Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree

ELISKASES

Early February Erich Eliskases died at the age of 83 in Crdoba,
Argentine. His death was mentioned in most chess magazines, but
I did not see big articles which commemorated his career. Still,
there was a time that Eliskases was considered a world champion
candidate. For instance by Alekhine, in 1941. Alekhine wrote that
a match against Capablanca was not opportune anymore, because
Capablanca was past his best days. It would be better for the
chessworld, according to Alekhine, if younger players like Keres
or Eliskases got a chance. He praised the universal style of
Eliskases. But this was in the notorious series of anti-semitic
articles in which Alekhine exulted the Aryan attacking style. It was
useful for his political purposes to praise the Austrian Eliskases,
who after Austria's Anschluss in 1938 was the strongest player of
Great-Germany. The Jewish players Botvinnik, Fine, Reshevsky
and maybe Flohr could have been called world champion
candidates with better reason. And moreover Eliskases was hardly
a paragon of the romantic attacking style that Alekhine rejoiced in.
But objective truth played no role in these articles.

Eliskases was strong, that 's for sure. He had won matches against
Spielmann and Bogolyubov. His best tournament victory was in
Noordwijk 1938, ahead of Euwe and Keres. It was the first of eight
consecutive tournaments in which he did not lose a single game.

Alekhine could not know in 1941 that the period in which
Eliskases played against the world's best had already passed. In
1939 World War II broke out during the chess olympiad in Buenos
Aires. Eliskases played on first board for Germany, the team that
won that olympiad. When the olympiad was finished, the five
German players stayed in Argentine. Not because of unease with
the politics of Hitler. The Austrian captain of the Great-German
team Albert Becker had clearly shown his pro-nazi attitude in 1938
at the time of the Anschluss. In a recent interview in the Dutch
magazine Schaaknieuws A.D. de Groot, author of Thought and
Choice in Chess and member of the Dutch team in 1939, said that
the German player Michel was the only member of his team that
was not pro-nazi and that he was pestered by his teammates
because of that.

From Argentina Becker sent a letter to the Austrian chessworld in
which he excused the desertion of the team by explaining that the
return trip to Europe was too dangerous for Germans while
England ruled the seas. Maybe this was true. Or maybe the
patriotism of the chessplayers did not amount to a willingness to
personally contribute to the war effort. Eliskases was 26 years old
at the time, a good age for cannon fodder.

It was not easy to be a professional chessplayer in Argentina
during the war. Many strong players had stayed there after the
olympiad and international chess life had come to a stop. In 1943
Eliskases settled in Brazil, first as a teacher of bridge, later as a
chess trainer of the club of a German firm. In 1951 he was invited
by a group of chessplayers in the Argentine city of Crdoba to
become a chess trainer there.

His greatest success in South-America was his victory in Mar del
Plata in 1948, ahead of Stahlberg and Najdorf, two other
Europeans who had stayed behind in Buenos Aires in 1939. In
1964 Eliskases was still strong enough to play on first board for the
Argentine team in the olympiad in Tel Aviv. He played well, five
wins and only two losses in nineteen games, against strong
opposition. But by then his career as a world top player was of a
distant past. It had been finished by the war, in 1939.

Diagram: White: Kc1, Rf7; pawns - a6, b5, d4 Black: Ke3, Ra2;
pawn - f2

The style of Eliskases may have been universal, as Alekhine wrote,
but spectacular it was certainly not. It may be significant for his
style that his most famous game is one in which he saved a draw
by the skin of his teeth. White: Keres Black: Eliskases, Noordwijk
1938. A famous endgame that found a place in many textbooks.
White's last move was 51 d3- d4 There followed 51...Ke3xd4! This
had to be calculated very exactly. Not good for black would have
been 51...Ra5 52 d5 Rxb5 53 d6 Rd5 and now not 54 a7 Ra5 55 d7
Rxa7 56 d8Q Rxf7 57 Qe8+ Kf3 58 Qxf7+ Kg2, but 54 Rxf2!
Rxd6 55 Ra2 Rd8 56 a7 Ra8 57 Ra4 and white wins. 52 Rf7xf2
Ra2xf2 53 a6-a7 White could have started his run for promotion
with the other pawn. In Hans Kmoch's tournament book the
following variation is given: 53 b6 Kc3 54 Kd1 Kd3 55 Ke1 Ke3!!
(double exclamation mark by Kmoch) 56 b7 Rh2 57 Kf1 Kf3 58
Kg1 Rh8!! 59 a7 Rg8+ 60 Kf1 Rh8 61 Ke1 Ke3 62 Kd1 Kd3 63
Kc1 Kc3 64 Kb1 Rh1+ 65 Ka2 Rh2+ 66 Ka3 Rh1 67 Ka4 Kc4 68
Ka5 Kc5 with a draw. A fantastic variation, writes Kmoch with
good reason. 53...Rf2-a2 54 b5-b6 Kd4-c3 55 Kc1-b1 Ra2-a6!!
Double exclamation mark by Kmoch again, and this time his
admiration is somewhat exaggerated, because other rook moves on
the a-file would do as well. 56 b6-b7 Ra6-b6+ 57 Kb1-c1 Rb6-h6!
Draw. White's king cannot escape.

Diagram: White: Kh1, Nc8; pawns - a3, b2, f4, g4, h3 
Black: Kh7, Bd6; pawns - b6, c4, g7, h6

White: Eliskases Black: Fischer, Buenos Aires 1960. For the future
world champion this was not a very successful tournament. Among
twenty players, he shared thirteenth place. Nor was it for Eliskases,
who finished seventeenth and apart from Fischer, only beat the
weak Bazan. . 41...Bd6-c5 The sealed move, a mistake. A draw
could be had by 41...Bxa3 42 Nxb6 Bxb2 though black, a pawn
down, would still have to put in some effort. But it is typical for
Fischer that he tries to keep some winning chances, even a pawn
down. 42 a3-a4 Kh7-g6 After 42...Bd4 white has 43 Nd6 43
Kh1-g2 Kg6-f6 44 Kg2-f3 Kf6- e6 45 Kf3-e4 Bc5-f2 46 f4-f5+
Ke6-d7 47 Nc8-a7 Kd7-d6 48 Na7-b5+ Kd6-c5 49 Nb5-c7 Bf2-h4
50 Nc7-e8 Kc5-b4 51 Ke4-d5 Bh4-e7 52 Ne8xg7 Be7-f6 53
Ng7-e8 Bf6xb2 54 f5-f6 Bb2xf6 55 Ne8xf6 c4-c3 56 Nf6-h5 This
way white is just in time: 56...c2 57 Nf4 c1Q 58 Nd3+ Hardly
better in this variation is 57...c1N, because black's knight is
powerless against white's kingside pawns. 56...Kb4xa4 57 Nh5- f4
b6-b5 58 Nf4-e2 c3-c2 And Fischer resigned. White's simplest win
starts with 59 h4. There must have been few players who beat both
Capablanca and Fischer. As far as I know only Euwe, Keres,
Reshevsky and Eliskases. 

This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper
"NRC-Handelsblad" March 8, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.