Marco spent many enjoyable hours with Albert Mandelbaum on match- and tournament games and analyses. Mandelbaum's single moves seemed innocuous, but the whole sequence of moves was threatening and his opponents found out only too late, when they were already encircled. Simplicity and Clarity were his characteristics, also in chess. He joined the <Wiener Schachgesellschaft> in 1873. Back then, he was registered as a <Beamter der Hypothekar-Rentenbank>, living in the 1st floor, Franz Josefs-Kai 25. He still lives there today *, but one floor higher as he has a great view on the <Kahlenberg> and its surroundings from there. He inherited a large fortune, but his classical simplicity and frugality brought him his freedom and independency. He still lives like a spartan, having been a rigorous vegetarian for 32 years now.

* March 1913

He already played chess at the age of 8 and was so good, that he was regarded as a prodigy.

He found out that he did worse when answering 1.e4 with e5 and overcame his difficulties when switching to 1...e6. He went on to regard 1...e6 as the antidote to 1.e4.

He not only concluded that 1...e5 was a mistake, but also that 1.e4 was a mistake - this escaped the attention of the public due to the even bigger mistake 1...e5.

White can't gain an advantage, neither with the exchange variation (3.exd5 exd5) which violates the <Parallitätsprinzip> (probably a principle of parallelism), nor the thrust 4.e5 which violates Philidor's rule that a pawn should not be pushed onto the 5th rank in the opening.

Mandelbaum's trick is to forego short castling - either at all or at least to delay it for as long as possible. The ♔ is safer on e8 than g8.

Then follows a chart on which Mandelbaum worked with the author during the winter months of 1912, 1913 and 1914.

In the list of Israeli chess masters on the http://jewishchesshistory.blogspot.... we can found Eliyahu Mandelbaum.

Eliahu Avraham Mandelbaum in 1958 published a book "Israel in Chess Olympiads" ישראל באולימפיאדות / מנדלבאום אליהו אברהם ‬ (1958)

http://www.edochess.ca/players/p581...

Di Felice also used <Mandelbaum, Albert>, attributing his source to <Arpad Fodeak: Chess Olympiads 1927-1968>

https://books.google.com/books?id=r... (scroll to bottom of page)

But we know from <Tal--Tarve (1965)> that Di Felice sometimes gets things wrong.

One of the reasons I like open sourced sources is that they allow checks on what information is actually present in the referenced source. In this case, Di Felice's source, Fodeak, is available in preview, allowing us to see the actual xtab:

https://books.google.com/books?id=f...

It's unclear it the full name is listed elsewhere, but it appears that Fodeak only gives Mandelbaum.

<hemy>'s 1956 source is in English, and is authoritative:

Ah <hemy>, I've glad you bring this up.

I trust your Hebrew, most certainly - but to quote myself from a rough draft I didn't post:

<I have a strong preference to follow the contemporaneous names in general, both to facilitate searching in the literature, and because it was very often the name the player used at the time.>

Take, for a contemporary example, <Vishy Anand>. That's not his real name, but it's the name he uses among his English-speaking friends, and it's widely used in the press.

<David Janowski> is another example. It's not really accurate - except for the fact that it completely reflects the actual usage in the contemporaneous English press of the time.

Moreover, it might be conceivable that a player used a nickname, one that was widely used in the press, to the point where it is practically the only name the player was known by in the literature. The PGN name should reflect this, relegating the fuller, and less-known explanation, to the bio.

Consider this example - Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal, which is the version of the name most of us know him by. But this version of his name isn't really accurate, as he's Latvian. It should be <Mihails Tāls>.

Speak of synchronicity - I see that there's a great photo of <Skuja, Harijs> in one of your links. I'm actually just now doing the <22e Latvian Ch - Riga (March 1965)> tournament which he was in, along with his brother Roberts.

I'm curious - do you know if, during the Soviet era, whether instruction was given in both Latvian and Russian in the grade schools and beyond? Or was only Russian used?

Tal seems to like Latvian best...

<Alexander Liepnieks was the best person to answer this question because not only did he know Tal personally being originally from Riga himself, but he was editor of a Latvian Chess Magazine and thus had access to the notes Tal had written in Latvian about these games>

https://www.newinchess.com/chess-ps...

Also, I forgot that Latvia was actually independent when Tal was born:

<Mikhail (Misha) Nekhemievich Tal (born Mihails Tals) was born in Riga, Latvia (then an independent country), on November 9, 1936.>

In Lithuania and Latvia 90% of Jews choose Russian language schools. The main reason was to make it easier to be accepted to Universities in Moscow and Leningrad.

Lithuanian (Latvian in Latvia) language was a mandatory subject in Russian schools.

If you can find an example of the Olympiad ever using the name Albert I'd be interested.

PS- I think the Israeli player should get a new pid and be split off - assuming Albert was in the can first, that is.

Today I received an email message from Israeli chess player Izak Bar Ziv (Itzhak Bar Ziv) with scan of the Mandelbaum's book cover https://www.dropbox.com/s/8oknkhynq...