July 8, 2026
Matthew Sadler
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As promised, I will dedicate an article to a deep-dive on the main lines of the Swedish variation of The Tarrasch Defence which we saw in the game Carlsson-Stoltz, Stockholm 1938. The variation starts as follows: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.g3 c4 7.Bg2 is the main line by far,…
July 8, 2026
Matthew Sadler
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Our game this time was played in November 1938 in a tournament organised to celebrate the 60th birthday of one of Sweden’s great chess benefactors. The game was not annotated in Tidskrift för Schack, only the brief description above but a commemorative booklet of the tournament was published through it is unclear whether the games…
July 2, 2026
Matthew Sadler
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Stoltz played a good tournament in Prague 1946, placing equal second in a strong field The game we will study today is a very cool Accelerated Dragon in which Stoltz demonstrates concepts that would only become commonplace 30-40 years later, most notably in the games of the great Danish player Bent Larsen. It was played…
June 12, 2026
Matthew Sadler
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Sweden performed very creditably in the 1930 Hamburg Olympiad, coming in 9th after the winners Poland. Stoltz scored 10/17 (+7 = 6 -4) on board 3 (behind Stahlberg and Berndtsson and ahead of Lundin) and this win against the American team was typically exciting! Stoltz,Gosta – Steiner,Herman [C89] Olympiad–03 Hamburg (9), 19.07.1930 Comments marked [EB]…
June 4, 2026
Matthew Sadler
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One of the nice side-effects of reading the first part of the fabulous biography of Gideon Stahlberg (“Gideon Stahlberg – An Epoch in Swedish Chess. Volume I. The Musketeer Years 1908-1939”) by Peter Holmgren (Verendel Publishing) was that I developed a strong interest in his compatriot and rival Gosta Stoltz (May 9, 1904 – July…