József Szén

József Szén
Association	Hungary
Born	Plague 9 July 1805
Died	Plague 13 January 1857
Best Elo rating	2546 (August 1851) ( historical rating )

József Szén [ ˈjoːʒɛf ˈseːn ] (born July 9, 1805 in Pest , † January 13, 1857 there ) was a Hungarian chess master .

Life

Szén, an archivist by profession, learned to play chess in the cafes of Pest (now Budapest). In 1830/31 he won the championship of Café Wurm in Pest and was soon considered the Philidor of Hungary . In the years 1836 to 1839 Szén made a trip to Europe that took him to France, England and Germany. He took the opportunity to play competitions and casual games with the strongest chess masters from these countries. His tour and the successes associated with it increased his fame among Europe's chess players. In 1836 he defeated Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais in Paris in a handicap match with 13:12 (+13 = 0 −12) (Szén was given Bauer and Zug). In April 1839 Szén stayed in Berlin for a few days and measured himself against the strongest players in the Berlin chess society : he lost the game against Paul Rudolph von Bilguer , Carl Mayet won two of three games and held the third draw. Tassilo von Heydebrand and the Lasa lost the first two games and won the third; Ludwig Bledow lost the first and won the second game.

In 1839, Szén was one of the founders of the Pest Chess Club (this was initially a temporary collaboration in the coffee house), whose campaigner was the Hungarian composer Ferenc Erkel , a strong player to whom Szén was even defeated in individual games.

The Pest Chess Club was headed by Szén, Johann Jacob Löwenthal and Vince Grimm when a highly regarded correspondence match against Paris , led by the chess master Pierre Saint-Amant , was organized between 1842 and 1845 . Pest's 2-0 win was a sensation back then. The defense used by the Pest in their black game went down in chess theory as the Hungarian Defense .

In 1851, Howard Staunton invited Szén to London for the first international chess tournament in chess history , which took place during the World's Fair . Szén finished fifth and proved his world class with this excellent result, which was his greatest success in his career. Szén had Lospech in this tournament. In the second round he met the eventual tournament winner Adolf Anderssen , to whom he lost 2: 4. He estimated Szén's playing strength so high that an agreement was reached between the two before the competition, according to which the winner should give the loser a third of his future prize money.

On the way back from London in April 1852, Szén met various Viennese chess players in Café Neuner in Vienna. Of the 20 games played between Szén and Ernst Falkbeer , each won nine and two remained a draw. In 1853 Szén lost to Daniel Harrwitz in London with 1.5: 3.5 (+1 = 1 −3). Some of the endgames he wrote (mostly pawn endgames ) found their way into chess literature .

Chess composition

The following is a famous study from his compositional work, the position of which had long been regarded as a draw and in which he was able to prove that the right of the suit is of decisive importance and that the person who attracts wins.

József Szén
Bell’s Life 1840

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

                                                       (Syllables 4 + 4) He who attracts wins

Solution :

1. Ke2! Kd7 2. Kf3 Kc6 3. a4 h5 4. c4 f5 5. Kg3 Kb6 6. b4 g5 7. a5 + Ka6 8. c5 h4 + 9. Kh3

Variants:

9.… f4 10. c6 f3 11. b5 + Ka7 12. c7 g4 + 13. Kxg4 f2 14. c8D f1D 15. b6 #
9.… Kb5 10. Kh2 g4 11. Kg2 f4 12. Kg1 f3 13. Kf2 h3 14. Kg3 etc. with a profit

The course of the solution contains numerous deviations that are worth further consideration of their own.

The starting position, characterized by the two peasant phalanxes isolated on the wing side with a supporting king , is not determined by mutual pressure , as one might assume , but by the remote opposition of the two kings.

Due to the material used, the above study is one of the pawn endings and there it is one of the so-called three-pawn problems, which have also been the subject of extensive mathematical chess investigations, some with computer support.

literature

• Iván Bottlik: Joseph Szén: Life and times of a chess genius , Quarterly for Chess History 9 (2004), 120-137
• Mario Ziegler: The Chess Tournament London 1851 . St. Ingbert 2013. ISBN 978-3-944158-00-6 , 125-132

Web links

• József Szén (1805–1857) Website Sarah's Chess Journal (English)
• Hungarian chess composers: József Szén ( Memento of July 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) via Internet Archive (Hungarian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Edo Historical Chess Ratings reflects various traditions. Retrieved October 11, 2012.
2. ↑ Schachzeitung 1847, p. 13.
3. ↑ Wiener Schachzeitung 1855, p. 17.
4. ↑ György Bakcsi (Ed.): Hungarian chess problem anthology . Corvina Kiadó, Budapest 1983. ISBN 9-631-31432-4 , pp. 8 and 54
5. ↑ György Bakcsi (Ed.): Hungarian chess problems with few pieces . Verlag Harri Deutsch, Thun and Frankfurt am Main 1985. ISBN 3-871-44798-6 , pp. 222 and 291
6. ^ Howard Staunton: The Chess-Player's Handbook: A popular and scientific introduction to the game of chess , Henry G. Bohn, London 1847, pp. 498-500. Online . Retrieved October 9, 2012.
7. Jump up ↑ Noam D. Elkies : On Numbers and Endgames: Combinatorial Game Theory in Chess Endgames , Games of No Chance, MSRI Publications, Vol. 29, pp. 135-150