Nottingham 1936

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Leonard Barden's chess column in The Guardian mentions Nottingham 1936:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/ ... efield-cup

Friday is the exact 90th anniversary of the final round of Nottingham 1936, the strongest chess tournament ever played on English soil, in which five past, present and future world champions took part.

And a suggestion is made:

My suggestion is that the English Chess Federation should start planning for a Nottingham Centenary Tournament in 2036. Such a proposal would be better made in the early 2030s, but somebody else would need to make it then.

And a personal note from Leonard:

I confess to a personal interest: In my long ago chess youth I played, met, or had correspondence with 12 of the 15 players at Nottingham 1936, missing out on only Emanuel Lasker, José Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine. A major international centenary tournament in Nottingham 2036 would be fitting.

I do hope someone (either now or in the early 2030s) takes up this proposal and makes this happen.

Without cheating and looking, can anyone name the other 12 players at Nottingham 1936? Any thoughts on how such a centenary event might be organised and who might be there and who of the current top players would still be playing?

[Nick Ivell]

That is a trio of giants that Leonard missed out on.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Yeah, but the other 12...

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest Reti, Euwe, Botvinnik as starters... (I am probably wrong about Botvinnik).

OOPS: Reti had been dead for 7 years. 2/3 not bad. Naming the four UK chess masters should be easy for three of them. Of the foreign masters, I should have got at least five but the Yugoslav one I always forget.

(The nationalities were: USSR, Cuba, Netherlands, USA, France, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Germany, Poland, UK.)

[Nick Ivell]

I seem to recall Tylor as part of the weak local contingent. Reshevsky also rings a bell, as well as Tartakower.

I have the Alekhine book, not leafed for many a long year. Think it might have been v Tartakower that the annotator acidly observed that Capablanca's game did not deserve a diagram.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Capablanca, Alekhine, Flohr, Lasker, Euwe, Reshevsky, Fine, Botvinnik, Vidmar, Bogolyubov, Tartakower, Thomas, Alexander, Winter and Tylor.

(it does help tbf that I am currently in possession of CHESS volume 2 and have been playing through some of the games)

One thing I have wondered is why there was an odd number of participants - was somebody else originally pencilled in to play?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

The Wikipedia article is silent on who organised it and how they managed to get so many strong players to play.

It was J. N. Derbyshire who was the driving force behind it.

https://leftlion.co.uk/features/2020/02 ... ournament/

It’s hard to imagine a sporting entrance more dramatic than Tartakower’s, who sent shockwaves through the tournament before a single game had been played. The night before the opening match, a Dutch ship believed to be carrying him sank to the bottom of the Thames during a storm. Tournament organisers, assuming he had died, hastily announced his passing to a hall full of shocked attendees, only to have Tartakower stroll in twenty minutes later, very much alive and ready to play.

I swear I had not heard that before.

(Maybe one of the British players was a substitute for Tartakower, so the numbers went from 14 to 13 to 14 to 15?)

I had heard this before:

The eventual winner, young Mikhail Botvinnik, seized victory in somewhat contentious circumstances. Having methodically worked his way to seven draws and seven victories, he met with last-placed British master William Winter, who completely outplayed him on the final day. With first prize on the line, and defeat seeming certain, Botvinnik was inexplicably offered a generous draw by Winter. Why? Winter was a well-known Stalinist, and would have rather seen a Soviet player crowned as champion. His wish was granted, and Botvinnik became the first Soviet player to achieve success outside of the Soviet Union.

[Matt Mackenzie]

I thought the "commie Winter fixed it for Botvinnik" canard had been discredited long ago tbh - as I have mentioned on here before, WW's blowing a totally won game against Capablanca earlier on in the tournament was surely much more relevant. He was almost certainly happy to draw with such a strong player (and with the Black pieces) given his generally poor event.

A minor curiosity is that the four "home" players drew all their games with each other.

I had not heard that Tartakower story before, no - it certainly does not appear in the lengthy coverage of the tournament in CHESS.

(what was the ship in question btw, it must have been given fairly major news coverage at the time)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Edward Winter covers this twice:

(1) https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/ext ... kower.html

As shown in C.N. 8162, Tartakower stated on page 331 of the November 1952 Chess Review that he arrived 20 minutes late for his first-round game against Capablanca in Nottingham (10 August 1936), having travelled from Rotterdam via Hull. By choosing that route, he claimed, he had ‘avoided a sure death’, because the Dutch ship to London that he had envisaged taking ‘sank in the Thames with the loss of all on board’.

Olimpiu G. Urcan has examined a number of British newspapers of the time and has found reports of only one major accident on the Thames during the relevant period, i.e. on 9 August 1936. It involved Batavier IV, a Dutch steamer from Rotterdam, but the only casualty was its cargo of fruit.

Mr Urcan also notes that the report on the first round of play on page 1 of the Nottingham Evening Post, 10 August 1936 does not indicate any surprising late arrival by Tartakower

(2) https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/ext ... ngham.html

Tartakower’s account of the journey to Nottingham from Rotterdam, referred to by Kmoch at the end of the previous item, was given in an article on pages 330-331 of the November 1952 Chess Review

It is, though, difficult to reconcile Tartakower’s account (including its reference to ‘Sunday’) with that of W.H. Watts on page xviii of Alekhine’s book on Nottingham, 1936: ‘The Opening Ceremony took place in the main Assembly Hall of the University at noon on 10 August; there was a very large attendance, all the masters, with the exception of Capablanca, who was indisposed, being present.’

EDIT: Edited to correct my sources, with apologies and thanks to John Townsend.

[Nick Ivell]

This got me running for my book, dusty after about 50 years. Alekhine describes the draw offer as 'premature to say the least'. Looking at the position, it does not look trivial to me. I would be happy to draw with Botvinnik from that position.

If the rumour were true, it would be quite disgraceful; having said that, in 1936 it probably was not widely known in the West what a vile man Stalin was.

[Nick Ivell]

I also note that my book has an addendum from the minor tournament, in which games appear from our old friends Abrahams and Ritson Morry.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Though a communist "true believer", Botvinnik showed himself prepared to stand up to Stalin and his henchmen on occasion - making it clear he would tolerate no attempt to throw games in his favour during the big Soviet international tournaments in the 1930s for instance.

He was also one of just a handful of prominent Soviet chess figures who did not sign the letter condemning Korchnoi's defection.

[Nick Ivell]

Kudos to the Patriarch for all that. His immense stature probably meant he could make a stand without being sent to Vladivostok.

I never met him, sadly, having missed out on the simuls he gave. I did play simuls against Smyslov, Petrosian, Karpov and Korchnoi.

[David Williams]

Have tried to find the ship. Nothing yet.

Oh, a myth, busted by Edward Winter:

On August 9, 1936, the Batavier IV, a Dutch passenger/cargo steamer traveling from Rotterdam, was involved in a maritime accident on the River Thames. Despite rumors of a catastrophic disaster, contemporary British newspaper records confirm that the ship did not sink, and there were zero human casualties. The only damage suffered was to its cargo, which primarily consisted of a large shipment of fruit.

But an interesting example of misinformation and rumour spreading (or FAKE NEWS, as some would call it these days).

But that doesn't make the story about Tartakower a myth. In fact it explains why the organisers might have believed he was dead.

[John Townsend]

Above, Christopher purports to be quoting Edward Winter, but his unsourced (and unended) passage has nothing to do with Winter.

In https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/ext ... ngham.html Winter discusses the Tartakower matter (C.N.s 8161 and 8162).

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Apologies, John. You are quite right. I have corrected my post now.