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Vera Menchik - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vera Menchik
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vera Menchik (Czech: Vra Menkov; Russian:

Vera Frantsevna Menik; 16
February 1906 27 June 1944) was a British-Czech chess
player who gained renown as the world's first women's chess
champion. She also competed in chess tournaments with
some of the world's leading male chess masters, defeating
many of them, including future World Champion Max Euwe.

Vera Menchik

Contents
1 Early life
2 Women's World Championships
3 International tournament results
4 The "Vera Menchik Club"
5 Late life and death
6 Notable chess games
7 Notes
8 External links

Early life
Her father, Frantiek Menk, was born in Bystra nad
Jizerou, Bohemia, while her mother, Olga Illingworth (c.
18851944[1]), was English. He was the manager of several
estates owned by the nobility in Russia, and his wife was a
governess of the children of the estate owner.
Vera Menchik was born in Moscow in 1906. Her sister Olga
Menchik was born in 1907.

Full name

Vra Menkov

Country

Russian Empire
Soviet Union
Czechoslovakia
United Kingdom

Born

16 February 1906
Moscow, Russian Empire

Died

27 June 1944 (aged 38)

Clapham, London, United
Kingdom

Women's World
Champion

192744

When she was nine years old her father gave her a chess set and taught her how to play. When she was 15 her
school club organised a chess tournament and she came second.
After the Revolution her father lost a mill he owned and eventually also the big house where the family lived. The
marriage broke down; her father returned to Bohemia, and in the autumn of 1921 Olga and her daughters went to
Hastings, England, to live with Olga's mother.

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As Vera spoke only Russian she hesitated to go to the local chess club, but at last on 18 March 1923 she joined
the Hastings Chess Club and began to take lessons from John Drewitt. Then she became a pupil of the grandmaster
Gza Marczy. During 1923 she played in several team matches.
In December 1923 she played in her first Hastings Congress and got a draw against Edith Price, the then British
ladies' champion.
In the next Hastings Christmas Chess Congress 1924/25 she played again in Group A, first class, and finished
second with five points out of seven. She met Miss Price in the last round of the Group of the Winners and again
drew.
In 1925 she contested two matches against Edith Price, winning both of them, and she was considered the
strongest lady player in the country; as she was not British she could not enter the national competition.
In January 1926 she won the first Girls' Open Championship at the Imperial Club in London with her sister Olga
coming third. In 1927 she retained this title and Olga came second. Next year Vera was too old to play, and Olga
again came second.[2][3][4]

Women's World Championships

She won the first Women's World Championship in 1927 and successfully defended her title six times in every
other championship held during her lifetime, losing only one game, while winning 78 and drawing four games.
1927, she represented Russia in 1st WWCh in London winning 1st place with (+100=1).
1930, she represented Czechoslovakia in 2nd WWCh in Hamburg winning 1st place with (+61=1).
1931, she represented Czechoslovakia at 3rd WWCh in Prague winning 1st place with (+80=0).
1933, she represented Czechoslovakia in 4th WWCh in Folkestone winning 1st place with (+140=0).
1935, she represented Czechoslovakia in 5th WWCh in Warsaw winning 1st place with (+90=0).
1937, she represented Czechoslovakia in 6th WWCh in Stockholm winning 1st place with (+140=0).
1939, she represented England in 7th WWCh in Buenos Aires winning 1st place with (+170=2).
She won two matches against Sonja Graf for the Women's World Champion title; (+31=0) at Rotterdam 1934,
and (+92=5) at Semmering 1937. Sonja Graf was the second strongest women's player in the world at the time
and coached by the legendary Siegbert Tarrasch, but looking at both the games and the final result, their playing
levels were completely different; Menchik was considered head and shoulders above any female chess player of
her time.
This observation was supported by the fourth world champion Alekhine, who, writing about one of her victories
against Sonja Graf in 1939, wrote that "it is totally unfair to persuade a player of an acknowledged superclass like
Miss Menchik to defend her title year after year in tournaments composed of very inferior players",[5] the specific
tournament in question being the seventh Women's World Chess Championship.

International tournament results

Starting in 1929, she participated in a number of Hastings Congress tournaments.
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A list of her results in Hastings, year by year;

Hastings 1929, 9th place out of 10 players, (+24=3)[6]
Hastings 1931, tied for 5th8th places out of 10 players, (+34=2)[7]
Hastings 1932, tied for 6th8th places out of 10 players, (+24=3)[8]
Hastings 1933, 8th place out of 10 players, (+26=1)[9]
Hastings 1934, 8th place out of 10 players, (+14=4)[10]
Hastings 1936, tied for 9th10th places out of 10 players, (+04=5)[11]
The biggest and strongest tournament Menchik played in was the Moscow tournament of 1935, which featured
World Champions Botvinnik, Capablanca, and Lasker, as well as a host of elite players and future GMs like Flohr,
Ragozin, Spielmann, Levenfish, Lilenthal, etc. Here, Menchik finished in last place, 20th out of 20 competitors, with
a score of (+016=3).[12]
Other major international tournaments include Karlsbad in 1929, where she finished last, 22nd out of 22 players,
with a score of (+217=2),[13] and Lodz in 1938, where she finished 15th out of 16, with a score of (+19=5).[14]
Menchik's best results at international tournaments came at Ramsgate 1929. This was a Scheveningen system
match,[15] with 7 players from one team competing against 7 from another. Menchik finished with an unbeaten
score of (+30=4).[16] In 1934 she finished in 3rd place out of 9 players at Maribor, behind Lajos Steiner and
Vasja Pirc, but ahead of the likes of Rudolph Spielmann and Milan Vidmar, with a score of (+31=4).[17] In 1942
she won a match against Jacques Mieses (+41=5).[18] It should, however, be noted that Mieses was 77 years old
at the time, and no longer an active tournament participant.

The "Vera Menchik Club"

When in 1929, Menchik entered the Carlsbad, Viennese master Albert Becker ridiculed her entry by proposing
that any player whom Menchik defeated in tournament play should be granted membership into the Vera Menchik
Club. In the same tournament, Becker himself became the first member of the "club".[19][20] In addition to Becker,
the "club" eventually included Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander, Abraham Baratz, Eero Bk, Edgard Colle, Max
Euwe, Harry Golombek, Mir Sultan Khan, Frederic Lazard, Jacques Mieses, Stuart Milner-Barry, Karel
Opoensk, Brian Reilly, Samuel Reshevsky, Friedrich Smisch, Lajos Steiner, George Alan Thomas, William
Winter, and Frederick Yates.[18][21][22][23]

Late life and death

In 1937, at the age of 31, Vera Menchik married Rufus Henry Streatfeild Stevenson (18781943), twenty-eight
years her senior, who was subscriptions editor of British Chess Magazine, a member of the West London Chess
Club, and later honorary secretary of the British Chess Federation.
In 1944 Britain was nearing its sixth year in World War II, and 38-year-old Vera, who was widowed the previous
year, still held the title of women's world champion. On 27 June she, her sister Olga, and their mother were killed in
a V-1 flying bomb attack which destroyed their home at 47 Gauden Road in the Clapham area of South
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London.[24]
The trophy for the winning team in the Women's Chess Olympiad is known as the Vera Menchik Cup.

Notable chess games

Frederic Lazard vs Vera Menchik, Paris 1929, Bird Opening: From Gambit
(A02), 01 (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1258249) A
nice combination in an open position leaves Lazard without a bishop.
Mir Sultan Khan vs Vera Menchik, Hastings 1931, Queen's Gambit
Declined (D35), 01 (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?
gid=1258409) A sharp game with attacks on both sides of the board. At the
end, Menchik queened her advanced pawn.

Vera Menchik

Vera Menchik vs George Alan Thomas, Podbrady 1936, Queen's Gambit

Declined Slav (D11), 10 (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1266513)

Notes
1. CWGC (http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/3141183/MENCHIK,%20OLGA) Casualty Record,
Wandsworth Metropolitan Borough.
2. Quarterly for Chess History Spring 14/2007 (http://hastingschess.proboards.com/index.cgi?
board=General&action=display&thread=861)
3. Biography (http://www.hastingschessclub.co.uk/bio_menchik.htm) by Brian Denman
4. Autobiography (http://web.archive.org/web/20130805083457/http://www.chesscafe.com/ice/ice143.htm)
Shakhmaty August 1928, pages 160162
5. Alekhine, Alexander (1992), Wilson, Fred, ed., 107 great chess battles: 19391945, Dover Publications, ISBN 0486-27104-8
6. Hastings 1929 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Hastings_2930_1929/28026)
7. Hastings 1931 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Hastings_3132_1931/28131)
8. Hastings 1932 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Hastings_3233_1932/28189)
9. Hastings 1933 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Hastings_3334_1933/28268)
10. Hastings 1934 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Hastings_3435_1934/28309)
11. Hastings 1936 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Hastings_3637_1936/28434)
12. Moscow 1935 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Moscow_1935/28359)
13. Karlsbad 1929 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Karlsbad_1929/28022)
14. Lodz 1938 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Lodz_1938/28495)
15. [1] (http://www.chesskb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/chess/3903/Schevevingen-match-system-description-online)
16. Ramsgate 1929 chess tournament results (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Ramsgate_schev_1929/28014)
17. Maribor 1934 chess tournament (http://www.365chess.com/tournaments/Maribor_1934/28282)
18. Anne Sunnucks, The Encyclopaedia of Chess, St. Martin's Press, 1970, p. 306.
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19. Chess Notes (http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter01.html) Winter, Edward, Chess Note 3433 (excerpt
from Sunnucks, Anne, Encyclopaedia of Chess (1976)).
20. MenchikBecker, Karslbad 1929 (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1066877). ChessGames.com.
Retrieved on 19 February 2009.
21. B.M. Kazi, International Championship Chess: A Complete Record of FIDE Events, Pitman, 1974, p. 260. ISBN
0-273-07078-9.
22. Irving Chernev, Wonders and Curiosities of Chess, Dover Publications, 1974, p. 6. ISBN 0-486-23007-4.
23. Wins by Vera Menchik (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?
yearcomp=exactly&year=&playercomp=either&pid=&player=Menchik&pid2=&player2=&movescomp=exactly&
moves=&opening=&eco=&result=1st). ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 19 February 2009.
24. CWGC (http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/3141454/STEVENSON,%20VERA) Casualty Record,
Wandsworth Metropolitan Borough.

External links
Vera Menchik (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=13277) player profile and games at
Chessgames.com
Vera Menchik by Bill Wall
(https://web.archive.org/web/20091028034414/http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/menchik.ht
m) at the Wayback Machine (archived 28 October 2009)

Preceded by
none, first champion

Women's World Chess Champion

192744

Succeeded by
vacant, then Lyudmila
Rudenko
(no champion from 1944
1950)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vera_Menchik&oldid=649059680"

Categories: Women's World Chess Champions Russian chess players Czech chess players
English chess players British chess players Sportspeople from Moscow People from Clapham 1906 births
1944 deaths Deaths by airstrike during World War II British civilians killed in World War II
Russian people of Czech descent Russian emigrants to the United Kingdom Russian people of English descent
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