The 1924 Soviet chess match where chess pieces were real soldiers and horses

Let's Time Return Return to Leningrad (alias Saint-Petersburg) in 1924. It was then that an unconventional chess match was played by Peter Romanovsky And Ilya Rabinovichtwo chess of the day.

Apparently, they called their movements by phone. And then the acts of real chess – in the form of human beings and horses – moved through a huge failure covering the square of the palace. The members of the Red Army of the Soviet Union were the black parts; The members of the Soviet Navy were the white pieces. 8,000 spectators watched the action unfold.

According to this Online forum for chess enthusiastsThe 5 -hour match “was an annual event, designed to promote failures in the USSR”. The first match of this type took place in Smolensk in 1921, followed by matches in Kerch in 1922, OMSK in 1923 then in Saint Petersburg in 1924. You can have an overview of the match in the images below.

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