Vera Menchik was the first Women’s World Champion, and one of the leading English masters of her generation. Below, I explore her life and games.
Photo: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Table of contents:
Biography
Early life
Vera Menchik was born in Moscow in 1906, to an English mother and a Czech father. She learned to play chess around the age of nine. A few years later, her family lost much of their wealth in the Russian Revolution, as her father’s mill was nationalised. Around this time, her parents got divorced.
Vera, along with her mother and sister, settled in Hastings, England, while her father travelled to his native Bohemia. This was great for the development of Vera as a young chess player, as Hastings was one of the major chess cities in the world. There she met the famous player Geza Maroczy, then one of the world’s leading players. Maroczy became her coach and helped her to develop as a player, and their work together would prove very successful.
Hastings Chess Club
Menchik joined the Hastings chess club in March of 1923, where she had the opportunity to play against and learn from many strong players. In the next few years, she improved remarkably quickly. By 1926, she won the Girls Open Championship held at the Imperial Chess Club in London, her sister Olga sharing 2nd place.
World Champion
1927 was an important year for Menchik. Alongside the famous Olympiad held in London, the first Women’s World Chess Championship took place in tournament format. Menchik crushed the field, scoring 10 wins and a draw. Interestingly, her only draw was against Edith Michell, who would go on to become British women’s champion. Menchik finished a whole 1,5 points ahead of the 60-year-old Swedish Katarina Beskow in 2nd place.
Competing at the top
After recording this dominant performance, Menchik began to compete in master tournaments, giving her further opportunities to develop her play. She competed at Scarborough 1928, sharing 7th place with Buerger in a field of 10, behind famous names such as Winter, Colle, Yates and Thomas.
Perhaps Menchik’s best ever performance came at the team tournament at Ramsgate in 1929. As she was not yet a British citizen, she played on the World Team against many of the leading English masters, like Thomas, Yates, and Winter. There she scored three wins and four draws, going undefeated. She finished only half a point behind ex-World Champion Capablanca, on the same score as Rubinstein, and half a point ahead of Maroczy. This strong performance greatly enhanced her reputation.
At Karlsbad that same year, she competed in an incredibly strong field, which included all the leading players of the time except for Alekhine. However, she was unable to build on her strong performance, finishing in last place, with the score 3/21. At Barcelona later that year, Menchik achieved a respectable 7/14 score in a field which included famous names like Capablanca, Tartakower, Colle and Yates.
World Championship Dominance
1930 saw Menchik win the Women’s World Championship for the second time at Hamburg, with a dominant 6,5/8 performance. It was also around this time that she began to play on board one when representing the Hastings Chess Club in their matches, an impressive achievement considering the fame and prestige of the club. At the Hastings tournament at the end of the year, Menchik shared 8th place with Theodore Tylor, but managed a victory over the tournament winner and future World Champion, Max Euwe.
Menchik defended her Women’s World Championship title once again at Prague in 1931, scoring a perfect 8/8. This was double the score of Paula Wolf-Kalmar in 2nd place. Menchik also supplemented her income by giving simuls, writing newspaper articles, and giving private chess lessons at her home. This shows her affinity and aptitude for languages, as she spoke no English when she arrived with her mother and sister in England back in 1921.
Hastings and the World Championship
Menchik continued to compete at the traditional Hastings tournaments at the end of each year. She finished 6th at the 1931/2 edition, behind famous names like Flohr, Kashdan, Euwe and Khan, but ahead of Yates and Thomas. The following year she finished 8th, behind Flohr, Pirc and Khan. In 1933, Menchik defended her Women’s World Championship title once again, scoring an incredible 14/14 in a double round robin format at Folkestone, England. Later that year, she took 7th place at Hastings, behind Flohr and Alekhine.
1934 saw Menchik defend her Women’s World Championship title in a match for the first time, against Germany’s Sonja Graf, although FIDE refused to recognise it as an official match for the title. Menchik won the Rotterdam match 3-1, losing a World Championship game for the first time since 1930. At the end of the year, she finished 8th out of 10 at the traditional Hastings tournament, in an especially strong field which included Thomas, Euwe, Flohr, Capablanca, and Botvinnik.
Return to Moscow
1935 was an important year for Menchik, as she returned to Moscow for the first time since she left as a teenager. There she played in a very strong international tournament, full of famous names like Botvinnik, Flohr, Lasker, Capablanca and Spielmann, as well as many of the strongest Russian players of the time. Menchik suffered a disappointing performance, finishing 20th and last on just 1,5/19. She did, however, record a draw against tournament winner Flohr. Despite the poor result, Menchik had the opportunity to spend time reconnecting with her hometown and exploring its museums.
Warsaw and Semmering
Later that year, she once again defended her title, with a dominant 9/9 performance at Warsaw.
In 1937, Menchik played another match for the Women’s World Championship with Sonja Graf. Unlike their previous match in 1934, the 1937 event was officially sanctioned by FIDE. The match took place at Semmering. Once again, Menchik’s dominance was unquestionable, and she won by the lobsided score 11,5-4,5. The following year, she won the title again in tournament format, finishing an incredible 4 points ahead of 2nd place.
British citizenship
1938 was also a significant year for Menchik in her personal life, as she got married to Rufus Stevenson, who worked for British Chess Magazine. As a result, Menchik finally obtained British citizenship, after living there for around 17 years.
WWII
The 1939 Olympiad held in Argentina is remembered for WWII breaking out during the tournament. The Women’s World Championship took place alongside the Olympiad in tournament form, and was won for the ninth time by Menchik. She scored 18 wins and two draws, going undefeated throughout.
With WWII beginning, Menchik returned to England. There she became the director of a chess club, although it would be destroyed by German bombings. In June of 1942, she played a match against a 77-year-old Mieses. Although he used to be one of the world’s strongest players, he was clearly past his prime, and Menchik won the match 6,5-3,5.
In 1944, a German bomb struck Menchik’s home, where she was living with her mother and sister. All three were killed. Menchik fell victim to the war and died too young, at 38.
Legacy
Today Menchik is remembered as the first Women’s World Champion, and for being one of the leading English masters of her generation. Generations of players have grown up learning from her games and writings. She set an example as the first woman to consistently compete at the top level of chess. The trophy which goes to the winning team at Women’s Olympiads is named after her, being called the Vera Menchik Cup.
Game Analysis
Lessons from this game:
- The square in front of a passed pawn is often a strategically important square, as the side fighting against the pawn attempts to set up a blockade. In this game, white wins the game by breaking black’s blockade of the d6 square.
- Provoking a pawn advance is a common strategy to weaken squares in the opponent’s camp. In this game, white induces the advance …f7-f6, leaving black’s kingside light squares very weak.
- When all the pawns are placed on the same colour squares, the bishop of the opposite colour becomes very important. The absence of this bishop can lead to a weak colour complex. In this game, the exchange of black’s light squared bishop left black’s light squares in the centre and on the kingside very weak.
Puzzles
Menchik – Price, London 1927
Menchik – Colle, Paris 1929
Stevenson – Menchik, Hamburg 1930
Menchik – Graf, Semmering 1937
Solutions
Solutions
To find more about Menchik’s life and games, the following are useful sources:
Menchik’s chessgames.com page,
her chess.com page,
this collection of her tournament and match results,
this article by Edward Winter,
and this YouTube video by Lucas Anderson.
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