Karel Traxler (1866 – 1936) was a

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chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

master and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

chess problem A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by the composer using chess pieces on a chess board, which presents the solver with a particular task. For instance, a position may be given with the instruction that White is to ...

s. He is best known for the hyper-aggressive variation named after him, the Traxler Variation in the Two Knights Defense.

Traxler Variation

The Traxler Variation was first shown in the following game against Reinisch, played in Hostouň in 1890:

Problem composer

Because Traxler was a

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priest, he rarely played chess in serious competitions. As a composer of chess problems he pursued the style of

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. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms: Anonymus z Tábora, Karel Kaplan, Vis Maior und Karel Zboněk. From 1896 to 1899, he edited, in part, the journal ''České listy šachové'' (Czech chess letters). He composed over 900 chess problems, mainly 2-, 3-, and 4-move problems, but also multiple-move ones, and more rarely,

selfmate A selfmate is a chess problem in which White, moving first, must force Black to deliver checkmate within a specified number of moves against their will. Selfmates were once known as sui-mates. Example The problem shown is a relatively simple examp ...

s. With his brother-in-law, Jan Kotrč, he published a selection of 247 problems that he'd composed by 1910.Jan Kotrč and Karel Traxler, ''Schachprobleme aus den Jahren 1884–1910'' hess problems from the years 1884-1910(Vienna, Austria: (self-published), 1910).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Traxler, Karel 1866 births 1936 deaths 19th-century Czech Roman Catholic priests 20th-century Czech Roman Catholic priests Czech chess players Chess writers Chess composers People from Prachatice District