From Vienna to Munich to Stockholm: A Chess Biography of Rudolf Spielmann

Rudolf Spielmann was one of the strongest chess players in the world in the first half of the 20th century. Following his shared second place at the Carlsbad tournament in 1929 with Capablanca, half a point behind Nimzowitsch, he was considered one of the world’s top five. His career spread over four decades and included a host of tournament and match victories, such as defeating Bogoljubov over ten games in 1932.
Often known as the Last Romantic in chess with his predilection for the King’s Gambit and Vienna Game and love of sacrifices, he bequeathed a rich legacy of ideas and techniques. These combinational and positional master classes are examined here in 213 instructional games and fragments, organized thematically in a way similar to Grigory Bogdanovich’s previous volumes on Bogoljubov.
Detailed commentary is provided on games against leading contemporaries. Opponents in this work include five world champions Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, and Botvinnik, as well as Marshall, Janowski, Tarrasch, Tartakower, Nimzowitsch, Reti, Rubinstein, Romanovsky, Bogoljubov, and many others. Bogdanovich’s commentary is richly supplemented by that of stars of the epoch and, above all, of Spielmann himself.
The book further contains a biographical sketch and is supplemented by a large number of tournament photographs and portraits. Spielmann’s life was ultimately tragic – a lonely death in Sweden aged just 59 as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany following the demise three years earlier of his sponsor, while several family members failed to escape the Holocaust.
Additional materials in the book include a detailed table of tournaments and matches from his career, as well as a translation of Spielmann’s fascinating article dating to 1923 called “From the Sickbed of the King’s Gambit”.
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Grigory Bogdanovich (born in 1949) began work as a chess coach in the early 1980s. He was awarded the USSR Master of Sport title in 1983 after successful results in the Moscow team championship, during which his famous opponents included David Bronstein, Artur Yusupov and Andrei Sokolov. Later, he was twice Soviet Correspondence Chess Champion as part of the victorious Moscow team. In 1990 he graduated for the second time, from the Higher School of Coaches, after previously gaining a degree in engineering and economics. He has recorded a string of victories in international chess tournaments, and gained the International Master title in 1991. Grigory lives in Germany and spent over a quarter of a century playing for Bad Mergentheim chess club (Baden-Wurttemberg). He has written several opening books in English and Russian.