Talk:George Koltanowski

From my childhood I recall Koltanowski hosting a program “Koltanowski on Chess” in the 1960’s on public television. Perhaps this entry could make reference to this.

Inconsistent information

At the top of the article, it mentions Koltanowski playing 34 simul blind games, and setting a record which still stands today, yet then it goes on to metion him playing 56 simul blind games. This needs to be clarified, as how can his earlier record still stand if he later broke it?

Also, in the blind section, it talks about him winning 50 and losing 6 games in the 56 blind games, while at the top it says he drew those 6 games. Which is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.124.224.51 (talk) 23:30, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I think it is fixed now. It is mentioned in the lead and the details are in a new section. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 00:30, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

It was still unclear - I rewrote the lead. The 34 games were simultaneous, the 56 games were consecutive, played one after the other at 10 secs per move, not simultaneous. Two different records.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 23:55, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Copyright status of this article

Note that versions of this article are floating around the Web in many places. However, the original uploader to Wikipedia was User:Sam Sloan, who appears to be the original author of the piece. So no copyvio. --Quuxplusone 04:42, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Inaccurate statement, I believe

"Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on September 20, 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded, making headline news around the world. His record still stands in the Guinness Book of Records. Later, both Miguel Najdorf and János Flesch claimed to have broken that record, but their efforts were not properly monitored the way that Koltanowski's was."

Koltanowski did not play his opponents simultaneously but one after another with a ten second interval between moves. This happened in San Francisco. I also believe it was 50 opponents and not 34 as stated.

Najdorf did simultaneously play 45 opponents blindfold in Sao Paolo. It was watched by 4000 spectators and documented by a local lawyer. The preceding unsigned comment was added by hypotaxis 08:29, 12 January 2007 (UTC)Hypotaxis.

I'm pretty sure that Koltanowski did play 30-odd blindfold games simultaneously in the 1930s. He and Alexander Alekhine used to compete over time, each bettering the other's record by a game or two. Koltanowski's later 50 and 56 game marathons were one game after another, which is not the same thing at all.WHPratt (talk) 16:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC) See the separate article "blindfold chess." Actually, it was Alekhine, Richard Reti and Koltanowski who competed to outdo the others. WHPratt (talk) 19:57, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Blindfold Chess Champion

George Koltanowski claimed the Blindfold Chess Championship for many years. One of his complaints about other pretenders to the throne was he would play without referring to notes. Pictures of the pretenders would be shown on Koltanowski PBS TV show with an assistant standing next to the pretender, and Koltanowski would remark on the assistant refreshing the pretender's memory before making his next move. Koltanowski had an assistant who helped him move from board to board. He said he did not need to be told who he was playing and did not need his memory refreshed concerning the board position.--HighSchoolPlayer (talk) 01:07, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Without a reliable source, this is not a useful comment. -- Jibal (talk) 01:42, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

"Only" daily newspaper chess column

The statement "Koltanowski wrote the only daily newspaper chess column in the world." needs to be qualified or removed since Raymond Keene has a daily chess column in the UK Times newspaper which has been running since 1985 . The question is whether this was an incorrect guess by an editor, or something slightly less general was intended? Elroch (talk) 14:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the facts. It might have been the only one in some time period. Bubba73 (talk), 17:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

This SF Chronicle article says "he could beat any other newspaper's chess columnist with his eyes closed" implying there were other chess columnists. Bobby Fischer's world chess champion match and subsequent events triggered a bit of interest in the game in the western world. For a while, many newspapers had a chess column though I don't know how many of them ran daily. Oddly, Koltanowski is not mentioned in Chess columns in newspapers. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:12, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

A Chicago paper, The Sun-Times, I think, ran G.K.'s column twice weekly circa 1965 when I was a kid. Maybe it was daily in S.F. I wasn't aware of any other regular chess columns. WHPratt (talk) 16:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I found this which only covers California. Most of the columns were weekly but it appears the Los Angeles Daily News had a daily by George Koltanowski around 1952. The San Francisco Chronicle had a daily by Koltanowski from May 9, 1948-February 25, 2000 (18,920 columns assuming he never missed a day). After missing a couple of days the the San Francisco Chronicle resumed the daily, now edited by Shelby Lyman on February 28, 2000 which ran until 2013. As I grew up in both the San Francisco bay area and Los Angeles that explains why I'm used to seeing a chess column in the local newspaper.

This article mentions that Leonard Barden has written a daily column from June 1956 to 30 July 2010 (54 years 1 month) that appeared in the London Evening Standard. Oddly, Barden is not mentioned in Chess columns in newspapers either though that article says that Raymond Keene also has a daily that appears in the The Times and The Sunday Times.^{(citation needed)} --Marc Kupper|talk 04:38, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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Column continued until his death

Actually for a few weeks afterwards too: see Edward Winter's C. N. 5267. Double sharp (talk) 16:41, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Kolty was in poor health his last few years. People in Northern California chess who should know told me that Kolty's column was ghostwritten for the last few years it appeared. I was given a name of a prominent local chess personality who was supposedly the ghostwriter. It all made sense from what I could observe but I have no proof. Seki1949 (talk) 04:29, 10 June 2022 (UTC)