My Favourite Annotators. Part Seven. Georg Marco.

Afternoon everyone. This one is a contrast to last time!

Well, those few who have been my friends here over the years will know that I only started playing chess as a substitute for other sports - notably cricket. I got injured at a young age and my ambition of becoming a professional cricketer went out of the window, In cricket we have a phrase 'good honest pro'. Not the spectacular mega-stars - just the guys who day in, day out, go on the field and do a good job. They are my favourite cricketers, and at one stage I had hoped to be one of them. In that context you can understand why Marco is someone I admire immensely.

The very best 'good honest pro' of chess literature. 

My late friend Barry Wood introduced me to his work. When I was just a child in chess terms he let me into his special cupboard. There he had bound volumes of the work of his two favourite chess editors - a subject he knew about, obviously! Potter and Marco. 

At one time he left me in there for about an hour which I spent with the volumes of Wiener Schachzeitung. Marco was the editor and annotator. The day job. The good honest pro making a living. ( of course, he was also a fine player , who competed at the top level whilst producing the magazine, annotating the games, etc. at the same time.)

Well I see some pathetic charlatan 'chess historians' out there writing about chess of the era who have clearly never looked at a single volume of W.S. For those of us who take the subject seriously it is absolutely the first point of reference.  Marco's Wiener Schachzeitung is 100% THE primary source for the time. End of.

He could annotate chess games! Seriously fine analyst - trust me on that guys. Hours of work put in and he had the analytical skills to do the work wonderfully. I always say 'don't trust old analysis', but Marco was generally way above his contemporaries.  Later writers - Reinfeld for example - would simply rewrite his material, trusting that it was correct.

 For important events - he would go even beyond that and spend countless hours studying the games. As one example see my blog here:- https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/the-first-lasker-janowsky-match-1909  

But, in the context of this little tribute, I will show him being the 'good honest pro'. A thematic tournament where the King's Gambit Declined was compulsory. 

A couple of relevant pictures for a game between Heinrich Wolf ( there were three 'Wolfs! and Schlechter.

So, enjoy a fascinating game and Marco doing his thing. Just a day at the office!

The header picture source and key - W.S. of course! 

Thanks for indulging me - back with more soon. I hope you all  learn to appreciate the wonderful Georg Marco!