Talk:Nottingham 1936 chess tournament

Emanuel Lasker's nationality

I didn't make the original edit that changed Emanuel Lasker's nationality from Germany to USSR, but I think I understand the motivation. Lasker left Germany in 1933 and never returned, and I think the German flag in 1936 should be the Swastika, which would be pretty offensive. I wouldn't call him a communist, but our bio page indicates that he accepted Soviet citizenship between 1935 and 1937. What should we do? Quale (talk) 20:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Get rid of the flags? Peter Ballard (talk) 22:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

That might help, but suppose the players' nationalities are given in parenthesis after their names. What do we put for Lasker? Quale (talk) 22:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

My point is that we should have no qualms about calling him German, if he was German at that stage. Or we could put nothing for Lasker - perhaps he was technically a refugee at that point? Peter Ballard (talk) 23:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually I think that would work OK, as it is my impression that Lasker was generally identified as German even in his final years spent in the U.S. The nationality thing is difficult, but I don't think we can always avoid it. It is a point of interest to encyclopedia readers. Quale (talk) 23:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Which gets us back to the flags. Technically, a German in 1936 was playing under the Swastika flag. Which of course is repugnant because Lasker as a Jew had to flee Germany. So why not remove the flags, because the players weren't representing their countries? (Though Botvinnik felt like he was). Peter Ballard (talk) 10:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoever changed Lasker's flag had incorrectly put "USRR", which obviously displayed gibberish, so I changed it back to Germany without thinking-- I wasn't even aware he had taken Soviet citizenship. I don't like the use of flags on Wikipedia in general, but if indeed he was a Soviet citizen at that point in his life I suppose the USSR flag is technically correct. Pawnkingthree (talk) 10:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It is an interesting episode in Lasker's life. The Soviets offered him citizenship, an apartment in Moscow and a stipend. He accepted for a while, but left. I don't know if he technically remained a Soviet citizen or if he would be considered stateless in the last years of his life. I'm OK with removing the flags on this page given the Nazi/USSR problem. Generally I like the flags in part because they add some color to the usually drab-looking chess pages. Sometimes they do cause trouble, and this seems to be one of the cases. Nationality isn't insignificant to this tournament since its only importance is that it was an international tournament. If only UK players had participated, it wouldn't be remembered today. Look at all those Union Jacks at the bottom of the cross table. Quale (talk) 21:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

At the moment, the cross-table gives Lasker's country as USSR/Germany. However, the tournament book lists his country as "U.S.S.R." Alexander Alekhine, The Book of the Nottingham International Chess Tournament, Dover Publications, 1962 (reprint of 1937 book published by David McKay), p. 289. Moreover, as Quale said, our bio of Lasker says that by the time of this tournament he had accepted Soviet citizenship and renounced his prior German citizenship, citing for that proposition Litmanowicz, Władysław & Giżycki, Jerzy (1986, 1987), Szachy od A do Z, Wydawnictwo Sport i Turystyka Warszawa. ISBN 83-217-2481-7 (1. A-M), ISBN 83-217-2745-x (2. N-Z). As such, I think the USSR flag should be given for him at this time, and the German flag certainly should not be. I'm changing the article accordingly. Krakatoa (talk) 05:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Erroneous cross-table

The cross-table used in the article was taken from Golombek's book Capablanca's 100 Best Games of Chess. It was erroneous: if you added up the line for Flohr, it showed him scoring 8 points, rather than the 8.5 points he actually scored. The mistake was in his game against Lasker: it was shown as a draw, but in fact Flohr won - as you can see on the line for Lasker himself, where it was shown as a loss for Lasker. I've corrected the cross-table accordingly and cited instead the correct cross-table from the tournament book. I compared the two cross-tables and the above was the only difference. Edward Winter has criticized Golombek's book for "highly inaccurate biographical information and results tables". Winter, Kings, Commoners and Knaves: Further Chess Explorations, p. 268. I assume Nottingham 1936 was one of those inaccurate results tables, but he doesn't list them (at least not at the above cite). Krakatoa (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Stub to Start

Article was moved from Stub to Start status because it has a significant amount of information and multiple references. In addition, the main article has not had a Stub tag for some time. Araesmojo (talk) 20:02, 23 October 2020 (UTC)