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, …

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 …

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 …

I was inspired to analyse this game after coming across this passage in the excellent 4-part biography of Kortchnoi by Tibor Karolyi and Hans Renette (Elk and Ruby) Stoltz didn’t make a great score in this Olympiad But he was instrumental in Sweden’s victory over a very strong American team. The  game was annotated here …

In Tidskrift för Schack 1952/10-11, Stahlberg is quoted as referring to Stoltz as “an extinct volcano”! However, the volcano still had some danger to it from time to time as this game – which won the beauty prize at the 1952 Interzonal – demonstrates. Translation: “Today’s sensational match was provided by Stoltz and Steiner. The …