Al Horowitz
Encyclopedia
Israel Albert Horowitz (often known as Al Horowitz or I. A. Horowitz) (November 15, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York – January 18, 1973) was a Jewish-American http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/jews.html International Master of chess
. He was clearly a grandmaster-strength player by present day standards, but he never received the title. He is most remembered today for the books he wrote about chess, many of which are still highly recommended for students of the game.
magazine from 1933 until it was bought out and taken over by the United States Chess Federation
in 1969 and merged into Chess Life
. Chess Review magazine was founded in 1933 as a partnership between Horowitz and Isaac Kashdan
. However, Kashdan dropped out after just a few issues and Horowitz became sole owner. Before that, Horowitz had been a securities trader on Wall Street
. He had been partners with other chess masters, Maurice Shapiro, Mickey Pauley, Albert Pinkus
and Maurice Wertheim
. Horowitz dropped out and devoted himself to chess, while the others stayed on Wall Street.
Horowitz was a leading player in the U.S. during the 1930s and 1940s. He was U.S. Open Champion
in 1936, 1938, and 1943. In 1941, he lost a match (+0 =13 −3) with Samuel Reshevsky
for the U.S. Chess Championship
. He played on the U.S. Team in four Chess Olympiad
s, in 1931
, 1935
, 1937
, and 1950
; the first three of which were won by the U.S. In a famous USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945
, Horowitz scored one of the only two wins for the USA by defeating Grandmaster Salo Flohr
. He split his "mini-match" of two games against Flohr and in the 1946 edition of same event split his mini-match against Isaac Boleslavsky
.
, from the USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945
1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ gxf6 6.Ne2 Bf5 7.Ng3 Bg6 8.h4 h6 9.h5 Bh7 10.c3 Qb6 11.Bc4 Nd7 12.a4 a5 13.Qf3 e6 14.O-O Bc2 15.Bf4 Bb3 16.Bd3 e5 17.Be3 Bd5 18.Be4 Qb3 19.dxe5 fxe5 20.Rad1 Bxe4 21.Qxe4 Qe6 22.Rd2 Nf6 23.Qf3 Rg8 24.Rfd1 Rg4 25.Nf5 e4 (diagram at left) Black appears to be winning material, since White's attacked queen has no move that continues to defend the knight on f5. 26.Bb6! A powerful shot, leaving Black with no effective way to stop the threatened mate on d8, e.g. 26...Nd5 27.Qxg4; 26...Be7 27.Qxg4! Nxg4 28.Ng7+ Kf8 29.Nxe6+; or 26...Qc8 27.Nd6+ Bxd6 28.Qxf6 Be7 29.Qh8+ Bf8 30.Rd8+ Qxd8 31.Rxd8+ Rxd8 32.Bxd8 Kxd8 33.Qxf8+. Rxg2+ 27.Qxg2 Qxf5 28.Rd8+ Rxd8 29.Rxd8+ Ke7 30.Qg3 Nd7 31.Bc7 Qd5 32.c4 Qg5 33.Qxg5+ hxg5 34.Ra8 Ke6 35.Bxa5 f5 36.Bc3 f4 37.a5 g4 38.b4 f3 39.Bd2 Kf7 40.Ra7 g3 41.Rxb7 1-0
in the Foxy Openings DVD entitled Dashing Danish.
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
. He was clearly a grandmaster-strength player by present day standards, but he never received the title. He is most remembered today for the books he wrote about chess, many of which are still highly recommended for students of the game.
Chess career
Horowitz was the chess columnist for the New York Times, writing three columns a week for ten years. He was the owner and editor of Chess ReviewChess Review
Chess Review is a U.S. chess magazine that was published from January 1933 until October 1969 . Until April 1941 it was called The Chess Review. Published in New York, it began on a schedule of at least ten issues a year but later became a monthly...
magazine from 1933 until it was bought out and taken over by the United States Chess Federation
United States Chess Federation
The United States Chess Federation is a non-profit organization, the governing chess organization within the United States, and one of the federations of the FIDE. The USCF was founded in 1939 from the merger of two regional chess organizations, and grew gradually until 1972, when membership...
in 1969 and merged into Chess Life
Chess Life
Chess Life is a monthly chess magazine published in the United States. The official publication of the United States Chess Federation , it reaches more than a quarter of a million readers every month. A subscription to Chess Life is one of the benefits of Full Adult, Youth, or Life membership in...
. Chess Review magazine was founded in 1933 as a partnership between Horowitz and Isaac Kashdan
Isaac Kashdan
Isaac Kashdan was an American chess grandmaster and chess writer. Kashdan was one of the world's best players in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was twice U.S. Open champion...
. However, Kashdan dropped out after just a few issues and Horowitz became sole owner. Before that, Horowitz had been a securities trader on Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
. He had been partners with other chess masters, Maurice Shapiro, Mickey Pauley, Albert Pinkus
Albert Pinkus
Albert Sidney Pinkus was an American chess master and author. In 1943 and 1944, he published an analysis of the Two Knights Defense in Chess Review.-Chess career:...
and Maurice Wertheim
Maurice Wertheim
Maurice Wertheim was an American investment banker, chess player, chess patron, environmentalist, and philanthropist. He financed much of the activity in American chess during the 1940s. Wertheim founded Wertheim & Co. in 1927.-Biography:Maurice Wertheim graduated from Harvard University in 1906...
. Horowitz dropped out and devoted himself to chess, while the others stayed on Wall Street.
Horowitz was a leading player in the U.S. during the 1930s and 1940s. He was U.S. Open Champion
U.S. Open Chess Championship
The U.S. Open Championship is an open national chess championship that has been held in the United States annually since 1900.-History:Through 1938, the tournaments were organized by the Western Chess Association and its successor, the American Chess Federation .The United States Chess Federation ...
in 1936, 1938, and 1943. In 1941, he lost a match (+0 =13 −3) with Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel "Sammy" Herman Reshevsky was a famous chess prodigy and later a leading American chess Grandmaster...
for the U.S. Chess Championship
U.S. Chess Championship
The U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational tournament held to determine the national chess champion of the United States. Since 1936, it has been held under the auspices of the U.S. Chess Federation. Until 1999, the event consisted of a round-robin tournament of varying size...
. He played on the U.S. Team in four Chess Olympiad
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...
s, in 1931
4th Chess Olympiad
The 4th Chess Olympiad, organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 11 and July 26, 1931, in Prague, Czechoslovakia...
, 1935
6th Chess Olympiad
The 6th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 16 and August 31, 1935, in Warsaw, Poland...
, 1937
7th Chess Olympiad
The 7th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 31 and August 14, 1937, in Stockholm, Sweden]....
, and 1950
9th Chess Olympiad
The 9th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 20 and September 11, 1950, in Dubrovnik, SR Croatia, Yugoslavia .The final results were as follows:-Final :The...
; the first three of which were won by the U.S. In a famous USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945
USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945
The USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945 was a chess match between the USA and the USSR that was conducted over the radio from September 1 to September 4, 1945. The ten leading masters of the United States played the ten leading masters of the Soviet Union for chess supremacy. The match was played...
, Horowitz scored one of the only two wins for the USA by defeating Grandmaster Salo Flohr
Salo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...
. He split his "mini-match" of two games against Flohr and in the 1946 edition of same event split his mini-match against Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Yefremovich Boleslavsky was a Soviet–Jewish chess Grandmaster.-Early career:Boleslavsky taught himself chess at age 9...
.
Illustrative games
Horowitz versus FlohrSalo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...
, from the USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945
USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945
The USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945 was a chess match between the USA and the USSR that was conducted over the radio from September 1 to September 4, 1945. The ten leading masters of the United States played the ten leading masters of the Soviet Union for chess supremacy. The match was played...
1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ gxf6 6.Ne2 Bf5 7.Ng3 Bg6 8.h4 h6 9.h5 Bh7 10.c3 Qb6 11.Bc4 Nd7 12.a4 a5 13.Qf3 e6 14.O-O Bc2 15.Bf4 Bb3 16.Bd3 e5 17.Be3 Bd5 18.Be4 Qb3 19.dxe5 fxe5 20.Rad1 Bxe4 21.Qxe4 Qe6 22.Rd2 Nf6 23.Qf3 Rg8 24.Rfd1 Rg4 25.Nf5 e4 (diagram at left) Black appears to be winning material, since White's attacked queen has no move that continues to defend the knight on f5. 26.Bb6! A powerful shot, leaving Black with no effective way to stop the threatened mate on d8, e.g. 26...Nd5 27.Qxg4; 26...Be7 27.Qxg4! Nxg4 28.Ng7+ Kf8 29.Nxe6+; or 26...Qc8 27.Nd6+ Bxd6 28.Qxf6 Be7 29.Qh8+ Bf8 30.Rd8+ Qxd8 31.Rxd8+ Rxd8 32.Bxd8 Kxd8 33.Qxf8+. Rxg2+ 27.Qxg2 Qxf5 28.Rd8+ Rxd8 29.Rxd8+ Ke7 30.Qg3 Nd7 31.Bc7 Qd5 32.c4 Qg5 33.Qxg5+ hxg5 34.Ra8 Ke6 35.Bxa5 f5 36.Bc3 f4 37.a5 g4 38.b4 f3 39.Bd2 Kf7 40.Ra7 g3 41.Rxb7 1-0
Horowitz Defense
In his book Modern Ideas In The Chess Openings, Horowitz proposed a defense against the Danish Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.c3 dxc3 4.Bc4 cxb2 5.Bxb2). Rather than play the usual 5...d5 as Black, Horowitz suggested keeping both pawns and playing 5...c6. This would be followed up with the moves d6, Nd7, Nc5, and Be6. Although this defense is not commonly played, it has not been refuted. I.A. Horowitz receives credit as the inventor of this defense, and it is called The Horowitz Defense by Grandmaster Nigel DaviesNigel Davies (chess player)
Nigel Davies is an English chess Grandmaster, chess coach and writer.Davies won the British Boys Championship in 1979 and the British Rapidplay Chess Championhship in 1987.-External links:* Nigel Davies' own website...
in the Foxy Openings DVD entitled Dashing Danish.
Books
Books by Horowitz:- All About Chess, Collier Books, 1971
- Chess for Beginners, Fireside Books, 1950, ISBN 0-671-21184-6
- Chess: Games to Remember, David McKay, 1972. OCLC 309191.
- Chess Openings: Theory and Practice, Fireside Books, 1964 ISBN 0-671-13390-X (hardback) and ISBN 0-671-20553-6 (paperback)
- Chess Opening Traps, Coles Publishing Company Limited, 1979
- Chess Self-Teacher, Harper & Row, 1961, ISBN 9780060922955
- Chess Traps, Pitfalls, and Swindles (with Reinfeld), Simon and Schuster, 1954. OCLC 2731999.
- The Complete Book of Chess (with P. L. Rothenberg) Collier-McMillan, 1969. OCLC 59804206.
- First Book of Chess (with Fred ReinfeldFred ReinfeldFred Reinfeld was an American chess master and a prolific writer on chess and many other subjects, whose books are still read today.-Biography:...
), Harper & Row, New York, 1952. ISBN 9780389002253. - The Golden Treasury of Chess, ISBN 0-88365-065-7
- How to Think Ahead in Chess (with Reinfeld), Simon and Schuster, 1951. ISBN 9780671211387.
- How to Win At Chess (A complete course with 891 diagrams)
- How to Win in the Chess Openings, ISBN 0-671-62426-1
- Learn Chess Quickly, Doubleday, 1973. OCLC 9653926.
- The Macmillan Handbook of Chess (with Reinfeld), Macmillan, 1956. OCLC 1237807.
- The World Chess Championship; a History, Macmillan, 1973. OCLC 604994.