George Koltanowski (also "Georges";September 17, 1903, in Antwerp, Belgium–February 5, 2000) was a Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer. Events 1176 - The Battle of Myriokephalon is fought 1462 - The Battle of Świecino (or Battle of Żarnowiec Year 1903 ( MCMIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar of the Gregorian calendar or a Common year starting ||-||-||-||} Antwerp ( Dutch:, French: Anvers) is a City and Municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Events 1576 - Henry of Navarre converts to Roman Catholicism in order to ensure his right to the throne of France. 2000 ( MM) was a Leap year that started on Saturday of the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. The Kingdom of Belgium is a Country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters as well as those Chess is a recreational and competitive Game played between two players. He was informally known as "Kolty". Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on September 20, 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded, making headline news around the world. Events 451 - The Battle of Chalons takes place in North Eastern France. Year 1937 ( MCMXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Edinburgh ( ˈɛdɪnb(ərə Dùn Èideann) is the Capital of Scotland and is its second largest city after Glasgow. Blindfold chess is a way to play Chess, whereby play is conducted without the players having sight of the positions of the pieces or any physical contact with them His record still stands in the Guinness Book of Records. Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records (and in previous U Later, both Miguel Najdorf and János Flesch claimed to have broken that record, but their efforts were not properly monitored the way that Koltanowski's was. Miguel Najdorf (born Mendel (Mieczysław Najdorf in Grodzisk Mazowiecki near Warsaw, Poland, April 15, 1910 &ndash János Flesch ( 30 September 1933 – 9 December 1983) was a Chess Grandmaster, born in Budapest, Hungary Also in San Francisco,California playing fifty games with ten seconds a move winning forty-three, losing two, and drawing five. And he was playing blindfold. Then December 4, 1960 in San Francisco, CA he played fifty-six games blindfolded. With only ten seconds a move he won fifty and drew six.
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Early life
Born to a Jewish family, Koltanowski learned chess while watching his father play his older brother. PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ He took up the game seriously at the age of 14, and was the top Belgian player after the death of Edgar Colle in 1932. Edgard Colle ( Ghent, May 18 1897 &ndash Ghent, April 20 1932) was a Belgian Chess master who pioneered
He gave up a fledgling career as a diamond cutter to play full time.
He served a short stint in the Belgian army, where his primary duty was the peeling of potatoes. While he peeled away absent-mindedly, he studied chess positions. "Soldiers were going hungry," he said, "because I was peeling the potatoes into smaller and smaller cubes. "
Chess career
He got his first big break in chess at age 21, when he visited an international tournament in Merano, planning to play in one of the reserve sections. Merano ( Italian, now most common in English German: Meran, also used in English Ladin: Meran; Archaic (857 AD Mairania The organizers were apparently confused or mixed up about his identity and asked him to play in the grandmaster section, to replace an invited player who had not shown up. The title Grandmaster is awarded to extremely strong Chess masters by the world chess organization FIDE. Koltanowski gladly accepted and finished near the bottom, but drew Grandmaster Tarrasch and gained valuable experience. In Chess, a draw is one of the possible outcomes of a game the others being a win for white and a win for black Siegbert Tarrasch ( March 5, 1862 &ndash February 17, 1934) was one of the strongest Chess players and most influential chess
He thereafter played in at least 25 international tournaments. His best results were wins in Antwerp 1932, and Barcelona 1934 and 1935. He was Belgian Chess Champion 1923, 1927, 1930 and 1936.
However, Koltanowski became better known for touring and giving simultaneous exhibitions and blindfold displays.
Based upon his results during the period 1932–37, Professor Arpad Elo gave Koltanowski a rating of 2450 in The Rating of Chess Players. Arpad Emrick Elo (born Élő Árpád Imre, August 25, 1903 in Egyházaskesző, Hungary &ndash November 5, 1992 The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as Chess and Go. Koltanowski was awarded the International Master title in 1950 when the title was first officially established by FIDE, and he was awarded an honorary Grandmaster title in 1988. The title International Master is awarded to outstanding Chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Fédération Internationale des Échecs or World Chess Federation is an international organization that connects the various national Chess federations around the The title Grandmaster is awarded to extremely strong Chess masters by the world chess organization FIDE. However, Koltanowski's record as a tournament player was not especially distinguished. He showed up for the 1946 U.S. Open in Pittsburgh, but was eliminated in the preliminary section and did not qualify for the finals. The US Open Championship is an open national Chess championship that has been held in the United States annually since 1900
His style is hard to categorise and against strong opponents it seems he usually played queen pawn openings with white such as the Colle System in the hope of hanging on. In the most general sense the term Queen's Pawn Game can refer to any Chess opening which starts with 1 The Colle System is a Chess opening strategy for White introduced by Belgian Edgard Colle in the 1920s
In those years, the U. S. Open was played in round-robin preliminary and final sections. A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a type of group tournament in which each participant plays every other participant an equal number of times However, the next year, Koltanowski returned, not as a player but as the director, introducing the Swiss system to the U. A Swiss system tournament is a commonly used type of Tournament in Chess, bridge, Scrabble, squash, Magic The Gathering S. Open. He directed the 1947 U. S. Open in Corpus Christi, Texas, using the Swiss system for the first time ever in a U. Corpus Christi is a coastal city in the South Texas region of the U S. Open chess event. After that, he traversed the country, holding Swiss system tournaments everywhere. Before long, the Swiss system was adopted as the standard for most chess tournaments in America.
Koltanowski thereafter toured the United States tirelessly for years, running chess tournaments and giving simultaneous exhibitions everywhere. After his failure in the 1946 U. S. Open in Pittsburgh, he never played tournament chess again, except for two games as a member of the U. S. Olympic team in 1952 in Helsinki, getting a draw with Soviet Grandmaster Alexander Kotov, one of the strongest players in the world, and a draw with Hungarian International Master Tibor Florian, in a game which Koltanowski appeared to be winning. The 1952 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad, were an International Multi-sport event held in Helsinki, Finland Helsinki (in Finnish;) or Helsingfors (in Swedish;) is the Capital and largest city of Finland. In Chess, a draw is one of the possible outcomes of a game the others being a win for white and a win for black Alexander Alexandrovich Kotov (Александр Александрович Котов ( &ndash January 8, 1981) was a Russian Chess grandmaster
Later years
Koltanowski will not be remembered as a player, but as an exhibitor, writer, promoter and showman. Possessed of an incredibly powerful memory, Koltanowski would give exhibitions, playing several games blindfolded simultaneously. Strangely, what wowed the spectators the most was not that he would win all the games, even though blindfolded, but that after the games were over, he would recite the complete moves of the games without looking at the board, something which any competent master can do.
Many of Koltanowski's relatives died in the Holocaust. The Holocaust (from the Greek el ''ὁλόκαυστον'' (el-Latn holókauston holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt" also known as Koltanowski survived because he happened to be on a chess tour of South America and was in Guatemala when the war broke out. Guatemala (República de Guatemala) is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west the Pacific Ocean to the southwest In 1940, the United States Consul in Cuba saw Koltanowski giving a chess exhibition in Havana and decided to grant him a U. Havana ( IPA: aˈβana officially Ciudad de La Habana, is the Capital city, major port and leading S. visa.
Koltanowski met his wife Leah on a blind date in New York in 1944. This is about a type of dating For other uses see Blind date (disambiguation. They settled in San Francisco in 1947. The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth most populous city Koltanowski became the chess columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, which carried his chess column every day for the next 52 years until his death, publishing an estimated 19,000 columns. The San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H Koltanowski wrote the only daily newspaper chess column in the world.
In addition to the 1937 record Koltanowski played a notable fifty-six blindfold games sequentially at a rate of 10 seconds a move in San Francisco, December 1960. The event lasted 9 hours with the result of fifty wins and six losses.
In 1960 he was awarded the title of International Arbiter by the FIDE. In Chess, International Arbiter is a title awarded by FIDE to individuals deemed capable of acting as arbiter in important chess matches (the arbiters are responsible Fédération Internationale des Échecs or World Chess Federation is an international organization that connects the various national Chess federations around the
Later on in the 1960s, he played a newspaper game against grandmaster Paul Keres. Paul Keres ( January 7, 1916 – June 5, 1975) was an Estonian Chess grandmaster. Following a system similar to that adopted in the Kasparov versus The World match, readers would vote on moves and send them in to the Chronicle. Kasparov versus The World was a game of Chess played in 1999 over the Internet. Koltanowski would select the move actually played, and would award points and prizes to his readers for their selections. However, after about only 25 moves, Keres abruptly stopped the game and declared himself the winner by adjudication. Koltanowski disagreed and showed analysis which seemed to give him at least an even game. Keres, an Estonian, may have been ordered by his Soviet handlers to stop playing. Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia ( Eesti or Eesti Vabariik) is a Country in Northern Europe in the Baltic region
Koltanowski had his own organization, the Chess Friends of Northern California, which resisted the USCF rating system and dominated Northern California Chess through the mid-1960s. The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as Chess and Go. Koltanowski later decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". He won election as President of the United States Chess Federation in 1974. The United States Chess Federation ( USCF) is a non-profit organization the governing Chess organization within the United States, and one of the federations He also directed every US Open from 1947 until the late 1970s. He was appointed as the "Dean of American Chess".
Perhaps Koltanowski's most remarkable accomplishment was that he made his living entirely from chess. He wrote many books; his best-known work is Adventures of a Chess Master, published by David McKay Co. in 1955. In it, he recounts primarily his tours giving blindfolded simultaneous exhibitions. He also wrote books on the Colle System which he sold by mail order. The Colle System is a Chess opening strategy for White introduced by Belgian Edgard Colle in the 1920s He taught a system which would enable even rank beginners to get out of the opening with a playable game. This saved his students the trouble of memorizing vast amounts of chess opening theory. However, he never played this opening himself against strong opponents.
Koltanowski died of congestive heart failure in San Francisco in 2000. Heart failure is a Cardiac condition that occurs when a problem with the structure or function of the Heart impairs its ability to supply
Blindfold Knight's Tour
Koltanowski’s most sensational chess entertainment was the ancient exercise known as the Knight’s Tour, in which a lone knight traverses an otherwise empty board visiting each square once only. The Knight's Tour is a mathematical problem involving a knight on a Chessboard. Of the countless patterns for achieving this feat, there are trillions of sequences for performing the more restricted version known as the re-entrant tour, wherein the knight on its 64th move lands on its original starting square. For Koltanowski, who claimed to have a “phonographic memory” (a keen memory for sequences), the trick relied on mastering just one re-entrant pattern. He could begin on any square in the sequence and complete the tour by rote. However, it was his original twist that gave Koltanowski’s performance dramatic value well beyond the mechanical moving of the knight through the memorized sequence.
Koltanowski began his tour with a large chalkboard divided by lines into a grid eight squares by eight. As he solved problems on a large demonstration board, audience members were encouraged to come onstage to enter words and numbers into the squares. By the time all 64 squares were filled, it was common to see street and city names, names of months or days of the week, names of famous chess players, names of audience members, names of movie stars or TV personalities, telephone numbers and addresses, birth dates, serial numbers from bank notes, etc.
After concluding his problem solving challenges on the demonstration board, Koltanowski would turn his back on the audience and examine the chalk board for three or four minutes. Then he would seat himself with his back to the board and ask for any audience member to call out a square; for example, e4. He would recite from memory the entry in that square as an assistant crossed it off with a chalk mark. Making imaginary knight-moves through his re-entry sequence, Koltanowski would recite the contents of each square as the knight landed on it.
As amazing as this performance was, if time permitted afterward, Koltanowski would occasionally demonstrate his mental grasp of the board by reciting the information contained in the squares by rank or file, or even the two long diagonals. He occasionally performed the tour on two boards simultaneously. In Palo Alto, California, he conducted his performance on three chalk boards, jumping the knight back and forth between boards mid-move, until all 192 squares were completed. He made two errors and immediately corrected himself both times. At the time of this performance, Koltanowski was 80 years old.
Trivia
- "Pawns are like buttons," he was fond of saying. "Lose too many and the pants fall down by themselves. "
- He preferred the brand of scotch that came in purple cloth sacks – not because he liked that brand, but because the bags could be used later to hold chess pieces.
- A curious fact is that he is not listed in the Social Security Death Index. The Social Security Death Index ( SSDI) is a database of death records created from the United States Social Security Administration 's Death Master File The closest match is a George Colton with the same dates of birth and death. It is believed that this George Colton was the same person as George Koltanowski. Colton was probably his adopted Dutch name whereas Koltanowski was his original Polish family name. Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname Poland (Polska officially the Republic of Poland
- Mentioned briefly in the Philip K. Dick novel Mary and the Giant – set in 1953, his chess column is referenced by a character. Philip Kindred Dick (December 16 – March 2) was an American Science fiction Novelist and Short story Writer.
External links
- George Koltanowski at ChessGames.com
- Chess Space obituary
- "Grandmaster Of Chess, George Koltanowski,' 2/7/00
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