Dutch Treat by Hans Ree Marks or Marx? In almost every chess magazine of the Soviet Union the slogan could be found, at one time or another: "Chess is the gymnasium of the mind - V.I. Lenin." Of course it was a wonderful argument for the propagation of chess. Who in the former Soviet Union would dare to contradict Lenin? But last year Genna Sosonko revealed in New in Chess that the slogan had not actually been invented by Lenin, but by the Russian chess master and organizer Yakov Rokhlin, who had attached Lenin's name to it for propaganda purposes. That was clever of Rokhlin. One tends to think that it was also a bit risky. Had it been found out that he had misused the name of Lenin so opportunistically, trouble would not have been far off. But in those pre-computer times, Lenin's Collected Works were not yet available on disk with handy search functions, and nobody was foolish enough to comb all volumes to see if the quote was really there. And it was also a good thing that no one had found out that in 1803, in the English magazine Chess Studies, there had been written about the game of chess: "It is, in its essential tendency, a gymnasium of the mind." Not only had Rokhlin used Lenin for his own purposes, he also had made him look like a plagiarizer. There should be no doubt though about Lenin's love of chess, nor about the chess passion of socialist patriarch Karl Marx. After Marx's death, his comrade in arms Wilhelm Liebknecht described how furious Marx would be whenever he had lost a chess game. (W. Liebknecht: Karl Marx zum Gedaechtnis, quoted in Kaissiber, of which more later.) In London, where Marx and other political refugees had gathered around 1850, Marx once announced triumphantly that he had found a new move with which he would beat everybody, and at first this proved indeed to be the case. Until Liebknecht found the right defense and beat Marx with it. Marx asked for revenge, the next morning at his place. When Liebknecht arrived there, Marx's wife had retired and 'Lenchen' (I suppose this was the maid) was looking unfriendly. Marx at once fetched the chessboard. During the night he had found an improvement. He won the first game and immediately his spirits improved and he had sandwiches brought and something to drink. The next game was won by Liebknecht. They went on till midnight, when Lenchen decided that it had been enough. Next morning Liebknecht was visited by Lenchen, who told him that Marx's wife urgently requested him not to play chess with her husband during the evenings anymore, as Marx was intolerable when he lost. One game by Marx has been handed down in chess literature. White Karl Marx (?)-Black Meyer 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3. Ng1-f3 g7-g5 4. Bf1-c4 g5-g4 5. 0-0 The Muzio gambit, quite popular at that time. 5...g4xf3 6. Qd1xf3 Qd8-f6 7. e4-e5 Qf6xe5 8. d2-d3 Bf8-h6 9. Nb1-c3 Ng8-e7 10. Bc1-d2 Nb8-c6 11. Ra1-e1 Qe5-f5 Played for the first time in Kolisch-L. Paulsen, London 1861. 12. Nc3-d5 Ke8-d8 13. Bd2-c3 Successfully tried by Chigorin in 1874, but in later games 13. Qe2 was preferred. 13...Rh8-g8 14. Bc3-f6 More accurate would have been 14. Rxe7, as in Mackenzie-N.N. New York 1883. 14...Bh6-g5 15. Bf6xg5 Qf5xg5 16. Nd5xf4 Nc6-e5 After 16...Nd4 17. Qf2 Ne6 White wouldn't have had enough for his piece. 17. Qf3-e4 d7-d6 18. h2-h4 Qg5-g4 And here 18...Qg7 was stronger. (See Diagram) 19. Bc4xf7 Rg8-f8 20. Bf7-h5 Qg4-g7 21. d3-d4 Ne5-c6 22. c2-c3 a7-a5 23. Nf4-e6+ Bc8xe6 24. Rf1xf8+ Qg7xf8 25. Qe4xe6 Ra8-a6 26. Re1-f1 Qf8-g7 27. Bh5- g4 Nc6-b8 28. Rf1-f7 Black resigned. All in all, a game of which no Marxist should be ashamed. Marx, unmaterialistically, sacrifices a piece and proves to be well aware of contemporary opening theory. His play is not without mistakes, but he handles the attack with flourish. But was the game really played by Marx? The German quarterly Kaissiber is a rich source of information for chess lovers who like to go off the beaten track. The magazine specializes in analyses of unfashionable opening variations and historical research. For instance, in its first issue of 2000 there is an article by Michael Ehn, Wiener Turnierpreise (tournament prizes in Vienna). It is about a question that has always intrigued me and many others. How much did the masters of the past actually earn their living? We read about prizes of so many pounds, marks, crowns or whatever, but it is very difficult to form an idea how much that would be in modern terms. And what did chess writers get for their work? Ehn makes a start of handling this difficult subject in a scientific way. Very interesting. But back to Marx now. In the same issue, in an article called Der Murks mit Marx (The Trouble with Marx), Kaissiber's editor Stefan Buecker reports on his investigations as to the authenticity of the game supposedly played by Marx. His suspicions had been raised by the quality of the game. Wasn't it just too good for Marx? Liebknecht had written that Marx was an excellent draught player, but weak at chess. How then could Marx be so well versed in the theory of the Muzio Gambit? Buecker went back to the sources and found that when the game was published in 1926 in a Russian magazine, the editors had honestly written that the source was not known to them. But this was forgotten later. In Schlechter's 8th edition of Bilguer's Handbuch, the openings bible of that time, the opening moves of the game were given with the footnote, (p. 731): "Gentleman's Journal 1871, page 218, notes that 13...Rf8 would be an improvement on the game Marks-Meyer." The 1873 edition of Bilguer is even more specific and mentions that the player with the black pieces had been H. Meyer. This H. Meyer was known to Buecker. He must have been the problem composer Heinrich Meyer, who moved from Hanover to London around 1870. Buecker reaches the conclusion that the player with the white pieces cannot have been Karl Marx, but must have been Edward Marks or Mark Marks (whoever they may have been, I personally had never heard of either of them before). He is probably right, but there still remain some slight doubts. In his recent biography Karl Marx the author Francis Wheen writes that Marx played the game in 1867, when he was in Germany to check the proofs of his main work Das Kapital, at a houseparty given by the chess master G.R.L. Neumann. Wheen obviously is under the impression that he is the first to print the score of this game, which in fact has appeared in many magazines and books. This does not improve his credentials as a chess historian. On the other hand, he is quite specific as to time and place and there must be some basis to it. I put the matter to Buecker, who replied that Wheen's reference to the game had only been indicated to him after his own article had appeared. He had written to Wheen for clarification, but had not yet received a reply. Could it have been, Buecker surmised, that Wheen had misunderstood the Russian 'partya', which means game, and had changed it to a house 'party' given by Neumann? Maybe. For the moment we have to wait a bit before we can definitely do away with Karl Marx's one preserved game of chess. There is also a game fragment that has been attributed to Marx, but it had been known for a long time that this attribution was wrong. (See Diagram) White: Kg1, Qa4, Rd8,Rf1, Bf8; pawns - a3, b2, g2, h3 Black: Kh8, Qd2, Ng4, Nh5; pawns - b7, c7, f7, g3, h7 White Neumann-Black Marx (??) Black announced mate in three, starting with 1...Qd2-f2+. Buecker quotes the Deutsche Schachzeitung of 1869: "From a game played by G.R. Neumann (White) with Knight odds against Mark Marks from London." There he is again, this Mr. Marks. In Cyrillic transcription there is no difference between him and Marx and it is understandable that Soviet writers eagerly attributed this game fragment to Marx, until their mistake was pointed out in 1964 by N. Sacharov in the Bulletin of the Central Chess Club. This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper "NRC-Handelsblad" on April 1, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree. All Rights Reserved.