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Irving Chernev
May 31, 2019
Since I have just resurrected a thread on Fred Reinfeld, it is perhaps fitting to start another one on one of the most popular chess writers of the 1940 – 1960 era.
Irving Chernev 1900 - 1981
NYT Obit:
Irving Chernev Is Dead; Wrote Books on Chess
OCT. 3, 1981
Irving Chernev, a chess master who wrote 18 books on the game, died Tuesday at his home in San Francisco after a long illness. He was 81 years old.
Mr. Chernev was born in Priluki, Russia, and came to the United States in 1904. He worked in the fine papers industry, and his last job was with Marquardt & Company in New York City, from 1957 to 1968. He lived in Brooklyn for 60 years, taught and lectured on chess and to ok part in many chess tournaments throughout the United States.
He was co-author with Fred Reinfeld of ''The Fireside Book of Chess.'' He also wrote ''Curious Chess Facts'' and ''The Golden Dozen; The Twelve Greatest Chess Players of All Time.''
Other works of his offered introductions to the game and described winning traps, Russian chess-playing, special games and the strategy of chess.
Surviving are his wife, the former Selma Kulik, and a son, Melvin, of San Francisco.
__________
One of the first chess books I bought was Chernev’s Curious Chess Facts. I have the 1960 Catalogue of Chess Books and Equipment from Chess Review in front of me as I write. These are some of the prices
Chernev Curious Chess Facts 75 cents
Chernev The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (cloth) $5
Bobby Fischer Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess (cloth) $2.95
Chernev and Reinfeld The Fireside Book of Chess (cloth) $5.95
Yanofsky How to Win End-Games $2.95
_________
Curious Chess Facts
This little booklet comprises 64 pages and has 206 entries such as:
The shortest and longest tournament games
The anecdote of Marshall’s 1912 game against Lewitsky where the chessboard was showered with gold pieces by the spectators
The German book on advice to chess spectators with the admonition “Keep your mouth shut!” (Halt’s Maul)
Bishop Ruy Lopez’s advice to place the chessboard so that light reflections from it would shine in your opponent’s eyes
These were meant to entertain. Edward Winter has examined the evidence for the gold coin game and gives a photo of the Halt’s Maul booklet (in CN 3415). The true facts are not quite as spectacular as the curious facts.
__________
Through the years I picked up 15 of his books. I can single out Logical Chess: Move by Move, The Russians Play Chess and The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess as ones I particularly remember. The pages of my paperback copy of 1000 Best Short Games started falling out and so I had to get the clothbound edition.
Grandmaster John Nunn hated Logical Chess calling it “a severely limited work produced by a weak player”. Ah well, I think we all like our first chess books no matter what the critics say.
Edward Winter considers Capablanca’s Best Chess Endings as his best work. His best-selling book was An Invitation to Chess (with Kenneth Harkness).
I kept a copy of the Dover edition of The Russians Play Chess and a peg-in board in the lab and used to play over a game or two during lunch.
___________
In 1979 Jerome Tarshis wrote a four-page article for Chess Life and Review about him entitled:
An Invitation to Chernev
Extracts from that article:
Chernev has made a career out of appreciating the beauty of chess. Today, at seventy-nine, he is the dean of American chess writers.
When I learned that Chernev and I both live in San Francisco, I resolved to call on him, partly in the service of journalism and partly to thank him for the pleasure he has given me. I suppose, considering his age and the great erudition that informs his writing, that I expected his apartment to be a cavern lined with books from floor to ceiling and to be inhabited by a yawning, shuffling wraith.
The books do not reach from floor to ceiling; the Chernevs use waist-high bookcases. They do go on and on, however. A quick inspection discloses that Chernev has reading interests other than chess. Literature and history are well represented and Chernev delighted me with his collection of books by the humorist S. J. Perelman, one of his favorites and mine. Since the chessboard is not the only place where Irving Chernev enjoys finding sardonic wit, he is also fond of the short-story writers Roald Dahl and John Collier.
Reinfeld tells us that Chernev used to go about with little black notebooks, one for games that especially pleased him, one for problems, one for endgame studies, one for anecdotes, and one for curious chess facts. Reuben Fine, in an introduction, calls up a picture of Chernev as always ready to entertain his companions with the contents of those notebooks. His books are, on the whole, extensions of the little black notebooks, expanded and published for all of us to enjoy.
Irving Chernev was born in Russia on January 29, 1900, and was brought to the United States by his family in 1904. He grew up in New York, where, when he was twelve, he began to learn chess from his father. Later, he did not commit his full energies to chess competition; he wanted to do other things with his life, and enjoy other aspects of chess, including problems, fairy chess, the history of the game, and the lives of great players.
His first book resulted from his meeting Fred Reinfeld – Chess Strategy and Tactics (1933). Other books followed, most written by himself. Of eighteen books published over a period of forty-six years, sixteen are still in print.
He was not a fulltime writer. For most of his adult life, before he retired and moved from New York to San Francisco in 1968, he was employed in the paper industry, specializing in fine papers for books and magazines.
(to be continued)
May 31, 2019
Since I have just resurrected a thread on Fred Reinfeld, it is perhaps fitting to start another one on one of the most popular chess writers of the 1940 – 1960 era.
Irving Chernev 1900 - 1981
NYT Obit:
Irving Chernev Is Dead; Wrote Books on Chess
OCT. 3, 1981
Irving Chernev, a chess master who wrote 18 books on the game, died Tuesday at his home in San Francisco after a long illness. He was 81 years old.
Mr. Chernev was born in Priluki, Russia, and came to the United States in 1904. He worked in the fine papers industry, and his last job was with Marquardt & Company in New York City, from 1957 to 1968. He lived in Brooklyn for 60 years, taught and lectured on chess and to ok part in many chess tournaments throughout the United States.
He was co-author with Fred Reinfeld of ''The Fireside Book of Chess.'' He also wrote ''Curious Chess Facts'' and ''The Golden Dozen; The Twelve Greatest Chess Players of All Time.''
Other works of his offered introductions to the game and described winning traps, Russian chess-playing, special games and the strategy of chess.
Surviving are his wife, the former Selma Kulik, and a son, Melvin, of San Francisco.
__________
One of the first chess books I bought was Chernev’s Curious Chess Facts. I have the 1960 Catalogue of Chess Books and Equipment from Chess Review in front of me as I write. These are some of the prices
Chernev Curious Chess Facts 75 cents
Chernev The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (cloth) $5
Bobby Fischer Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess (cloth) $2.95
Chernev and Reinfeld The Fireside Book of Chess (cloth) $5.95
Yanofsky How to Win End-Games $2.95
_________
Curious Chess Facts
This little booklet comprises 64 pages and has 206 entries such as:
The shortest and longest tournament games
The anecdote of Marshall’s 1912 game against Lewitsky where the chessboard was showered with gold pieces by the spectators
The German book on advice to chess spectators with the admonition “Keep your mouth shut!” (Halt’s Maul)
Bishop Ruy Lopez’s advice to place the chessboard so that light reflections from it would shine in your opponent’s eyes
These were meant to entertain. Edward Winter has examined the evidence for the gold coin game and gives a photo of the Halt’s Maul booklet (in CN 3415). The true facts are not quite as spectacular as the curious facts.
__________
Through the years I picked up 15 of his books. I can single out Logical Chess: Move by Move, The Russians Play Chess and The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess as ones I particularly remember. The pages of my paperback copy of 1000 Best Short Games started falling out and so I had to get the clothbound edition.
Grandmaster John Nunn hated Logical Chess calling it “a severely limited work produced by a weak player”. Ah well, I think we all like our first chess books no matter what the critics say.
Edward Winter considers Capablanca’s Best Chess Endings as his best work. His best-selling book was An Invitation to Chess (with Kenneth Harkness).
I kept a copy of the Dover edition of The Russians Play Chess and a peg-in board in the lab and used to play over a game or two during lunch.
___________
In 1979 Jerome Tarshis wrote a four-page article for Chess Life and Review about him entitled:
An Invitation to Chernev
Extracts from that article:
Chernev has made a career out of appreciating the beauty of chess. Today, at seventy-nine, he is the dean of American chess writers.
When I learned that Chernev and I both live in San Francisco, I resolved to call on him, partly in the service of journalism and partly to thank him for the pleasure he has given me. I suppose, considering his age and the great erudition that informs his writing, that I expected his apartment to be a cavern lined with books from floor to ceiling and to be inhabited by a yawning, shuffling wraith.
The books do not reach from floor to ceiling; the Chernevs use waist-high bookcases. They do go on and on, however. A quick inspection discloses that Chernev has reading interests other than chess. Literature and history are well represented and Chernev delighted me with his collection of books by the humorist S. J. Perelman, one of his favorites and mine. Since the chessboard is not the only place where Irving Chernev enjoys finding sardonic wit, he is also fond of the short-story writers Roald Dahl and John Collier.
Reinfeld tells us that Chernev used to go about with little black notebooks, one for games that especially pleased him, one for problems, one for endgame studies, one for anecdotes, and one for curious chess facts. Reuben Fine, in an introduction, calls up a picture of Chernev as always ready to entertain his companions with the contents of those notebooks. His books are, on the whole, extensions of the little black notebooks, expanded and published for all of us to enjoy.
Irving Chernev was born in Russia on January 29, 1900, and was brought to the United States by his family in 1904. He grew up in New York, where, when he was twelve, he began to learn chess from his father. Later, he did not commit his full energies to chess competition; he wanted to do other things with his life, and enjoy other aspects of chess, including problems, fairy chess, the history of the game, and the lives of great players.
His first book resulted from his meeting Fred Reinfeld – Chess Strategy and Tactics (1933). Other books followed, most written by himself. Of eighteen books published over a period of forty-six years, sixteen are still in print.
He was not a fulltime writer. For most of his adult life, before he retired and moved from New York to San Francisco in 1968, he was employed in the paper industry, specializing in fine papers for books and magazines.
(to be continued)
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