Dawid Janowski

Who was Dawid Janowski?

Dawid Markelowicz Janowski was a leading Polish chess master and subsequent French citizen.

Born into a Polish family in Wołkowysk, Russian Empire, he settled in Paris around 1890 and began his professional chess career in 1894. He won tournaments in Monte Carlo 1901, Hanover 1902 and tied for first at Vienna 1902 and Barmen 1905. In 1915 he left Europe for the United States and spent the next nine years there before returning to Paris.

Janowski was devastating against the older masters such as Wilhelm Steinitz, Mikhail Chigorin and Joseph Henry Blackburne. However, he had minus scores against newer players such as Siegbert Tarrasch, Frank Marshall, Akiba Rubinstein, Géza Maróczy and Carl Schlechter. He was outclassed by world champions Emanuel Lasker and José Raúl Capablanca, but scored respectably against Alexander Alekhine.

Janowski played very quickly and was known as a sharp tactician who was devastating with the bishop pair. Capablanca annotated some Janowski games with great admiration, and said, "when in form [he] is one of the most feared opponents who can exist". Capablanca noted that Janowski's greatest weakness as a player was in the endgame, and Janowski reportedly told him, "I detest the endgame." American champion Frank Marshall remembered Janowski's talent and his stubbornness. In "Marshall's Best Games of Chess" he wrote that Janowski "could follow the wrong path with greater determination than any man I ever met!" Reuben Fine remembered Janowski as a player of considerable talent, but a "master of the alibi" with respect to his defeats. Fine said that his losses invariably occurred because it was too hot, or too cold, or the windows were open too far, or not far enough. He also noted that Janowski was sometimes unpopular with his colleagues because of his predilection for doggedly playing on even in an obviously lost position, hoping his opponent might blunder. Edward Lasker in his book Chess Secrets I Learned from the Masters recalled that Janowski was an inveterate but undisciplined gambler who would often lose all of his chess winnings at the roulette wheel.