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Frank Marshall
American Chess Legend
- I have always liked a wide open game and tried to knock out my opponent with a checkmate as quickly as possible. I subscribe to the old belief that offense is the best form of defense.
- --Frank Marshall
 | Hans Kmoch memories of Marshall. At ChessCafe.com |
| Frank Marshall, United States Chess Champion: A Biography With 220 Games by Andy Soltis. |
| Chessdate Selection of Marshall Combinations |
One of only three native American men to play a match for the World Championship, Frank Marshall's lengthy chess career had an impact on the development of chess in the United States that few others can match.
Born on the west side of Manhattan on August 10, 1877, Marshall's family moved to Montreal, where he learned to play chess. He won the Montreal Chess Club Championship at age 17, and subsequently moved back to New York.
Marshall's chess achievements are many. Here is a small sample:
| He won seven international tournaments without losing a game. |
| He held the U.S. title for twenty-nine years, resigning the title in 1936 to facilitate the organization of a championship tournament. |
| His performance against an elite field at Petersburg led to his being one of the first five players formally honored with the title Grandmaster in 1914. |
Marshall was a colorful man who had a number of idiosyncratic quirks as a chess player:
| Like Pillsbury, he was inordinately fond of strong cigars. |
| He was proud of his skill at chess "swindles" in lost positions, even naming an early collection of his games Marshall's Chess "Swindles". |
| He was a notoriously inconsistent player, capable of reaching the peaks of greatness, such as first place finishes ahead of Lasker (Cambridge Springs 1904) and Capablanca (Havana 1913) when both men were in their prime, while on the other hand he was also capable of losing matches by lopsided scores to both Lasker (0 - 8 with 7 draws in 1908 World Championship match) and Capablanca (1 - 8 with 14 draws in 1909). |
The Marshall Chess Club he founded in 1915 in the back room of a mid Manhattan restaurant was a fixture on the New York chess scene for decades, helping develop the cream of America's chess talent, including Fine, Evans, Sherwin, Mednis and Soltis. Robert Fischer used the facility in 1965 to compete by teletype machine in the Havana Memorial tournament.
American chess players mourned the passing of a chess legend when Marshall passed away on November 9, 1944. In recognition of his significant contributions to American chess, Frank Marshall was an Inaugural Member of the Chess Hall of Fame.
Other Views of Marshall
- A case can be made for Marshall as the single most important figure in shaping U.S. Chess.
- --NM Macon Shibut, in The U.S. Chess Hall of Fame, 1995
- Probably no American champion took more pleasure out of playing chess, as opposed to winning games, than did Frank Marshall. He would rather lose the game than lose the chance for brilliancy.
- --GMs Andy Soltis and Arthur Bisguier in American Chess Masters From Morphy to Fischer, 1978