International Chess Magazine, Vol. III: 1887, 388pp (EUR 29.00) (Volume III.)

Description:
ICM was virtually unique monthly magazines in that the fine chess content (a superb annotated games section - mostly by Steinitz himself - plus regular problem and tactics features) was often upstaged by Steinitz's editorial, the highly cobtroversial Personal and General column. 1887 was a particularly turbulent year, as the Bohemian Caeser continued to be the eloquent scourge of what he saw as chess journalism of the pettifogging pawnbroker type. Amongst the sometimes hard-to-follow, but highly entertaining battles that Steinitz undertakes is a brief but tempesuous argument with the celebrated problemist Sam Loyd. After being asked to resign from New York Chess Club of which Loyd was president, Steinitz called Loyd the insolent N.Y. 20 sandwich rodent. The feud stemmed from Steinitz's charge (in November 1886) that Loyd had misappropriated this sum from the American Chess Editors Association, ostensibly for the cabling (and dissemination to othet chess correspondents) of games from the 1886 London congress. In fact he was wired the reports by one of the players, Samuel Lipschutz, for free and the 20 was never satisfactorily accounted for. The World Champion responded by voting to expel the New Club from the society of Mr. W. Steinitz and rounded off his rude invective towards Loyd with a punning quote from the German-Latin version of Goethe's Kladderdatsch> Lex mihi Mars (war is law to me). As Landsberger explains in his biography of Steinitz, this sounds very similar to the German leck mich in arsch (freely translated: kiss my ass) Steinitz's style obviously did little to win over the waverers, but on factual matters he was highly regarded. As always, great entertainment and a real antidote to any rose-tinted view of chess history. 388 pages