Jacques Mieses - Legacy

Legacy

Mieses often used the Scandinavian Defense and greatly developed its theory in the early 1900s. The chess opening 1.d3 is named the Mieses Opening. He is also known for the Mieses Variation of the Vienna Game, which runs 1.e4 e5. 2.Nc3 Nf6 (or 2...Nc6) 3.g3. Its king bishop fianchetto can be seen as an early example of hypermodernism. There is also a line in the Scotch Game named The Mieses Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 6.Nxc6) after he employed it four times at Hastings 1895.p213

Mieses' long playing career ties for the shortest example of six degrees of separation for linking the beginning of international chess tournaments to the present day. Henry Bird (chess player) played at the London 1851 chess tournament, which is considered the first international chess tournament and at the great Hastings 1895 chess tournament, where he played Mieses. Mieses played Max Euwe as early as The Hague in 1921. Euwe played Vassily Smyslov as early as the Groningen 1946 chess tournament and Smyslov played current World Champion Viswanathan Anand at Groningen 1989, thus resulting in a chain of five degrees of separation. No shorter chain can be constructed between London 1851 and 2012, for while Emanuel Lasker also played at Hastings 1895, he never played an official tournament game with Smyslov, so that chain must still pass through Euwe or various other players to reach Smyslov and Anand. Lasker did play Samuel Reshevsky but the latter never faced Anand. This can be confirmed by examining the career games of Anand and the various other players cited in the Chessbase 2012 "MegaDatabase" or any number of on-line databases, e.g., Chessgames.com. Simlarly, Siegbert Tarrasch played at Hastings and also played Mikhail Botvinnik in the 1930s but Botvinnik never faced Anand, as he had retired by the time Anand began playing. Again, this can be readily determined by database searches.