The First Hungarian C.C. Championships. A Tournament Shambles With Historic Interest

Good Afternoon Everyone. Sadly I have had plenty of time on my hands this week, so some time with my head in chess books, resulting in a long blog!

I have lots on the tournament. Gideon Barcza played c.c. and there is a mass of material on it spread over three volumes of his 'Magyar Sakktortenet, including many games which you won't find in the databases. ( Books are good!)

There is also a good synopsis in this book :-

A shambles of a tournament!? Absolutely!! 

The event was organised by the Hungarian magazine 'Budapesti Sakkszemle' with a committee of S. Jacobi, Gyula Makovetz - Hungary's leading player - and Gyula Exner, who was an important early opponent for both Maroczy and Charousek. Those two legends of the game both took part before they burst onto the international chess scene at Nuremburg.

The rules make you smile - well, it was early days organising such things!!

 ''Agreed games'' were banned - no games may be drawn in under 50 moves!! The time limit was no less than eight (!) days per move. Go work it out - 100 half moves at eight moves per day with the 19th century postal system!!

Well, Charousek was lucky - his father was a telegraph operator, so he could send his moves that way. Well, in the end - after 5 years, 82 of the games were unfinished/ abandoned, leaving this bizarre cross table.

Let's look at some chess - I have done notes - entering into the world of the players by doing very few engine checks, and referencing earlier annotators.

The historical significance lies in the fact that this event saw very early competitive games of Maroczy and Charousek,

So, their first meeting.

Some more from Charousek. I have always said that he had possibly the most pure style of any player ever ( De Vere, Keres and Anand would be on the list) and clearly, even at that early stage of his career he simply played whatever the position demanded.

This one is far from perfect, but a good illustration of that statement.

Gyula Mayer is a name which comes up in Hungarian chess over at least two decades.

He was considered one of the favourites for the tournament.

And one against a player who I have been unable to find anything about! Janos Suto, who had a major part to play in the final result of the tournament.

The Suto - Maroczy game, which deprived Maroczy of outright first prize. It's interesting to compare it with games played in the Nimzo-Indian 60 years later!

I really like this next game - even at that stage you can see the player Maroczy was.

Two more from the mystery man Suto. This one is rather unusual up to a point, but the finish is a picture!

Lets finish with this one. The loser was an interesting character in his own right, and we have a picture of him! ( via wikipedia) Try studying this for yourself - no engines - particularly the position which I draw attention to in the notes. Old style correspondence chess was not so easy!

A rare picture from Magyar Sakktortenet to finish with.