Mate in 2 moves

7911. Two pawns (C.N. 7901)


White to move and draw

We took this composition from page 30 of the February 1942 Schweizerische Schachzeitung. The solution was on page 129 of the August 1942 issue: 1 g4+ Kf6 2 g5+ Ke7 3 gxh6 Nf6 4 h7 Re8 5 h8(Q).

The magazine stated that the composer was J. Jonas of Zurich and that the original source was the National-Zeitung, 1939. Richard Forster (Zurich) has provided cuttings from that newspaper (2 November and 23 November 1939). The second of these reported that the black bishop at h5 needed to be on e2 for the sake of soundness (since otherwise, as our correspondent points out, 1 g4+ Kg5 2 gxh5 offers White no prospect of stalemate).

7912. My 61 Memorable Games

Via Frederic Friedel (Hamburg, Germany) we learn that Garðar Sverrisson, who may be regarded as Fischer’s closest confidant in Iceland, states that Fischer would never have considered bringing out a book such as My 61 Memorable Games without consulting him. Mr Sverrisson writes:

‘When I told Bobby about the forgery in early December 2007 he just became sad and disappointed, exactly as he used to react when he learned about slander or a similar betrayal. At that time his health was deteriorating, and we had other things to worry about than who might be behind this book.

When we discussed the possibility of having My 60 Memorable Games republished he was very much against using any improvements of his own or others (including computers). And changing the notation from the descriptive to the algebraic was out of the question.

We never saw My 61 Memorable Games, and I still have not seen it.’


7913. Rosanes v Anderssen

From Fabrizio Zavatarelli (Milan, Italy):

‘Well-known classics can be surprisingly mysterious. A particular case is the game between J. Rosanes and A. Anderssen (Breslau, 1863), which seems to have appeared in books before it was published in magazines:

1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 g5 4 h4 g4 5 Ne5 Nf6 6 Bc4 d5 7 exd5 Bd6 8 d4 Nh5 9 Bb5+ c6 10 dxc6 bxc6 11 Nxc6 Nxc6 12 Bxc6+ Kf8 13 Bxa8 Ng3 14 Rh2 Bf5 15 Bd5 Kg7 16 Nc3 Re8+ 17 Kf2 Qb6 18 Na4 Qa6 19 Nc3 Be5 20 a4

We took this composition from page 30 of the February 1942 Schweizerische Schachzeitung. The solution was on page 129 of the August 1942 issue: 1 g4+ Kf6 2 g5+ Ke7 3 gxh6 Nf6 4 h7 Re8 5 h8(Q).

The magazine stated that the composer was J. Jonas of Zurich and that the original source was the National-Zeitung, 1939. Richard Forster (Zurich) has provided cuttings from that newspaper (2 November and 23 November 1939). The second of these reported that the black bishop at h5 needed to be on e2 for the sake of soundness (since otherwise, as our correspondent points out, 1 g4+ Kg5 2 gxh5 offers White no prospect of stalemate).