Frédéric Lazard

Frédéric Lazard (also Fred Lazard, born February 20, 1883 in Marseille, † November 18, 1948 in Le Vésinet) was a French chess master and composer.

Biographical information
Lazard took part in the First World War and was wounded twice near Verdun. He was also awarded the Croix de Guerre.Shortly after the French Chess Federation was founded in 1921, he became its first “Technical Secretary”.

At the end of the 1930s, Lazard became ill with Parkinson's disease, which condemned him to disability from 1940 onwards. Despite his serious illness, Lazard was interned in the notorious Drancy assembly camp from March 3, 1944 until the liberation of Paris due to his Jewish descent.

Even under these adverse circumstances he managed to compose.

A manuscript of his studies includes 57 entries from the period between 1900 and the Second World War and a further 79 studies composed primarily during the war, the last of which is dated December 20, 1944.

Gustave Lazard (1876–1948), who died just twelve days after his younger brother Fred Lazard, was also a chess master and chess composer.

Chess career as Chess player
In 1912 he lost to Eduard Lasker (0:2, =1) in a short competition. In international tournaments held in Paris, he took 7th place in 1929 and only 10th and last place in 1933 (the winner was Alexander Alekhine). Above all, Lazard took part in numerous French national championships, but never achieved victory. In 1925 he came second, and he achieved the same result in 1926 at the championship held in Biarritz, tied on points with the winner André Chéron, to whom he was inferior in a direct comparison. Lazard took part in the unofficial 1924 Chess Olympiad in Paris.

Famous short part
A short game is known that is attributed to Frédéric Lazard (with black). In chess literature it is usually quoted as follows: 1. d2–d4 Ng8–f6 2. Nb1–d2 e7–e5 3. d4xe5 Nf6–g4 4. h2–h3? Ng4–e3! and White resigns due to loss of queen (if 5. f2xe3 Qd8–h4+ and checkmate). Lazard probably played such a game in 1920 with a slightly different outcome against a Parisian amateur. To this day, the multiple French champion Amédée Gibaud is sometimes cited as the loser, although he always protested against it.

Chess composer
Lazard's great passion since his youth was chess composition.

He wrote a total of 600 problems and studies, which won him numerous prizes. He was also the founding president of the French Problem Chess Association (Union des problémistes de France). Lazard composed two-move, three-move, self-mates and endgame studies. In 1929 he published a collection of his own tasks under the title Mes problèmes et études d'échecs, to which Alekhine contributed a foreword. Harold van der Heijden's database (as of 2004) contains 139 studies by Lazard.

Individual evidence
  Pallier, Alain: Frédéric Lazard. in: eg, no. 181, July 2010, 182-185
  Tournament table at Heritage Échecs
  Frédéric Lazard's results at unofficial Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
  Bill Wall: “Fireside Chess”; Edward Winter: Kings, Commoners and Knaves, Russell Enterprises, Milford 1999, p. 351 (there with the reference for 1920)
  See, among other things, Tim Krabbé: “Chess Records”
  Calendar sheet, in: Die Schwalbe, issue April 230, 2008.

Web links
Short biography and photographs of Lazard (French)
Replayable chess games by Frédéric Lazard on chessgames.com (English)
Compositions by Frédéric Lazard on the Schwalbe PDB server

Source: de.wikipedia.org

Others: Website ARVES by Peter Boll are 3 famous endgame studies by him selected.