The Quest to Bust MCO 9.

It all started with a scan through a 1959 Chess Review.

A Birthday card to RHP.

Two sharp Four Knight games where Black nicks a pawn just to suffer.

Ending with two games from the RHP Vaults of Despair featuring players
missing a mate and a few moves later they themselves get mated.

Blog 4

What's nice about this blog is that if Hajek and Richter, the players in the game recorded in MCO 9, and the annotator missed the checkmate then the rest of us don't have to feel quite so bad about missing these things...

Hi Deep Thought,

That is the thing I left out on purpose.

I cannot find the source game between these two. I also failed to find the position.
it's not on any database I have nor could I find it on the net.
I daresay it's out there...somewhere....maybe the spelling of the names is
different but I should still find the position.

Note that the Hajek and Richter game in MCO stops before the mate.
Their mysterious game did not go this way. And here.


The move 16....a6 is given in MCO. But 16...Qg3+ and Qh3+ are on the table.

I'm seeing Black wins and all kinds of things and was writing myself into a
deep hole that would have required more PGN's and diagrams to climb out off.

I did try to water it down but then I thought who is really going
to follow it before they get fed up. I also decided after failing to find the
game that the whole thing was a shambles and I'll end up confusing the
lads or making a bigger mistake than MCO. The page is cursed.

Hi greenpawn,

You did the right thing tearing the page out then! My database is idiosyncratic, I built it from the file enormous.pgn from Bob Hyatt's ftp site and added to that from TWIC and where ever else I could find games, but I removed all the games between engines. I had a quick check and my database has no games in that line, after 9. 0-0 there are 35 games with 9. ... Bb6 and 1 with 9. ... Qe7, but according to it no one has tried 9. ... Nh6. Possibly someone made up a game? One for Edward Winter maybe?

Regarding the MCO game - I wonder if the players could have been Ivan Roháček and Emil Richter?

You can hear the pronunciation of Roháček here:
http://www.forvo.com/word/roh%C3%A1%C4%8Dek/
It sounds pretty similar to "Hajek" to me.

These players competed in a tournament in Trenčianske Teplice in 1949 (see http://tinyurl.com/mz9tfxp) and whilst this isn't exactly Prague, it's the right neck of the woods.

(edit)
My theory is slightly dented by this game on chessgames.com:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1534046
Other games on this site suggest that the tournament in question was an all-play-all with just one game played between each pair of players.

Also, Roháček appears to have favoured the Four Knights as White rather than the Giuico Piano.

Originally posted by Data Fly
Regarding the MCO game - I wonder if the players could have been Ivan Roháček and Emil Richter?

You can hear the pronunciation of Roháček here:
http://www.forvo.com/word/roh%C3%A1%C4%8Dek/
It sounds pretty similar to "Hajek" to me.

These players competed in a tournament in Trenčianske Teplice in 1949 (see http://tinyurl.com/mz9tfxp) and whilst this ...[text shortened]...
Also, Roháček appears to have favoured the Four Knights as White rather than the Giuico Piano.

Good thinking, but it's clearly not that game. I think the only way Hajek can be Roháček is if half of the games from that tournament are lost for some reason and the game was played in the half of the tournament from which the game scores have been lost.

Given the flakey nature of the play that greenpawn drew attention to, it is also possible that it is from a simul, with Richter missing things because it's a simul and Hajek missing things because he was an amateur. That would explain why it isn't on any databases we know of.

My impression is that in the post-war era they were all playing "scientific openings" with lines like the Evan's gambit under a bit of a cloud. So that it is an Evan's gambit could indicate it's from a simul or just an off hand game someone kept the score for and it found its way into MCO 9 through personal contacts. The problem is that if that is right it is almost completely unprovable as it is unlikely anyone involved will still be alive.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for looking - it is indeed a mystery, from now on I will
be referring to Hajek v Richter 1949 in all my notes to any game.
Nobody can prover me wrong.

MCO 11 still refers to the Hajek - Richter 1949 game but stops here after 15.Qd5


Saying it's unclear.

So they have spotted the error and simply stopped giving analysis.

They looked at 15....Bxh3 and the Qg3+ line like I did,
threw up their arms in despair and just skipped it reasoning
nobody is going to play this junk line anyway lets just carrying on making money.

I wonder what MCO 10 says.

I do not have a MCO 10. How about some of you lads haunting your
favourite book shop and ripping out the page we need.

A search on Edward Winter's sitr reveals nothing about the game.
(though I am still searching)

There is this:

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter87.html

Where Bob Wade and Walter Korn appear to have fallen out over the
contribution Bob made to MCO 8 (pub 1952, we the relevant page from that as well)

Bob worked on the French, Caro-Kann, Sicilian and Queen’s Gambit
and not the fiasco that took place on the Evans Gambit page.

What does the latest MCO 15 say?

Just some thoughts:

If it was Prague in 1949, it is very possible that it was Emil Richter, not Kurt Richter.

There are also several Hajeks in the databases, with the earliest reference seeming to be Miroslav Hajek. He was a "low master" who played some games in 1963. The next oldest reference it Michal Hajek in 1964, and I do not know if they are different or the same person with variations in the names given in the database.

There was a Swiss official called Dalibor Hayek in the 1950s/1960s who might have been a player as well.

Miroslav Hajek was born at the tail end of 1946 and hence unlikely to have been playing in a chess tournament in 1949.

Been going through MCO 9 looking for lines that finish with 'unclear' or something similar.

Page 283 has a line ending here after 12 moves.


Saying White's attack should come to nothing quoting Gelder - Loman 1919.

I cannot find it the game (yet) but I do know the player's were active
around about the same time.

I was looking at the position and wondering about the phrase:
"Saying White's attack should come to nothing."

Perhaps hinting that White's attack did come to something through plausible bad play.

If in the above position Black plays 12...Bb6


Did White play 13.Qxd6?? and Black missed 13...Bxf7+ and took the Queen.
(I've been looking at RHP games for far too long - all I can see are bad moves.)

Here are the moves leading up to the position in MCO 9.



Here is an RHP game where White plays a sound pseudo Queen sac Qxd6
followed by a Knight check winning back the Queen. (move 14)

I did a little hunting around on this and didn't find anything relevant, but I did find a nice photo of Capablanca with what appear to be some members of the Adams Family, the three people seated on his right (so on the left of the photo as you look at it).

www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter87.html#CN_7301

Edit - Just so you realise I'm joking, they aren't the actors who were in the Adam's Family - I'm probably being rude about some eminent chess players from the pre-war era.

The competitors in Moscow in 1936 were:

Capablanca, Botvinnik, Flohr, Lilienthal, Ragozin, Lasker, Levenfish,
Eliskases, Kan and Riumin.

You are right, most of them would not look out of place in an Addams Family Show.


BTW the post above. It is not from MCO 9 that was from MCO 7.
I was checking both books at once.

This reminds me of the golden olden days when we ploughed through books
(no computers back then) looking for possible errors or improvements.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
Hi Guys,


MCO 11 still refers to the Hajek - Richter 1949 game but stops here after 15.Qd5

I wonder what MCO 10 says.

I do not have a MCO 10. How about some of you lads haunting your
favourite book shop and ripping out the page we need.

RE MCO9 Evans Gambit: the line was not carried over in MCO10 but WAS carried over in MCO11 (pg. 63, line 15, note L.) w/ the same error. I have corrected my copy. Very nearly the same line also appears in MCO13 pg.105-106 line 22 note o, also noted as unclear position (infinity sign).

Originally posted by Data Fly
There was a Swiss official called Dalibor Hayek in the 1950s/1960s who might have been a player as well.

Miroslav Hajek was born at the tail end of 1946 and hence unlikely to have been playing in a chess tournament in 1949.

Definitely would have been tough- and I am sorry I missed your earlier reference to Emil- I hate being redundant. I hate being redundant.