Xsawery Tartakower
Xsavery (Saveilly) Tartakower was the wittiest of masters, and, it was said, “too in love with chess to ever become world champion”, as he would often play an interesting move over a plain one, and perhaps throw the result into question. He was the champion of chess journalists, and his epigrams, or [i]Tartakowerisms[/i], will be quoted as long as chess is played. Everyone loved to talk with Tartakower, not just for his wit, but also his great knowledge and appreciation of books and art.
[blockquote]
“The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made.”
“The move is there, but you must see it”
“An isolated Pawn spreads gloom over the whole chessboard”
“Any opening can be played as long as its reputation is bad enough”
“Some part of a mistake is always correct.” (very wise)
“A chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second when you believe you have an advantage, and the third… when you know you’re going to lose!”
“A draw can be obtained normally by repeating three moves, but also by one bad move.”
“The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.”
The chessplayer’s proof of existence:
[br]”Erro ergo sum” (I blunder, therefore I am).
[/blockquote]
But the chess is superb too. A tireless experimenter in the openings, a true hypermodern, a fearless attacker and a master whom Nimzowitsch called one of the top endgame players in the world (rather teasing with the reference “the third best endgame artist of all the living masters”, without naming the first two). His style matured, from early heroics and later love of complexity (‘a system consisting in the lack of system”), into a player who could play any sort of position well – a hallmark of all the great masters. He was also a decorated war veteran, fighting for Austria in WW1 and the Free French in WW2.
Tartakower’s most famous sacrificial game, played with great verve:
And a miniature blockade: the gambit opening suggests a dashing attack, but Black is positionally strangled:
We all play the Greek Gift sacrifice Bxh7, as we have all seen it before; it is part of chess technique. But here is a sacrifice that no-one had played before! Do you know the expression, three pieces are mate? Tartakower sacrifices when he can get only two pieces into the attack, but bets that he can bring his far-off reserves into the fight before White can organise a defence.
And we had better give one endgame, to see what might have impressed Nimzowitsch: