How strong was Vera Menchik

[Geoff Chandler]

Found it!

I knew I had seen that Menchick - Thomas noted up in a primer.
And not just the bland score on my DB.

Book 3 in the Routledge Chess Handbooks series (those blue books).
W.H.Cozens uses it and make a decent job of bringing out the instructive bits.

That's that itch scratched.

Still have not found out why the lad decided to play over her games
in the first place. But that can wait.

Dull and safe play is a mysterious art form to me.
The wins come from nowehere.

Dull is OK.

It's better than some players who fear losing so much they never risk playing for a win.
It's not their natural style, they play safe because not losing is far more
important to them than winning.

Now that is dull. That is dreary dull.
Their games are stale dull cakes covered in weary drearyness.
No chocolate topping and no creamy fudge inside.

I blame the grading system.

[John Moore]

Here's an aggressive opening as Black by Vera M at Maribor 1935. A good win - but what was Rejfir doing. He drew with Pirc and beat Spielmann in this tournament.

Just realised don't know how to put game on - some help would be appreciated.

[John McKenna]

In post reply below the 'emoticons' (funny faces) but above the input area there are sq. buttons for pgn, etc. The pgn button will put two sets of sq. brackets (with pgn & /pgn inside them) into your input area. Paste the game in PGN format between the two sets of bracket and proceed as usual.

[John Moore]

Thanks for that John

[John McKenna]

While you're doing that I'll have my say. Vera was born in Moscow, 1906 and she became the Women's World U-21 champion in 1926. In 1927 she retained that title and also won the full adult Women's World title in London at an all-play-all tournament instituted by FIDE in that very year. She retained that title until she was killed, by a V-weapon, in London in 1944.
Arapad Elo retrospectively estimated (in 1978) her to have had a lifetime best 5 yr. av. of 2350. So, dangereuse but not necessarily fatale.

[Roger de Coverly]

Arapad Elo retrospectively estimated (in 1978) her to have had a lifetime best 5 yr. av. of 2350. So, dangereuse but no necessarily fatale.

http://www.chessmetrics.com/ on the other hand has her with a top rating of 2535. That's not to be trusted as a historic measure to be compared to ratings today, rather it can be observed that Alekhine was 2805 on the same list with Capablanca at 2801. So she was nearly 300 points below the world champions. That makes sense, since she was good enough to beat them sometimes, but not enough to be top 20 as Judit Polgar has been.

[John McKenna]

Do you mean this game, John?

[Event "Maribor"] [Site "Maribor"] [Date "1934.??.??"] [EventDate "?"] [Round "5"] [Result "0-1"] [White "Josef Rejfir"] [Black "Vera Menchik"] [ECO "D32"] [WhiteElo "?"] [BlackElo "?"] [PlyCount "40"] 1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.d4 c5 4.cxd5 cxd4 5.Qxd4 Nc6 6.Qa4 exd5 7.Nf3 Bc5 8.Qb5 Qd6 9.g3 Nf6 10.Bg5 Ne4 11.Nxe4 dxe4 12.Nd2 O-O 13.Nxe4 Bb4+ 14.Bd2 Bxd2+ 15.Nxd2 Nd4 16.Qc4 Be6 17.Ne4 Qb6 18.Qd3 Rac8 19.Nc3 Qxb2 20.Rb1 Qxc3+ 0-1

I have not found one for 1935 as yet.

[John Moore]

Ah yes John, that's the one. I found it in the American Chess Bulletin for 1935 hence the confusion. The real reason for introducing it, apart from the feeble resistance put up by Rejfir, was Vera M's choice of opening. For those who have had read the earlier part of the thread, you will understand that I was slightly surprised and it seems that she was capable of a rather more universal style than I had appreciated.

[John Moore]

Arapad Elo retrospectively estimated (in 1978) her to have had a lifetime best 5 yr. av. of 2350. So, dangereuse but no necessarily fatale.

http://www.chessmetrics.com/ on the other hand has her with a top rating of 2535. That's not to be trusted as a historic measure to be compared to ratings today, rather it can be observed that Alekhine was 2805 on the same list with Capablanca at 2801. So she was nearly 300 points below the world champions. That makes sense, since she was good enough to beat them sometimes, but not enough to be top 20 as Judit Polgar has been.

Managed to lose the text which I had typed! Just noting that the only World Champion that Vera beat was Max Euwe where she had a 2.5/1.5 record. That is, of course, a serious achievement but let's not lose sight of the fact that she had 0-9 against Capablance and 0-7 against Alekhine.

[Matt Mackenzie]

She was usually a careful positional player (as were women players generally in those days) but could certainly attack on her day.

(and better players than her had terrible scores against AAA and Capa)

[John McKenna]

A Canadian youngster wants to follow Vera to Maribor in November.

www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8467

A large English contingent will also be going, I believe. (See 'World Youth 2012 - Maribor, Slovenia' thread in 'Junior Chess'.)

[Gerard Killoran]

Do you mean this game, John?

[Event "Maribor"] [Site "Maribor"] [Date "1934.??.??"] [EventDate "?"] [Round "5"] [Result "0-1"] [White "Josef Rejfir"] [Black "Vera Menchik"] [ECO "D32"] [WhiteElo "?"] [BlackElo "?"] [PlyCount "40"] 1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.d4 c5 4.cxd5 cxd4 5.Qxd4 Nc6 6.Qa4 exd5 7.Nf3 Bc5 8.Qb5 Qd6 9.g3 Nf6 10.Bg5 Ne4 11.Nxe4 dxe4 12.Nd2 O-O 13.Nxe4 Bb4+ 14.Bd2 Bxd2+ 15.Nxd2 Nd4 16.Qc4 Be6 17.Ne4 Qb6 18.Qd3 Rac8 19.Nc3 Qxb2 20.Rb1 Qxc3+ 0-1

I have not found one for 1935 as yet.

Ben Finegold covered this game here:

https://youtu.be/ObKldBjmQIQ?feature=shared&t=757

Finegold has absolutely no idea who Rejfir was, and made no effort even to find out. Instead he claims that Rejfir was a nobody without a title or grading, and therefore had to be a very weak player. In fact Rejfir was a IM with a peak ELO of 2480. He drew with both Alekhine and Fine - who I suppose Finegold has heard of - and in 1931 beat Flohr in 22 moves! (To quote Fine, 'In the years from 1929 to 1933, when Alekhine was at his peak Flohr was universally recognised as his most serious challenger.')

[Event "Kautsky mem 8th"] [Site "Prague"] [Date "1931.??.??"] [EventDate "?"] [Round "8"] [Result "1-0"] [White "Josef Rejfir"] [Black "Salomon Flohr"] [ECO "E40"] [WhiteElo "?"] [BlackElo "?"] [PlyCount "43"] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 Bxc3+ 5.bxc3 c5 6.Bd3 Nc6 7.Ne2 b6 8.e4 d6 9.O-O Nd7 10.f4 Ba6 11.e5 Qc7 12.f5 cxd4 13.fxe6 Ndxe5 14.cxd4 Nxd3 15.exf7+ Kf8 16.Qxd3 Nd8 17.Qe4 Qc6 18.d5 Qd7 19.Ba3 Nxf7 20.Qe6 Qe8 21.Rxf7+ Qxf7 22.Rf1 1-0

[Christopher Kreuzer]

To be fair, I don't think either of those games tell us much about the playing strengths of Rejfir and Flohr, other than that they were both capable of 'off' days where they played badly and lost to players who were strong enough (Menchik and Rejfir) to take advantage of it? Unless I am misreading those games? Nice games though.