Chess Olympiad: Paris 1924 (Unofficial)

World’s top players unfortunately did not appear in Paris. There were some decent players – like Euwe, Colle or Hasasi – in the field, but nothing more. The preliminary stage did not bring much surprises. Vajda (Hungary) kicked out master of Belgium Koltanowski from the final, Schulz (Czechoslovakia) was wiped out by the Spaniard Golmayo. Apšenieks from Latvia and Tschepurnoff from Finland were the only two to have qualified with 5 consecutive wins. Golmayo and Palau (Argentina) qualified thanks to superior Berger in favour of Schulz and Romi (Italy), respectively. Hungary and Latvia had two players in the Championship final, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Spain and Argentina had one. Czechoslovakia, France and Poland were big losers of the preliminaries, since no one from these nations went through.

As the finals began, Golmayo kicked off with impressive pace earning 2½ points out of 3, ahead of Colle and Havasi, 2 each. Euwe (who a. o. beat Matisons) and Tschepurnoff set the pace in the middle stage of the race. Colle, Tschepurnoff and Euwe were in the lead after 6th round, 3½ points each (Colle yet to have a rest day), ahead of Matisons and Golmayo – 3. Unfortunately Euwe and Tschepurnoff’s finish was awful and they were thrown down the table, as well as Golmayo. Both Latvians went on the top of the group because of their impressive final spurt. Colle might have levelled on points with both Latvians had he only beaten Matisons in the very last round, but he barely drew. Hermanis Matisons, the young Latvian master was proclained the “World Amateur Champion” and received gold medal, his team-mate Apšenieks, the runner-up, and Colle who finished third were awarded with the silver-plated medals and the rest of the finalists received bronze medals.

The Czech Hromádka won the consolation cup comfortably ahead of his team-mate Schulz and Voellmy for Switzerland. Behting (Bētiņš) of Latvia played very well in the final phase but he had to recover from his poor preliminary play. Romi, who missed the final by the fraction struggled in the final section and Malmberg of Finland drew all of his 8 games of the final stage. The winner was awarded same medal as the Championship Final participants.

Czechoslovakia missed the individual final and thanks to that they outplayed easily their weak consolation cup opposition winning the team classification a point ahead of favoured Hungary, who earned another one point advantage over Switzerland. Latvia had only three players in the squad and their 4th position must be considered immense success, since two of them won individual tournament and the last one brought as much as 8 points in overall. France, the hosts, were down in 7th place shared with Poland, who sent their third suit to Paris. Belgium were hoping for more but not with poor Jonet in the squad. As we have already mentioned Holland were deprived of one man, and because of that they were down in 11th.

On July 20th, the last day of the games, 15 delegates from all over the World signed the proclamation act of the International Chess Federation (originally known as Fédération Internationale des Échecs in French) and elected Dr. Alexander Rueb of Holland the first FIDE president. Latin motto Gens una sumus (“we are one family”) became official and well-recognized watchword of the chess unity. Below is the historic list of 15 founders of FIDE: Abonyi (Hungary), Grau (Argentina), Gudju (Romania), Marusi (Italy), Nicolet (Switzerland), Ovadija (Yugoslavia), Penalver y Zamora (Spain), Rawlins (Great Britain), Rueb (Netherlands), Skalička (Czechoslovakia), Smith (Canada), Towbin (Poland), Tschepurnoff (Finland), Vincent (France), Weltjens (Belgium).

Potemkine and Kahn were Russian expatriates who lived in France. They were recorded as “Russia” in the tournament. It was not correct. The communist state Soviet Union existed since 1922.