Black and White Passion

I ended my recent post on the FIDE rating list, Still There After All These Years, with the intention of a follow-up post.

It's an introduction to the photographer listed beneath the photo, Catherine Jaeg. I'll come back to her in another post.

Open almost any issue of Europe Echecs (EE) from the mid to late 1980s and you'll find photos by Catherine Jaeg. One of my favorites is shown below.

Europe Echecs, January 1988 p.13

I translate the caption as '"Ready to Rumble", GMs Dolmatov and Azmaiparashvili, Kasparov's seconds'. The photo is from an EE report on the Kasparov - Karpov Title Match, Seville 1987.

Jaeg was listed on the EE masthead as one of the 'Collaborateurs' starting November 1984, and as a member of the 'Comité de Redaction' (editorial team) starting September 1985. She continued to be listed until July 1990. That same year she published a collection of her photos in a book titled 'black & white -- PASSION -- en noir et blanc' (Broodcoorens, 1990; Bookfinder.com: ISBN 9090041125). Bessel Kok and his wife at that time, Pierrette Broodthaers, were listed as editors (both were also involved with Kasparov's GMA).

Today she is an artist and serves as President of the Salon Dessin et Peinture à l’eau, Paris. A biography (in French) and sample of her work (nothing to do with chess) can found on Exposition des oeuvres de Catherine JAEG (2007).

Instructional Videos : Giri

In the previous episode of this series featuring players in the 2016 Candidates tournament (starts next month!), I used a game from the 2016 Tata tournament, Instructional Videos : Caruana. In this current episode I'll flip back to a historical Tata tournament for another clip showing Tata's infamous wooden demo board (follow the Caruana link for other players using the same board.).

Anish Giri shows his win against Magnus Carlsen (13:55) • 'An unsuccessful opening idea followed by a blunder left the world's number one player Magnus Carlsen with nothing in round 3 of the [2011] Tata Steel Chess Tournament.'

The Youtube description continued, 'For the first time in many years [Carlsen] lost against someone younger than him: the talented Dutch GM Anish Giri, who promoted from the B group last year.' To follow the complete game, see Magnus Carlsen vs Anish Giri; Tata Steel 2011 on Chessgames.com. As far as I know, GM Giri's family name is pronounced with a hard 'g' and rhymes with 'weary'.

Connecting Children with Chess

From the same Youtube channel that brought us Five Time Winner at Wijk aan Zee, here's a clip featuring Janton van Apeldoorn, founder Chessity, 'a company that develops software that teaches children how to play chess'.

Tata Steel Chess 2016 - Chessity (5:39) • 'Published on Jan 31, 2016'

Q: 'Why do you promote the product at the Tata Steel tournament?' • A: 'Tata developed and created a platform for chess. What they have done the last three years is going to all kinds of places in Holland. They connect chess for all the ages, also children. You have seen in the Spoorwegmuseum [Railway Museum] how big it was there -- thousands of visitors and also a lot of children. That platform is an incredible, powerful tool for children to meet with chess.'

In my next post for the 'Chess in School' series, I'll look at chess software for children, in the same spirit as I did for Chess Curriculum (December 2015).

Five Time Winner at Wijk aan Zee

After winning the 2016 Tata tournament at Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands, the World Champion discussed the event with Press Chief Tom Bottema (left) and Tournament Director Jeroen van den Berg (right).

Tata Steel Chess 2016 - Final Press Conference - Magnus Carlsen (16:52) • 'Published on Jan 31, 2016'

For more videos from the Tata Chess organizers, see Youtube channel Tata Steel Chess.

Seven Portieljes

This blog's most recent post about 'Top eBay Chess Items', The Kitten Theme, featured a painting by Gerard Portielje (Belgian, 1856-1929) and noted,

A search on 'chess Portielje' brings up two other works by the same artist.

Afterwards I noticed another painting and started to wonder how many different chess paintings there are by Portielje. Using the following image as a starting point...

Google image search on 'chess Portielje'

...I numbered the rows from top to bottom as 1 to 3 with the paintings from left to right in each row identified as A, B, etc.. The 'Kitten Theme' painting (first row, second from the left) is thereby identified as 1B.

That identification scheme reveals the following pairs of chess paintings: 1A & 1C are the same, 1D & 2B ditto (although certain details like the cabinet on the right of the painting are not identical), 1E & 1F ditto; plus two unpaired paintings: 2A and 2F.

2C and 3C show the same painting, but it's not a chess scene. The other Google images are either not by Portielje or not about chess.

That makes six different paintings on the first Google search page. I found a seventh on the second search page, which leads to valsur 274753.html - Valerij SURKOV, showing four Portielje images (among many others by other artists): 1A/1C, 1D, 2B, plus the new painting.

I wouldn't be surprised to find more.

***

Later: I found a second Valerij SURKOV collection of chess paintings: valsur 337769.html - Valerij SURKOV. This page also has four Portielje images -- 2A, *, 1E/1F, and 2F -- where '*' is a painting not identified above. Change the title of this post to 'Eight Portieljes'!

I also searched my collection of ~10.000 chess images (most of them from eBay) for Portielje. In addition to 'Kitten Theme' (1B), I found several variations of 1E/1F, the best of which had the accompanying text:-

The title is 'The Chess Players'. This print was issued by the Denver Post, December 7, 1902 (printed in the lower left corner). [...] This was printed by the American Colortype Company as a supplement to the Denver Post newspaper.

Another variation mentioned, 'Originally this print appeared as a supplement to the CHICAGO TRIBUNE on 2/2/1902'.

February 1966 'On the Cover'

Fifty years ago, chess photo credits were more haphazard than they are today. I imagine the photo on the left was taken during the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup in Los Angeles.

The issue of Chess Life had only 20 pages with surprisingly little content. Five of the pages showed only crosstables and game scores for non-U.S. tournaments.

Left: World Champion Petrosian
Right: 'WHAT AGAIN! (Photo by Robert Parent)'

Chess Life

Tigran Petrosian, who won the world chess championship by defeating Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963 by a score of 12.5-9.5, will defend his title against Boris Spassky in a 24-game match that will begin on April 11.

Chess Review

Robert J. Fischer stretched his record for winning the United States Championship to seven straight times at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York city, December 12 to 30, 1965. As this tournament, directed by E.T.McCormick, was also the U.S. Zonal tournament, Fischer, along with Robert Byrne and Samuel Reshevsky who tied for second place, qualified to compete in the Interzonal Tournament later this year...

On my zonal pages, World Chess Championship Zonals, I've adopted the practice of numbering the World Championship cycles. The events mentioned here would have been in cycles no.6 and no.7.

Instructional Videos : Caruana

The three previous videos in this series on the players in the forthcoming 2016 Candidates tournament (see the previous post Instructional Videos : Aronian and follow the links back) have all shown analysis from recent editions of the Corus/Tata Wijk aan Zee tournaments. The current video is from the 2016 Tata event that finished yesterday. GM Caruana finished tied for 2nd/3rd, one point behind GM Carlsen. In this clip Caruana discusses his game against the World Champion with broadcast host GM Seirawan.

Tata Steel Tournament 2016 ! Fabiano Caruana Post Game Analysis After Round 2 (22:05) • 'American GM Fabiano Caruana giving analysis of his game against World Champion Magnus Carlsen, Wijk Aan Zee 2016.'

Which do I prefer : the click of wooden pieces on a wooden demo board as in the Aronian discussion or the click of a mouse as in the Caruana discussion? It's hard to say. To follow the complete game, see Magnus Carlsen vs Fabiano Caruana; Tata Steel 2016 on Chessgames.com.