Today (August 10) is the 137th birthday for American Chess Champion Frank James Marshall [1877-1944]. Marshall was a dominant force in American chess for decades; only Paul Morphy [1837-1884] & Bobby Fischer [1943-2008] have made an equally large (or larger) impression on the international chess arena. Chessmetrics shows Marshall in the top 5 players in the world for several years (notably 1913-1920), and in the worlds top 10 players most of the time from 1904-1920. Marshall did play a match for the World Chess Championship against Champion Emanuel Lasker [1868-1941] in 1904, but was thoroughly outclassed by Lasker. Marshall has a reputation for fame as a wild tactician with a strong ability to spot combinations others dont see. But when he made his very successful debut in Europe he had recognized that the European masters were relatively weak in the endgame; Marshall made a special study of endgames before going to Europe, and won many of his important games not with combinations, but superior endgame technique. Still, while long a very strong master, he was usually outclassed by a handful of the very strongest, including Lasker. The story goes that Marshall was one of the original Grandmasters of chess, that title being bestowed on the 5 finalists in the epic tournament in St, Petersburg, 1914, where Marshall finished in 5th place and qualified for the next round of competition (the other 4 Grandmasters being Lasker, José Capablanca [1888-1942], Alexander Alekhine [1892-1946] and Siegbert Tarrasch [1862-1934]). But whether or not this really happened is in question. The International Chess Federation did not create the modern International Grandmaster title until 1950, but had Marshall lived that long, there is no doubt he would have been in the first group to be awarded the title. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Marshall_(chess_player) chessgames/perl/chessplayer?pid=10309 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Chess_Club en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitsky_versus_Marshall
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 04:24:52 +0000
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