Artur Popławski

Artur Władysław Kamil Popławski (* 1860 in Warsaw; † August 10, 1918 ) was a Polish engineer and chess master. He twice won the chess championship of Switzerland.

Life

Popławski studied after finishing high school in Warsaw from 1879 to the Tsarist Mathematics University of Warsaw. In 1884 he joined the Polytechnic in Zurich, where he received the engineering diploma with distinction. He returned at the beginning of the 1890s to Warsaw, where he was assigned as a railway engineer with the construction of the Warsaw- Vienna. He also went after scientific work and published a work on the statistics. At the end of his life, he received an appointment to the Chair of Statistics at the Technical University of Warsaw, which he had, however, reject due to his poor health. Popławski died before the end of World War II and received his final resting place on Powązki cemetery in Warsaw.

Chess career

Already during his studies he was Warsaw, together with his fellow student Józef Żabiński as a promising young chess player and was one of the more well-known Warsaw Masters. He was awarded in September 1879 by Szymon Winawer and Jan Kleczyński ( the older players of that name ) an invitation to represent the Warsaw team that fought out two correspondence games against Moscow in the same year. Popławskis partner in this match, which won the Warsaw 1.5:0.5, were in addition to Szymon Winawer, Kleczyński and Żabiński been mentioned yet Dawid Winawer, Szymon Michał Landau and methallyl.

Shortly before his departure to Switzerland Popławski still took part in the Warsaw Cup, which was hosted on the turn of 1883/84: In a field of 12 players, he finished second, overtaken only by half a meter of Żabiński. In Switzerland, he won the first two aligned Championships in Switzerland in the years 1889 and 1890, both times shared with Max Pestalozzi. Popławski received many awards for his beauty games and published several articles on the problem of chess.

After returning from Switzerland, Popławski again took part in the Warsaw Chess Life, but its activity gradually on the organizational part in the Warsaw Chess Club restrictive, for which he organized tournaments and competitions. He was also repeatedly judges in chess competitions in the newspapers Tygodnik Illustrowany and Kurier Warszawski.

Sporadically, he played a few games in Warsaw cafés; get him some notable successes, as he defeated 1892 champion Galicia, Ignacy Popiel, and the year after the Berlin Master Moritz Lewitt. He won competitions against local Warsaw sizes: Jan Kleczyński ( the Elder, 1891), Szymon Menthal (1895 ) and Alexander Flamberge ( 1900).