Meine Schülerin

In Vom ersten Zug an auf Matt Diemer refers to “meine Schülerin, Frau Oesterle.” The noun would normally translate as the feminine form of student, or pupil, but in Diemer’s case I would imagine that he intended it more in the sense of “my disciple.” Still, he was not too proud to include this miniature in his book:

 

Decades later, not long before her death, Elisabeth Oesterle spoke of Diemer as he was in those days:

Her husband operated a little cheese dairy in Biesenberg. Diemer often visited her. He was very poor and she gave him to eat and to drink. Once she presented him with a coat (I believe a winter coat). Some days later she heard that he had sold it--probably to finance his worldwide correspondence. She was deeply saddened by this.

Related post: You don't bring me flowers...

You don’t bring me flowers...

Happy St. Valentine's Day to all, and in special memory of this lady who is no longer with us. Many thanks to Günter Brunold for the photograph (but blame me for the pink border).

A related post is here.

What happened to 2011?

Seems like it was here just yesterday. And suddenly you look around and it’s February 2012.

The last thing I remember is standing on a mountaintop overlooking my hometown in Tennessee. The next morning I awoke in the intensive care unit in a Chattanooga hospital. Turns out I had the good luck to collapse with an EMT standing nearby. He, my sister, and some visiting cousins got me into an ambulance and then in a helicopter airlift to the hospital.

I’m not sure what happened, but I’m recovering nicely (but slowly), thanks. Unfortunately we’ve had other family emergencies over the past couple of months. Things like that happen to all of us, but they seem to gang up on old folks. (My hat’s off to Korchnoi, still ticking at 80, to make 81 next month.)

But I’m back now and hope to get in a few posts each month. And I apologize to readers—if any of you are still out there—for not getting some sort of notice up before this.

I’ll start back with an easy game. It appeared in a recent TWIC. Shades of Milner-Barry and George Thomas.

And yet another rook sac on the knight at f6 brings a quick knockout. The patent on this expired years ago.

A Diemer scoresheet

Since first becoming interested in the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit—almost forty years ago now—I’ve collected just about anything I could find on the opening, on Blackmar, on Diemer. Books, magazine articles, photos. correspondence, whatever. Scoresheets—here’s one I scanned from the original.

This is Diemer's scoresheet of one of a series of BDGs he played with Manfred Kloss in August 1959. On the back page he wrote:

A typical BDG game!
The sword of Damocles has won more victories than the sword of Caesar. (Khrushchev)
The goddess of victory surrenders only to he who courts her with strong will. (de Gaulle)

That’s heavy stuff, but I think it’s still okay to play the game just for the fun of it. No, really!

Of course, there are exceptions...

The winning of a pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game.--Jose Capablanca.

But stay away from poisoned pawns!—Jose Capablanca’s momma.

Another photo quiz

Recently I posted a photo of the contestants taken during the game Motta-Greer from the 1988 Montana Open and asked readers to identify the move pending on the board. Among the first to correctly do so were Günter Brunold, Richard Westbrook, and Matt Lasley. The clock in that photo indicates Black is on the move. Black’s queen is clearly on f7  and is only there for one move during the game. The answer then is that it is Black’s move after 21.e6.

Now, a new photograph, a somewhat different quiz. I’ll give you the move number: the gentleman on the left raises his hand after having played his 12th move. You tell me the players, the event, the date. Here’s the photo, generously provided by Günter Brunold and used with his permission.

Did I make it too easy?

Catching up with Klaus Nickl

Back in the 1980s Austria’s Klaus Nickl was a formidable opponent in Blackmar-Diemer thematic correspondence tournaments. After I included several of his Lemberger Countergambits in my last post I decided to see what sort of chess he’d been up to recently. No straight BDGs turned up, although Nickl seems to still be quite active over the board. As he approaches his 70th birthday (he was born in 1942) his ELO has fallen a bit from a high of just over 2250 some years ago.

He had a very successful outing this past July in the 9th International Senior Tournament in Ramsau am Dachstein, Austria, finishing clear first, with 6 points in 7 rounds, ahead of several FIDE Masters. I have no games from that event, but found an interesting one from the European Seniors this past April. It’s a Veresov. It’s also a BDG by transposition. You can try, but you can’t get away from the BDG.