MARK RUBERY CHESS

The following is an extract of an editorial by Huxley St. John Brooks that appeared in the December 1937 issue of his South African Chess Magazine …

The knowledge of chess and a love for, or at least an interest in the game, is far more widespread than many a newspaper editor imagines. For one member of a chess club there are at least ten who play regularly in their own homes. For one home player there are at least three who take an interest in the game-work out problems, puzzle over endgames, like to read about masters, about curious incidents, about their friends. Here in Durban, where we have one of the leading South African clubs, the writer knows of many who-though they hardly know the moves-yet regularly scan the chess news which appears in the local papers. Only a day ago I received a letter from Johannesburg which said: ‘Our household is quite agog over the Euwe-Alekhine match! My wife, although no chess player, is a great admirer of Dr Euwe as am I. We are both holding thumbs!’

But if we want chess news we must be vocal. When the Euwe-Alekhine match started we in South Africa only got the results of the first two games. The rest was silence! I then got in touch with the editor of a leading Natal daily. Result – the paper in question at once ‘got after’ old Mr Reuter, and from the next day forward the whole of chess-playing South Africa had the latest results of the World Championship match in their daily papers within 24 hours of each game!

In 1940 John Selman was to publish a brilliant study with a unique idea but due to the advent of World War 2 this did not come to pass. A few years later the Russian composer Vladimir Korolkov published an extended version of Selman’s study without even being aware of its existence. Such coincidences are not uncommon when two independent minds chance upon the same theme – for example, on perhaps a more profound level, the theory of Evolution came independently to both Darwin and Wallace.

Here is Selman’s original concept.