human chess, outdoors, 1924


hhmm.. i couldn't tell you that. From the background, I'd guess England, but could be France. If anybody knows what this building is, please inform us!

Actually, the locale was the Palace Square in Leningrad (at that time, the great city hadn't been St. Petersburg for a decade).
The game played was a draw between two masters of that time, Peter Romanovsky and Ilya Rabinovich with the moves transmitted by telephone. This Live Chess spectacle, put on July 20, 1924, lasted 5 hours and attracted an audience of 8,000. The Black pieces were represented by members of the Red Army. The White pieces were represented by members of the Red Fleet.
This was an annual event, designed to promote chess in the USSR, that had taken place since 1921 at different venues: 1921 in Smolensk, 1922 in Kerch, 1923 in Omsk and 1924 in Moscow.

In Smolensk, on August, 23rd, 1921, the first such game was put on at the initiative of local Vsevobucha. The board was created using chalk and sand for the squares.