Artur Popławski

Artur Władysław Kamil Popławski

Popławski's grave in Warsaw

Artur Władysław Kamil Popławski (* 1860 in Warsaw ; † August 10, 1918 ibid) was a Polish engineer and chess master . He won the Swiss chess championship twice .

Life

After finishing high school in Warsaw, Popławski studied mathematics from 1879 at the Tsarist University in Warsaw . In 1884 he moved to the Polytechnic in Zurich , where he received his engineering diploma with distinction. He returned to Warsaw at the beginning of the 1890s, where he was entrusted with the construction of the Warsaw-Vienna line as a railway construction engineer. In addition, he pursued scientific work and published a work on statistics. At the end of his life he received an appointment to the chair of statistics at the Technical University of Warsaw , which he had to decline due to his poor health. Popławski died before the end of the First World War and was buried in the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

Chess career

During his studies in Warsaw, he and his fellow student Józef Żabiński were considered a promising young chess player and one of the better-known Warsaw masters. In September 1879 he received an invitation from Szymon Winawer and Jan Kleczyński (the older player of that name) to represent the Warsaw team, which played two correspondence games against Moscow in the same year . Popławski's partners in this match, which the Warsaw team won 1.5: 0.5, were Dawid Winawer, Michał Landau and Szymon Methal in addition to the aforementioned Szymon Winawer, Kleczyński and Żabiński .

Shortly before his departure to Switzerland, Popławski took part in the Warsaw Championship, which was organized around the turn of the year 1883/84: In a field of 12 players, he was second, only half a point overtaken by Żabiński. In Switzerland, he won the first two aligned Championships in Switzerland in the years 1889 and 1890, both times shared with Max Pestalozzi . Popławski received many beauty awards for his games and published several articles on problem chess .

After returning from Switzerland, Popławski took part in Warsaw chess life again, but gradually limited his activity to the organizational part in the Warsaw Chess Society , for which he organized tournaments and competitions. He was also a judge several times in chess competitions for the newspapers Tygodnik Illustrowany and Kurier Warszawski .

Sporadically he played a few games in Warsaw cafes; He achieved some notable successes, for example in 1892 he defeated the master of Galicia, Ignacy Popiel , and the following year the Berlin master Moritz Lewitt . He won competitions against local Warsaw greats: Jan Kleczyński (the elder, 1891), Szymon Menthal (1895) and Alexander Flamberg (1900).

literature

• Tadeusz Wolsza: Arcymistrzowie, mistrzowie, amatorzy ... Słownik biograficzny szachistów polskich [Grand Masters, Masters, Amateurs ... Biographical Lexicon of Polish Chess Players], Volume 1, Wydawnictwo DiG, Warsaw 1995.