The Life and Chess of Akiba Rubinstein

[@perpetualchesspodcast9143]

Lucas, just a reminder that these lectures are a treasure. I hope that you and Warren are well and not going through any Rubinstein in 1913 esque years of darkness :)

[@truthfulheretic]

Lucas I love these nuggets of historical facts you give us during the lecture! Please keep these going. Love learning about chess and history together. I cherish these videos as a chess and history enthusiast.

[@jeanlucas24]

Those are my favorite part. I feel strongly that history is not studied adequately in contemporary America (and perhaps other regions as well). We have to understand history to more fully understand present events, including geo-political conflicts.

[@Thomasdada]

Thank you! Life has a meaning again ;-) Greetings from Germany. Please, please, keep up the good work. Such excellent stuff!

[@jeanlucas24]

I'm glad you enjoy them! I always love hearing how chess fans from around the world watch these videos.

[@tommonk7651]

Rubinstein was a very underappreciated chess master

[@ronkamphuis5538]

Hi Lucas, I really appreciate your videos. They are excellent! Keep up the great work.

[@williamsamson8563]

I love these lectures! What a great team Lucan and Warren are. I think a series of American greats (perhaps combined) Marshall, Fine and Reshevsky would be fascinating. But I can't find a lecture on David Bronstein, who is my personal favourite. So if you guys are taking requests - there's mine. Thanks again guys - keep this up.

[@jeanlucas24]

Thanks for the suggestion!

[@TremendousSax]

Yes!!! Thank you for your attention to detail and all the pain staking effort you take to put these together. I'm grateful to be able to learn so much about one of the legends of chess.

[@c.y.hollander5592]

If I might clear up a point about the name Aki[w|b|v]a: nobody had ever stopped *using* Hebrew at any point in history, so the revival led by Ben Yehuda of Hebrew as a native first language is beside the point here. The pronunciation of the name in question is "Akiva" in either Hebrew or Yiddish. The question is only one of spelling. As Simon Pantera pointed out, "Akiwa" is simply the Polish spelling of Akiva. The 'b' spelling has a different story. In Hebrew (or Yiddish), there is a single letter (ב) pronounced either 'b' or 'v', depending on its position in a word. In the name Akiva (עקיבא), it is pronounced 'v'. However, some transliteration systems consistently use a single character to transliterate a single character, rather than varying to reflect pronunciation. 'Akiba' is the product of such a system. However, it should be pronounced 'Akiva', if you want to reflect how he would have pronounced his own name.

[@FrRuy-vc3zc]

Thank you so much for making these lecture series available online. I just discovered them this week, and watched a couple of them already: I love how you combine history and chess. A pleasure to watch! As a suggestion: May be it would be interesting to make one on Ulf Andersson? one of the great players from the west, and someone with a distinctive style. Thanks again from the Netherlands!

[@Yeomannn]

These videos are fantastic. Lucas you're a very intelligent man and you always have insight to add on the players. Warren Harper is also an inspiration to me as I'm going to college to study computer science fall of this year. Your videos always provide me comfort when I need it. Thank you for all you do for chess fans around the world. Happy days, Dominic Rossetti.

[@jeanlucas24]

Thank you for your kind words! We don't claim to be experts, but we're trying.

[@danieltirsoreanu2152]

Please continue making these lectures if you guys can! Very informative and interesting. Fantastic work guys!

[@Silvermist78]

Hi Lucas, Thank you for your awesome video on Rubinstein. I have an original volume 1, I didn't know it was volume 1, and for that matter there is a volume 2! About increasing one's rating / strength at ridiculous speed : Fischer went from 1726 to 2626, 900 points in 2 years!! Love your videos! ❤

[@ogeraxbabuyen3110]

Hey man I really liked your videos about the life and chess of Grandmasters keep up the good work. (Salute)

[@lyq3r2]

It's actually "Łódź" in the original spelling and pronounciation, so as You see there's more than simple Lodz (eng.), but I understand it's easier and irrelevant to the substance of a case. I'm not saying it in a mean way, not at all, it's strictly for informative purposes :) Although, I'm not a linguist, from what I've read and checked, the letter "ó" ("o with diacritic sign" isn't an umlaut in the written Polish lang., because we don't have such). I don't think we have a specific name for it in Polish either, but I may be wrong about it. It's just" o with a line/sign(?)" in common speach at least. I will omit the other consonants/letters and their genesis for the sake of everyone. Anyway, we pronounce consonant "ó" just as "u". Why the difference? It would mean the accent, later on evolved and ended up as an enrichment of the alphabet. FYI, please be aware there are homophones with "ó" and "u", e.g. "Bug (name of River)" and Bóg (God); bród (ford) and brud (dirt). Thanks for the video!

[@jeanlucas24]

Thank you for this clarification.

[@radependrek9974]

Great job, guys, thanks! :) Just a tiny correction regarding kzbin.info/www/bejne/emKzkoqfhrmmjck - Franz Ferdinand was not the emperor's son, he was his nephew. In fact, Emperor Franz Joseph has lost both his wife (murdered in 1898) and his son Rudolf (suicide in 1889) prior to 1914 when his nephew and successor to the throne Franz Ferdinand was killed And by the way, Rubinstein's last tournament success was, in my opinion: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_Chess_Olympiad - gold medal and 15/17 score agains pretty strong competition.

[@jeanlucas24]

Thank you for that clarification! I had known about his wife's death, but did not know his son committed suicide. I'm inspired to learn more about that.

[@jonberg]

Hi Lucas, just chiming in on the linguistics issues. Firstly, Yiddish is not related to Hebrew (in the sense that linguists use that word), though it has a lot of hebrew borrowings of course. Yiddish is closely related to German. On the pronunciation of Lodz, or more accurately Łódź. In Polish the Ł is pronounced as a [w] and 'dz' is closest to English 'ch' (but not actually the same. So you would pronounce it like 'wutch' (with the vowel in put). HOWEVER, Rubinstein was a Polish Jew and a Yiddish speaker, so he would have pronounced it something like "lotch" when speaking Yiddish.

[@jeanlucas24]

Fascinating--thank you for the clarification!

[@c.y.hollander5592]

To clarify further, the consonant dz is like a voiced version of "ch", so basically "dzh" (with "zh" being the sound of a french J, as in "je"). Wikipedia has a recording of the pronunciation in Polish here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl-Łódź-3.ogg . In Yiddish, it's similar, except with an initial L.

[@pureredwhiteblu]

To much to my wife's chagrin, my bibliophilism has resurrected in no small part due to you Mr. Anderson and FM Harper. Despite not finishing my Tal book yet, I keep buying chess books with a focus on biographies. I have thoroughly enjoyed each video that you both have created - this one included. Thank you for sharing these gems with us. - Rob in Denver Btw, I did some research and found that his son was sent to a concentration camp during WWII but survived because he played chess with the Camp Commander. www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/stawiski/Sta137.html#P144

[@jeanlucas24]

I hereby deny and disavow any responsibility for your book-buying:) Definitely, finish the Tal book--it's a gem. After that, try Bronstein's book (Sorcerer's Apprentice). They both have different voices through their writing, but they both come across as genuinely passionate about chess.

[@simonpantera]

Boris Gelfand gives a lot of excellent commentary on Rubinstein's games in his recent book "Positional decision making in chess"

[@jeanlucas24]

Hah, I have that book and just haven't read it yet. I'll move it up in my pile.

[@simonpantera]

"Akiwa" is the spelling of his name in Polish. 'w' in Polish is pronounced like the English 'v' , so you could just pronounce it as 'Akiva'

[@jeanlucas24]

I'm thankful you shared this with me. I will keep the spelling and change my pronunciation!

[@simonpantera]

You're very welcome. Thank you for all the research work you do for these presentations. Nothing else on KZbin is as thorough.

[@SiChange]

Makes a good point! His first name given in Yiddish in transliterated Akiva (cognate to English Jacob). Besides the Polish spelling explanation, there's a good chance that Rubinstein was thinking of a German spelling where the "w" is pronounced like English "v." German was the lingua franca of chess; many chess masters of the era took the German spelling of their names (e.g., Nimzowitsch).

[@viveckcadambe]

I love your channel and the lectures. Combining history with chess makes for a very interesting series. I wonder if you are considering doing one lecture Kramnik. Since you covered the candidates tournament participants, you have one on most contemporary strong players...but Kramnik is missing!

[@jeanlucas24]

Yes--Kramnik was not a candidate in the 2016 cycle. I'm hoping he will be in 2018, and it's looking likely from a ratings perspective. Either way, there will be a Kramnik lecture in the next year.

[@spiros_il]

Thank you, Lucas and Warren, good work! Regards from Greece, Spiros

[@bradenstewart6270]

Wonderful lecture once again! I think the name discussion was a little too much but the quality of the lecture was great. I would also like to say I think it's time Frank Marshall got his own lecture as an American chess fan a lot of his famous co-players during his time have been discussed and Marshall certainly should be too!

[@jeanlucas24]

You make a strong case. Maybe Warren and I need to make a pilgrimage to NY to do some research.

[@bradenstewart6270]

Hello sir! Just curious if there was any plans to continue the chess lectures? I can completely understand if the business of life or other obligations have overtaken the time it takes to make these in-depth lectures. But as a fan of the channel I have to ask since nothing has been posted for several months now is the series canceled or on hold or etc? Thanks! Sorry to bother :D

[@Trombosilbo]

Great lecture, thank you

[@debashisbanerjee9415]

Thanks for the trouble taken.

[@pablofernandez77]

Thanks a lot for this video. Once they made a survey on facebook, as a game, they asked: if you could make it real, with which famous of the history would you like to have a lunch and a relaxed conversation. I choose 2. Yuri Gagarin and Akiba Rubinstein

[@eliasb8]

Why don't you make a video about Henrique Mecking? He was the strongest western chess player during the 70s after Bobby Fischer retired. He won 2 interzonal tournaments and, at one point, was number 3 in the world. This happened at the height of the Russian chess mafia. He was the strongest chess player in Brazilian history. If I am not mistaken, he was the strongest player in South American history. I cannot say that about Latin America because, obviously, we have Raul Capablanca!

[@AUFalcon64]

David Bronstein, Deserves a lecture out of all the players, just listen to yassers opinion if you dont believe me

[@eliasb8]

@@AUFalcon64 I would love to see a video on Bronstein! He wrote my favorite chess book "Zurich 53".

[@fabricelealch]

Thank you so much for this one!

[@wenchaoliu7280]

Most of the videos in the series have the proper volume, and It'd be great if the default volume for this one could be turned up a little.

[@leonardobaracchi7040]

One of the finest positional players ever and, before the arrival of capablanca on the scenes, the best endgame player the world had seen. There was a period in which I think he was a bit underrated, a bit forgotten, but in the latest years it seems to me there's much more attention to the importance of Rubinstein for the development of chess. Maybe because we passed from kasparov era to magnus era, and magnus is strongly influenced by Rubinstein and capablanca, but there's more consideration of this huge player.

[@jivko777]

Thank you, Lucas and Warren, for yet another very interesting lecture! I was wondering whether you could possibly be interested in making a lecture on Mir Sultan Khan - one of the strongest chess Asian players of his time, self-taught, who had a relatively short career, but during which he played at the British Championship 5 times and won it 4 times. Regardless of your answer to this request (or lack of it), thank you for your great work!

[@jeanlucas24]

Thank you for the kind words. We actually did part of one lecture on Khan--look for the lecture with Charousek, Khan, and Nezhmetdinov.

[@jivko777]

Oh, I must have missed that lecture. But I just finished watching it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much for all the effort you and Warren are putting in producing these videos!!

[@drewberrynews3875]

this was really great way to learn

[@StefekBurczymucha]

Thx for Akiwa :) and now maybe you will make another one about Mieczysław Najdorf?

[@VaSavoir2007]

Thanks first of all to you, Lucas Anderson and Warren Harper, for the almost endless source of happiness and instruction that these videos, and thier bibliographies contitute. My gratitude is endless. Secondly, in which park in Poland, is the statue or sculpture of Akiwa Rubinstein, please? Thank you very much indeed.

[@zacharycat]

Rubinstein is an example of a dedicated and talented player who never became champion due to a late start in chess. At the age where Capablanca was already champion of Cuba Rubinstein had barely learned the game.

[@bronisawazbigniew6633]

at last! :D thx!

[@leonardobaracchi7040]

I appreciated this attention to spelling and pronunciation. It's important, not essential, but still important. So also Anand should have his accent on the right syllable, and iliyn-genevsky's name cannot be nicknamed "genevsky" only.. Anyway most of the polish names of players and cities were German at that time (or German jew or jew tour court, given that most of the chess players were jews). Then there are some specifically polish names (tartakower..) and some that were slavizated..

[@zacharycat]

Always thought his last name was pronounced like Frankenstein.

[@sakthivelv1777]

I love your work, can you make one about Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch ?

[@williamsamson8563]

Sorry Lucas, not Lucan (typo)

[@ericvanthof]

Great lecture. One small remark: the picture show at 21:17 does not match the St. Petersburg 1909 tournament. The right picture is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chigorin_Memorial#/media/File:StPete1909.jpg

[@leonardobaracchi7040]

You still read akiwa with a "v" not with a "u"...!!

[@leonardobaracchi7040]

The city of Merano in France..? Did I hear correctly?!? My God!

[@Bryflei]

lucas anderson when will we get kramink?

[@jeanlucas24]

As I've said before, our Life and Chess series focuses on retired players, and our other series (Meet the Candidate) looked at active players in last year's Candidates Cycle. Kramnik hasn't been in either category! However, it's looking likely that he'll be a candidate in the next cycle (rating), so I'm hoping we'll get to him soon.

[@ulrichschmidt5559]

"unerklärlich" does not mean "unclear", it means "unexplainable"...!

[@lakers4shoPSD]

Just as 'Akiwa' is pronounced as 'Akiva/Akiba', 'Janowski' similarly should be 'Yanovski/Yanobski'. But overall good lecture as always!

[@chessviewofficial]

The town of Lodz- in Polish spelling the L should have a line trough it pronounced as a "W"- the o has a line on top of it pronounced as "oo" as in book- so in English it would be "Wooj" Poland was occupied for 123 years by Prussia, Russia and Austria- (imagine trying to keep your culture, traditions and language alive for so long - so this area is truly Polish territory under Russian rule- and he was 12th out of 14 children- imagine all the struggles - with such a big family- his grandparents raised him because his parents....etc.

[@chessviewofficial]

He wasn't World Champion because of several factors...his opponents wanted too much money in order to play for the World Championship that he would have had to come up with in order to challenge the World Champion like Capablanca who btw came from an affluent family - ($10,000 USD at that time is what they wanted from Rubinstein- do the math of how much it would be today) and at that time no one it seems from any community would back him up financially -, WWI interrupted that trajectory- psychological issues became apparent- as he was hospitalized- and the onslaught of WWII and the Nazis terror on people did not help this state....one that has a brilliant mind is also subject to more sensitivity- the stringent combination of dark war history and the lack of financial backing could send anyone over the edge... politics.. it was almost a mockery- you want to beat me- sure...come up with the money to do so... how would you feel if you faced such obstacles? Rubinstein came from a poorer Polish Jewish family - 12th out of 14 kids.

[@chessviewofficial]

Akiwa- the "w "in Polish is pronounced as "V" - so the pronunciation would be "Akiva" please remember that Poland was still Poland even though through awful historical events it disappeared off of the map for 123 years- the oppression suffered by the Polish people and the continuation of wanting to x out a whole nation and it's ethnicities'- cannot be taken for granted or ignored in the subsurface struggles.

[@kellybrown6988]

💨 1:01:03

[@rainerausdemspring894]

"the city of Merano in France" - shudder. Must be Italy. Yiddish is a Germanic language with some elements from Hebrew. It has evolved from Mittelhochdeutsch - German spoken around 1200.

[@ASMRChess]

YES!!!!

[@jeremyorr9227]

can you do one on smyslov? thx

[@mohbw3]

1:01:03 Accurate describes hes form

[@wapiti3750]

Great fart! Not silent but deadly nonetheless. 1:01:00

[@asherasator]

Some good stuff & interesting info but way too dragged out & laid back with a dillydally lollygag vibe. That probably could have been done in 45 minutes with everything said. Some of historical politics is nice but how about just show the games with excitement & energy then add political history as a sideline & not make it a long thing & point in its own. Some coffee, tea or energy drinks may help bring things up to speed & give a jolt of enthusiasm.

[@MikeL-7]

YES!!