Morphy CDV

Another post for Top eBay Chess Items by Price, another Morphy item. It's only been a few weeks since we had Morphy Stereoview (July 2016), and now we have the item pictured below.

Titled 'Vintage CDV Paul Charles Morphy American chess player photo by Appelton', it had a starting price of US $19.99 and finally sold for $519.00 after 12 bids from five bidders. The item's description carried no more information other than a copy of Wikipedia's Morphy page.

What's a CDV? The eBay page CDV Photos: What are they? (Buying Guides > Photographic Images > Vintage & Antique (Pre-1940) > CDVs) says,

Those three letters are an acronym for the French carte de visite or visiting card. This style of antique photography took over in popularity from the daguerreotype or ambrotype of the 1840s and 1850s. Though they provided lovely images, the dag and ambro were easily damaged and not suitable to tuck into an album or a letter to a friend. The Civil War era of the 1860s, however, saw a wide acceptance of the cdv, the invention of either Adolph Disderi in 1854 or Louis Dodero in 1851.

The cdv photograph belongs to the group known as card photographs because the albumen print (a mixture of egg whites, sodium chloride, and silver nitrate) was mounted on paper cards. The size of a cdv is 2 1/4" x 4 1/4".

The back of the Morphy CDV carries a signature (that doesn't match the signature on the 'Stereoview' item) and the printed identification,

CARTES DE VISITE
D.APPLETON & Co.
443 & 445 Broadway N.Y.
A.A.TURNER
Photographer

I searched my collection of chess images and found many more that featured CDVs, including another showing Morphy. These might be worth a future post.

***

Follow-up: Brady CDVs (September 2016).

Uig, Isle of Lewis

You've seen the movie: Lewis Demisemiseptcentennial (March 2008). You've read the story: The Lewis Pieces at Hilton Head (December 2008) Are you ready for the photo shoot?

Lewis Day 2-18 © Flickr user Alexandra Stevenson under Creative Commons.

The movie explained, 'On 21 April 2006, a carved oak chessman was placed on the machair near Ardroil Sands, Uig, Isle of Lewis. [...] Carving: Stephen Hayward'.

September 1966 'On the Cover'

In last month's 'On the Cover', I boldly forecast,

I predict that next month's 'On the Cover' will feature the Piatigorsky Cup for both magazines.

And so it is.

Left: '(no caption)'; Spassky - Unzicker
Right: 'Piatigorsky Cup Tournament'; Petrosian - Spassky, Reshevsky - Fischer

Chess Life

SPASSKY TAKES CUP • Fisher [sic] Surge Half Point Short • Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, playing with unshakable consistency throughout, went undefeated through eighteen grueling rounds of play to capture the Second Piatigorsky Cup Tournament, held in Santa Monica, California July 17 to August 15. Although Spassky was rarely in danger of losing a game, he did have to withstand a dramatic challenge by U.S. Champion Robert J. Fischer, who came from far behind to tie for first place with two rounds remaining.

Chess Review

2nd PIATIGORSKY CUP TOURNAMENT • Spassky First, Undefeated; Fischer Stages Sensational Rally, Cops Second

The tournament book for 1966 Santa Monica is one of my all-time favorites, largely because most games were annotated by both players. World Champion Petrosian annotated every game he played in the event; ditto for his title challenger of a few months earlier, Spassky.

Chess Sells, Propaganda Sells

In the most recent post about 'Top eBay Chess Items', Soviet Propaganda Porcelain, I wondered,

It escapes me why this current item might also be considered propaganda. Maybe I should look into that another time.

Of the first 21 images returned by a relevant search phrase, all but two of them feature the same chess set. Even after removing the keyword 'porcelain', at least half of the images are of that set.

Google image search on 'chess soviet propaganda porcelain'

The first image (top row, left) points to a post on this blog: Soviet Propaganda Chess Set (September 2009).

Originally the set was created on Lomonosov Porcelain Factory in 1920’s by a very famous and important artist - Natalia Danko. [...] This copy was made from an original set which is located in Lomonosov Porcelain Factory Museum.

The image next to it points to A Russian propaganda porcelain chess set (liveauctioneers.com; 'Sold For £1,100').

The Communists versus the Capitalists, Capitalist King as death, Communist King as a worker, Capitalist Queen in flowing robes, Communist Bishops as effete feudal clergy, Communist Knights as black and white horses, Communist Rooks as ships, Capitalist Rooks as black and white ships, Communist Pawns as healthy workers, Capitalist workers bound in chains, the King 10 cm high, the Pawn 5 cm high.

A later copy of the famous Soviet Propaganda set, designed by Natalia and Yelena Danko in the early 1920's. Literature:
- Bloomsbury Auctions, "Fine Chess Sets and Games", Tuesday 26th October, 2004, Lot 95.
- Bloomsbury Auctions, "Fine Chess Sets and Traditional Games", Thursday, 14th April, 2005, Lot 182.
- Collen Schafroth: "The Art of Chess", Abrams, New York, page 10.

The other images link to similar explanations. But what about my question on 'Top eBay Chess Items: Soviet Propaganda Porcelain'? The best explanation I could find was a booklet titled News From a Radiant Future: Soviet Porcelain from the Collection of Craig H. and Kay A. Tuber (amazon.com).

In a 1925 article on the post-Revolutionary production of the State Porcelain Factory in Leningrad, the ceramic artist Elena Danko described the factory's wares as "news from a radiant future." This volume is a catalogue of the Art Institute of Chicago's 1992 exhibit of Soviet porcelain from the collection of Craig and Kay Tuber. The essays included in News from a Radiant Future discuss the relationship between Bolshevik propaganda and the state porcelain factory, as well as the larger tradition of Russian imperial ceramics. They also consider porcelain's connection to the Russian folk heritage and specifically to the October Revolution.

In short, any Soviet porcelain that shows Lenin, Stalin, or workers is propaganda. The eBay item featured two workers (and a dog); that makes it propaganda; and that helps it sell. Capitalism won.

Korchnoi's Events 1998-99 / 2014-15

After my previous Korchnoi post, Events 1976-2000, I looked at TWIC's records starting with the year 1998, and added a summary for the years 1998-99 to my index page Viktor Korchnoi's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record (TMER, 1946-1977). When does Korchnoi's TMER end? Wikipedia's page, Viktor Korchnoi, says,

Korchnoi became the oldest player ever to win a national championship, when he won the 2009 Swiss championship at age 78. He won the national title again a few months after his 80th birthday in July 2011 after a playoff game with Joseph Gallagher.

Chess.com's Peter Doggers, in Viktor Korchnoi, 1931-2016 (June 2016), wrote,

Korchnoi's last recorded games were the four rapid games that he played against Wolfgang Uhlmann at the 2015 Zurich Chess Challenge. He also played two rapid games against the same opponent in 2014 in Leipzig.

His last classical games were from 2012, played in the Swiss Team Championship. At the end of that year, when he was 81, he suffered from a stroke, and later he had problems with his heart as well. He was scheduled to play in the 2013 Zurich Christmas Open, but withdrew due to health reasons.

TWIC's Mark Crowther covered the two Uhlmann matches in TWIC 1014 & 1059. By the time I wrote this post, I had located four events Korchnoi played in his last two years:-

• Korchnoi Again Plays Chess. Against Uhlmann, not Spassky Though (chess-news.ru/en; March 2014)
• Pegasus chess extravaganza in Dresden (chessbase.com; September 2014) • 'The white side consisted of GMs Uhlmann, Darga and Hecht, while the black side was represented by Korchnoi, Taimanov and Padevsky. It was a discussion game: the three players would come to a consensus and then a move would be made.'
• Korchnoi vs. Uhlmann, two legends in Zürich (chess24.com; February 2015)
• The man who has spent his whole life in the game (chessdiagonals.ch; June 2016) • 'Viktor Korchnoi's last games in public were the four rapid games he played against his longtime friend from Saint Petersburg, Mark Taimanov at the [Lucerne] Chess Museum in November 2015.'

There were undoubtedly other games. Korchnoi must have been the most active chess grandmaster in history.

Does Chess.com Make You Smarter?

In my previous 'chess in schools' (CIS) post, 'Chess in Primary Schools' Studied, I promised to 'take a closer look at the EEF study', where EEF stands for the U.K. based Education Endowment Foundation. First, here's a recent video from Chess.com's Youtube channel.

Does Chess Make Kids Smarter? With GM Ian Rogers (3:06) • 'Renowned chess journalist and grandmaster Ian Rogers gives his two cents on the recent UK study that suggests chess does not improve math skills among kids.'

This links to another Chess.com video, ChessCenter: Does Chess Make You Smarter?, where the title covers a few minutes of discussion between IM Daniel Rensch and WFM Alexandra Botez starting at 6:20 into the clip. The commentators ask viewers to leave a comment on the survey question 'Do you think chess makes you smarter?'. (I recently featured the series in a Video Friday post, Chess.com's ChessCenter, June 2016).

GM Rogers penned a corresponding article on Chess.com, titled School Chess Fails PR Test, where he started,

Boris Gelfand’s musings in a recent interview on the benefits of children playing chess for its own sake - “Only a fraction will play professionally, but the rest will acquire the skill of strategic planning and the habit of thinking, taking responsibility for their actions and respecting their opponent; very useful skills.” - has proven remarkably prescient.

The original Gelfand interview can be found at Gelfand on missing the Baku Olympiad (chess24.com; 2 July 2016). As if all that weren't enough, Chess.com has another comments-only forum post, Playing chess doesn't make your children any smarter, study finds, which starts with a copy of the Telegraph article (13 July) that I referenced in my previous post. Of course, Chess.com isn't the only chess organization looking at the EEF study: more about that in my next post.

Chess with Walkie-Talkies

When was the last time you needed a drone to see the whole chess board?

Chess pieces are substituted by tractors in Spain (2:46) • 'In the small town of Hinojosa in the centre of Spain, 32 chess pieces took their position to begin the game on Saturday, August 20. But this time the figures were replaced by heavy agronomy machinery.'

The description continued,

This is the second time the inhabitants of Hinojosa have celebrated the event. Organisers say the chess game is an opportunity to vindicate agricultural labour and a call for youngsters to move to the countryside. Local farmer, Andres Lazaro, said the game also pays tribute to the effort of those who stay in the town to work the land. The tractors moved over a 25,000 square metres board sketched in the land. The game was played by two young adults on a regular chess board, but the players used a walkie talkie to give orders to move the tractors over the land.

Kasparov and Timman once played a game using forklifts, but this goes one step further.