Jacques Mieses

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Jacques Mieses
Jacques Mieses, 1900
Country	Germany United Kingdom
Born	27 February 1865(1865-02-27) Leipzig, Germany
Died	23 February 1954(1954-02-23) (aged 88) London, United Kingdom
Title	Grandmaster

Jacques Mieses (Leipzig, 27 February 1865 – London, 23 February 1954) was a German-born Jewish chess Grandmaster and writer. He became a naturalized British citizen after World War II.^p258

Chess career

Mieses was a dangerous attacker with a number of brilliant victories to his credit, e.g. against Frank Marshall (Monte Carlo 1903). His best achievement was to win the first Trebitsch Memorial at Vienna 1907, and he came third at the 28-round Masters tournament at Ostend the same year.

He organized the 1911 San Sebastian master tournament and insisted that all the masters' expenses were paid. This was the first international tournament of José Raúl Capablanca, who surprised everyone by winning.

Mieses moved to England in the 1930s to escape Nazi persecution. In 1950 he became the first FIDE-authorized British grandmaster, though not (as is sometimes claimed) the first British grandmaster. ('Grandmaster' is a title first used of chess players in the nineteenth century,^p156 and a number of British players were considered to be grandmasters in their day, the most obvious examples being Howard Staunton and Joseph Blackburne. When FIDE first awarded the grandmaster title in 1950, Mieses was one of the 27 original recipients.)

Mieses wrote many tournament reports, but his style was regarded as fairly dry, in contrast with his wittiness in person.

Legacy

Mieses often used the Scandinavian Defense and greatly developed its theory in the early 1900s. The chess opening 1.d3 is named the Mieses Opening. He is also known for the Mieses Variation of the Vienna Game, which runs 1.e4 e5. 2.Nc3 Nf6 (or 2...Nc6) 3.g3. Its king bishop fianchetto can be seen as an early example of hypermodernism. There is also a line in the Scotch Game named The Mieses Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 6.Nxc6) after he employed it four times at Hastings 1895.^p213

Mieses' long playing career ties for the shortest example of six degrees of separation for linking the beginning of international chess tournaments to the present day. Henry Bird (chess player) played at the London 1851 chess tournament, which is considered the first international chess tournament and at the great Hastings 1895 chess tournament, where he played Mieses. Mieses played Max Euwe as early as The Hague in 1921. Euwe played Vassily Smyslov as early as the Groningen 1946 chess tournament and Smyslov played current World Champion Viswanathan Anand at Groningen 1989, thus resulting in a chain of five degrees of separation. No shorter chain can be constructed between London 1851 and 2012, for while Emanuel Lasker also played at Hastings 1895, he never played an official tournament game with Smyslov, so that chain must still pass through Euwe or various other players to reach Smyslov and Anand. Lasker did play Samuel Reshevsky but the latter never faced Anand. This can be confirmed by examining the career games of Anand and the various other players cited in the Chessbase 2012 "MegaDatabase" or any number of on-line databases, e.g., Chessgames.com. Simlarly, Siegbert Tarrasch played at Hastings and also played Mikhail Botvinnik in the 1930s but Botvinnik never faced Anand, as he had retired by the time Anand began playing. Again, this can be readily determined by database searches^{[citation needed]}

External links

• Jacques Mieses player profile at ChessGames.com
• Jacques Mieses - Information, Pictures and Games (in German)

This article incorporates information from the German Wikipedia.