Churchill wrote about a meeting with Truman in Berlin on July 18, 1945, after they had heard news of the Trinity test.

"We seemed suddenly to have become possessed of a merciful abridgement of the slaughter in the East and of a far happier prospect in Europe. I have no doubt that these thoughts were present in the minds of my American friends. At any rate, there was never a moment's discussion of whether the atomic bomb should be used or not."

<The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953 was awarded to Winston Churchill "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values".>

If we assume Einstein was only an occasional chess player the game shows great natural talent.

Einstein soon understands that his opponent is a patzer against which there is no need to use deep strategical concepts and that a quite smart tactical game will be enough to crash him. Due to his friendship it seems he had acquired a touch of Lasker´s psychological greatness in finding which kind of game was required to beat his opponent.

From the game we cannot assess Einstein´s level, we should have a game against a stronger player to start seeing his limitations.

There is in fact an oft-repeated (from various sources) anecdote about Einstein's frequent humorous sally, "I'm no Einstein, you know."

Here, when Einstein says he knows nothing about chess, I am inclined to take it as a relative statement: Since he didn't understand chess at grandmaster level, he modestly said he knew nothing about the game. In fact, it may well be that he really had no particular *knowledge* of the game, but played merely by improvisation.

However, many tests have established the validity of the idea that mental skills are to some extent transferable, and an extremely intelligent person knowing nothing about a game will perform at a far higher level than his lack of experience might lead one to suppose.

This has been tested, for example, with new games of skill introduced to grandmasters who'd never tried them, but quickly picked up enough to play creditably.

The game has a history which is well-known (here and elsewhere). It appeared first in a German book called "Freude am Schach" by Gerhard Henschel in 1959. This book contains other games being dubios and/or constructed. I have read the book, and even besides the games it is more like a book of fairytales on chess.

Your example of Einstein's humour is obvious humour. Einstein's statements on chess lack of this, and so I prefer to take them literally instead of interpreting them just the opposite direction!

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/...

Entry written by Olimpiu Urcan:

<Page xvi (287-288): the alleged game between <<<Einstein and Oppenheimer>>> is given as a certainty despite the lack of trustworthy sources (as documented in C.N.s 3533, 3667, 3691 and 4133). An endnote offers no source for the game, merely sending the reader to “an animated version” at a <<<highly undependable website>>>, chessgames.com;>

OUCH!

I counsel a thorough investigation of <C.N.s 3533, 3667, 3691 and 4133> before we just let this "game" sit here, causing real chess historians to sneer at us.