Ossip Bernstein

Ossip Bernstein, Saint Petersburg 1909
Association	France Russia
Born	September 20, 1882 Zhytomyr , Russian Empire
Died	November 30, 1962
title	Grand Master (1950)
Best Elo rating	2688 (January 1906) ( historical rating )

Ossip Bernstein (originally Russian Осип Самойлович Бернштейн ., Scientific transliteration Osip Samojlovič Bernštejn or Осип Самуилович Бернштейн / Osip Samuilovič Bernštejn * 20th September 1882 in Zhytomyr , † thirtieth November 1962 ) was a Russian - Ukrainian chess player with Jewish roots.

Tournament player

Ossip Bernstein came from a wealthy merchant family and went in 1901 to Germany to there jurisprudence to study. He won several tournaments of the Berlin Chess Society and in 1902 took part in the main tournament of the German Chess Federation in Hanover, where he reached 2nd place. He was also a very good simultaneous player . In 1903 he played against 80 opponents in Berlin and won 70 games in six draws and only four losing games. In 1906 he received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg . Bernstein then settled in Moscow , where he became a member of the Moscow Chess Society .

He achieved his first major international success at the tournament in Kiev in 1903, where he was second behind Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin , but was able to defeat this in a direct duel.

Then he took part in many important tournaments until the outbreak of World War I and mostly landed in the top places, for example in Coburg in 1904, Barmen in 1905, Ostend in 1906 and 1907, Saint Petersburg in 1909, and in San Sebastián in 1911. That year, Bernstein also won a competition against Szymon Winawer with 3.5 - 2.5. At the All-Russian National Tournament in Vilnius in 1912 he was second behind Akiba Rubinstein , who was considered a serious candidate for the World Cup at the time. A relative failure of Bernstein was the tournament in Saint Petersburg in 1914 , in which he was eliminated after the preliminary round, but was the only participant to win a game against the world chess champion Emanuel Lasker .

Ossip Bernstein (1961)

After the October Revolution , in which he lost his fortune, he emigrated to France with his wife and two children and from 1920 lived as a respected lawyer in Paris . He only took part in tournaments sporadically, but hardly lost any of his playing strength and in 1933 was able to keep a training match against world champion Alexander Alekhine in a draw (2-2). In 1940 Bernstein had to flee from the National Socialists to Spain , but returned to France after the end of the Second World War . In 1950 FIDE awarded him the title of Grand Master . In 1954 he still represented France on the first board at the Chess Olympiad in Amsterdam and in the same year won a game against Miguel Najdorf that was awarded a beauty prize in Montevideo . In 1956, Bernstein saw Russia for the last time when he came to Moscow as captain of the French team for the Chess Olympiad, but did not play due to illness.

Ossip Bernstein died on November 30, 1962 in a sanatorium in the French Pyrenees .

Savielly Tartakower , who published a biography of Bernstein in 1930 , described him as a " tactician par excellence".

Between 1904 and 1906, Bernstein was among the top ten players in the world for several months.

Bernstein met future world champion José Raúl Capablanca in San Sebastián in 1911 , who played one of the best games of his career against him: Capablanca - Bernstein, San Sebastián 1911

Well-known games

• Capablanca - Bernstein, San Sebastián 1911

Chess composition

Bernstein composed some chess problems and studies . The following game on stalemate illustrates this.

Ossip Bernstein
Schachmatnoye obosrenije, 1903

	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

White to move forces a draw

Solution:

1. g7 + Kg8
2. f7 + Kxf7
3. Bh5 + Kg8
4. Bf7 + Kxf7
5. g6 + Kg8
White is patted.

The following task has often been reprinted as an alleged position in the game.

Ossip Bernstein
549 Daily Telegraph , 1907

	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

Mate in 3 moves

Solution:

1. c4 – c5 , and:
1.… b6xc5 2. Nd6 – c4 + Ka5 – b5 3. a2 – a4 mate
1.… Nd8- ~ 2. Nd6 – b7 + Ka5 – b5 3. a2 – a4 mate
1. … B6 – b5 2. a2 – a3 with pressure to pull

literature

• Savielly Tartakower: Modern chess strategy: Ossip S. Bernstein's chess and life career . Breslau 1930 (Reprint Olms-Verlag, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-283-00177-4 .)

Web links

Commons : Ossip Bernstein  - Collection of Images

• Replayable chess games by Ossip Bernstein on chessgames.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ossip Bernstein's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
2. ↑ Alain C. White: Knights and Bishops . 1909