Pest chess club
The Pesti Chess Club ( Hungarian: Pesti Sakkör ), which was probably founded in 1839, was the oldest chess club in Hungary and developed into a center of national chess life. The Budapest Chess Club emerged from the merger with another club in 1894 and existed until 1951.
Origins of the chess club
The exact circumstances of the formation of the Pest chess club are unclear. The year of foundation is usually given as 1839. However, there is no written evidence for this. In September 1842, the German-language Pest magazine “Der Spiegel” reported that a new chess club had been founded in Pest “under the chairmanship of Mr. Josef Mayer”. He asked the Paris Chess Club to play a match, the stake should be 500 forints . It is usually noted that Vincenz Grimm was the (first) chairman. This need not be a contradiction in terms if you consider him as a leader on a practical game level and Mayer on an organizational level. Johann Berger , who mostly had good sources, mentions the years 1839 and 1864 as the most important historical data (see below). Between 1913 and 1915, disputes flared up over the date of foundation, with most votes in favor of 1839 as the year of foundation. At that time the witness Fridrich Altstock had found himself who stated that he had personally attended the establishment.
The correspondence chess competition against Paris
One of the founders of the club was the strongest Hungarian chess player at the time, József Szén . In 1842, the Paris Cercle d'Échecs contacted him to carry out the aforementioned correspondence competition . At the head of the Paris chess masters was Pierre Saint-Amant . Both games, which lasted until 1845, were won by the Hungarian team led by the so-called "triumvirate", which earned the Pest chess club a great prestige success. The triumvirate was made up of Szén, Johann Löwenthal and Vincenz Grimm.
The Hungarian Defense got its name after one game of this competition .
Crisis and renewal of the club
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The chess club had its seat in the late 1840s in a building called "Wurmhof in the apartment of an old, decrepit German baron"; According to Ludwig Bachmann , the apartment of the subsequent revolutionary leader Ludwig Kossuth , "who communicated a lot with the gentlemen of the club", was on the same floor . The upheavals of the Hungarian revolution of 1848/49 ended the early heyday of the chess club, Grimm and Löwenthal decided to emigrate for various reasons. The activities of the Pest chess club experienced a long break in the following years. In order to prevent a permanent extinction, a new attempt had to be made.
The Austrian authorities rejected the first application for a start-up in 1859. The re-establishment of the association was only approved five years later and was ceremonially carried out on October 16, 1864. For almost three decades, until his death in 1893, the composer Ferenc Erkel , who also emerged as a chess master, was chairman of the Pest Chess Club.
Game of chess by Cseresznyés
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position after Black's 26th move
The winner of the first club championship in 1865 was István Cseresznyés. An almost timeless and beautiful positional game from him has been preserved, which he played on February 24, 1865 in Pest as an attraction against O. Hay.
- 1. e2-e4 c7-c5
The Sicilian Defense is played.
- 2. Ng1 – f3 Nb8 – c6 3. d2 – d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 e7 – e6 5. Bc1 – e3 Ng8 – f6 6. Bf1 – d3 Bf8 – e7 7. 0–0 0–0 8. Nb1 – c3 d7 –D5 9. e4xd5 Nf6xd5 10. Sc3xd5 Qd8xd5 11. c2 – c4 Qd5 – d7 12. Nd4xc6 Qd7xc6 13. Qd1 – c2 f7 – f5? 14. f2 – f4 b7 – b6 15. Bd3 – e2 Bc8 – a6 16. b2 – b3 Ra8 – c8 17. Be2 – f3 Dc6 – c7 18. Qc2 – e2 Rf8 – f6 19. Ra1 – d1 Be7 – c5 20. Rd1 – d2 Ba6 – b7 21. Bf3xb7 Qc7xb7?
Bxe3 + was better.
- 22. Be3xc5 b6xc5 23. Rf1 – d1 Rf6 – g6 24. g2 – g3 Qb7 – c7 25. Rd2 – d6! Rc8 – e8 26. De2 – e5 Qc7 – a5
Directed against Rxe6 (see diagram).
- 27. b3 – b4!
A pawn sacrifice to distract the black queen from d8 .
- 27.… Da5xb4 23. Rd6 – d8 Qb4 – a4 29. Rd8xe8 + Da4xe8 30. De5 – c7 Black resigned.
New founding of the Budapest chess club
On December 22nd, 1894 the association of the Pest Chess Club with the Budapest Chess Society , which had existed since 1889, was decided. A week later, on December 29th, the Budapest Chess Club was officially founded. The renewed association of the capital Budapest - which was created in 1873 by amalgamating the previously independent cities of Pest, Buda and Óbuda - remained the focus of the Hungarian chess world for a long time. A national chess federation was not founded until 1911.
International tournament of 1896
On the occasion of Hungary's millennium in 1896, the Budapest Chess Club organized a lavishly endowed international tournament with ten foreign and three Hungarian top players ( Lasker and Steinitz , who were about to start their rematch for the world championship , were prevented from doing so ). The tournament management took over Géza Maróczy , who then stepped in as a participant at short notice due to the failure of other players. To the prize contributed Mikhail Chigorin and Rudolf Charousek a stitch fight the Russian Champion 3: won first Harry Nelson Pillsbury won third prize and 4th / 5th. Dawid Janowski and Carl Schlechter shared the place . For various reasons, Maróczy's tournament book did not appear until almost half a century later.
The later development up to the dissolution of the association
In 1929, the Szén Memorial Tournament took place in honor of the club's founder, won by José Raúl Capablanca ahead of Akiba Rubinstein and Savielly Tartakower . Ten years later, the centenary of the Budapest Chess Club (BSK) was celebrated, which completely followed the tradition of the Pest Chess Club.
During the Second World War , the association's activity was low. After the end of the war there were two more significant chess events, the organization of the memorial tournaments for Kornél Havasi in 1946 and István Abonyi in 1947. In communist Hungary , the conditions for the historic club deteriorated. The national chess federation was converted into a department of the state authority for sport and physical education ( OTSH , Országos Testnevelési és Sporthivatal) in 1950. The sports authority asked the Budapest chess club to merge with another chess club. When the club refused, it was dissolved in August 1951.
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Der Spiegel", September 28, 1842, p. 623 (after A Pesti Sakkör történetérõl )
- ↑ Johann Berger, Chess Yearbook for 1899-1900 , p. 269 (after A Pesti Sakkör történetérõl )
- ↑ Ludwig Bachmann: From bygone times. Pictures from the history of the development of the practical game of chess . 2 vol., Berlin 1920–1922 (vol. 2: p. 305)
- ↑ Barcza et al. a .: Magyar sakktörténet 1 , Verlag Sport, Budapest 1975, p. 148
literature
- Gedeon Barcza , Árpád Földeák, Emil Gelenczei, József Hajtun: Magyar sakktörténet 1. Sport Publishing House, Budapest 1975 (Hajtun: pp. 78–82) ISBN 9-632532-39-2 .
- Géza Maróczy: The international chess championship in Budapest 1896 , Kecskemét 1941
- SG Tartakower : The International Szén Memorial Tournament in Budapest 1929 , Magyar Sakkvilág, Kecskemét 1930
Web links
- A Pesti Sakkör történetérõl ( Memento from May 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (Hungarian)
- Games of the Pest-Paris competition at chessgames (English)