1920 was a very bad year for Polish chessplayers named Gersz

en.wikipedia.org... Just sayin'


EDIT: The thread starts out kind of stupid and gets more educational as it moves along. Like life, in a nutshell (emphasis on nut, then on shell).

a reply to: Aleister

A reaper killed the first and when he was scratching the name from his list he realized he got the wrong Gerz and had to go finish the job.

a reply to: Indigent

"Make your move, Gersz!"

"Ha, you have the wrong Gersz, buddy"

"Checkmate, my friend Gersz!"

What's interesting is that there are only two famous (well, wikipedian-famous) people named Gersz.

en.wikipedia.org...–Soviet_War anything to do with it maybe? id wager a whole buncha fellas named gersz died in 1920.

interesting to note the east and west tug over ukraine even then.

a reply to: mindseye1609

k i suck at linking things. lets try this again

Polish-soviet war

a reply to: mindseye1609

I've never heard of this war, thanks. Will give it a good read. Appreciated. It was a massive war, and gives context to why the Soviet Union wanted to annex Poland after WWII. And I had thought that WWI ended in 1918, and here is a continuation of the killing and hate. A real eye-opener, and well worth the stupidity of opening up this thread.

One guy was almost 70, so he probably wasn't fighting the war. The other was 31.

From your source, and maybe you should open a thread about the war:

The Polish–Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921) was an armed conflict that pitted Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic over the control of an area equivalent to today's Ukraine and parts of modern-day Belarus. At some points the war also threatened Poland's existence as an independent state. It followed on from the Soviet westward offensive of 1918–19.

It's not the name that's interesting, but that there are only two listed and both are polish chessplayers. A coincidink that popped up for me when I was doing a random page run.

a reply to: Aleister

a reply to: Aleister

go nuts if you wanna open a thread, seems like its a good time to do so too.

it is very coincidental about those 2 chess players. i woulda probably done the same as you did had i stumbled upon it myself lol.

a reply to: mindseye1609

They've been fighting that way since 1018. Wikipedia even has a template about it.

en.wikipedia.org...(disambiguation) , and categories (what, you can't link Wikipedia categories?? the link is at the bottom of the first link anyway)

Like Fight Club, only with countries.

a reply to: Aleister

ya i saw an animation somewhere that played the drama that is changing borders out over time at a perceivable pace. that area of the world seemed to have the most back and forth with new countries popping up left and right. we humans have goldfish memory bad, we forget what we've been doing for soooooo long. long long time.

site 117

north eastern syria

a reply to: mindseye1609

Gersz Salwe, one of the Gersz's. He looks a lot like that photo of the guy playing chess above (except for the shape of his face, his ears, his mustache, and almost everything else. He does have a forehead).



So the land encompassing Poland and that area of Ukraine (Kiev and point nswe) has had its share of back and forth.

And some stuff about Gersz Rotlewi

www.russell-enterprises.com...

Gersz Rotlewi, a Polish Jew, shares the fate of Jean Dufresne and Lionel Kieseritzky, who, in spite of their fine accomplishments, are mainly known for their loss of an immortal game. From his famous game against Rubinstein, it may appear that Rotlewi, who handled the opening badly, was a weak player, but this is far from the truth.

We know little about Rotlewi. He was born and died in Lodz, but according to the historian Edward Winter, who knows a lot, the exact dates are unknown. Also nothing seems to be known about his life before he entered the chess scene of Lodz in 1905.

In 1910 he won a match against Salwe and shared first place with Rubinstein in a tournament in Warsaw in which he also won the beauty prize for his victory over Bogoljubow. But his greatest tournament was Carlsbad 1911. It would also be his last tournament, nine years before his early death

Check this out, the Rotlewi-Rubinstein game has its own Wikipedia page:

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Aleister

he's got a very saddam'esque look about him.

pols sure like the letter Z lol.

i love the quote "nothing seems to be known of his life before he entered the chess scene of lodz in 1905" sadly today i doubt anyone will ever have "Nothing seemed to be known about their life before they showed up anywhere" any more.

I've always wondered about myself lol if i ever made anything of myself just think of all those ridiculous myspace posts and pages and just all the retarded things we do lol. ALOT is known about me and i tend to hide from digital social media as much as possible and always have. i bet we have an idea who the next chess champions coming up already are just by checking out face book lol

a reply to: mindseye1609

All of us have our accomplishments, and at the same time we have many sides to us. Playful, contemplative, outrageous, and wacky as hell while at the same time upholding with principle the central core of our work and interests. As for chess champions, sometimes they come out of nowhere, and I wouldn't be surprised if even now there's a 12-year-old girl somewhere beating her brothers and their friends with both hands tied-behind and around her back (someone call the authorities!) who will emerge unknown into the fray and play laps around computers and champions alike.