Ernst Grünfeld (chess player)

Ernst Grünfeld, around 1925
Surname	Ernst Franz Grünfeld
Association	Austria
Born	November 21, 1893 Vienna , Austria-Hungary
Died	April 3, 1962 Vienna
title	Grand Master (1950)
Best Elo rating	2715 (December 1924) ( Historic Elo rating )

Ernst Franz Grünfeld (actually Ernest Franz Grünfeld ; born November 21, 1893 in Vienna-Josefstadt ; † April 3, 1962 in Vienna-Ottakring ) was a chess grandmaster from Austria . He introduced a major chess opening, the Grünfeld-Indian Defense , named after him , into tournament practice.

Life

Ernst Grunfeld was in the eighth Viennese district of Josefstadt Parents seventh Roman Catholic born parents, who were both immigrated to Vienna. The father Julius came from Austrian Silesia , the mother Aloisia from the Sudetenland . When he was five years old, Ernst Grünfeld had to have his left leg amputated after an accident . He was also severely nearsighted, but had an excellent visual memory.

Grünfeld's father and two of his brothers died as a result of the First World War . As a result, the family's bronze goods business was closed. Grünfeld, who worked in the commercial profession until around 1919 , became a professional chess player.

Grünfeld was married and had a daughter.

Chess career

Grünfeld ( Hoogovens tournament , 1961)

The 1910 world championship match between Emanuel Lasker and Carl Schlechter impressed Grünfeld so much that he learned to play chess a year later. At the age of 19 he first drew attention to himself in Viennese chess clubs with his skills. During the First World War , however, there were no opportunities for him to prove himself in international tournaments. During this time he devoted himself mainly to correspondence chess .

Grünfeld achieved tournament successes between 1920 and 1936 in particular. During his first participation in an international tournament in Budapest in 1921 , he caused a sensation with his second place behind Alexander Alekhine . In 1923 he won the German Championship in Frankfurt am Main (23rd DSB Congress) ahead of Ehrhardt Post and Heinrich Wagner . In the same year he also won in Margate ahead of Alekhine, Bogolyubov and Réti . In 1924 he took first place in Merano , ahead of Spielmann and Rubinstein, and in 1933 in Mährisch-Ostrau .

Grünfeld took part in the Chess Olympiads in 1927 , 1931 , 1933 and 1935 with the Austrian national team. During the Nazi era , Grünfeld joined the NSDAP . He was repeatedly hostile because of his Jewish-sounding name, but referred to his " Aryan descent". He wrote for Schach-Echo , the chess magazine of the KdF chess community, and took part in Wehrmacht events.

He reached his best historical rating of 2715 in December 1924. This put him in fourth place in the world rankings.

Due to his international success, he received the title of Grand Master from FIDE in 1950 .

Contributions to opening theory

Grünfeld made significant contributions to the theory of chess openings. He possessed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of opening variants .

After defeats to Friedrich Sämisch in Vienna and Boris Kostić in Budapest in 1921, Grünfeld had begun to look for a promising way of playing Black against the Queen's Gambit , concentrating on the Indian systems . He discovered that the fianchetting of the black king's bishop could be combined with breaking the center with c7 – c5.

“Black takes his queen pawn two steps as soon as White threatens e4, which is usually done with Nc3; if then d5, cxd5 Nxd5, e4, the Nc3 is exchanged and the center is attacked with c5. A later exchange on d4 creates the hanging pawns e4 and d4 and his majority pawn on the queenside then ensures Black the superior endgame . "

- Ernst Grünfeld : Teplitz-Schönau Chess Congress in October 1922 . ed. by Josef Schorr. German Chess Club, Teplitz-Schönau-Thun 1923, p. 33.

In 1922, in the fourth game of his match against Albert Becker in Vienna, he introduced this style of play into tournament practice: 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. c4 Bg7 4. Nc3 d5 5. cxd5 Nxd5 6. e4 Nxc3 7. bxc3 c5 . Half a year later he defeated Boris Kostić at the tournament in Teplitz-Schönau . In November 1922 Grünfeld succeeded in opening a new store in Vienna against Alekhine. Although grandmasters like Alekhine, Max Euwe , Aaron Nimzowitsch and Richard Réti took up the new defense corresponding to the hypermodern ideas , Grünfeld himself practically did not play it since the mid-1920s. The Grünfeld-Indian Defense ( 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 ) was picked up, developed further and established in tournament chess primarily by Soviet grandmasters after the Second World War .

Grünfeld's first book The Queen's Builder Opening and the Queen's Gambit was published in 1924. The publication was made possible financially by a sponsor, Gyula Patay von Baj. Grünfeld was convinced all his life that 1. d2 – d4 was the best opening move.

style

As a professional player, Grünfeld capitalized on his great opening knowledge. He was known for collecting all available games, determining the opening variants from them and developing his own rating system. For each tournament he put together a repertoire in a bag, which became known as a "variant case". After Grünfeld's first appearance in Budapest in 1921, Jacques Mieses wrote in the Deutsche Schachzeitung :

“[Grünfeld] is a peculiar, completely self-contained type. We would like to call him a reproductive genius, although we are actually expressing a 'contradictio in adjecto'. His knowledge of opening theory goes beyond what is permitted. The ' manual ', which he knows completely by heart, is, so to speak, only the skeleton on which the results of his special studies are based. The first ten to fifteen moves of the game he therefore usually makes a tempo, so that he usually saves an hour to think about it . In the final, too, he is familiar with everything that can be learned. "

- Jacques Mieses : Deutsche Schachzeitung 1921, p. 218.

The Wiener Schachzeitung characterized Grünfeld's style in 1923 as follows:

“[T] he characteristic of his style of play: correctness. No matter how tempting the seduction may be, (…) Grünfeld will never go out to fool the opponent. He will only find satisfaction in chess if he succeeds in 'methodically wrestling the opponent to the ground' through a logical treatment of the opening, through solid systematic work in the middlegame , through careful weighing of the chances of attack and defense. He owes his rapid rise to this deep moral seriousness. "

- Wiener Schachzeitung No. 3/1923, p. 81.

The Austrian master and journalist Hans Müller wrote in the Neue Wiener Journal in 1924 in an appreciation of his style:

“His specifically personal style of playing is primarily based on a methodical and scientific treatment of the position. Alekhine prefers the storm in open battle, so Grünfeld tries to get closer to his opponent with the help of the no less effective method of undermining, in order to finally strangle him properly by blocking the air supply. "

- Hans Müller : Neues Wiener Journal from November 24, 1924.

copyright

In 1930 Grünfeld accused the Viennese master Hans Kmoch of having used his games and analyzes on a large scale in the supplement to the Handbuch des Schachspiels , without quoting him or sharing the fee. He sought legal advice and wrote to world champion Alekhine. At the FIDE congress in Prague in 1931, the subject was discussed in general, but only a moral obligation to cite the sources was recognized, while the assertion of further claims was judged skeptically due to legal concerns.

Trivia

Grünfeld played as an extra in the Soviet film humorist Schachfieber (1925).

literature

• Felix Czeike (Ed.): Historisches Lexikon Wien . Volume 2, Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-218-00544-2 , p. 626.
• Michael Ehn : Ernst Franz Grünfeld. Wiener Schachverlag, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-9500291-0-9 .
• Hans Kmoch in: Heroic tales. Russell Enterprises, Milford 2002, ISBN 1-888690-13-5 , pp. 228-232.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Grünfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Replayable chess games by Ernst Grünfeld on 365Chess.com (English)

swell

1. ^ Edward Winter : Chess Notes, Item 5750
2. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 129.
3. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 129 f.
4. ^ German chess sheets , issue 8/1938, Ernst Grünfeld (curriculum vitae)
5. ↑ German individual chess championship 1923 in Frankfurt / Main on TeleSchach (cross table and games)
6. ↑ Ernst Grünfeld's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
7. ↑ Edmund Bruns: The game of chess as a phenomenon of the cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries . LIT, Münster 2003, p. 214.
8. ↑ Chessmetrics Player Profile April 22, 2006 (English)
9. ↑ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002. Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 74.
10. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 131 f.
11. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 132.
12. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 133.
13. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 136 f.
14. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 130.
15. ↑ Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history: Dramatic decisions and historical turning points . Humboldt, Hannover 2014, p. 130 f.
16. ^ New Vienna Journal of November 24, 1924
17. ↑ Michael Ehn: Nothing new in the Bilguer . In: Kaissiber 2007, 27, pp. 46–69.