Erich Hagenlocher

Erich Hagenlocher
Personal details
birthday	July 24, 1895
place of birth	Stuttgart
date of death	December 12, 1958
Place of death	Stuttgart
nationality	Germany
Active time	approx. 1925–1942
Achievements Unless otherwise stated, the information relates to the “three cushion” discipline.
Best GD: 70.00 (Cadre 45/2)
(1926 - professional match, USA)
Maximum series (HS): 583 (Cadre 45/2)
(1928 - professional match, Germany)
World Championships:
2 × (1926, 1934 Cadre World Cup)

Erich Hagenlocher (born July 24, 1895 in Stuttgart ; † December 12, 1958 there ) was a German carom player and multiple world champion.

Career

Hagenlocher at the game

1910-1930

Erich Hagenlocher was born in Stuttgart and initially worked as an apprentice in a machine factory. Coincidentally, when he was around 15, his path led him to the Billiard Hall Wilhelmsbau and there he received the first instructions from the billiard masters Stehle and Straub. After only one year he was playing an average of between 4 and 5 on the big billiards table. He liked the game of billiards so much that he gave up his originally planned job.

The young man came to Berlin via Karlsruhe and Frankfurt am Main at the age of 18 , with the active help of Zielkas quickly improved to an average of 6-8 and often managed series over 100 points. Hagenlocher trained with master Jean Bruno for almost 18 months and also received valuable suggestions from the professional player Jamada, who performed show fights in the Cafe Zielka. The master's degree (at that time common among professional players) was presented to the young, ambitious billiard player at the age of 20.

His meeting with Hans Niedermayr probably brought about a significant turning point . The two saw each other every day in the Woerz Academy. Niedermayr himself said that he probably never had a student who tried so persistently and thoroughly to get to the bottom of billiards. Hagenlocher made rapid progress; Series of two and three hundred were no longer uncommon for him.

In 1919 he felt so strong that he undertook a series of tournaments through Switzerland, Italy and Turkey. The constant change from one billiard to the other, again and again in a different city, solidified his game immensely. His security grew from tournament to tournament. When he returned to Germany, he found no opponent who could have beaten him. And so he traveled to the USA in the same year. The reasonably tough school of his southern European trip should benefit him there.

The material he encountered in the United States was certainly not what he wanted in all places. So he was forced to make himself as independent as possible from the material, to play uncomplicated and to eliminate all risks. He quickly adjusted to an unfamiliar gang tee and his game showed enormous accuracy. Again and again he found a continuation of the series, even in difficult situations. For the impartial viewer, this resulted in an apparent simplicity of the game, behind which, however, was the ultimate mastery.

The audience celebrated Hagenlocher, so that he always received more offers than he could accept. In the 1920s his restless life was constantly changing between Europe and America. On one of these trips (in 1922) he married the daughter of his great patron Zielka.

Back in the USA he had his greatest successes. However, his first appearance at a world championship from November 13 to 21, 1922 in New York with all the greats of the time was very disappointing for him only with the sixth and thus last place. Willie Hoppe won the 10th professional world championship ahead of Jacob Schaefer junior , Roger Conti , Edouard Horemans and Welker Cochran . Between the world championships, the professionals were able to challenge the reigning world champion. Hagenlocher got the chance for a challenge match from March 9th to 11th 1926 in Philadelphia against the reigning Cadre 45/2 professional world champion Jake Schaefer junior. He won a game up to 1500 points with an average of 27.27 and a maximum series of 308 and was world champion for the first time. He lost the title to Willie Hoppe in a challenge match from January 5 to 7, 1927 in New York. In America at that time it was customary to play games over longer distances in sections of 300 or 400 points. In the same year he won a game against Welker Cochran up to 2400 points with an average of 70.00. In doing so, he finished several sections in just one shot. Extended series were not common in America. As a result, no series over 300 or 400 could be played. At the 12th Professional World Championship from March 1 to 3, 1927 in Washington , he was just second behind Cochran, against whom he also lost a challenge match from September 29 to October 1, 1927 in Chicago extremely narrow. Also noteworthy is a Cadre 45/2 series of 583 on German soil against the billiard master Rau. But again and again he met the American cadre specialist Cochran. This was and remained his most stubborn opponent.

1930-1950

From a sporting and financial point of view, the 16 years that Hagenlocher spent in the USA were a great success. For an exhibition match in New York in 1932, for example, he received the considerable sum of 2,000 dollars in one evening. But that was not the rule. Therefore it is interesting to know in this context that the billiard factories regularly oblige the strongest professional players to give shows and lessons there for a fixed fee in order to revitalize the large billiard halls. At the 14th and last Cadre 45/2 Professional World Championship from March 26th to April 7th, 1934 in Chicago, Erich Hagenlocher won his second world title. So he would still be the reigning world champion of the professionals in this discipline today. He never took part in professional European championships. From May 5th to 8th, 1938, he played his only German professional championship in the Cadre 45/2 in Gelsenkirchen. He outclassed all of his opponents. In the end, he had an average of 65.12, almost twice the average of the second Hans Weiß (32.47).

For Hagenlocher, the years up to the start of the war in Germany were filled with engagements in all major German cities and with tournaments. It turned out that Hagenlocher was vastly superior to all top German players. Shortly before the outbreak of war, he went to Switzerland and revived billiards in Geneva and Lausanne. It is not known why he returned to Germany in 1942.

As soon as he arrived in Pforzheim, he was given service "in his old job". More than 30 years had passed since he had stood at a machine as a boy because his father, a civil servant, wanted to train his son's technical skills first in practice and later in college. In 1948, Hagenlocher wrote a shocking letter to a friend: “Workers? The word is a gentle term for the craft that I had to do! "

Retirement

But the beginning of the end of such a great billiards career, which for decades delighted people in two continents, could no longer be stopped. The hands, numb due to the heavy work, could no longer handle a cue. In the post-war period there was little need for employees who had known nothing in life but the game of billiards. Modest, as always in life, he looked for a quiet job, but it no longer satisfied him.

Although it was possible to bring Hagenlocher to the billiards table with the cue, he quickly put it back in the cupboard. He also accepted an invitation to open the Stuttgart billiard casino and dared to go to Cafe Maurer with a friend. But the former world champion sat on his chair “like a ghost and watched the balls run deeply”.

Hagenlocher died of a brain tumor at the age of 64. He was buried in the Fangelsbach cemetery in Stuttgart.

The Hagenlocher-Capablanca legend

Legend

When Hagenlocher was in Monte Carlo at the turn of the year 1922/23, the Cuban world chess champion José Raúl Capablanca lived with him in the same hotel. The hotel owner, who is enthusiastic about chess and billiards, recognized his chance and arranged a chess-billiard match between the two world champions. They agreed and the match was scheduled for December 31, 1922. The owner had made no mistake with his assessment, and his house was the most visited in the Monegasque capital that evening. The conditions were quickly negotiated and so Hagenlocher gave his opponent a target of 75 in a game to 100 points, who in turn renounced his lady's tower .

First they played billiards. Capablanca, who himself was a good billiards player, could only admit defeat with 94: 100 despite the huge advantage of 75 points. However, he got his revenge on the board with the 64 black and white squares and this time was just as convincing as Hagenlocher before him.

truth

However, it must be highly doubted that this match ever took place. The online portal Chess History had asked for a public clarification in this regard. The trigger was an article in the Yugoslav chess magazine Šahovski Glasnik from October 1982. In extremely contradicting and contradicting answers to this article, one can come to the conclusion that the encounter never took place. A Mr. Müller from Germany wrote that it was probably a New Year's Eve joke from the newspaper Die Welt ( Hans Klüver's column) from 1951. David Hooper from Bridport, England, wrote that Capablanca used to stay with his family for Christmas in Cuba. Mr. Kleinhenz from Germany sent an issue of the magazine Faschingsschach der Welt (Siegfried Engelhardt Verlag, Berlin-Frohnau, 1963) in which the New Year's Eve joke is resolved on page 15, with a reference to the fact that the German chess newspaper erroneously stated this in its December 1951 issue Had printed the factual report.

However, the legend still lives on. The Batsford Book of Chess Records (London) reprinted this encounter in 2005 without knowing that it was a fake. Astrid Hager, from the online edition of the Cigar Clan , wrote exactly this in its March 4, 2006 issue. In issue 247 of billard magazine, she is mentioned again, but not as a factual report, but in the “Back then” section.

The game of chess actually took place in April 1880, when a Mr. Hoffer played a “Viennese opening” without a lady's tower ( Chess Monthly , May 1880, page 276; Ellis' Chess Sparks , page 86; cites April 1880 as the date).

Others

In 1923 the American pool player Rudolf Walter Wanderone Jr. , better known as "Minnesota Fats", who later became legendary , became his student. Wanderone attributed his subsequent success to his good training at Hagenlocher.

successes

• Professional world champion in Cadre 45/2: 1926, 1934

Web links

Commons : Erich Hagenlocher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Photo by Erich Hagenlocher 1933/34 ( Memento from February 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
• It Takes Healthy Nerves To Run 308 At Billiards Article on Hagenlocher at Stanford School Of Medicine, Tobacco Advertising.
• Article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 30, 1933.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Biography about Erich Hagenlocher in the Deutsche Billard-Zeitung , edition 12/1960.
2. ^ History of BC Stuttgart 1891 e. V. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved July 5, 2012.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Erich Hagenlocher (with photo) Wanderon by Fred Walther (English), Chapter 7, Pages 110–115, Publisher: Xlibris, ISBN 1-4363-4455-7 (excerpt from Billard-Zeitung No. 6, Mönchen -Gladbach December 1960, translated into English by Melanie Knödler).
4. ^ Edward Winter : A Chess-Billiards Concoction ( English ) Chess History.com. Archived from the original on November 8, 2012. Retrieved July 5, 2012.
5. ↑ Heinrich Weingartner : billiards . No. 247 . Weingartner Verlag, 2012, ZDB -ID 1087098-2 , p. 41 .
6. ↑ http://www.de.cigarclan.com/articles/2006/3/04/