The Life and Chess of Vera Menchik

In our lectures on Capablanca, Botvinnik, and Alekhine, one name stood out as a curiosity on crosstables: Vera Menchik. Easily the strongest female player in the world at the time, Menchik was begrudgingly admitted into the closed world of men’s chess. Though she did not reach the pinnacle of chess, she did take games from some of the strongest players of the time, like Euwe and Reshevsky. In this lecture, given on February 16, 2017, at Center64 (www.center64.com), Lucas Anderson recounts the story of her life, from being a young immigrant fleeing the Communist Revolution in Russia to a child growing up in Hastings, England, where she studied chess under Geza Maroczy. FM Warren Harper will present six of her notable games.

[@rocioaguilera3613]

Thanks for this video. I'm 58 and when on Senior High School (in Mexico city)when I was15, me and another girl were the only women competing for the school championship. We played against boys. She was first place; I was second. Chess was considered a masculine game. How sad that Ms. Menchik and her mother and sister were killed by the Nazis too, like many other thousands of victims of fascism.

[@pureredwhiteblu]

Warren Harper, (and Lucas Anderson) Thank you so much for doing a video bio on #VeraMenchik! I enjoyed it immensely. I went to Bill Wall's page about her and found this. Maroczy also coached another world champion, Max Euwe. (So, I could see the banter that Euwe may have had with her regarding his losing record against her. ) She played and beat Euwe (1930), Reshevsky (1935), Alexander (1932), Yates (1928), Colle, Opocensky, Thomas (1932), Becker (1929), Mieses (1928), L. Steiner (1936), Saemisch (1929), Milner-Barry (1934), Golombek, William Winter (1932), Tylor (1933), Book (1938), Sergeant (1938), and Sultan Khan. All are now members of the Menchik Club. As always, well researched and professionally done. Again, thank you both for doing this video.

[@TremendousSax]

You knocked it out the park once again! Superb presentation. As an aside, have you considered doing a life and chess of Akiba Rubinstein?

[@rupertbaxter2274]

Wow... really great presentation! Many thanks for producing these!

[@ulrichschmidt5559]

Another enjoyable and well-researched documentary! However, I had to chuckle when you stated "Steinitz could not represent England in the Olympiads"... I would have been very surprised if he did, considering that Steinitz died in 1900 and the first Olympiad was held in 1927.... 🙂

[@antoniovarela4444]

Thanks for another cool story about a player that i knew almost nothing. If you still accept any kind of suggestions, i would like to add the great Akiba Rubinstein, witch has some of my favorite all time games, with ideas that i still use today, because i feel that they are timeless as long as the rules of the game doesnt change..

[@ewg6]

Thank you for this series. There is a nice appreciation by Harry Gollombek of Vera Menchik in one of my favourite books : Chess Treasury of the Air (ed. Tiller) which is a selection of BBC radio broadcasts from the early 1960s (the original broadcasts have been lost I believe.) I think that she was the games editor in the magazine "CHESS" edited by BH Wood during the early WW2 period and so some of her thoughts and annotations will survive I imagine.

[@fernandoarguijo8949]

It would be very interesting to see a lecture about Hou Yifan.

[@RobNoonanic]

Excellent video! Keep up the good work.

[@playschessatwork8632]

Another amazing lecture. If your taking requests I would love to see a lecture on the 8th Olympiad.

[@joeyp1636]

Thank you from Australia

[@alpulley4894]

another informative video, well done. suggestions for future videos, Bent Larsen, Larry Evans,Pal Benko

[@tagheuer001]

If you guys did a gofundme I'd give $5 per video, just such excellent work! I've watched each one at least 3x. Perhaps Josh Waitskin or Pillsbury next?

[@TremendousSax]

Public Piper Pilsbury would be a fantastic addition to this series. I wonder, though, how much biographical information is available for him?

[@debashisbanerjee9415]

thank you for this one!

[@nuclearpowerandsocialism7099]

Very nice video, but the V1 "buzz bomb" only made its buzzing sound while its ram-jet engine was running. It wasn't in any sense "guided". It would be more accurate to call it an "early cruise missile" or perhaps suicide drone.

[@dionysisstasinakis5171]

Another great documentary. Is it possible to do one on the reigning champion Magnus carlsen?

[@jeanlucas24]

I've explained this in a few other comments, but there's an outstanding documentary recently released titled 'Magnus'. I don't think we can top it.

[@fertvb9119]

when we can watch a new historical video? keep up the good work. much appreciated

[@jeanlucas24]

I'm presenting in an hour, and will aim to edit and upload in the next two days!

[@16lazyjuan]

can you make a documentary of old US masters like ruben fine , reshevski and harry nelson pillsbury.

[@shakcomposer3344]

I enjoy all your lectures. But did the world champion Smyslov somehow fall thru the cracks?

[@ulrichschmidt5559]

What I find quite strange is, that even though on the crosstable of the 1939 Women's World Championship, Sonja Graf is shown as "stateless", on the crosstable of Moscow 1935, Emanuel Lasker is shown with the Swastika flag!?! Don't they have any decency? Lasker was of Jewish descent and was driven into exile just a few months after Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The Nazis confiscated all his property and forced him to spend his last years in poverty in foreign countries. Ok, I just checked the Wikipedia page for Moscow 1935, and apparently by now someone pointed out this faux pas, and they replaced the Swastika with today's German flag (which of course was not in use until 1949, but well, at least it's better than the Swastika...)

[@Ronbo710]

I would like to see Nona Gaprindashvili in a biography.

[@Ronbo710]

Do you have a video history of Mir Sultan Khan ? Thanks :)

[@georgedramountanis5171]

will you make a video for Max Euwe?

[@akiva7774]

36:36 Surely Tarrasch "supplemented" his income by, er, being a full-time medical doctor?

[@andrewjackson508]

first off i want to say that i dont speak english, i try but i know that i dont do it correctly , having said that: i guess i like these lectures because i like history of human thinking, but i cant belive you due to your bias and preference for talking about things putting in a good place all the british and north american thoughts, anyway is a good form to complete my view of the history of humanity having a look about what are the points of view of an american lecturer about chess famous players

[@rathelmmc3194]

After watching Queen’s Gambit I thought back to this lecture and how Vera is the real Beth Harmon.

[@Bryflei]

So when will you guys do SO!?!?!?

[@Bryflei]

Glenn House I totally understand that. I'm still waiting on people like Reshevsky, Ewue, and Bent Larson. However modern players deserve a spot. Wesley So, MVL or even older guys like Short or Krammink deserve to be covered

[@jeanlucas24]

You're all right. We did a Meet the Candidates series so that we could look at more contemporary players, but as said, their stories are still being written. I'd really like to do a lecture on Kramnik (arguably the best player we haven't covered), but he is neither a candidate (and probably won't be this cycle either) nor retired. Keep in mind that I highly value books, and very few contemporary players have quality books written by/about them.

[@johnobrien6415]

I know you guys have stopped doing these series...to the loss of the chess world...but another possibly interesting person to do is Sonja Graf. You showed what is probably the most commonly shown picture of her, wearing a dress, a pretty, feminine young woman. But that is like the only picture of her I've seen like that. Every other picture of her I've seen is her in men's clothing. Definitely some kind of non-binary energy going on there. She did marry and have kids, but that still doesn't mean she isn't on the end of the spectrum either. One spot I read said she did that to be able to play in chess clubs (with their weird membership and/or dress codes) but that doesn't sound right to me. Sounds like LGBT erasure to me. I know she wrote several books too. Probably has something to do with why she wasn't a fan of the Nazis. Not that you'd have to be LGBT to dislike Nazis mind you, but still...

[@PrinceAkaiVtuber]

The real Elizabeth Harmon

[@Ronbo710]

Max Oy Vey ? :D

[@ikkrijgnoggeldvanje]

Took me more than an hour to figure out they were talking about Euwe 😄 but good presentation nonetheless