:
‘When I told Bobby about the forgery in early December 2007 he just became sad and disappointed, exactly as he used to react when he learned about slander or a similar betrayal. At that time his health was deteriorating, and we had other things to worry about than who might be behind this book.
When we discussed the possibility of having My 60 Memorable Games republished he was very much against using any improvements of his own or others (including computers). And changing the notation from the descriptive to the algebraic was out of the question.
We never saw My 61 Memorable Games, and I still have not seen it.’
In case you want to delve deeper into pranks, hoaxes and fakes in the history of chess, here are links to chess historian Edward Winter's thorough research on the subject.
See also the main Chess Notes page and the Factfinder.
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