After a blistering season of slaying the finest Pall Mall could send, Player of the Season Mister Whiteley broke off from his intensive study of Batsford Chess Openings to research further some of the great players in NLC chess history.
He didn’t disappoint, finding two World Champions and an inter-war NLC player with a famous problem composition to his name.
Capablanca at the NLC
Then, as now, the NLC was the first stop in London for the finest in world chess. Capa was a regular at 1 Whitehall Place both before and after he took the chess crown.
The first recorded visit of the 7th World Champion to the NLC was in 1919, when he played a simul hosted in the Club house. Mister A Emery held the soon-to-be champ to a draw.
In 1930 Capablanca was still licking his wounds from his 1927 world championship defeat to Alekhine, and was scheming for a rematch. Arriving in England ahead of the 1930/31 Hastings tournament (coming second to Euwe, with 6.5/10) he first toured the country delivering a series of simuls to leading chess clubs. The NLC was of course on the list. The 1930 (vol. 51) edition of the British Chess Magazine (pgs. 370/1) records:
“On October 15th the Cuban master was back in London once more, playing 40 opponents at the National Liberal Chess Club. Of these he defeated 35, drawing with the remaining 5”.
Lasker out for dinner
Capablanca was not the only chess supremo to haunt the smoking room. Mister Whiteley’s eagle eye spotted these paragraphs in the recollections in British Champion Harry Golombek’s ‘World Champions I Have Met’ that suggests Lasker was bound for an NLC dinner:
“Steinitz’s successor was Emanuel Lasker and, though his long playing career did in fact extend right over the earlier part of my own and I might have played him when I was a young master, I never, to my great regret, had this opportunity”.
“But we did meet, though the first occasion was one in which he met me rather than I met him. Let me explain the paradox. In 1934 I was playing in a tournament in the Gambit Chess Rooms in London. These rooms, alas, are no more, having been converted from their lofty and lively use to the more humdrum employment of offices for business. There was a long main room on the ground floor in which players played fairly light-hearted chess and consumed meals, the more absent-minded dipping pawns into their tea, coffee or soup instead of spoons. Down below, in the grim basement, we played our serious tournament games”.
“One evening I was engaged in a hard game against the late E. T. Jesty, a stalwart of the London League and a player of no mean calibre. Looking up for a moment from the board I saw two figures in evening dress enter the room. They were either coming from a dinner or going to one, I never discovered which. One of them was a rather weak but enthusiastic player whom I recognized as a member of the National Liberal Club. The other was no less a person than the great Emanuel Lasker. ‘That,’ said his companion, pointing towards me, ‘is Golombek.’ Just then my opponent moved and I turned my attention to the board. Ten minutes later I looked up again and Lasker had gone.”
The NLC has always been a bastion of tradition in an ever changing world. The chess circle’s obstinate refusal to alter its ‘rather weak but enthusiastic’ approach to chess despite the passage of some 90 years is to our inestimable credit. We must hold firm, brothers, in the face of all chess improvement.
The Problamatist Mister Schwarzchild
And so to Mister Schwarzchild. Nazi Germany sent two gifts to the NLC: the V2 rocket that cleared out the atrium, and the emigre Mister Schwarzchild who fled Germany to head up our Hamilton Russell team.
A board one regular in the immediate pre-war years, The Times followed his NLC career closely.
But he had his limits. He joined the Vera Menchik club in 1937 (with Sir John Simon watching from board 4).
Here he is in action. He didn’t mess about.
Not only did Mister Schwarzchild play great chess, he also put his name to a famous published problem position. We start with the first diagram.
From here, black sacrifices his queen with 1…bxa3. White accepts with 2. Bxa5 and black then pushes the pawn to 2… a2. White plays Qa4 with a view to stop the pawn promoting, leaving us with the second position.
Post your answers in the comments box, gentlemen.
Acknowledgements
Thanks again go to Mister Whiteley for uncovering such rich history.
The information on Robert Schwarzschild was drawn from the excellent Ilkley Chess Club site.
Nice problem. Looks as though the answer’s … Ba3, threat Ne2 mate. If RxR, RxR, and the position’s unchanged. And then if c3, … a2-a1 (Q), Kc2, Qb2 mate. (N or B to D2? Ne12 mate.) If N interposes at d4 instead of the attempted c3 escape, black queens and then after Kd2 maybe just Qxd2 with the loss of the piece in d4 pinned against the king. Or is there something better for this last variation?
…Ba3 might just do it. Anything other than Queen takes bishop means the a2 pawn Queens. Then it’s Ne2 mate because the a2 pawn cuts off b1 for the King.
Must do some work….