Dawid Przepiórka
| Dawid Przepiórka | |
|---|---|
 Przepiórka in the 1930s | |
| Full name | Dawid Przepiórka |
| Country |  Poland |
Dawid Przepiórka (22 December 1880, Warsaw – 1940) was a prominent Polish chess player of the early twentieth century.
Dawid Przepiórka was born 22 December 1880 in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), to a family of wealthy landowners and entrepreneurs of Jewish extraction. His grandfather, Izrael Przepiórka, built a large house at the crossing of Warsaw's Aleje Jerozolimskie and Nowy Świat Streets, in the very heart of the city. Both the tenement house and the Gastronomia restaurant located there (one of the most popular restaurants in Warsaw between the wars) provided him with steady income.
However, Przepiórka was more interested in mathematics and chess than doing business. He learnt to play chess at the age of seven, on his own, as no one in his family knew the game. Declared a prodigy by the age of nine, soon afterwards he managed to beat a well-known chess master Jan Taubenhaus.[1]
Shortly before World War I, he left his family company for good and started travelling abroad, devoting himself to chess. Abroad he took part in numerous chess tournaments, winning many of them. His international chess career started in 1926. That year he became the first Polish Champion winning in Warsaw.[2] The same year he also and also won a notable tournament in Munich (+4 –0 =1) ahead of Rudolf Spielmann and Efim Bogoljubov. Further he took 2nd place to Max Euwe in the second and last World's Amateur Championship in 1928.
Two years later he was part of the Polish team at the 3rd Chess Olympiad in Hamburg, where he won the gold medal in a team with Akiba Rubinstein, Ksawery Tartakower, Kazimierz Makarczyk and Paulin Frydman. The following year, the team won the silver medal at the 4th Chess Olympiad in Prague, being beaten by the United States by one point.
His successes abroad made him popular among the Polish chess community, and he became the deputy chairman of the Polish Chess Federation in the 1930's. Przepiórka took the major responsibility as a chairman of Organizing Committee for 6th Chess Olympiad at Warsaw 1935.[3] During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he was present at a forbidden meeting of Warsaw Chess Circle. The Gestapo arrested everyone there, and most players, including Przepiórka, were subsequently killed by the Germans in a mass execution in Palmiry. The exact date of his death is unknown; it is presumed to be April of 1940.
References
- ^ Henri Weenink (1932). David Przepiórka, a Master of Strategy. A collection of his chess problems and end games thematically arranged and discussed by H. Weenink. Amsterdam. p. 13.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ I Szachowe Mistrzostwa Polski Warszawa 1926 at polbase.w.interia.pl Template:Pl icon
- ^ Dawid Przepiórka team chess record at www.olimpbase.org
External links
- Dawid Przepiorka player profile and games at Chessgames.com