Benjamin Blumenfeld (24 May 1884,

Vilkaviškis Vilkaviškis () is a city in southwestern Lithuania, the administrative center of the Vilkaviškis District Municipality. It is located northwest from Marijampolė, at the confluence of and rivers. The city got its name from the Vilkauj ...

– 5 March 1947,

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

) was a Russian

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

master. He was born in

, in the

Suwałki Governorate Suwałki Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire, which had its seat in the city of Suwałki. It covered a territory of about . History In 1867, the territories of the Augustów ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

(present-day

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

). In 1905/06 he tied for second/third with

Akiba Rubinstein Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein (1 December 1880 – 14 March 1961) was a Polish chess player. He is considered to have been one of the greatest players never to have become World Chess Champion. Rubinstein was granted the title International Grandma ...

, behind Gersz Salwe, in St. Petersburg (the fourth Russian championship). In 1907 he tied for second/third with

Georg Marco Georg Marco (29 November 1863 – 29 August 1923) was an Austrian Chess, chess player. He was born in Chernivtsi (Cernăuţi), Bukovina (then part of Austria-Hungary). He later settled in Vienna and was secretary of the Viennese Chess Associatio ...

, behind

Mikhail Chigorin Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin (also ''Tchigorin''; ; – ) was a Russian chess player. He played two World Championship matches against Wilhelm Steinitz, losing both times. The last great player of the Romantic chess style, he also served as a ma ...

, in Moscow. In 1920 he took eighth in Moscow (Russian Chess Olympiad, 1st URS-ch). The event was won by

Alexander Alekhine Alexander Aleksandrovich Alekhine. He disliked when Russians sometimes pronounced the of as , , which he regarded as a Yiddish distortion of his name, and insisted that the correct Russian pronunciation was . (March 24, 1946) was a Russian ...

. In 1925 he tied for second/third with Boris Verlinsky, behind Aleksandr Sergeyev, in the Moscow championship. He invented the Blumenfeld Gambit (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nf3 b5). In 1945 Blumenfeld defended PhD thesis on psychology, based on cognition in chess. At the time, it was one of the first attempts to do research into chess psychology.

Notable games

Benjamin Markovich Blumenfeld vs Aron Nimzowitsch, Berlin 1903, Scotch Game: Schmidt Variation (C45), 1-0

References

External links

* 1884 births 1947 deaths People from Vilkaviškis People from Suwałki Governorate Lithuanian Jews Lithuanian chess players Soviet chess players Jewish chess players Chess theoreticians {{Russia-chess-bio-stub