A Firefly Looking at the Moon
When I examine, in any detail, the games of the great Masters-Teachers whom I admire (Chigorin, Rubinstein, Capablanca, Alekhine, Bronstein, Nimzowitsch, Lasker, Tartakower, Keres, and now Romanovsky) I cannot help but feel like a firefly looking at the full moon. The scope and depth of their genius blinds me with its brilliance; I am a drop looking at the Ocean.
They are like a deep well that always gives good water; the supply seems inexhaustible.
Recently I have been exploring Romanovsky through the following book:
This book, published by Elk and Ruby Publishing Company in 2021, is so full of knowledge, it goes into the short list of books which I consider important to increase your chess strength. And please notice I said chess strength, not rating. For beginners, a bit of tactical awareness will be enough to avoid heavy blunders and win some games. For real chess improvement, however, an understanding of chess at a deeper level is necessary. Certain books and authors can transmit this knowledge, either through their games (like Rubinstein) or through both their games and analysis (Chigorin, Steinitz, Zukertort, Alekhine, Bronstein, Tartakower, Nimzowitsch and Tal among others).
Simaginfan has two blog posts about Romanovsky:
https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/peter-arsenyevich-romanovsky
https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/romanovsky-revisited-tragic-scenes-from-a-wonderful-book
But what triggered my re-exploration of Romanovsky's book was an observation by Bronstein, upon commenting on one of his own games:
Bronstein comments:
He mentions that "The concluding attack with the sacrifice of a piece evoked memories of the 7th game of the Lasker-Steinitz World Championship Match, New York 1894. Lasker won when a knight down, and everyone was amazed at how he had achieved this. But Steinitz knight stood in a corner square and was worse than a pawn. In an issue of the newspaper Izvestia, for which I wrote a regular column, I published an analysis of the critical position, and showed that Lasker had deservedly won this game."
When we look at the Lasker-Steinitz game, the similarity is unavoidable:
At the age of 66, after not being allowed by the Soviet regime to travel to international tournaments because he did not sign a collective letter condemning Viktor Korchnoi for defecting to the West, Bronstein produced this masterpiece against GM Istvan Farago:
This is one short example of something I've been preaching for awhile, the benefit of reading chess books, specially game collections which contain the ideas of the great Masters of the past, from Morphy on!
As I mentioned before, Bronstein inspired me to look at Romanovsky's book again....and now Romanovsky is inspiring me to look at the book about Chigorin again!
Another masterpiece of a book, which deserves a few posts on its own.
Romanovsky recalls:
"I was introduced into chess by my elder brother Evgeny when I was seven (I was born on July 30th, 1892) The same year, in December, I participated in my first chess tournament, which, besides my mother, included two elder brothers. It was a handicap event. My mother and my elder brother Alexander gave me queen and rook odds. When I was ten, it was already hard for them to give me even knight odds, and, beginning from 1903, the game, for the most part, was either without handicap or with pawn odds only."
"I recall two things contributing to my performance improvement in those years. Firstly, it was frequent home practice, sometimes up to 25 games per day; secondly, I was reading up on modern chess literature, especially Chigorin's chess column in Novoye Vremya, published twice a week, as well as those coedited by Chigorin and Schiffers for the literary supplements to Niva. Those chess columns were cut out by my elder brothers and neatly glued into thick copybooks, classified by the openings. Beginning from 1905, it fell entirely on me to keep up this cutting and pasting. I played through all the games that were there, carefully going over Chigorin's notes."
Morphy studied Labourdonnais and McDonnell's matches from 1834. Capablanca studied Morphy's games, and so did Steinitz. Believe it or not, at the beginning of his chess career Steinitz's nickname was "The Austrian Morphy". Rubinstein also studied the Masters before him. Smyslov's father was of Master's strength, and had a huge chess library, which Smyslov studied in detail. Bobby Fischer is said to have read over 1,000 chess books, and absorbed the wisdom in them......the examples are countless!
Best wishes to all....
Peace.
