Paul Morphy, Editor

In the previous post in this series, Five Volumes of 'Chess Monthly', I wrote,

Both title pages [1857, v01; 1858, v02] mention Paul Morphy and D.W. Fiske as editors (plus 'Problem Department by E.B. Cook'), although the handwritten page [1857, v01] indicates that Morphy's name was added later. [...] It's not clear what role he actually played in the publication of Chess Monthly. I'll tackle that another time.

I found a review of v02 at Chess Book Chats: The Chess Monthly by Morphy and Fiske (May 2018; part 1/2). It said,

This is the second volume, for the year 1858, with Paul Morphy named as co-editor, although he had spent the second half of the year in Europe; and the whole volume is largely a tribute to Morphy with extensive reports of his exploits both at home and abroad. Of the 97 games included in this volume, the great majority are by Morphy, starting with games from the First American Chess Congress, held in New York in October and November 1857, and ending with many of his astonishing performances in England and France.

That makes sense, although 'great majority [of games] are by Morphy', might be an exaggeration. Quibbles aside, here is an extract of the Morphy entries from the general indices of the first two volumes of 'Chess Monthly'.

Top: 1857, v01 • Bottom: 1858, v02

The top entry (1857) lists four Morphy games starting on p.368. All of the games were given without notes. The bottom entry (1858) lists four Morphy games starting on p.15. Here is a list of the games, including two games sandwiched between the Morphy games (all links to Chessgames.com):-

• p.15: Louis Paulsen vs Paul Morphy; 1st American Chess Congress (1857), New York, NY USA, rd 4, Nov-03
• p.18: Hardman Philips Montgomery vs Louis Paulsen; 1st American Chess Congress (1857), New York, NY USA, rd 2, Oct-13
• p.19: (see below)
• p.21: John William Schulten vs Paul Morphy; New York (1857), New York, NY USA
• p.22: John William Schulten vs Paul Morphy; New Orleans (1857), New York, NY USA [sic], Nov-??
• p.23: James Thompson vs Paul Morphy; New York (1857), New York, NY USA, Oct-07

The first game, Paulsen - Morphy (p.15), is the famous game where Morphy sacrificed his Queen for a Bishop. It has a page and a half of notes. The other three Morphy games have a half-page of notes. The first page of the edition where the games appeared (January 1958) said,

The Book of the [1st American Chess] Congress will hardly be ready before Spring. This delay is occasioned in part by the desire of the Editor to make the Historical Sketch of American Chess as complete as possible. The notes to the games will be chiefly by Mr. Morphy.

Were the notes to the Morphy games taken from the draft of the book? I'll look at that another time. If four of the six games in the game section were by Morphy, what about the other two? The second game, Montgomery - Paulsen (p.18), would also be found in the book of the congress. The third game appears to be missing from the databases; at least I couldn't find it during a few minutes of searching. Curious about the game, I entered the moves myself:-

[Event "Consultation Game"]
[Site "Paris"]
[Date "1857.06.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Viscount Casabianca / Count Isouard"]
[Black "Duke of Brunswick / Harrwitz"]
[Result "0-1"]
[Source "Chess_Monthly (v02; 1858; p.19)"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 e6 4.Nc3 a6 5.a4 g6 6.d4 cxd4 7.Nxd4 Bg7 8.Nde2 Nge7 9.O-O f5 10.exf5 Nxf5 11.Bd3 O-O 12.Bxf5 Rxf5 13.Ng3 Rf7 14.Nce4 d5 15.Nc5 Qe7 16.Nd3 e5 17.Re1 Be6 18.f3 Raf8 19.c3 h5 20.Be3 d4 21.cxd4 exd4 22.Bf2 h4 23.Ne2 h3 24.Bg3 Bh6 25.f4 hxg2 26.Nf2 Bg7 27.Ne4 Bd5 28.Ng5 Rf5 29.Rc1 Qd8 30.Rc5 d3 31.Qxd3 Qxg5 32.Rd1 Nb4 33.Qd2 Qg4 34.Re1 Re8 35.Qxb4 Rxe2 36.Rxd5 Rxd5 37.Qc4 Bd4+ 38.Bf2 Bxf2# 0-1

Its main point of interest appears to be the Queen sacrifice on move 31. Next stop: The Book of the 1st American Chess Congress.

Archie

No, we're not talking about Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor (congratulations to the proud parents!), we're talking about Archie comics. Although I had more than a half-dozen Archie chess comic covers to choose from, the one shown below seemed the most appropriate, given the news from Britain's royal family.

Archie's Pals 'n' Gals (No.162)

The dialog balloons say,

Veronica: 'Stand aside, Betty! King Archie is mine'

Betty: 'He is not! This QUEEN plays to WIN!'

Archie: 'If I'm a KING, how come they treat me like a PAWN?'

In real life, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor has about as much chance of being King as he has of becoming World Chess Champion, but he's still born into a charmed life. The story reminds me of the recent post, April Yahoos -- Much Ado About Nothing? (April 2019), where I asked, 'Is there a better way to illustrate the idea of a King than with a chess King?' • The Game of Kings? A King or a Pawn?

2019 CJA Awards Announcement

It's become an annual exercise on this blog -- following the Chess Journalists of America (CJA) awards. Last year, just like previous years, it took three posts to cover the main activity:-

• 2018-05-10: 2018 CJA Awards Announcement
• 2018-07-05: 2018 CJA Award Entries
• 2018-08-09: 2018 CJA Awards

I even got a fourth post out of the exercise to look at some of the new categories introduced in 2018:-

• 2018-08-12: CJA Multimedia Winners

The 2019 awards were announced in the May issue of Chess Life (CL). Just like in last year's post, here are the award categories for 2018 and 2019 presented side-by-side. (That's the cover of the August 2017 CL in the upper right corner.) For 2019, the CJA has added nine new categories, highlighted in yellow.

2018	2019

How to enter? There's an entry form on the CJA's web site, Chess Journalism (chessjournalism.org). The structure of the online entry categories doesn't correspond exactly to what was printed in the May CL, but I'll assume that everything is covered. The announcement specified,

The prestigious awards, which are open to anyone, showcase American works published in English between June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019.

If you're a CJA member (I'm not), good luck!

TCEC Cup 3 Nears QF; CCC8 S1 90% Finished

The title of last week's post on the two engine-vs-engines tournaments that I'm following was TCEC S15 Final: SF vs. Leela; CCC8 S1 at 3/4 Mark. Deciphering that title requires a summary of the post:-

TCEC: In the last event for S15, Stockfish and Leela will play a season-ending final match (aka superfinal, sufi) for the second time to determine the best engine on the planet. [...] Before the final match, the TCEC will be holding another cup event, as announced in TCEC Cup 3... • CCC: As of this writing, 18 engines have started play in CCC8; the most recent was Leelenstein. Nearly 590 games have been played. That means 75% of the engines have started play, but somewhat more than half of the games have been played.

During the intervening week, TCEC Cup 3 and CCC8 have both advanced; neither has finished, but both should be finished before next Monday's post. Let's have a quick look at their current status.

TCEC: Currently in the octofinal stage (the round of 16) five of the original 32 engines have already qualified for the quarterfinal, with three octofinal matches remaining to determine the other three quarterfinalists. So far there have been no surprises in the mini-matches.

CCC: Of the original 24 engines, 21 have entered the event and have run the gauntlet of the engines that started before them. Fizbo is the 22nd engine to start, leaving only Stockfish and Leela still to start. The following chart shows the current standings for the first 12 of the 21 engines that have already played each other.

A week ago I wrote, 'Houdini and Antifish are at no.1 and no.2, unfortunately a meaningless observation.' Leelenstein, which was just starting the event at that time, is currently at no.1, followed by Antifish and Houdini. Assuming that both Stockfish and Leela finish among the first four, that leaves place for two more engines. Only two engines from the same AI/NN family can qualify for the final stage, and -- as far as I know -- all of the top AI/NN engines are from the Leela family. That means Leelenstein and Antifish will be fighting each other for one of the last two places in the final.

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page.]

Hyde's Mandragorias

When was the last time I featured a book on Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010)? Not counting comic books, it appears to have been Lombardy's MCO (October 2017), over a year and a half ago.

The item pictured below was titled, '1694 HYDE Oriental Games HISTORY OF CHESS +Nard Backgammon HEBREW ARABIC CHINESE', subtitled, 'RARE 1ST EDITION OF "FIRST SCHOLARLY HISTORY OF CHESS"'. It sold for US $1450 after 48 bids from 16 bidders, on a starting price of $9.75.

The description started with a text image that I transcribed as

Thomas Hyde

[DE LUDIS ORIENTALIBUS LIBRI DUO]
Mandragorias, seu, Historia shahiludii [...] :
de ludis Orientalium

[WITH]

SHAHILUDIUM TRADITUM
in Tribus Scriptis Hebraicis.

[AND]

HISTORIA NERDILUDII,
Hoc est dicere, trunculorum : cum
quibusdam aliis Arabum,
Persarum, Indorum,
Chinensium
[...]

That Latin text appears to have been taken from portions of the book's title page and a 17th-century version of a preface. The rest of the description might be the longest I have ever seen on eBay that wasn't a copy/paste from Wikipedia. It started,

First Complete Edition of this pioneering and highly esteemed study on the history of chess, as well as nard and other oriental games. Three parts in one (2 volumes, with 1st volume comprising 2 parts). Text in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Persian, English and other languages. Illustrated with several engravings in text and 3 folding engraved plates.

This was followed by a collection of quotes from other sources, of which the most authoritative was from Murray:-

"The closing years of the [17th] century saw the publication by the Oxford University Press of Hyde's Mandragorias, seu Historia shahiludii (1694), the first really scientific contribution to the history of chess. A second volume, with the title Historia Nerdiludii, treated in a similar way of other Oriental games. The author, Thomas Hyde, was one of the first Oriental scholars of his age, and was successively Professor of Hebrew and if Arabic in the [Oxford] University, in addition to filling the position of Bodley's Librarian from 1665 until 1701. He used his vast knowledge of Arabic literature to establish the Indian origin of chess, and, although no chess-player himself, the careful use which he made of his authorities, and the copious extracts which he gives, make his work of great value even at the present time." (Harold Murray, A History of Chess, p.841)

After much more of the same, including a few paragraphs on Thomas Hyde (1636-1702), was a physical description of the book.

Octavo, text block measures 16 cm x 9½ cm. Bound in contemporary (ca. 1700) full vellum dyed brownish-orange over rigid boards; flat spine richly decorated in gilt, and with a gilt-lettered title label. • 3 parts bound in 1 volume. Pagination: [72], 184, [4], 71, [17], 278, [2 blank] pages + 3 folding plates. Collated and COMPLETE (with half-title and final blank present). • Illustrated with 3 folding engraved plates (in the 1st part), and several engravings and woodcuts in text. Printed in roman and italic letter (for Latin), black letter/gothic (for English and German), Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and other exotic types, some of which (Chinese, Sanskrit, etc) are engraved. • Each of the three parts with its own dated title-page and its own pagination. Includes half-title ("De ludis Orientalibus...") with the imprimatur (dated Sept. 20 1693) on verso. Dedications, dedicatory epistles, and prefaces to the reader to the 1st and 2nd volume, respectively.

It's unusual to see so much effort put into an eBay description. The seller certainly earned his $1450.

Five Volumes of 'Chess Monthly'

In last week's post, Early American Chess Periodicals, I used machine translation to understand an article from the August 1861 edition of Schachzeitung. Here's an excerpt:-

Recently, the American [Chess Monthly] has an equally thorough, as detailed compilation of all the leaves of their land brought the chess more or less have reciprocated extensively and permanently. We see that in all, 87 newspapers play our games, if only temporarily, were interested. Present are of course, it was only about eleven, which continued [to bring] a column over the chess; they are the following: [...]

Hoping to find the original article in English, I went back to Google Books to locate copies of Chess Monthly and found five volumes (1857-61, v01-05). The title pages for volumes 01 & 02 are shown below.

Left: 1857, v01; Right: 1858, v02
Bottom: Bookplate

The bookplate, which was also in the Google scans, says, 'Ex Libris : Dr. M.Niemeijer'. I mentioned Niemeijer in Chess Sources for Google Books (April 2019), because his book collection is one of the sources for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) in The Hague. As the image above shows, the title page for the 1857 annual volume (v01) of Chess Monthly was handwritten, as was the general index for the entire year. I assume that it is Niemeijer's handwriting.

Both title pages mention Paul Morphy and D.W. Fiske as editors (plus 'Problem Department by E.B. Cook'), although the handwritten page indicates that Morphy's name was added later. In a recent post on my World Championship blog, Early Chess Periodicals (April 2019), I noted a strong connection between those periodicals and the early history of the World Championship:-

The year in brackets ('[]') is the year of the periodical's first publication. That is followed by the name(s) of someone who played a role both in the early years of the periodical and in the early events now considered to have been forerunners ('Unofficial events') of the World Championship. [...] Labourdonnais, Staunton, and Anderssen are all accounted for. St.Amant played two matches against Staunton.

Now we can add Morphy's name to the list, although it's not clear what role he actually played in the publication of Chess Monthly. I'll tackle that another time.

The last volume of Chess Monthly (1861, v05) also has a title page and general index written in Niemeijer's hand. The title page includes the note, 'Five numbers only were published from January to May when the issue ceased.' The first article in the May 1861 edition is the English language source of the Schachzeitung translation. Now we can see how close the translation is to the original (spoiler alert: it's not very good).

May 1969 'On the Cover'

If this month's 'On the Cover' looks vaguely familiar, it might be because we've already seen the Chess Life side on this blog in Early U.S. High School Championships (May 2017). I'll come back to that post after I present both covers from 50 years ago.

Left: 'John Watson - Winner of the 1st National High School Championship'
Right: 'Chess Sets'

Chess Life

The CL cover promised 'Details next month', so let's skip ahead to the June 1969 Chess Life.

With 370 players from 21 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, the National High School Championship made a spectacularly successful debut at the McAlpin Hotel in New York April 11-13. Entrants came from as far as Hawaii and all eight USCF regions were represented. The Individual Champion, with a 7 1/2 - 1/2 score, was John Watson, a senior at Brownell-Talbot High School, Omaha, Nebraska; while the team title, determined by combining the scores of each school's four best scorers, went to the "Gompers" team of Chicago, Ill., all of whose members attend Lane Technical High School.

Getting back to that 2017 post on 'Early U.S. High School Championships', I wrote of the five first winners, 'Along with [Larry] Christiansen, John Watson is well known in the current chess scene, primarily as an author.' Indeed, we've seen him several times on this blog in discussions of books. The most extensive writeup was probably Notes on Material Imbalances (January 2013), where I mentioned, '"Secrets Of Modern Chess Strategy" by John Watson (Gambit 1998), a winner of several "Book of the Year" awards'.

Chess Review

Bob Rosenwald says of our cover sets this month: "Enclosed are photos of two different chess sets I recently designed. The top is made of brass; the lower, wood turned on a lathe -- my first serious attempt in some years to design a beautiful and playable set. I feel the bottom one lends itself admirably to a production line -- perhaps in a high quality plastic." This is Bob's fourth cover appearance!

Four Rosenwald cover appearances? I found the third in April 1966 'On the Cover', where the CR blurb said, 'Robert Rosenwald, who seems to specialize in "out" art on the chessboard'. The second was April 1964 'On the Cover', where the CR blurb said, 'The new Rosenwald set (compare with one on March cover last year) [...] Set designed and executed by Robert L. Rosenwald.' Since that 'On the Cover' was only the second in a new series, Rosenwald's work from the March CR 1963 isn't available for a comparison.

CR had a habit of featuring chess pieces on its covers. The previous occurrence was July 1968 'On the Cover where the CR blurb explained that is was from a 'display of chess sets held at the Brooklyn Museum'.