English Chess Forum

This morning I opened an old book which I bought secondhand years ago - Levenfish and Smyslov, Rook Endings, Batsford 1971 - and the clipping above fell out. The title appears to translate as Endgame Theory And Practice.

Judging from the Helsingi- at the top it's from a Helsinki newspaper, though I don't know which, and it is undated though the games that appear place it no earlier than 1977. (Slightly later, would be my guess, since there is an ad on the back for Ken Russell's Valentino, which was released in 1977 and may not have arrived on Finnish screens straightaway.)

Interestingly the column makes reference to Leonard Barden's Chess Puzzle Book - takakansi seems to mean "back cover" and the study mentioned does indeed appear on the back cover of that book.

I can see nothing that indicates who wrote the column. Any useful speculation on the name of the author, and of the newspaper, and indeed anything else about the column, would be welcomed.

The title means "Endgame Theory and Practices" (I'm an instant expert on Finnish due to Google Translate). It looked Finnish anyway as the words look very long, with lots of vowels, and it's difficult to guess how to pronounce them. Even their names for countries don't look right, which is unusual.

The several games dated 1977 suggest that whoever wrote it wanted to talk about recent games. Unless there's a Finnish Newspaper Archive and somebody here subscribes to it, I doubt we will learn much more. Great find!

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 07, 2022 11:24 am

The title means "Endgame Theory and Practices" (I'm an instant expert on Finnish due to Google Translate)

Yeah, I went there too. I think we would render it practice, though.

The book is labelled EX LIBRIS MARJA-COLIN, which is not a name I recognise or can trace.

I think the newspaper may be Helsingin Sanomat: see https://www.hs.fi/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsingin_Sanomat. The typeface in the partly visible header in your cutting looks similar.

You can search Finnish newspaper titles in the Digital Collections of The National Library of Finland:https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/etusi ... anguage=en.

Searching for "shakkia" I found chess columns in Helsingin Sanomat: e.g https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/searc ... =NEWSPAPER. Unfortunately the years 1977 and 1978 do not appear to be available.

I do note from a comment here that Eero Raaste was chess columnist for Helsingin Sanomat in (presumably) 1987 or 1988, but that may not help much.

This page http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/garde/fi/pelaajat.htm might help. Automatic translation below:

Eero Raaste
Date of birth: 23.4.1954. Domicile Helsinki. Professional chess journalist, Helsingin Sanomat / Ilta-Sanomat ....
Chess journalist since 1976 ....

1976 looks interesting, doesn't it? However I am informed, by Mauro Tauriainen, via Eetu Tiiva, who is president of the Finnish chess federation, that the man we want is Osmo Kaila. He also seems to have been the newspaper's crossword compiler.

David McAlister wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 07, 2022 1:09 pm

Searching for "shakkia" I found chess columns in Helsingin Sanomat: e.g https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/searc ... =NEWSPAPER. Unfortunately the years 1977 and 1978 do not appear to be available.

Everything after 1951 is in copyright and only viewable with an academic login.

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1071904

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1125672