More on Jacqueline Piatigorsky [UPDATED]

I spent some time this evening looking through Edward Winter's Chess Notes to see if he had published anything on Spassky's vodka story or if he had anything on the details of the contracts for the publication of the tournament book for the Second Piatigorsky Cup. Sadly, he had nothing on either, as best I can determine.

However, being Edward Winter's Chess Notes, the site has vast amounts of interesting stories. Of the items that caught my eye this time, he has a long series of items on Jacqueline and Gregor Piatigorsky, including some outtakes from her autobiography. I probably will not find what I'm looking for in that book, but I will try anyway.

Second, and unrelated to anything else, I found his glowing review of Alexander Alekhine’s Chess Games, 1902-1946 by Leonard M. Skinner and Robert G.P. Verhoeven (McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, 1998). The book is large and expensive, so sadly I won't be buying it anytime soon. But this line from Winter made me laugh:

There are over two hundred French Defence games, and the database buccaneers will not be slow to plunder the book’s treasures.

UPDATE: Jacqueline Piatigorsky's memoir arrived. Jump in the Waves has a chapter devoted to chess promotion, but that includes a wide range of activities, including various chess-in-the-schools programs. So I did not learn anything about the nature of the contracts for the Second Piatigorsky Tournament book.

I have not read the entire book, yet, but will soon. The memoir is short, and perusing a few random chapters it seems well-written and interesting. How many people do you know of that were raised in one of Talleyrand's old palaces?

The Second Piatigorsky Cup, and Sourcing Spassky

[WARNING: This post is long and rambling. But now that I've written it I'm going to post it.]

In the post that will follow this one I feature a couple of quotes by Spassky that I came across online today. The problem with the quotes is that the online sources did not tell me the original source.

So I tried to remember which books Spassky had written, with some help from Amazon. I knew that Spassky hadn't written many books, mostly contributions to a few opening surveys. But I thought that he may have contributed to a book called How to Open a Chess Game, which had seven co-authors. I had to look this up on Amazon because I don't own a copy, to my regret. Spassky had not contributed to that book.