One of the great chess players during the first half of the twentieth century was Frank James Marshall (1877-1944), Champion of the USA from 1909 to 1935. On his day he could beat anyone. Born in New York City in 1877 and raised in Montreal, he learned to play chess at the Hope Coffee House (and chess club) where he soon outstripped all the other players. By the age of nineteen, having moved back to New York, he was an up-and-coming master.* His first brush with the world's best was at the international masters' tournament in Paris in 1900. He took joint fourth place, playing in a style that was notably fearless and aggressive.

The breakthrough came in 1904 at Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, one of the legendary chess tournaments of all time.* Marshall ran away with it. In his slipstream trailed most of the world's elite chessplayers; famous masters such as mathematician Emmanuel Lasker from Berlin, who had won the world title in 1894 and was to hold it until 1921; Russian Champion Mikhail Tchigorin; US Champion Harry Nelson Pillsbury, winner of the great chess tournament at Hastings, 1895, and possessor of a freakish photographic memory;* Richard Teichmann, the deadly German tactician, described by a contemporary as 'like Wotan holding forth in the company of the minor gods'; Dawid Janowsky from Poland and Austrian Champion Carl Schlechter, peerless in attack and defense respectively; these are just a few of the great masters who yielded to the energetic newcomer from New York. Marshall came through undefeated, with eleven wins and four draws. Lasker limped home one and a half points behind Marshall, equal with Janowsky in a tie for equal third place.

As a result of his victory, Marshall had a crack at the World Title in 1907 - negotiating title matches took time in those days, but perhaps no more than it does now. However, he lost to Lasker rather decisively. In 1909 he won a consolation prize; by beating Jackson Showalter in a match in Kentucky, Marshall won the United States Championship.* Showalter was no mean player, having twice defeated Janowsky in matches. He had also come fifth at Cambridge Springs. Marshall dispatched him by seven wins to two.

In 1914 Marshall played in another super-tournament, this time in St Petersburg, which was played between the greatest players of his time. The older legends had been joined by new ones, such as the Cuban José Raoul Capablanca and the Russian Alexander Alekhine, both future world champions, as well as the pretender Akiba Rubinstein from Poland and Aaron Nimzowitsch from Latvia. Also resurgent was the veteran Doctor Siegbert Tarrasch, the former world championship challenger from Nuremberg. All of them are still revered as all-time greats. Lasker won the tournament, with Capablanca second. After them came Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall. These first five players were awarded a new title, specially minted for the occasion: 'Grandmaster'. Thus Frank James Marshall became one the original chess Grandmasters.* From around then until the early 1920s he was consistently one of the top five players in the world.

In the meantime Marshall defended the United States Championship against all-comers, fighting off challenges from Edward Lasker * and Isaac Kashdan. He had earlier defeated Janowsky * and Teichmann in matches. In total he held the title for over 25 years. His reign came to an end voluntarily, when he relinquished it on his retirement from serious chess.

Marshall's reputation has probably grown with the passing of the years. He was one of the world's top twenty players for about three decades, and played many famous games. On one occasion, after he won an astonishingly brilliant game during an international tournament in Breslau,* the board was showered with gold coins.* His legacy also includes a famous institution in New York City - the Marshall Chess Club. He was father to several opening lines, including the well known Marshall Attack (really a counter-attack) in the closed variation of the Ruy Lopez; this line claimed a notable scalp in 2004 when Peter Leko used it brilliantly to defeat world champion Vladimir Kramnik.

There are many stories about Marshall. He was a good raconteur himself, and wrote up some of them in his autobiography, 'My fifty years in chess' (1942). Here are two of his own accounts, both centred on chess games.

1) Frank J. Marshall - Amos Burn, Paris 1900 *

[Britisher Amos Burn was a very conservative player and liked to settle down for a long session of close, defensive chess. He loved to smoke his pipe while he studied the board. As I made my second move, Burn began hunting through his pockets for his pipe and tobacco] 1 P-Q4 P-Q4 2 P-QB4 P-K3 3 N-QB3 N-KB3 4 B-N5 B-K2 [Not much thought needed on these moves, but Burn had his pipe out and was looking for a pipe cleaner] 5 P-K3 O-O 6 N-B3 P-QN3 7 B-Q3 B-N2 8 PxP PxP [He began filling up his pipe. I speeded up my moves] 9 BxN BxB 10 P-KR4 [Made him think on that one - and he still didn't have the pipe going. The threat is BxP+ KxB N-N5+, known as the Pillsbury attack] 10...P-N3 11 P-R5 R-K1 12 PxP RPxP [Now he was looking for matches] 13 Q-B2 B-N2 14 BxP! PxB [He struck a match, appeared nervous. The match burned his fingers and went out] 15 QxP N-Q2 [Another match was on its way] 16 N-KN5 Q-B3 [He was puffing away and lighting up at last. No time left] 17 R-R8+ Resigns [For if 17...KxR 18 Q-R7 mate. Poor Burn. I think I swindled him out of that one. If he could only have got his pipe going, it might have been a different story. He took it good-naturedly and we shook hands. Then his pipe went out]

2) Frank J. Marshall - Fyodor Duz-Chotimirsky, Carlsbad 1911 *

This game was played in the last round against the excitable Russian Duz-Chotimirsky, who had already defeated Lasker and Rubinstein (according to the story, although this bit of information actually relates to a different tournament). Marshall approached the encounter with some trepidation. This is the game that resulted.

1 P-Q4 P-Q4 2 P-QB4 P-K3 3 N-KB3 PxP 4 P-K3 P-QR3 5 N-K5 [Steering away from book lines] 5... N-Q2 6 NxN [A poor move, which only develops Black's game. Simply NxQBP was in order] 6... BxN 7 BxP B-B3 8 O-O B-Q3 9 N-B3 Q-R5 [Black has developed with great rapidity] 10 P-B4 N-B3 11 B-Q2 N-N5 [Already giving signs of suffering from a hallucination. 11... N-K5 was a good continuation] 12 P-KR3 Q-N6?? [My opponent made this move quickly, jumped up from his chair and went into the next room where most of the players were gathered. In his broken English he said, 'Poor Marshall dead!' The players ran in and clustered round the table. I looked at the position and saw that he threatened mate in two ways, either with 13... QxNP or 13... Q-R7. Very threatening, but the solution was simple enough. I just played:] 13 QxN [My opponent returned to the board and looked at what I had just done. He threw over the pieces and in a loud voice exclaimed, 'Oh, Oh, Marshall not dead, I dead!']