Women’s World Chess Championship 1930

Introduction

Three years after the inaugural edition of the Women’s World Chess Championship, the 2nd edition of the tournament was organized in 1930 – once again alongside the 3rd Chess Olympiad (or Tournament of Nations, as this event was called back in the day). The Olympiad itself – as well as the accompanying events were organized in Hamburg by the president of the Hamburg Chess Club and the German Chess Federation Walter Robinow in order to celebrate the centenary of the Hamburg Chess Club. ¹

Walter Robinow. Source: https://www.schachbund.de/news/id-150-geburtstag-von-walter-robinow.html

Participants and format

In contrast to the previous edition of the tournament which fielded 12 ladies – in the Women’s World Chess Championship 1930 there were only 5 competitors:

• Vera Menchik – the defending champion and the greatest female player of the first half of the 20th century
• Paula Wolf-Kalmar – third prize winner from 1927
• Wally Henschel – a German chess player and a debutant in this competition. Incidentally enough, just like Robinow – she would also later have to emigrate to the USA due to her Jewish origins
• Katarina Beskow – the 2nd prize winner in the 1927 Women’s World Chess Championship
• Agnes Stevenson – the only other British competitor, apart from Menchik

Due to the much fewer participants than in the previous edition, ² the format of the tournament was double round-robin (all-play-all).

Games and results

The defending champion Vera Menchik was considered to be the undisputable pre-tournament favourite. Not only did she win the previous edition in a very dominant fashion – but in the subsequent three years she participated in a number of „Open“ tournaments – such as Paris 1929, Karlsbad 1929, and Hastings 1929/1930 – gaining a lot of experience in competing at the highest level.

Indeed, Menchik managed to justify these expectations and defend her title. However, the tournament path toward the title was anything but rosy.

In the first half, Vera drew with Paula Wolf-Kalmar and lost with White to the debutant Wally Henschel. It is hard to emphasize how big of an upset it was – should it suffice to say that this was Menchik’s only loss in all of her appearances in the Women’s World Chess Championships ³ Needless to say, we should take a look at this game ⁴:

Note: The games are available for free in the following lichess study and can also be downloaded for free (together with many others) on my “Free PGN Downloads” page

Even after enduring such a shock, Menchik managed to retain her composure and continued winning all her other games. By the 2nd half of the tournament, she was very much in the race for first place and her 2nd game against Paula Kalmar-Wolf turned out to be the one to ultimately decide the champion

style=”text-align: justify;”>It has to be said I was unable to figure out in which round the game was played and how many points the players had. In his book Vera Menchik: A Biography of the First Women’s World Chess Champion, R.B. Tanner stated that:

„Shortly thereafter Paula also lost to Wally Henschel and Menchik won her second title“

But given that Wolf-Kalmar finished a clear point behind, I hope it is not a big historical mishap to say that this game decided the tournament. ⁵

Thus, with the final score of 6.5/8, Vera Menchik managed to defend her title and reinforce her status as the strongest female player of the time!

References and Further Reading

http://www.olimpbase.org/1930/1930in.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Robinow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Henschel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_Chess_Olympiad

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In order to track the origin of the Women’s World Chess Championship, we have to go back all the way to the year 1924.

Namely, in June 1924, a chess tournament was held in Paris, alongside the 8th Olympic Games. According to some sources, prior to the tournament, there were attempts to include it in the Olympic Games, which was unsuccessful.

Considering that AND the fact that there was an ongoing discussion within the chess world about the need to establish an international chess organization, it is not a coincidence that it was precisely during this event that, the Federation Internationale des Echecs, or FIDE, was founded by the participants of the tournament.

According to the renowned chess historian Edward Winter: ¹

„Paris, 1924 also marked the foundation of the Fédération Internationale des Echecs, with the appointment of the above-mentioned Alexander Rueb of The Hague as its President. Initially, there were 15 signatories to FIDE: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.“

At the very beginning, FIDE had very little power within the chess world. In the congresses held in 1925 and 1926, a desire to become involved in the World Chess Championship was expressed. ² However, given that the World Chess Championship was already very established the World Champions had a lot of power and were in the position to organize matches without FIDE’s involvement.

Thus, in order to increase their power and influence, FIDE turned its attention to organizing other chess events. Given the past attempt to include the Paris Tournament 1924 in the Olympic Games and the fact that this event was considered to be an unofficial Olympiad, it was logical to try to organize the „official“ one.

This happened during the 4th FIDE Congress in 1927, when the First Chess Olympiad was held. ³ Apart from the team tournament for the nations that were members of FIDE, several additional events were held – including the 12-player women’s tournament.

(2nd placed Katarina Beskow plays 10th placed Agnes Stevenson. According to the source (British Chess Game Archive): This is a posed photo as neither was due to play each other on the day that it must have been taken, 18 July 1927, which was the first day of the inaugural Women’s World Chess Championship tournament at Central Hall, Westminster, London. Photo from the Daily Mirror, 19 July 1927.)

This event marks the beginning of the official lineage of the Women’s World Chess Championship. Unfortunately, it was very far from a glamourous one. Aside from the fact that the tournament was held as a SIDE event during the Olympiad rather than a SEPARATE one, there were numerous other issues with it.

Firstly, there was a matter of a very laughable prize fund. According to the book by Robert Tanner titled Vera Menchik:A Biography of the First Women’s Chess Champion, with 350 Games:

„As with all other such events prior to World War II, it was held in conjunction with the chess Olympiad. At that time, no one considered that there was adequate interest in a women’s Olympiad. Entry for the 12-player event was 1 pound, with prizes for first through fourth place of 20, 15, 10 and 5 pounds. By 2013 standards, that works out to a 42 USD entry fee and a first prize of 840 USD.“

Secondly, before the event, it was not yet known that the participants would compete for the Women’s Chess Champion title – this decision was only applied RETROACTIVELY. According to both Tanner’s book and Edward Winter’s article, this decision was announced in the August edition of the British Chess Magazine:

‘It was agreed that Article 3 of the Rules of the FIDE should be altered to include a Women’s championship of the FIDE, and this was made retrospective so as to award the title to the winner of the Women’s Tournament of the London Congress, 1927.’

It is indeed quite absurd that a world championship title was contested in an event where participants did not know that they were contesting the title.

Last but not least, it would appear that the majority of the games from this event were not preserved. In my preparation for this article, I tried searching different Internet sources (e.g. this website seemed promising at first), and chess databases and I even consulted the aforementioned Vera Menchik book with 350(!!) games. Yet, despite my efforts, I was only able to find two games – both featuring the eventual winner Menchik – from the entire event. ⁴ It is a big shame, given that this event was held in 1927 (!) and that numerous games from matches held much earlier, in the 19th century, have been preserved completely.

As for the event itself, it was won in an incredibly dominant fashion by the strongest female player of the first half of the 20th century – Vera Menchik, who conceded a single draw out of 12 games and finished a clear 1.5 points ahead of the second prize winner, Katarina Beskow.

(Image Source: Edward Winter: Chess And Women)

The result was not that surprising given that Menchik already established herself as the strongest female player in prior years, who would soon afterward start competing in open tournaments against the best male players. But that doesn’t make her dominant performance any less impressive or notable. ⁵

In order to get a better feeling for the level of her play and the difference in class between her and her opposition, I present you with two annotated games from this event – against 4th prize winner Edith Martha Holloway with the Black pieces:

and against multiple British Women’s Chess Champion Edith Price, who ended up 6th in the 1927 tournament:

In any case, despite all the problems and issues, the 1927 Women’s World Chess Championship tournament was an important landmark event that kicked of a historical tradition that has persisted to this day!

References and Further Reading:

Edward Winter – Chess In 1924

Edward Winter – Chess And Women

Chess Olympiad History

Vera Menchik:A Biography of the First Women’s Chess Champion, with 350 Games

British Chess Game Archive

Wikipedia Entry On Fide

Olimpbase.org: 1st Chess Olympiad 1927

Chessgames: Game Collection – Women’s World Chess Championship

Britbase: 1927 Women’s World Chess Championship

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