http://www.chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/...

http://soloscacchi.altervista.org/?... (in Spanish)

http://soloscacchi.altervista.org/?...

<Written by: Diego Marchiori | October 16, 2010 [...]>

Has a great selection of photographs, and an apparent interview with Eliskases. But I'm not sure if the interview is a work of fiction to make a more interesting narrative.

A native Spanish speaker will have to help.

But one fact is reported, at odds with all other mentioned I've seen made, and so I'll quote from the interview (which may not be a real interview):

<D) How many years has started to play chess?

R) I started to play chess at age 13. Even before I had learned the moves and played with an uncle but without knowing the rules and this is not to play chess. Incidentally my first chess book I read at that age.>

All other sources say 12.

A little more...

<D) When he made his debut in an international tournament?

R) at age 17 team tournament in Hamburg in 1930. Out of curiosity I will say that I was the youngest participant. My first international tournament individual played it in the same year to Stubianske Teplice.

D) She has a long experience in the tournament, which were his strongest opponents?

R) My toughest opponents were world champions. The carry my achievements against them: Lasker -1 = 1, Capablanca +1 -1 = 2, -2 = 2 Alekhine, Euwe +3 -2; Botvinnik = 3 -1 = 2 Smyslov, Petrosian -1, -1 Spassky, Fischer +1 -1. >

http://schach-und-kultur.com/?p=9274

http://schach-und-kultur.com/wp-con...

http://schach-und-kultur.com/wp-con...

1913-02-15
1997-02-02

<"Estaras siempre en el corazon de tu esposa, tu hijo e hija">

<"Always'll be in the heart of your wife, your son and daughter">

http://soloscacchi.altervista.org/?...

It has a picture of Eliskases and Alekhine:

http://soloscacchi.altervista.org/w...

Thanks for looking in, and offering to help. But if you have to use Google translator then there's no reason I can't as well.

The main idea was to provide pointers for additional information for interested readers, and eventually maybe, an improved biography.

Transylvanian would be my guess. He looked like Bela Lugosi's brother.>

By this reasoning, he might have been Egyptian. He was a dead ringer for Hosni Mubarak.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.co...

http://www.heldercamara.com.br/rona...

The followign site duplicates my earlier Spanish ref on this, but is signed by an author - Raúl Grosso

Akiba Rubinstein just crawled out of the grave and brained you with a rook. Not to mention Lasker, Smyslov, Korchnoi, Kramnik...the latter two aren't even dead.

All such lists are pointless anyway. Here, I'll quote myself.

Jose Raul Capablanca

<I can never take these sorts of lists seriously, because there are no common criteria.

Endgames are even more cumulative than other aspects of chess; every great endgame player owes a debt to his predecessors. Assuming that, say, Kramnik makes fewer endgame errors than Rubinstein, how do we judge between the two?

Also, do we make an adjustment for players before 1990 because they had adjournments to help them analyze?

Selection bias is an even bigger problem in these kind of lists than it usually is. Anyone who has an endgame book has seen endings by Lasker and Capablanca, but how much do most of us know about the endgames of players in the past 20 years, or the past 50? This endgame blew me away when I saw it unfold (Topalov vs Kasimdzhanov, 2005) it seemed equal or better than any classic. But for all I know Topalov, Anand, Kramnik etc. have 50 endgames each that good.

Other players you mentioned-of course, all of them were/are great endgame players. I would not put Smyslov and Kramnik there though-I think they are more of an universal positional players than endgame players. Opening preparation plays a great role with Kramnik too-he excells in endgames that he analyses out of openings, but he is not into deliberately switching into endgames in order to outplay opponent there, like Carlsen or Karpov do or like Eliskases or Capablanca did. That is why I put him there-of course, it is valid only for endgame play-Kramnik or Smyslov are overall better players than Eliskases, of course.

<However, Eliskases' defection to South America was badly timed, as documentary evidence later showed that the Nazi regime had scheduled him a 1941 match with the World Champion, but due to circumstances, had subsequently abandoned the idea.>

This relies on a <NIC> article:

<One cannot simply dismiss these statements as an attempt by Alekhine to please the Nazi regime, since several documents prove that as early as 1939 the plan of staging a world championship match between Alekhine and Eliskases in 1941 was being entertained by German chess circles.>

http://www.gardenachess.com/archiv/...

Anyone know anything about these documents? It'd also be interesting to learn how 'German chess circles' reacted to Eliskases and the other German players' decision to remain in South America. Presumably, their success in the Olympiad was celebrated in the media, but it can't exactly have gone unnoticed when none of the players took part in the 1940 German championship or other events. Did German chess magazines scrupulously avoid any politically sensitive topics?

Something else I didn't know: after the Olympiad, Capablanca was all set to employ Eliskases as a second for a return match with Alekhine:

Kmoch also mentions that Alekhine chose Eliskases as his second for the 1937 rematch with Euwe. The grateful Alekhine winning back the title awarded a golden cigarette case to Eliskases.