Chess Trivia

 Trivia Presented on the Book Written by Bill Will of 2001

1. Did you know that Bobby Fischer, Barbra Streissand, and Grandmaster/ murderer Raymond Weinstein all went to Eramus High School together?

2. Did you know that Humphrey Bogart hustled strangers at 5-minute chess for 50 cents a game at chess parlors in New York Times Square?

3. al-Adli (800?-860?) Father of opening analysis. He is credited with the use of descriptive chess notation and a rating system (5 classes of players). He was the strongest player of his time until defeated by ar-Razi.

4. Alburt, Lev (1945- ) Russian Grandmaster who defected from the USSR in 1979. He has won the U.S.
Championship 3 times and the Chess Trivia 12 U.S. Open twice. He has a doctorate in physics and natural
philosophy. He was the first Grandmaster elected to the governing body of the US Chess Federation.

5.

Alekhine, Alexander (1892-1946) Alexander Alekhine (Aljechin) was the son of a wealthy landowner. He learned chess from his older brother around age 11. At 17 he gained his master title after winning a tournament in St Petersburg. He was a prisoner of war like all the other chess contestants at an international
tournament in Mannheim in 1914. He was taken to Rastatt, Germany but he feigned madness and the Germans released him as unfit for military service. In 1915 and 1916 he served in the Russian Red Cross. He was captured by the Austrians and was hospitalized in Tarnapol due to a spinal injury. There, he developed his blindfold skills. After World War I, the Russian government decorated him for bravery. In 1918 he was a criminal investigator in Moscow. In 1919 he was imprisoned in the death cell at Odessa as a spy. In 1920 he was back in Moscow intending to be a movie actor. He also served as interpreter to the Communist party and was appointed secretary to the Education Department. He won the first Soviet chess championship in 1920. In 1921 he married a foreign Communist delegate and left Russia for good. In 1925 he became a naturalized French citizen and entered the Sorbonne Law School. At the Sorbonne his thesis dealt with the Chinese prison system. He did not get his doctorate from the Sorbonne as he claimed. In 1925 he
played 28 games blindfolded, winning 22, drawing 3, losing 3. In 1927 he defeated Capablanca in Buenos Ai- res for the world chess championship. In 1930 he scored the first 100% score in the Chess Olympiad, winning 9 games on board 1 for France. In 1935 he lost his world championship to Max Euwe, but regained it in a return match in 1937. During World War II, he became a Nazi collaborator and declared he was ready to sacrifice his life for a Nazi Russia. He competed in seven tournaments in Germany during the war and wrote several pro-Nazi articles. He died in Estoril, Portugal after choking on an unchewed piece of meat. The body was not buried for 3 weeks as no one claimed the body. The Portugese Chess Federation took charge of the funeral. Only 10 people showed up for his funeral. His remains were transferred to Paris in 1956, paid by the French Chess Federation. His tombstone has his birth and death date wrong.