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Monday, October 23, 2017

Whirlwind Attack by Milton Hanauer

      Frank Marshall founded the Marshall Chess Club in Greenwich Village, New York City in 1915, but it was officially incorporated in 1922. Originally the Club meet in several temporary homes until it moved permanently to 23 West Tenth Street in 1931 when the brownstone building was purchased for Marshall by a group of wealthy patrons.
     The club's purpose was to establish a meeting place on the same lines as such famous resorts as Simpson’s Divan in London and the Café de la Regence in Paris. Marshall's idea was to make the club a place of instruction for young players as well as a place where all chess players could feel free to gather. You can read some interesting anecdotes about the Marshall by Dr. Mark Ginsberg HERE.
     The club has been the site of several rounds of the U.S. Championship, incuding Bobby Fischer's Game of the Century. In the late 1950s, Bobby Fischer competed regularly in the Marshall's Tuesday night speed-chess tournaments. In 1965, when the U.S. State Department refused to issue him a visa to play in Cuba in the Capablanca Memorial tournament, Fischer secluded himself in the Marshall's rear drawing room and set up a board and proceeded to compete via teletype. Sitting, appropriately, at Capablanca's table with a single official in attedance, his moves were wired to Havana. He tied for 2nd-4th Ivkov and Geller a half point behind Smyslov.
     The list of club members is impressive: Reuben Fine, Erling Tholfsen, Anthony Santasiere, Milton Hanauer, Sidney Bernstein, Fred Reinfeld, Arthur Dake, Albert Simonson, Herbert Seidman, Larry Evans, Bobby Fischer, Edmar Mednis, James Sherwin, Andy Soltis, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and even Stanley Kubrick, Marcel Duchamp and Howard Stern.
     The following game was played in the 1950-51 club championship. I have posted on Milton Hanauer before. In this game his opponent was journeyman Master John L. Foster, originally from New York City and later from Florida where he won the 1958 Florida Championship. Hanauer's whirlwind attack is pretty impressive.

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