.... . .-. . -.-. .... .- -.-. .... ---

Constant Ferdinand Burille

http://www.chessville.com/misc/Hist...

-.-. .... .- .--. . .- ..- / -... ..- -.. -.. -.-- /---... / -.--.-

PS: I quit my morse career to start fishing, too!

I second that motion! Its the best Pillsbury book, definately. Although each of the others does have something going for it:

Pillsbury's Chess Career - Sergeant/Watts

Great American Chess Players - H.N. Pillsbury - Wenman

Pillsbury the Extraordinary - Soltis/Smith

Harry Nelson Pillsbury - A Genius Ahead of His Time - Cherniaev

Sad to say, that is true of a lot of great players here. CG does not include all of their games. It is up to the members to post the missing games and hope they get put in.

Early short chapters - Biographical Note,A Few Quotes from Pillsbury, The Most Remarkable Simultaneous Player.

Major section - Best Games pp 107-206 followed by a fairly comprehensive tournament record w/Crosstables and such. There are 50 Annotated Games with typically 3-5 diagrams the game.

Annotations are generally 'crisp' not a lot of text but some fairly extensive hard analysis and lots of alternative game cites.

The second game was played at St. Louis, 1898. The moves are as follows: 1.e4,e5; 2.Nf3,Nc6; 3.Bb5,Nf6; 4.O-O, d6; (my preference here would be to continue along Berlin Defense lines with 4...Nxe4) 5.d4,Nd7; (5...Bd7 is better) 6.Nc3,f6?; (my own question mark here; this move weakens e6 and the b2-h8 diagonal. Black should continue 6...Be7 followed by 7...O-O.) 7.Nh4,g6; (Necessary to keep the Knight from occupying f5. In many well-known games of the Ruy Lopez a White Knight on f5 often means doom for Black.) 8.dxe5,dxe5; 9.f4,Bg7; 10. f5,Nf8; 11.Qe2,Bd7; 12.Bxc6,Bxc6; 13.Be3,Qe7; 14.Qc4,Qf7; 15.Nd5,Bxd5; 16.exd5,c6; 17.Rad1,Rd8; 18.Qa4, Rxd5; 19.c4,Rxd1; 20.Rxd1,g5; (hoping to force the Knight's retreat, but White has other ideas!) 21.Qxa7,Qxc4; 22.Qxb7,gxh4; 23.Qc7 and Black resigned. He can only prevent Rh8 mate by giving up the Queen with ...Qd5 but then his game would be utterly hopeless. Note that he cannot defend with ...Ne6 because of White's f5 pawn. All of this stems from the weakening move 6...f6?

1. Did Pillsbury ever challenge Lasker? Did he ever try to raise match-stakes?

2. Does anyone have Tarrasch's Schach und Geisteskrankheiten: Der Fall Pillsbury (Chess and Mental Illness: the case of Pillsbury), in English or German?

<1. Did Pillsbury ever challenge Lasker? Did he ever try to raise match-stakes?>

I have done extensive research on both players and have never found any formal challenge by Pillsbury. I am sure that stakes could have been raised for this match.

<2. Does anyone have Tarrasch's Schach und Geisteskrankheiten: Der Fall Pillsbury (Chess and Mental Illness: the case of Pillsbury), in English or German?>

I don't, but it would be nice to have.

<3. Does anyone have the first edition of Tarrasch's Nuremberg 1896 tournament book, or his Vienna 1898 tournament book? Can't find them on Google books.>

Google has Internationales Kaiser-Jubilaums-Schachturnier Wien 1898 - Fahndrich, Halprin and Marco, only.

Thanks, as always.

I have the Owen translation of the Nuremberg book, but I would like to see Tarrasch's original for two reasons -- some of the English in Owen's version seems a little suspect to me, and the original German version has an "influence of luck" table that purported to show how many times a player had won from a lost position, and how many times he had lost from a won position. The point of all this, of course, was to show that Lasker was an undeserving winner and someone else -- Tarrasch, for example -- should have come in first instead. I've always wanted to see that table.

The American grandmaster is delivered from his suffering. "Death Challenges <bietet> Chess!" -- under this sensational title announced an American newspaper that Pillsbury had fallen victim to mental illness. And now Death has obviously won and given mate. In the flower of manhood, at the age of 34, Pillsbury has died.

Like a meteor he appeared ten years ago before the chess world. As a <homo novus> he took part in the great chess tournament at Hastings 1895 and battled against all the luminaries of the art of chess, who were all assembled -- and in brilliant fashion won a surprising victory. Then was his fortune made. His countrymen gave him an enthusiastic reception on his return, and everywhere a new chess genius was recognized. And now came a rapid succession of brilliant tournament successes, one after another. Of course, he did not again rise to the height of his first success <zum Hohe seines ersten Sieges sollte er sich nie wieder aufschwingen>, but he was always among the leading prizewinners in international tournaments.

His style had something very specifically American in it. Its main feature was unequalled energy, that instilled something very like fear in even the strongest opponents. His play was not sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought <Von des Gedankes Blasse war sein Spiel nicht angekrankelt>, and the scientific profundity, which the German master and even the German amateur know how to put in their play, was foreign to him. His play was above all practical, from which resulted the consistency of his success, in which he was equal to the best of his time. He never applied himself to the field of chess literature, and in this he resembled his brilliant countryman Morphy, as did he also in course of life, as well as chess style. For Morphy also appeared like a meteor half a century before and conquered all opponents who met him, and some years later ended in madness.

Already then competent people advised the master to abandon this idea, that must end in ruin. When he tourned Germany the following year, he everywhere exhibited blindfold play, but when he came to Nuremberg, we would not allow such an exhibition, so that we would not be accomplices in such a crime. The mental illness, that struck him a year ago, was long predicted by everyone, but, in my opinion, this was not completely correct. By itself, great effort cannot cause mental illness, if one is not (as Pillsbury was) struck by progressive paralysis. <This was, I have read, the polite term of the day for syphilis, or at least the mental symptoms that sometimes occurred in its third stage. Does anyone know whether this is true or false?> This develops rather in a body weakened by disease. Once the ground has been prepared, then many causes, for example a head injury, can bring about the fearsome mental illness that regularly ends in death. To this list of factors great mental effort can be added, but the root cause is always the shock to the whole system of already-progressing illness.

Especially in Pillsbury’s case, the newspapers have frequently stated that chess is hazardous, in my opinion quite without basis. Chess, like any intellectual activity, is healthy for men, not harmful, and mental illness comes to the insane by every possible means <und zu Geisteskrankheiten beanlagte Menschen werden durch alles moglich geistkrank>. To dispel the prejudice that chess is harmful, it is appropriate to describe those chessplayers who have fallen victim to mental illness in the last 25 years, and to investigate the causes of their disease. I will limit my investigation to those personalities I knew well and about whom I can express a knowledgeable opinion <und ich mir also hieruber eine authentische Meinung habe bilde konnen>.

Beside Pillsbury are in this era only three chessmasters of note who have been mentally ill, the Leipzig master Minckwitz, the German-Russian Schiffers <by the term Deutsche-Russe I take Tarrasch to mean the descendents of the 18th century German migration to Russia, and not people with dual nationality> and the world champion Steinitz. For Minckwitz chess has not the slightest to do with his mental illness, which in my opinion must be ascribed to “primary hallucinatory madness” <”primare halluzinatorische Verrucktheit”>. Minckwitz was unfortunately placed, such that he was at great risk of mental illness. Of his father, a professor at Leipzig University, it is recounted (not as a funny story, but as truth) that he used to say in his lectures: “There are only three great German writers: Schiller, Goethe, and the third modesty forbids me to name.” <This reads exactly like Janowski’s alleged statement about the great chessmasters of his own time – perhaps Janowski's quote is spurious?> This was the era in which Paul Lindau went eagerly on the hunt for Sunday poets <Sonntagdichtern> and, when he found one, tore him to pieces to the delight of the public. He came upon Minckwitz’s epic “The War for Liberation” <”Die Befreiungskriege”> and quoted the following verse describing the Battle of Leipzig:

Napoleon was yellow like a pickled egg <Solei>, Anyone who saw him knew good health he must beg.

<Napoleon war gelb wie ein Solei, Man sah ihm an, dass ihm nicht wohl sei.>

<Obviously I warped the meaning for the sake of getting a rhyme.>