Carl Carls

Carl Carls, Mannheim 1914
Surname	Carl Johan Margot Carls
Association	Germany
Born	September 16, 1880 Varel , German Empire
Died	September 11, 1958 Bremen
title	International champion (1951)
Best Elo rating	2589 (August 1930) ( historical rating )

Carl Johan Margot Carls (born September 16, 1880 in Varel , Oldenburg , † September 11, 1958 in Bremen ) was a German chess master .

Chess career

At the age of 13, Carls learned to play chess. He studied a book by Tarrasch , who from then on was his model. During his professional stay in Hanover he got to know the chess masters Bernstein and Fahrni , with whom he played many private games.

In 1898 Carls first took part in a tournament of the German Chess Federation in Cologne . As a member of the 13th Congress of the German Chess Federation, he was particularly committed to one of the most important events that the chess world had not yet experienced. A chess tournament in blind chess simultaneously against 21 opponents, a world record at the time, in which all players were allowed to consult with one another and analyze their games on their pocket chess sets during the game. Carls organized the event and held it on July 27, 1902 at 2 p.m. in the large hall of the Kaisers Café in Hanover. Inside and outside the world of chess, there was a heated debate as to whether a person could be able to play the games from the opening to the endgame from memory alone without any further aids. Harry Nelson Pillsbury , who is considered a phenomenon in the chess world, competed against the strongest chess players of his time, another special feature of this internationally acclaimed event, and won 3 games after 12 hours, with 11 draws and 7 losses. Carls valued the tournament very highly: "Never again had a blind player had to fight against an opponent that was even approximately the same strength". Two weeks later, Carls repeated the event in Bremen with 12 participants. This time Pillsbury won 10 games. Carls himself took part in both tournaments and was able to achieve a considerable draw on the first attempt, and lost in the second game in Bremen. In 1905 he finished 4th in the Hamburg championship and received the beauty prize for the best game. In 1911 he got the title of German Master . In 1912 he took part in an international championship tournament for the first time in Breslau at the 18th Congress of the German Chess Federation. Further successes were second place in Bad Oeynhausen in 1922 and his performance at the 1927 Chess Olympiad in London: With 9.5 out of 15 he was the best German player. At the amateur world championship in The Hague in 1928 he finished 7th. In 1930 he was again a member of the German national team at the Chess Olympiad in Hamburg.

In 1934 he won the tournament for the championship of Germany in Aachen before Heinrich Reinhardt and Ludwig Rödl and received the title of Master of Germany . In 1951 FIDE awarded him the title of International Master .

Carls was a good positional player and very strong in the final . One commentator characterized a typical Carls game with the words: The opponent is slowly worn down, the attack coldly rejected and then steered with full sails into an endgame in which the opponent is at a small disadvantage and now relentlessly step by step Abyss is pushed .

Carls was an honorary member of the Bremen Chess Society from 1877 , the Hannoversche SK and the Weser-Ems Chess Association .

opening

Carls always opened his games with White with the move 1. c2 – c4. This opening was therefore also known as the Carls opening or the Bremen partie . Today this beginning of the game is referred to as the English opening and is often found in tournament practice. He was hardly interested in other openings because his job left him with too little time for them.

During Carl's active time, the value of this opening was controversial. Before the tournament in Breslau in 1912 Tarrasch called the first move c4 a very stupid move . Carls returned the favor by defeating Tarrasch with white and of course with c4 in a highly regarded game in this tournament.

Another anecdote has not been forgotten: when Carls had white in a tournament game, a prankster secretly stuck pawn c2 on the board before the game. Carls came to the board, pulled powerfully with the c-pawn - and to the delight of all bystanders, all the pieces flew around.

With black, he preferred the Caro-Kann defense . With this opening he won a famous short game against Schuster in Oldenburg in 1914: 1. e2 – e4 c7 – c6 2. d2 – d4 d7 – d5 3. Nb1 – c3 d5xe4 4. Nb1 – c3 d5xe4 4. Nb3xe4 Ng8 – f6 5. Ne4 – g3 h7 – h5 6. Bc1 – g5 h5 – h4 7. Bg5xf6 h4xg3 8. Bf6 – e5 Rh8xh2! 9. Rh1xh2 Qd8 – a5 + 10. c2 – c3 Da5xe5 + 11. d4xe5 g3xh2 White gave up. He cannot prevent the pawn from converting into a queen and Black then having one more piece.

Professional career

After finishing school, Carls completed a commercial apprenticeship and then worked as a bank clerk in Hanover until 1906. Then he moved to Bremen. Here he was one of the founders of Bremer Creditbank . In 1908 he became director of this bank.

literature

• Alfred Brinckmann: Carl Carls and the Bremen part . Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin 1957.
• Andreas Calic: The romantic anti-romantic from Bremen , in: Karl (Schachzeitschrift) , 1, 2016, pp. 29–33.
• Robert Huebner: The Bremen chess master Carl Carls , in: The championship of the century in chess. The German individual championship 1998 in Bremen and the chess history of the Hanseatic city. Edited by Claus Dieter Meyer and Till Schelz-Brandenburg. Schünemann, Bremen 2001, pp. 237-306.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Weser-Kurier, April 26, 2018, p. 27.
2. ↑ German individual championship 1922 in Bad Oeynhausen on TeleSchach (cross table and games)
3. ↑ German individual chess championship 1934 in Aachen on TeleSchach (cross table and games)
4. ↑ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002. Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 88.
5. ^ The honorary members of the BSG
6. ↑ Deutsches Wochenschach and Berliner Schachzeitung 1925, p. 126.
7. ↑ Hanno Keller: On the history of the Bremen chess life , in: The century championship in chess. The German individual championship 1998 in Bremen and the chess history of the Hanseatic city. Schünemann; Bremen 2001, pp. 135-236; here p. 224.
8. ↑ There are different details about the venue and year of this game. The chess historian Edward Winter thinks it is most likely that the game was played at the 3rd Congress of the Oldenburg-East Frisian Association, about which the magazine Deutsches Wochenschach reported in March 1914. Chess Notes 5231. Schuster v Carls