Oddities in Chess

 

Aaron.  Manuel Aaron (1935- ) was born in colonial Burma.  He was the first Indian International Master (1961).  It took 17 years before India had its second International Master.  Aaron won the championship of India 9 times between 1959 and 1981.  He is chairman of the All India Chess Federation and is editor of Chess Mate.  [source: “Manuel Aaron Profile,” iloveindia.com]

Above Suspicion.In 1942, the movie Above Suspicion was made, starring Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, and Basil Rathbone.  The plot involves a doctor who collects chess pieces.  There was $50,000 worth of rare chess pieces used in the move.  Special guards were hired by MGM to guard the chess pieces.  The chess pieces were on loan from museums and were the finest available.  One chess set alone was valued at $5,000, carved from ivory and took three generations of one family to complete.  Each piece took more than a year to make (32 pieces).  During the movies, Fred MacMurray and Basil Rathbone took up chess, and they played many chess games between scenes of the movie.[source: Canonsburg Daily News, January 18, 1943]

Alda.  Actor Alan Alda (born in 1936) is a chess player. He usually plays chess on his computer. Alda was the leading character in M*A*S*H (1972-1983), which had several chess scenes.  Alda and co-actor Mike Farrell would usually escape from the set to play a quick game of chess.   In the 1977 CBS TV movie, Kill Me if You Can, Alda played Caryl Chessman (1921-1960), who spent 12 years on death row before being executed in 1960. Chessman played chess while on death row. In the 2011 movie, Tower Heist, he plays chess online. Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), as a crooked businessman, talks to Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) about the Marshall chess swindle involving Frank Marshall and Lewitsky in a World Championship game in 1912 in Helsinki. Alda called the swindle as the greatest move in the history of chess. Alda should have known better. It was a real game, but not a world championship game, and not in Helsinki (it was played in Breslau, now called Wroclaw). Alan's father, actor Robert Alda (1914-1986), may also have been a chess player. Robert Alda played a chess hustler (Bruce Conrad) in the 1946 movie, Beast with Five Fingers. His opponent was Francis Ingram (Victor Francen).[source: Chess Life, March 1988, p. 32]

Alekhine.  World champion Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946) once was concentrating so hard on his game that he absent mindedly stirred his coffee with a pawn , then dropped a white pawn in his coffee, thinking it was a sugar cube.[source: Chess Review, March 1949, p. 74]After World War II, Alekhine was not invited to chess tournaments outside the Iberian Peninsula, because of his alleged Nazi affiliation. His original invitation to the London 1946 tournament was withdrawn when the other competitors, such as Reuben Fine and Arnold Denker, protested. On the evening of March 23 or early March 24, 1946, Alekhine died in his shabby hotel room (the Park Hotel) in Estoril, Portugal (just outside Lisbon) at the age of 53. A chambermaid found his body at 10:30 am on March 24.   He was dressed in an overcoat to keep warm and slumped back in a ratty armchair with a peg chess set on the table and his dinner dishes in front of him.  Physicians said his death was due to angina pectoris. [source: Galveston Daily News, March 25, 1946]In April, 1946, medical doctors who carried out a port-mortem examination of Alekhine, were astonished to find that, although he drank two and a half pints of cognac every day, his liver was in perfect condition.  Doctors planned in examining his brain next.  There were discussions between French and Spanish Foreign Offices whether the body would be permitted to cross the Franco-Spanish frontier for burial in France.  Alekhine was a naturalized French subject.[source: Sydney Morning Herald, April 6, 1946] After his death Alekhine's body remained unburied in Estoril, Portugal for a period of three weeks. Then the Portuguese Chess Federation had him interred in a humble sepulcher in the Estoril cemetery. Only a few chess friends were present. His remains were forgotten until 1956, the tenth anniversary of his death, when FIDE, together with the Russian and French Chess Federations, transferred them to Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris. They placed a red granite monument with his image in Carrara marble at the head of his tomb.[source: “Alekhine’s death – an unresolved mystery?” ChessBase News, Mar 25, 2006]

Alfonsi.  Petrus Alfonsi (Alphonsi) (1062-1110) was a Jewish Spanish physician and astronomer.  He was also the author of the DisciplinaClericalis (Training School for the Clergy). He included chess as one of the seven knightly accomplishments to be mastered. The other tasks included riding, swimming, archery, boxing, hawking, and verse writing.  There are over 160 surviving manuscripts containing works of his.[source: Murray, History of Chess, 1914, p. 407 and O’Sullivan, Chess in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, 2012, p. 75]

Arrested.  In 1624, playwright Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was arrested in London after producing a pay, A Game of Chess, that satirized the proposed marriage of Prince Charles with a Spanish princess.  The play was performed at the Globe Theater.  Its nine performances was the greatest box-office hit of early modern London.  After Middleton’s arrest, the play was censored and was not allowed to be show again.  Alexandre Deschapelles (1780-1847) was arrested for being involved in the French insurrection of June 1832.  He was released after writing to the king that he was too old, too infirmed, and innocent. [source: British Chess Magazine, vol 36, 1916]  In April 1862, chess player Armand Edward Blackmar (1826-1888), of the Blackmar Gambit and Blackmar-Diemer fame,  was arrested, fined, and jailed by Union General Ben Butler (1818-1893) and imprisoned by Union soldiers in New Orleans for publishing “seditious” (Confederate) music, such as the Bonnie Blue Flag (Band of Brothers) and the Dixie War Song.  In 1864, George Mackenzie (1837-1891), a former Captain in the Union army, was arrested for desertion from the Union army.  He already fought with distinction on three battles.  He was released in May 1865, and moved to New York and started playing chess.  By 1867, he was U.S. chess champion.  In 1866, William Henry Russ (1833-1866), or W.R. Henry as he was known, shot his adopted daughter four times in the head after he proposed marriage when she turned 21, and she rejected him.  He then jumped into a river to drown himself, but the tide was out.  He was arrested, but died 10 days later, lacking the will to live.  The woman survived.   His book, American Chess Nuts, was published in 1868.  In 1870, Joseph Henry Blackburne (1841-1924) was arrested in Baden-Baden as a French spy for sending chess moves in the mail. The British government thought they were coded secrets. It also turned out that Blackburne’s carriage driver was a French spy.  In 1875, Albert Ensor (1843-1883) was arrested for counterfeiting in New York.  In 1873, he was the first Canadian Chess Championship.  He was later arrested in Germany for gambling and in France for forgery.  In 1879, American chess player and journalist James Mortimer (1833-1911) was arrested for refusing to reveal the author of an allegedly libelous article.  Once inside prison, he taught his fellow inmates how to play chess. In 1891, William Steinitz (1836-1900) was arrested In New York as a Russian spy after someone in the telegraph company thought that his chess moves being sent over telegraph was code. He was held for 24 hours and released. At the time, Steinitz was playing Chigorin in Havana by cable  In December 1906, Nicolai Jasnogrodsky (1859-1914), a chess master, was arrested for swindling 10 citizens of Bay City, Michigan out of $10,000 to marry a rich rabbi’s daughter.  [source: New York Times, Dec 3, 1906, p. 6] In 1914, all the Russian chess masters were arrested at the Mannheim, Germany Congress when World War I broke out.  The arrested players included Alexander Alekhine and Bogoljubow.  Alekhine was released after 6 weeks. [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sep 8, 1914, p. 9\  In 1918, Lorenz Hansen, a Danish naturalized citizen, was arrested by the Federal authorities, charged with using a secret code and spying.  The secret code turned out to be the moves in a correspondence game sent by post card.  [source: American Chess Bulletin 1918, p. 61]  In 1921, British chess master William Winter (1898-1955) was arrested and imprisoned for 6 months for sedition.  He was an active member of the Communist Party.  In December 1927, Dr. Joseph Eljas, President of the Reval, Estonia Chess Club, was invited to a chess tournament in Leningrad.  As soon as he entered Russia, he was arrested by the Cheka.  The Cheka, claiming his notebooks, filled with chess problems, were a secret cipher.  He was charged for spying for a foreign power.  [source: New York Times, Dec 8, 1927, p. 37]In 1936, PyotrIzmailov (1906-1937) was arrested and sentenced to death in the Soviet Union, accused of plotting to assassinate Stalin.  He was executed in April 1937.  In 1928, he was the first champion of the Russian Republic.  In February 1937, 13 chess players were arrested in Danzig for talking Socialistic politics in between moves.  The police charged them with trying to keep alive the forbidden Social Democratic party. [source: Decatur Herald, Feb 13, 1937, p. 3]  In 1937, chess problemist Mikhail Platov was arrested in Russia after making a derogatory remark about Stalin.  He was shipped off to the Gulag in Siberia and died within a year.   1937, Nikolai Krylenko (1885-1938), Chairman of the Chess Section of the Supreme Council for Physical Culture of the Russian Federal Republic, was arrested in Russia and later executed on orders from Stalin.  One of the charges against him was that he had retarded the development of chess in the Soviet Union.  In 1940, the Germans arrested all the chess players that were meeting at the Warsaw Chess Club (Kwiecinski Chess Café), which was banned earlier by the Germans.  The Jews were all taken to a concentration camp (Danilowicowskia) and were later killed in a mass execution.  This included Polish masters DawidPrzepiorka, Achilles Frydmann, Stanislaw Kohn, and Moishe Lowtzky.  In September 1940, Menahem Begin (1913-1992) was playing chess with his wife when he was arrested at home by Russian troops (NKVD).  At the time, he was an active member of the Zionist movement.  In June 1941, Estonian player Ilmar Raud (1913-1941) was found wandering in the streets of Buenos Aires and was arrested by the police.  A fight occurred while he was in jail, and he was later sent to a lunatic asylum, where he died on July 13, 1941, most likely of starvation.  In 1941, Ludek Pachman (1924-2003) was arrested by the Gestapo and interrogated for several weeks about incitement to anti-German demonstrations.   In 1943, Austrian master Ladslaus Dory was arrested for sedition by the Nazis and sentenced to death.  He was released from prison by allied troops in 1945.  In 1943, Akiba Rubinstein’s (1882-1961) son, Sammy Rubinstein (1927-2002), also a chess player, was arrested by the Germans after hiding in a castle in the Ardennes, and spent a year in prison.  On March 2, 1951, James Bolton (1928-2004), 22, was arrested in Connecticut’s first draft evasion case under the new Selective Service Act after the outbreak of the Korean War.  He testified he believed the law was unconstitutional and lost.  He was sentenced to one year and one day in jail.  Bolton was the winner of the 1950 New England chess championship.  He won the Connecticut State Championship in 1953, 1957, and 1966. [sources: Bridgeport, Connecticut Telegram, March 3, 1951 and June 5, 1951, and New York Times, March 4, 1951, p. 60]In March 1952, Pal Benko was arrested and imprisoned for 16 months in a Hungarian concentration camp for trying to escape from East Berlin and defect to the West.  He was accused of being an American spy.  When they searched his apartment, they found mail devoted to his postal chess games.  The police assumed that the notation was secret code, and they demanded to know how to break the code.  On February 20, 1959, Melvin Haifetz, the proprietor of the Humoresque Coffee Shop, contending several detective raids interrupted the chess-playing of his patrons, filed a $25,000 damage suit against the police and the city of Philadelphia.  He claimed in U.S. district court action that his business was “permanently damaged” because customers now were afraid to come in for fear they may be arrested for playing chess.  At least 34 chess players were arrested, fined for disorderly conduct and fined $12.50.  The police under the command of Captain Frank Rizzo (120-1991) conducted the raids on grounds the neighbors of the coffee shop complained of too much noise (I guess they were yelling “Check” and “Checkmate” too loudly).  Police also suspected drugs and interracial mixing.  [source: Gazette and Daily (York, PA), February 20, 1959]In August 1969, Grandmaster LudekPachman (1924-2003) was arrested and imprisoned for his political activities in Czechoslovakia.  He was charged of defaming a representative of the Republic and supporting Dubcek.  He was sent to Ruzyn Prison on the outskirts of Prague.  He was later charged with subversion and up to 10 years imprisonment.  [source: Daily Courier (Connellsville, PA), October 10, 1970]  He was released in December 1970, but was banned from chess in Czechoslovakia.  In 1972 he moved to Germany so he could play chess.  In May 1981, Bobby Fischer (1943-2008) was arrested in Pasadena, California because he matched the description of a man who had just committed a bank robbery in that area.  He was held for two days, and then released on $1,000 bail.  On February 20, 1977, Mrs. Regina Fischer, mother of Bobby Fischer, was arrested in London while protesting as government deportation order against two American journalists.  She was sentenced to one year’s probation for obstructing the sidewalk outside a British government office.  [source: Indiana Gazette, PA, Mar 16, 1977] In 1979, the Soviets arrested and jailed Viktor Korchnoi's son as a "draft dodger." Boris Gulko and his wife were arrested for protesting at the Moscow Interzonal in Moscow.  They were trying to immigrate to Israel.  In 1986, grandmaster  Aleksander Wojtkiewicz (1963-2006) was arrested and sent to prison in Latvia for dodging the Soviet Army draft.  While in prison, he studied chess and found a novelty in the Sicilian Defense, Accelerated Dragon variation.  The new move was coined the “Prison Novelty.”  In 1987, Grandmaster Tony Miles (1955-2001) was arrested at 10 Downing Street in London after trying to get in after midnight to talk to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about payments owed to him by the British Chess Federation.    He was eventually hospitalized for two months from a mental breakdown.  In 1988, undercover police arrested a chess player at a park in New York City after he won a marked $5 bill against a police officer posing as a construction worker during a blitz game.  The chess player was jailed for 3 days, his medication was confiscated, and he had a heart attack.  The arrest was finally tossed out by a judge.  Five years later, the city settled the wrongful arrest lawsuit out of court for $100,000.  In 1988, International Master James Sherwin, vice chairman of the GAF Corporation and president of the American Chess Foundation, was arrested on stock manipulation charges.  He was found guilty in December 1989.  The appeals court overturned the guilty verdict in 1991 and he was released.  The U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Sherwin was Rudi Giuliani, who spent over a million dollars prosecuting the case. [source: New York Times, July 7, 1988 and Dec 14, 1989]  In 1991, ArkadyFlom, a 64-year-old grandfather was arrested in Manhattan after a young man sat down to play chess with him in the park.  The young man played so poorly that Flom would give him pointers in exchange for $2.  The young man agreed.  They played for 20 more minutes and the young fellow paid his money.  As soon as Flom put the money in his pocket, four NYPD officers approached him, slapped him in handcuffs and read him his rights.  He was arrested for promoting gambling in the second degree and for possession of a gambling device, his chess set. He was jailed for 3 days, his medication was confiscated, and he had a heart attack.   Five years later, he received a $1 million settlement in a false arrest suit against New York City as the judge ruled that a chess game was not “gambling” since it was a game of skill rather than chance and the chess board was not “gambling equipment.”  In 1992, police in New Rochelle, NY arrested a player who refused to put away a chess board and pieces at a library.  Louis Taylor, 41, was reading a chess book and set up his own chess pieces and board in the library.  A librarian told him to put his game away.  When he refused, the police were called, who cuffed Taylor and charged him with trespassing.  In 2001, Vaughn Bennett, executive director of the Olympic Chess House, was arrested for unlawful trespassing onto the grounds of the U.S. Chess Center in Washington, DC.  In July 2004, Bobby Fischer was arrested in Japan, accused of traveling on a revoked American passport.  He was wanted by the U.S. government on charges of violating a ban to travel to Yugoslavia in 1992, where he went to play chess with Boris Spassky.  In October 2004, the FIDE vice president, ZurabAzmaiparashvili, was arrested by a group of security agents during the final ceremonies of the 36^th Chess Olympiad in Calvia, Spain.  He was approaching the stage to get the attention of FIDE President Ilyumzhinov about some awards that had not been given out when the security people stepped in front of him.  The Calvia police said that he hit them, so they arrested himIn 2005, Canadian grandmaster Pascal Charbonneau and his friends were mugged at gunpoint during the World Open in Philadelphia.  In 2005, GM Vladimir Akopian was arrested at Dubai airport having been mistaken for an individual of the same name wanted by Interpol for murder.  In April 2005, Grandmaster and former World Junior Champion Maxim Dlugy was arrested in Moscow  and charged with attempting to defraud a metals plant in Russia of $9 million in bonds.  He was transferred to a prison in Perm, central Russia.  He faced up to 10 years in prison.  All the charges against him were later dropped.  n September 2005, chess master Robert Snyder was arrested in Fort Collins, Colorado on charges of molesting three chess students of his.  Two boys were age 13 and one boy was age 12.  He later escaped and was featured on America’s Most Wanted in 2009.  He was later captured in Belize after someone recognized him from the TV show.  He was released from jail in 2008 and was supposed to register as a sex offender, but he never did.   He was featured on America’s Most Wanted in November 2009.   A girl had recognized him as a chess teacher in her school in Belize and notified the authorities.  US Marshals tracked him down in Belize and arrested him.  In July 2006, two chess players tried to smuggle cocaine in a wooden chess set in Trinidad, but were caught and arrested.   The cocaine, which weighed 6.8 kilograms, was valued at $3 million.  In April 2007, Garry Kasparov was among 170 people arrested during an anti-Kremlin rally in Moscow.  He was freed several hours later (some sources say he was in prison for 5 days) after being fined $40 for public order offenses.  In 2013, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Russian government to compensate Kasparov 10,000 euros for his arrest.  In 2008, a man was arrested by Boston police on a warrant of receiving stolen property.  He was supposed to have been running an extracurricular chess program for elementary school students, charging $63.50 per student, but it was a scam.  n July 2009, Gregory Alexander, an assistant to GM Susan Polgar, was arrested  in San Francisco for computer fraud and aggravated identity theft in stealing email messages between  USCF board members.  In July 2010, Oakland school board member Jumoke Hinton Hodge was arrested when she refused to stop playing chess at the intersection of Broadway and 14^th Streets.  In October 2010, seven players were arrested for playing chess in a playground in Inwood Hill Park, New York.  The chess tables in the park were off limits to adults if not accompanied by a child.  The charges were finally dismissed in April 2011.  In June 2011, a chess coach for a junior chess team in Port Elizabeth, South Africa was arrested in connection with child pornography charges.  In December 2011, two Vietnamese men were arrested for gambling on chess at a local café.  Gambling is illegal in Vietnam except in casinos.  The two men had been gambling on chess since 2009, betting up to $50,000 per game.  In August 2012, Garry Kasparov was arrested at a protest outside a Moscow court during the Pussy Riot trial.  He was not there to protest, simply to attend.  The police cornered him and dragged him into the police van and began assaulting him.  Kasparov was in jail for five days.

Baden-Baden.Baden-Baden 1870 was the first international chess tournament in Germany and the first truly strong tournament.  The tournament lasted from July 18 until August 4, 1870.  It was also the first chess tournament interrupted by war (the Franco-Prussian war as France declared war on Prussia on July 19, 1870).  Artillery fire 18 miles away could be heard in Baden-Baden.  After 4 rounds, Adolf Stern of Germany  was mobilized as a Bavarian reservist and had to drop out after 1 win, 1 draw, and 2 losses.  Baden-Baden 1870 was the first chess tournament to introduce chess clocks.  However, the players had the option of using a chess clock or an hour-glass.  20 moves had to be made per hour.   Adolf Anderssen won the event, followed by Steinitz. [sources: “Schachim Krieg: Baden-Baden 1870,” ChessBase News, Feb 2, 2005 and “Baden-Baden 1870,” Tartajubow on Chess II blog, May 19,2017

Ban.  In 1198, chess was banned from the clergy in Paris as ordered by the bishop of Paris, Eudes (Odo) de Sully (1168-1208). He banned all chess sets and chess boards from even being in the houses of the clergy.[source: Murray, A History of Chess, 1913, p. 410]In July 1928, the Brooklyn YMCA banned chess.  All the chess tables and pieces were removed, and the YMCA management forbade its members from playing chess even on a magnetic or pocket chess set.  The secretary of the YMCA concluded that chess attracted too many undesirable elements to the YMCA and that too many chess players or spectators were smoking during a chess game.  Smoking was forbidden inside the YMCA.  The YMCA also did not want to fund the extra supervisory personnel it needed to keep a room open for chess.  [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 11, 1928]In April 1930, chess was banned in Harbin, China as too dangerous and “against the public welfare.”  Manchurian Chinese police raided cafes to stop anyone from playing chess.  Players protested they were not gambling or playing for money.  The Chinese police responded, “No matter.  Such games are dangerous.”   [source: Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois), April 24, 1920]During World War II, the Soviet government banned the mailing abroad of chess gamesand chess symbols.  The new regulations were designed to prevent transmission of any economic, military, or political information.  [source: Ottawa Journal, July 8, 1941]During World War II, postal chess was banned between civilians and U.S. servicemen because censors thought that the chess notation might be secret code.[sources: Troy Record, March 31, 1944 and Chess Review, June 1946, p, 6]In 1993, chess was banned from American River College in California because of disruptive behavior on people playing in the cafeteria and library. Campus police ordered some chess players to stop playing chess. The players refused and the campus police confiscated the chess board and pieces.In 1994, chess was banned in Afghanistan by Mullah Mohammad Omar ad the Taliban edicts.  Anyone caught playing chess were beaten or imprisoned.  The ban was lifted in 2001.  In February 2017, 15-year-old Bona Derakhshani was banned from any Iranian chess tournaments because he competed against an Israeli chess player at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival. Iran does not recognize the state of Israel, and forbids its competitors from facing off against Israeli rivals at sporting events, including chess.    In February 2017, the women's U.S. chess champion, Nazi Paikidze, was banned from the World Women's Chess Championship in Iran because she refused to wear a headscarf.

Barnett.Sir Richard WhieldonBarnett (1863-1930), an Irish barrister and British Army Major, was an expert sport shooter. Barnett represented Ireland in the contest for the Elcho Shield (annual rifle competition) on 37 occasions, and twice made the record score. He was one of twelve competitors for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the 1908 Summer Olympics. He finished fourth in the 1000-yard free rifle competition. He was also Irish Chess Champion from 1886 to 1889. At Oxford he was president of the Oxford University Chess Club, competing in a number of varsity matches against Cambridge in the 1880s. In 1919, he played Jose Capablanca in a simul held at the House of Commons.  He was sometime chairman of the executive committee of the British Chess Federation and was one of the mourners at Henry Blackburne’s funeral.  [source: Abrahams, Not Only Chess,1974, p. 38]

Belle.Belle was a chess computer developed by Joe Condon and Ken Thompson (1943- ) at Bell Labs.  In 1980, it won the 1980 World Computer Chess Championship.  In 1982, the Belle chess computer (PDP-11/23) was confiscated by the U.S. State Department while on a plane at Kennedy Airport going to the USSR to compete in a computer chess tournament.  It was considered too high tech for the Soviets to see.  It took over a month and a $600 fine to get Belle out of customs. Thompson later said that the only way the Belle would be a military threat if it was dropped from an airplane on the head of some government official. [source: Chess Life, September 1982, p. 12]In 1983, it was the first machine to achieve master-level play.  Its USCF rating was published at 2203. 

Benko.  Pal Benko (1928-2019) was a Hungarian-American grandmaster.  In 1957. He was permitted to play first board on Hungary’s team in the World Students’ Team Championship, held in Reykjavik, Iceland.  On July 26,1957, after the tournament was over, Benko walked into the American embassy in Reykjavik and asked for asylum. The American embassy officials arranged a press conference for Benko to explain why he did not want to return to Hungary.Benko was granted asylum, but had to wait on a preferential visa (which he obtained on Oct 11, 1957). While waiting for a visa, Benko played in two more chess tournaments in Iceland. In the first, he took 1st place, ahead of Olafsson and Pilnik. In the second, he took 2nd, behind Olafsson. [source: "Our New Member," Chess Review, Dec 1957, p. 355]  In 1986, at the New York Open, Pal Benko was playing Hungarian Grandmaster Gyula Sax in the final round. If Benko won, he would have earned $12,000. If Benko drew, he would only get $3,000. Sax offered Benko a draw at a critical position. Benko turned it down, blundered in time pressure, and lost. He got nothing.

Bernhardt.In 1886, the French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), the first international stage star, played chess against the chess automaton Ajeeb. She loved chess and lived at the Hotel Chelsea from 1886 to 1900. Ajeeb was located at the Eden Musée, a block away from her hotel. She also played Ajeeb in 1900 and perhaps many times between 1886 and 1900 (losing every time). When asked how she spent her time on long sea voyages, she said she played chess. [source: Huret, Sarah Bernhardt,1899, p. 132, Chess Life, Jun 1992, p. 12, and British Chess Magazine, 1979, p. 302]The expense of playing with Ajeeb was 20 cents after you have entered the Musée, 10 cents for admission to the room where it sat, and 10 cents for every game played – 70 cents in all.  [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec 20, 1885]

Bird.Henry Edward Bird (1829-1908) was an English amateur chess player and a practicing accountant who was an expert on British railways.  In 1874, he proposed a new chess variant, which played on an 8x10 board.  It contained to new pieces, a guard (combining the moves of the rook and knight) and the equerry (combining the moves of the bishop and knight).  In 1876, he received the first brilliancy prize ever awarded, for his victory over James Mason.   Bird popularized the chess opening called the Bird’s Opening (1.f4), and the Bird Variation in the Ruy Lopez (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nd4).  In late July 1880, Bird arrived in Brunswick, Germany, but it was too late for him to participate in the master chess tournament of the West German Chess Congress. Bird missed his train and then tried to register for the tournament by telegraph. Bird addressed the telegraph wrong and it remained unopened. He showed up one day late and asked for admission to the tournament. The tournament committee could only admit him by a unanimous vote by the contestants. Two players, Wilfried Paulsen (1828-1901) and Carl Wemmers (1845-1882), objected, and Bird was not allowed to play. Bird would have been the only player from England if he had played. He then played a short match with Gaebler from Brunswick, one of the prize winners in the main tournament. Bird won the first game of the match, and Gaebler the second. Then Gaebler declined to continue. [sources: Deutsche Schachzeitung, 1881, p. 179-180 and Chess Monthly, Vol. 1, 1880, p. 358]

Blacks.Perhaps the first documented case of a Black chess player was that of Sa’id bin Jubair (665-714), a Black player who excelled at blindfold chess in Kufa, in modern-day Iraq.  He was the first known player who played chess without looking at the pieces.In 1950, black chess players were barred from the 1950 Southern Chess Association (SCA) Chess Congress, held in Durham, North Carolina.  There was a movement to outlaw the SCA from U.S. chess because of this incident.  In the early 1950s, Blacks were denied membership in the Chicago Chess Club.In the 1950s, a Louisiana law barred blacks from chess playing rooms in New Orleans.  This prevented blacks from playing in the U.S. Open in 1954, which was held in New Orleans. [source: Chess Life, July 20, 1954]  In 1955, Black were barred from playing in the Georgia Open chess tournament.At the 1959 U.S. Open chess tournament in Omaha, Nebraska, blacks were not allowed to rent a room at the hotel (or other nearby hotels ) in which the chess tournament was held.

Bloodgood.On July 14, 1937, Claude Frizzel Bloodgood (1937-2001) was born in La Paz, Mexico.  He was a controversial American chess player.  He was an active chess player, chess organizer and rating statistician for the Virginia State Chess Federation in the 1960s.  He was convicted of  burglary in the 1960s and served his prison time in Delaware.  He was sentenced to die in Virginia after he murdered his mother, Margaret Bloodgood, in 1969.  The sentence was commuted to life in prison.  While in prison, he played chess almost every day.  He played thousands of correspondence games (free postage for those on Death Row) and thousands of games with his fellow inmates.   At one point, he had 1,200 postal games going at the same time.  In 1973, he played in the Virginia State Championship wearing manacles.  In 1974, he received a furlough to play in a chess tournament outside the prison.  He escaped, but was captured a few days later.  That ended furloughs for chess players.   In 1996, his USCF chess rating rose to 2702, making him the ninth highest rated player in the country.  He was also the 3rd most active chess player in the nation, with over 1,700 games to his credit.  His rating was due to the closed pool ratings inflation, as he won almost every rated game he played against other prisoners, many rated as masters due to their provisional rating.From 1993 to 1999, he played 3,174 rated games in prison, winning 99% of his games. [source: Surber, “The Curious Case of Claude Bloodgood,” campfirechess.com, Oct 16, 2017]

Blumenfeld.Benjamin Markovich Blumenfeld (1884-1947) was one of the best chess players in Moscow between the First and Second World Wars.  He was born in the Suwalki Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania).  He studied law at Moscow and Berlin Universities, then gave up law to devote himself to chess.  He received a PhD in chess psychology from Moscow University.  His dissertation was on the nature of blunders in chess. [source: Chess Review, May 1947, p. 8]  The Blumenfeld Countergambit, 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nf3 b5 or 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.b5 is named after him.  He analyzed this line but appears not to have played it himself.

Bogoljubov.In 1927, the chess champion of the Soviet Union, Efim Dmitriyevich Bogoljubov (1889-1952), was officially excommunicated from all Soviet chess activities because he “exhibited the typically bourgeois vice of putting his pocketbook above his principles.”  The Soviet government declared he was no longer chess champion and no longer a member of the Soviet chess organization.  He was expelled when he expressed the desire to give up his Soviet citizenship in order to be able to attend a chess tournament in Italy.  He was unable to go because the Italian authorities refused to recognize his Soviet passport.  Bogoljubov wrote to the Soviet chess organization declaring that in view of the difficulties of moving about Europe with a Soviet passport, he was thinking of assuming the citizenship of another country.  [source: Bridgeport Telegram, Jan 21, 1927]  In the USSR,he was a non-person, and even mentioning of his name was forbidden.  Bogoljubov then emigrated to Germany, but was stateless until 1931.Bogoljubov was the challenger for the world chess championship in 1929 and 1934.  Bogoljubov is the only player in the history of chess who was German and Soviet Chess Champion in the same year.In early June 1933, a National Masters tournament was held in Aachen, Germany. It was won by Bogoljubow. The tournament was organized by the GrossdeutscheSchachbund, a new state-supported chess federation with Dr. Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), the German Minister of Propaganda, serving as honorary President of the Schachbund. Jewish players were not allowed to participate. FIDE first awarded him the International Grandmaster title in 1950, but denied the title because they claimed he had been an ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler. FIDE awarded him the title the following year, in 1951.On June 18, 1952, Bogoljubov died in Triberg, Germany after giving a simultaneous chess exhibition.  He was 63.

Bolsheviks.  The Bolsheviks were a faction founded by Vladimir Lenin (a chess player).  They took power in Russia in November 1917.  During their political power, chess was officially discouraged as a “decadent bourgeois pastime.”  Virtually all organized chess activities and chess clubs ended in Russia.  However, they respected their chess masters.  During the October Revolution, the aristocracy was overthrown, and Soviet Russia was founded.  After an assassination attempt, Lenin created the Cheka, a secret police organization whose job was to reduce threats to the state.  The led to the Red Terror, where the Cheka rounded up dissidents and executed thousands of people.  In 1918, one of the people rounded up and arrested was Ossip Bernstein (1882-1962), a financial lawyer who was believed to be part of the problem with their pre-revolution society.  The Cheka lined him up along with others before a firing squad.  As he was awaiting his execution, watching the firing line assemble into position, an officer noticed Bernstein’s name on the list.  Was this the great Ossip Bernstein, the former chess champion of Moscow?  The officer asked Bernstein if he was really the chess master.  Bernstein said that he was.  The officer didn’t quite believe it, so he challenged Bernstein to a game of chess.  If Bernstein lost or drew a game of chess, he would be shot.  Bernstein won the game and was given freedom and allowed to walk away.  [source, Denker, The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories, 1995]In 1919, the Bolsheviks and the Cheka arrested Alexander Alekhine, charging him of being a spy and sentenced to be shot.  However, someone higher up (perhaps Leon Trotsky) intervened and he was released.  Afterwards, Alekhine joined the Communist Party.

Bronstein.On August 15, 1948, David Bronstein (1924-2006) won the first Interzonal at Saltjobaden (near Stockholm).  His prize was $550.  He survived an assassination attack during the Interzonal tournament.  On the last day, Bronstein was playing SaviellyTartakower.  Suddenly, a Lithuanian made a lunge at Bronstein to kill him. Several spectators grabbed the man. He wanted to murder all Russians because he claimed the Russians were responsible for sending his sister to Siberia and murdering her.  Bronstein won the game and the Interzonal with an undefeated 13.5-5.5 score.  [source: Salt Lake Tribune, August 16, 1948]Bronstein married GM Isaac Boleslavsky’s daughter.

Calvo.  Dr. Ricardo Calvo (1943-2002) was a Spanish medical doctor and International Master.  In 1987, Calvo was condemned by FIDE and declared Persona non Grata (an unwelcome person) by a vote of 72 to 1. The penalty was imposed for his racial attack on Latin Americans in New in Chess magazine. He admitted that he violated election ethics by offering free Kasparov simultaneous exhibitions to certain countries in exchange for their voting for MrLucena for FIDE president (Campomanes' opponent) in the recent FIDE elections. He also erroneously charged that a Latin American woman was beaten up by supporters of FIDE President Campomanes.Calvo died of esophagus cancer.  [source: “IM Dr. Ricardo Calvo, 1943-2002,” ChessBase News, September 26, 2002]

Cambridge Springs.In September 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) announced that he would offer a trophy to the winner of the Cambridge Springs International Chess Congress in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania. While regretting his inability to go to Cambridge Springs during the tournament he expressed his intention of tendering the competitors and committee a special reception at the White House. [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 19, 1903]  Cambridge Springs was the first international tournament in America in the 20th century, from April 25 to May 19, 1904. It was the first major international chess tournament in America since the Sixth American Chess Congress in 1889, held in New York. There would not be another major international chess tournament in American until the New York 1924 tournament.  SiegbertTarrasch (1862-1934) declined an invitation because of Emanuel Lasker’s presence.  They were not on speaking terms.  The tournament was held at the Rider Hotel (which later burned down), a huge complex that included 500 rooms and a bowling alley.  The eventual winner was Frank Marshall.  World champion Emanuel Lasker and David Janowski tied for 2^nd.  The moves 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Nbd7 5.Nf3 c6 6.e3 Qa5 is knows as the Cambridge Springs Defense. In 1988, the U.S. Chess championship was held in Cambridge Springs with 12 participants.  It was won by Michael Wilder.  Second-to-last place finisher, Lev Alburt, won more games (4) than the tournament winner (3).  [source: New in Chess, 1988.08, p. 84]

Canada.In 1758, the earliest documented chess game in Canada was played by Louis-Guillaume Verrier, Solicitor-General of Quebec and Hocquart, Intendant of Quebec.In 1759, General Sir John Hale (1728-1806) and General James Wolfe (1727-1759) played chess on their way over to the taking ofQuebec. The chess set that they used is now in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.In 1787, there was a chess club in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Its president was Richard Bulkeley (1717- 1800), Nova Scotia Director of Public Works.By the 1840s, there were chess clubs in Quebec and Kingston, Ontario.In 1841, the first correspondence chess game in Canada took place between the Quebec City and Kingston chess clubs.In 1844, the Montreal Chess Club (MCC) was formed. It s founding member was Thomas Workman (1813-1889).On September 24, 1872, the Chess Federation of Canada (CFC) was founded in Hamilton, Ontario. At the time, it was called the Canadian Chess Association (CCA).In 1932, it was replaced by the Canadian Chess Federation (CCF).  In 1872, the first Canadian chess book, 100 Gems of Chess, edited by Thomas D.S. Moore, was published by the Western Advertiser in Ontario.  In May 1873, Albert W. Ensor (1833?-1883) won the first completed Canadian championship, held in Toronto. Ensor was also the first Canadian to give a blindfold simultaneous exhibition. He once claimed that he was champion of all of England.  In 1873-74, Henry Robertson won the first Canadian correspondence tournament.In 1886, Nicholas MacLeod (1870-1965), age 16, won the Canadian Chess championship. He is the youngest player ever to win the championship. He won again in 1888.  [source: “Chess and Canada,” White Knight Review, January/February 2012, pp. 5-8]

Capablanca.On March 8, 1942, José Raúl Capablanca y Grauperadied in Manhattan at the age of 53.  A few days before, his doctor advised him that his life was endangered unless he totally relaxed.  Capablanca said that he couldn’t because his ex-wife and children had started court proceedings against him.  [source: Winter, “Capablanca’s Death,” Chess Notes blog, Dec 26 2019]  He collapsed at the Manhattan Chess Club the day before.  Capablanca was watching a three-way skittles chess game being played by Alfred Link, Sidney Kenton, and Charles Saxton.  Capablanca suddenly felt ill, asked for help removing his coat,  and then collapsed in a coma.  He never regained consciousness. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he died the next morning from "a cerebral hemorrhage provoked by hypertension."  Emanuel Lasker had died in the same hospital the year before. Capablanca's body was given a public funeral in Havana's Colón Cemetery a week later, with President Batista taking personal charge of the funeral arrangements. He was the third World Champion, reigning from 1921 until 1927.  At the time of his death, Capablanca was  the commercial attaché of the Cuban Embassy.[source: Harrisburg Evening News, March 9, 1942\

Car crash.  On May 30, 1937, Herman Steiner (1905-1955) was on his way back to Hollywood from the annual North-South chess match when he hit a car head-on. Steiner's passenger was Dr. Robert B. Griffith (1876-1937), who played Board 2 for the South (Steiner played Board 1). Griffith died in the car crash and the driver in the other car was critically injured. Dr. Griffith was a medical doctor for the Hollywood film industry. He was the physician for Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin.  In 1938, Mary Bain, Mrs. McCready and Miss Weart, returning from the US Open chess tournament in Boston were in a car accident after their car skidded on slippery pavement and crashed into a telegraph pole.  On February 17, 1940, New England chess champion, Harold Morton (1906-1940), died in Iowa after a car accident. His passenger, Al Horowitz (1907-1973), was seriously injured. They were travelling together giving tandem simultaneous chess exhibitions across the country. Morton was driving on the return trip from the west back to an exhibition in Minneapolis when he collided with a truck. Morton was killed instantly, and Horowitz suffered a concussion and other injuries. [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 22, 1940]  On April 1, 1945, former Hungarian champion Zoltan von Balla (1883-1945) died in Budapest when his car collided with a soviet tank.On January 1, 1948, Allen G. Pearsall (1877-1948), age 70, was struck by a car and was killed instantly in Chula Vista, California.  He was a member of the Correspondence Chess League of America and a member of the International Chess Olympiad, playing on the USA team.  He was returning home after playing chess at the San Diego Chess Club and had just stepped off of a street bus when hit. [source: Chula Vista Star, January 9, 1948]In 1950, 6 US Open participants were in a car accident after leaving Detroit. They were injured in an accident at Batavia, New York, when their car overturned on a rain-soaked road. The new crowned US Open Champion Arthur Bisguier broke a rib and had a gash in his forehead. Kit Crittenden, former North Carolina champion, broke his collar-bone. Larry Evans was badly bruised in the accident. Walter Shipman had to have leg put in a cast for an injured ankle  On April 27, 1954, Leon Tuhan-Baranowski (1907-1954) died in a car accident in Frankfurt, Germany. He was a Polish-Belarusian chess master.  In July 1955, Nancy Roos (1905-1957) was in a car accident just before the U.S. women's championship and had spinal injuries. She recovered to win the women's championship a few months later.  In 1960, Mikhail Tal was driving to the 14th Chess Olympiad in Leipzig, Germany when he got into a car accident. He was unable to play the first 3 rounds, but when he did show up to play, he played board 1 for the USSR. He won 8 and drew 6 games and only lost the final round, to Englishman Jonathan Penrose. That cost him the gold medal for board 1, and he settled for silver.  On August 31, 1961, chess master Norman Whitaker (1890-1975), chess expert Glenn Hartleb, and a 16-year-old boy were driving in Arkansas when they got into a car accident, killing Glenn Hartleb. Whitaker and Hartleb were too tired to drive, and they allowed the 16-year-old to drive. He lost control, hit a bridge abutment and overturned the car. They were returning home after playing in the US Open in San Francisco.  In 1962, Norman Whitaker drove from Germany to Oslo in his Volkswagen beetle and crashed his car when he reached Oslo. He was hospitalized for chest wounds for a few days after that.  On February 10, 1967, French master Pierre Rolland (1926-1967) died in a car accident. He was French champion in 1956.  In May 1974, Grandmaster LjubomirLjubojevic (1950- ) was severely injured in a car accident.  On November 8, 1977, Viktor Korchnoi, age 46, was injured in a car accident with a broken right hand and other injuries. Korchnoi's taxi collided with a Swiss army truck on its way to Zurich. The car rolled over three times. He asked for a postponement in his world championship semi-final match with Spassky. Raymond Keene was also a passenger, but not seriously injured.  In 1979, Milan Matulovic (1935-2013) was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and served 9 months in prison for a car accident in which a woman was killed.  In 1983, Hungarian Grandmaster Janos Flesch (1933-1983), while returning from the Kasparov-Korchnoi match in London to a chess tournament in Ramsgate, he became involved in a car accident. Both he and his wife died in the crash.  In 1988, International Master Bela Perenyi (1953-1988) of Hungary died in a car crash while driving from Hungary to the chess Olympad in Greece.  [source:New in Chess, 1988, #8, p. 4]In 1990, FIDE president Florencio Campomanes (1927-2010) barely escaped death as he had a car accident in Uganda. The president of the Uganda Chess Federation sitting next to him was killed.  In 1990, GM Guillermo Garcia (1953-1990) died in a car accident in Havana, Cuba while on his way to the airport to play in the 1990 Chess Olympiad in Novi Sad.  In 1998, David Hooper (1915-1998) was killed in a car accident in Somerset, England. He was 82. He was a former international player and author of several chess books.  On September 24, 2000, International Master JaanEslon (1952-2000) died from injuries after a car accident.  On February 18, 2001, USCF Executive Director Dr. George De Feis was injured in an auto accident while attending the US Amateur Team East tournament in New Jersey. He was in intensive care in Morristown, New Jersey and suffered a brain injury.  In 2001, 5 chess players died in a car wreck in India while going to an All-India chess tournament. They were part of a 10-member chess team that were involved in a head-on collision with a bus. The other 5 members were in critical condition.  In 2002, IlzeRubene (1958-2002) died in a car accident. She was a Latvian Woman International Master. In 1976 and 1995, she won the Latvian women's championship.  In May 2005, GM Nigel Short was in a car crash while driving from Messinia to Athens. His car was struck by an oncoming vehicle which had skidded uncontrollable off a wet bend. His passenger was Sergey Karjakin, who was the youngest grandmaster in the world.  In 2005, GM Alexander Stripunsky was in a car accident just before the 2005 US chess championship. He played his chess games wearing dark sunglasses to protect his left eye, which was badly injured in the accident  In 2006, WGM LilitMkrtchian was hospitalized after a car accident in Armenia.  In February 2007, Florencio Campomanes was involved in a car accident in Turkey that left him in intensive care. He was on his way to the airport for a return flight to the Philippines after the FIDE Presidential Board meeting in Antalya, Turkey when the driver lost control of the vehicle. The car overturned and plunged over the side of the road. Campomanes was sitting in the back seat and not wearing a safety belt. He was thrown from the car, which was badly damaged. Campomanes was operated on for 7 and 1/2 hours to repair broken bones in his legs, hands, neck and face.  On June 30, 2007, GM (1992) Maxim Sorokin (1968-2007) died of complications from a car accident that occurred while driving home from the Candidates matches in Elista, Kalmykia at the age of 39. He died in the Elista hospital several days after an auto crash on the road from Elista to Volgograd.  In 2008, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was in a car accident on the way to the airport in Kalmykia to go to the 38th Chess Olympiad in Dresden, Germany. He was unable to attend the opening ceremony.  On April 21, 2009, National Master Landon Brownell (1989-2009) died after a car accident near Bakersfield, California. He was 19. In 2006, he won the National High School Championship. In 2010, Tyrone Lee, a long-time Chicago chess player, was killed in a car accident while traveling to Tennessee.  In May 2011, GMShakhriyarMamedyarov was involved in a car accident. His Ranger Rover that he was driving collided with another vehicle in Sumgayit, Azerbaijan. He had minor injuries to his hand and right leg.  In October 2011, Grandmaster Eduardo Iturrizaga, the top player in Venezuela, got in a car wreck on his way to the airport to participate in a chess tournament in Barcelona. He was unable to make it to the tournament.   In April 2013, 6 members of the Melbourne, Australia Chess Club died in a car crash after returning from a chess tournament in Canberra.  [source: ChessBase News, April 3, 2013]  On August 8, 2013, GM Igor Kurnosov (1985-2013) died in Chelyabinsk, Russia at the age of 28. He was hit by a car as he was crossing the street in Chelyabinsk and died at the scene of the accident. He was killed on the spot at 2:45 am. He was one of the top 20 GMs in Russia, rated 2680 at his peak.  In August 2013, correspondence GM Mark Noble walked away from what could have been a fatal car crash. A car failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting the front end of Mark's car, just missing the driver's door.  On September 9, 2013, Alexander Bitman was killed by a hit-and-run car accident in Moscow. He was a chess master and co-developer of one of the first chess programs in the world.  In January 2015, Erich Spielman, age 92, was struck by a car driven by another 92-year-old in England and died. He was a chess player (winner of several club championships in Loughton) and the nephew of the famous chess player Rudolf Spielmann.

Chajes. Oscar Chajes (1873-1928), pronounce “HA-yes,” was an American chess master.  In 1909, he won the U.S, Open Chess Championship.  On September 24, 1911, Chajes tied for 23-26^th (last place) in Carlsbad, Bohemia, but won brilliancy prizes for his victories over SaviellyTartakower(1887-1956) and Julius Perlis (1880-1913).  Chajes, as Black, had an interesting game against Amos Burn (1848-1925) in the final round.  The Burn-Chajes game saw 5 queens on the board during play.  Chajes lost after 115 moves.  Burn, at one time, offered a draw, knowing that he was winning, but Chajes refused.  There were 4 queens on the board at the same time from move 77 to 92 in the queen-pawn ending.  It was the last round of the tournament and both players books space on ships which left in the evening of the following day.  They would have had to take an early morning train to get to the port of embarkation in time.  The outcome of the game was of no real importance.  Chajes played on in hope of getting a better score than last place.  The game lasted 15 hours and it was now dawn.  When the game was over, the remaining spectators and other players gave them a standing ovation.  The tournament organizers voted to create a special prize and award it to both players for their fighting spirit.  After Chajes was checkmated, both players rushed to their rooms to pack and make it to the railway station.  Both players missed their train.  Chajes had to wait a week before he could get another ship bound for New York. [source: Edward Lasker, Chess: The Complete Self-Tutor, 1973]

Chang.When Alex Chang was 5, he saw some other children with a chess trophy and begged his mother to let him join his school club. She thought he was too young , but decided to humor him. A year later, in 1983, as a first-grader the Richwood, W.Va., youngster of Taiwanese descent was national co-champion in the third-grade-and-under division.  In 1986, Alex Chang took 1^st place in the National Elementary Championship.  His older sister, Angela, took 2^nd place.  [source: Chess Life, August 1986, p. 24]

Charlemagne.The oldest chess anecdote found in old literature is that of Charlemagne (742-814), around 765, playing a chess match with the Prince of Bavaria. Charlemagne, first Holy Roman Emperor, became so enraged at the latter for having repeatedly beaten him, that he picked up the chess board and hit the prince so hard with the board that it killed the prince. [source: The Chess Player's Chronicle, November 1881, p. 555]At the Cabinet des Medailles, BibliothequeNationale in Paris, 16 pieces are on display with the official imprimatur as the Charlemagne chess set.  The Charlemagne chess set may be the most famous chess set in the world, despite the consensus opinion by historians that he never once played the game,   Legend has it that an exquisite set of  chessmen was presented to Charlemagne as a gift from Caliph Harun al-Rashid.

Checkmate.  There are 8 different ways to checkmate in two moves.  There are 347 different ways to checkmate in three moves.  There are 10,828 different ways to checkmate in four moves.  The term checkmate is an alteration of the Persian phrase “Sha mat” which means “the king is helpless.”

Chess Club.  In 1550, the first chess club was organized in Italy.  In 1854, the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Cub in San Francisco was formed.  It is the oldest chess club still in existence.  In 1877, the Manhattan Chess Club was founded.  In closed in 2002.[source: “The World’s Oldest Chess Club, ChessBase News, June 24, 2009 and “Chess Clubs,” White Knight Review, March/April 2012, p. 17]

Cleveland.Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) (22^nd and 24^th U.S. President in 1885-1889 and 1893-1897) was a chess player. In September 1885, he visited the Eden Muséein New York while the chess automaton Ajeeb was being displayed. Cleveland's Vice-President, Thomas Hendricks (1819-1885), was with Cleveland at the time. Hendricks played Ajeeb and lost in a smothered mate. In September 1885, Grover had one of his chess games published in the International Chess Magazine.In 1893, he consented to become a patron for the New York Chess Congress (Columbian Chess Congress) and was to present to the winner of the tournament a $500 gold medal. This is the first time in the history of American chess that the game had been honored by the gift of a prize for a tourney from the head of the republic. However, the "Panic of 1893" overtook events and the tournament was cancelled.[source: British Chess Magazine, Volume 13, 1893, p. 310 and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 9, 1893]  Grover Cleveland is my 7^th cousin, four times removed.

Correspondence Chess.A correspondence chess game was thought to be played in 1119 by King Henry I (1068-1135) of England and King Louis VI (1081-1137) of France. Moves were dispatched through the use of couriers. [source: Golombek, Encyclopedia of Chess] In 1673, Thomas Hyde (1634-1703) wrote De LudisOrientalibus (the Book of Oriental Games). This book, first published in 1694, documented correspondence games between Venetian and Croatian merchants as early as 1650.  In September 1706, a player by the name of M. Caze wrote a letter to Lord Sunderland recommending a correspondence chess match between Paris and London to test a chess variant. The proposed correspondence match never took place. [source: Murray, A History of Chess, 1913, p.845]In 1804, the earliest known postal game was between a Prussian army lieutenant colonel named Freidrich Wilhelm von Mauvillon (1774-1851) stationed at Breda, Netherlands, and one of his friends stationed at The Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands.  The two cities were about 40 miles apart. Mauvillon's chess games (winning two and drawing one) were published in his chess book in 1827.   In the 18th century, Frederick the Great (1712-1786) played a correspondence game with Voltaire (1694-1778) by royal courier between Potsdam and Paris (530 miles). Katherine the Great is also said to have been one of Voltaire's correspondence chess partners.  The first well known correspondence challenge was the Edinburgh — London chess club match, from April 24, 1824 to July 31, 1828.  The match was scheduled to continue until two decisive games were completed.  Draws did not count (there were 2 draws — games 1 and 3).  Edinburgh (headed by John Donaldson) made the first move on 4 of the 5 games. Edinburgh won, 2-1.  Several newspapers published the moves and for the first time a wide readership could study the games of contemporary players. The letters were carried a distance of nearly 400 miles by mail coach travelling day and night. The letters and moves were delivered within two days. Each letter from London to Edinburgh cost 1 shilling 1 pence (over $4 in today's currency).  In 1824, a group of players from Leeds started a correspondence chess game against some players from Liverpool. Play lasted for about 3 months in favor of the Leeds team, which won in 47 moves. [source: Leeds Mercury, Oct 15, 1825, p. 2, and Kaleidoscope, Oct 11, 1825, pp. 116-117] In November 1828, the first known private correspondence match was started between E. Houlston, Jr. (London) and his father, H. Houlston (Wellington).  H. Houlston won.  In 1829, two correspondence chess games were played between the old Berlin Chess Club and the Breslau Chess Club.  It lasted until 1833.  Berlin won both games, with the help of Julius Mendheim. [source: British Chess Magazine, 1899, p. 408]  In February 1834, the Westminster Chess Club (No. 20, Bedford Street, Covent Garden) in London began a correspondence chess match with the Paris Chess Club.  Each side put up 50 British pounds, winner take all. JacquestChamouillet (1783-1872) was in the committee of Paris in the London vs. Paris correspondence match, and he convinced the Paris team to adopt the defense advocated by Jacques Mouret (1787-1837), which became known as the French Defense. By October 1836, Paris won both games in the match, with the help of Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant (1800-1872). [source: Chess, the Match by Correspondence, Recently Played by the Chess Clubs of Paris and Westminster, 1837]  In 1835, the first U.S. major correspondence chess match was played between the New York Chess Club and the Federal City Chess Club in Washington DC.  Play was interrupted in 1839 and there was no official result. [source: Chess Life, June 5, 1951]  In February 1838, two correspondence games were played between the New York City Chess Clubs and Washington DC Chess Clubs.  In New York, the games were played at Bassford's club room.  [source: NY Evening Post, Feb 21, 1838]   New York won the first game and the second game was a draw. [source: Bell's Life, July 12, 1840]  In January 1839, the Ballinasloe Chess Club in the Galway County, Ireland, played the earliest known Irish correspondence match. They defeated The Philidorean Society of Dublin after two games, winning one game and drawing the other. [source: Bell's Life, Jan 5, 1840]  On January 10, 1840, Sir Rowland Hill (1795-1879) introduced the Uniform Penny Post. The penny post was established throughout Britain in which normal letters could be sent for one penny. The penny post gave considerable impetus to chess by correspondence. About a dozen correspondence chess matches started between individuals dwelling in remote parts of Britain. [source: Bell's Life, Jan 26, 1840]  In 1840, the New York Chess Club played the Norfolk Chess Club in Norfolk, Virginia in a correspondence chess game.  The New York Chess Club won one game, which finished in June 1842, and drew a second game, which finished in 1843. One of the players for the Norfolk team was Littleton Tazewell, former Governor of Virginia. The New York Chess Club won a handsome chess board and pieces. [sources: Chess Life, June 5, 1951, Bell's Life, July 24, 1842, Panola Times (Mississippi), Jul 29, 1843, and Chess Player's Chronicle, vol. 4, 1843, p. 247]   On April 9-10, 1844, Samuel Morse claimed to have played the first game of chess by telegraph using the newly completed 38-mile line between Washington, DC and Baltimore.  On November 23, 1844, some players in Baltimore (Charles Howard, W. Habersham, and James McHenry) challenged any three members of the Washington Chess Club in Washington, DC to a telegraph chess match. The two cities were the first to be linked by an American telegraph. The chess games were played to test the accuracy of the telegraph as well as for the players own amusement. On November 26, the chess game was started. The Washington DC players were Col Gardiner, Mr. Dexter, and Dr. Condict. The Baltimore team won. Seven games were played.  In 1849, a chess game won by the Shrewsbury School against Brighton College may be the earliest preserved inter-school correspondence game known.[source: Illustrated London News, Dec 29, 1849]  In 1853, two ships, the Barham and the Wellesley, played a correspondence game while sailing on their last homeward voyage from Calcutta to London. They used optical signaling systems between them to make their moves. [source: The Anglo-American Magazine, 1853, p. 216]  In late 1870, the first correspondence chess club, the Caissa Correspondence Club, was founded in England.  The club sponsored correspondence tournaments and matches. It initially had only 12 members, rising to 14 members in 1875. The club lasted four years.   In 1953, Cecil John Seddon Purdy (1906-1979) won the first world correspondence chess championship (1950-1953).  In 1958, the All Service Postal Chess (ASPC) Club was formed. [source: Chess Life, Nov 1970, p. 644]In January 1961, CliffardAntcliff, a lawyer from Indiana, wondered why there was a delay in the chess game he was conducting by mail with an unknown chess player in Massachusetts.  He later discovered his adversary was an inmate of a penal institution and had been thrown in solitary confinement for trying to escape.  [source: High Point, NC Enterprise, Jan 17, 1961]In 1985, Nick Down, a former British Junior Correspondence champion, entered the British Ladies Correspondence Championship as Miss Leigh Strange and won the event (and 15 British pounds along with the Lady Herbert trophy). He then signed up to represent Britain in the Ladies Postal Olympiad. He was later caught when one of his friends mouthed off about it and Nick confessed. The whole thing had been cooked up by Nick Down and a group of undergraduates at Cambridge, where Nick was a student. Nick returned the Lady Herbert trophy and was banned from the British Correspondence Chess Association for two years.

Cuba.Chess is mentioned as being played in Cuba in 16^th century books.  In February-March 1952, there was an international chess tournament in Havana.  During the event, there was a revolution in Cuba.  The President who sponsored the tournament was deposed.  The Mexican entrants were recalled by their government.  The Cuban chess champion, Juan Quesada, age 40, died of a heart attack during the event on March 14.  His funeral was attended by all the masters participating in the tournament.  Reshevsky and Najdorf tied for 1^st, each winning $2,000.  [source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, March 21, 1952]

Dadian.Prince Andria Dadian (1850-1910) of Mingrelia was a Georgian nobleman and a chess patron.  In 1873, he graduated from the law school at Heidelberg University and was fluent in 6 languages.  He later served as a lieutenant-general in the Russian army.  Prince Dadian was sponsor of the 1903 Monte Carlo international chess tournament.  He invited Mikhail Chigorin(1850-1908) to play in the event, but later paid him 1,500 francs( greater than 2rd place prize money) not to play.  Prince Dadian had learned that Chigorin published analysis of one of Dadian’s chess games, pointing out several gross errors by the prince.  The offended the prince so much that he un-invited Chigorin to the tournament.  At the end of the tournament, Tarrasch and Maroczy tied for 1^st place.  A valuable art object was to go to the winner of a short match between the two.  However, the players also wanted some more money for whoever won.  This annoyed the prince that he gave the valuable art object to the 3^rd place finisher, Harry Pillsbury.[sources: “leaders of European Chess,” American Chess Magazine, 1898, p. 109 and “The Extraordinary Prince Dadian,’ Kingston Chess Club web site and “Prince Dadian – Real Player, Fake Games,” Tartajubow on Chess II blog, October 22, 2018]

Denker.Arnold Sheldon Denker (1914-2006) was U.S. chess champion in 1944 and 1946.  In 1944, Denker, the new U.S. chess champion, was interviewed at his Forest Hills apartment, “Back in 1936, the Russian government offered me a professorship in chess at a certain university.  It was a lucrative offer, but I did not care to leave my own country.  Naturally, I felt like going to a land where chess means so much – where crows of from 50,000 to 90,000 gather to watch a chess match.  It was a tempting offer.”  Denker was a representative of a firm of distributers of canned goods.  He was a former New York golden gloves boxer.  [source: The News-Herald (Franklin, PA), May 12, 1944]Denker won the Manhattan Chess Club championship 6 times. 

Died playing chess.On March 18, 1584 (old style), Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) died of a stroke while playing chess against his adviser, Bogdan Belsky.  On June 20, 1888, Johann Zukertort (1842-1888) died of a stroke while playing chess at Simpson’s, a London coffee-house. While playing a chess game with Sylvain Meyer, Zukertort fainted. Instead of calling for medical help, he was taken to the British Chess Club in an unconscious state. They then took him to Charing Cross Hospital where they diagnosed the problem as a cerebral attack. He never regained consciousness, and died at 10 a.m. the next day. The cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage. At the time, Zukertort was also in the middle of a tournament at the British Chess Club and was in 1st place. He was scheduled to play a match with Blackburne on June 23, 1888 and Bird on June 26, 1888.  On June 3, 1923, Sam Katz was playing a game against Louis Silverman at the Pitkin Chess Club in New York.  Katz made a move which resulted in the loss of Silverman’s queen.  The shock of losing his queen caused Silverman to have a heart attack.  He died at the chess board.  Silverman was only 47.  [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 4, 1923]On February 4, 1926, Rev. Dr. Frederick Gotweald, 58, died of a heart attack while playing chess at the YMCA in York, Pennsylvania.[source: Evening News (Harrisburg), February 5, 1926]In May 1931,Andors Wachs of Hungary had just checkmated his opponent at a chess club in Hungary. He then dropped his head on the table and died of a heart attack.  On December 14, 1934, Paul Saladin Leonhardt (1877-1934) died of a heart attack while playing chess at a chess club in Konigsberg, East Prussia.  On January 21, 1941, Arthur Harris, age 65, had the honor of meeting and playing an exhibition match with I.A. Horowitz in Kansas City, Missouri.  Harris told friends at the Kansas City Chess Club that he was about to experience the greatest thrill of his life playing Horowitz.  Then he sat down at the chess table opposite Horowitz about to make his first move.  A moment later, Harris slumped across the table.  He had died of a heart attack from the excitement. [source: Amarillo Daily News, January 22, 1941]   In January 1949, James Durran, age 67, second officer of the S.S. Tahsis in the Pacific Ocean, suffered a heart attack during a chess game and died. [source: Long Beach Independent, January 8, 1949]In 1952, Juan Quesada, Cuban chess champion, died of a heart attack during an international tournament in Havana.   November 20, 1954, Harry Bedford, the No. 1 chess player for the Toronto Chess Club team, collapsed and died of a heart attack during a chess team match against the Port Colborne Chess Club.  He was 73. [source: Ottawa Journal, Nov 22, 1954]On November 25, 1955, Herman Steiner died of a heart attack after a California State Championship game in Los Angeles. He was defending his state championship title and finished his 5th round game (a 62-move draw against William Addison). He then said he felt unwell, so his afternoon game was postponed. About two hours later, around 9:30 pm, Steiner had a heart attack while being attended by a physician. By agreement of the players, the 1955 California State Championship tournament was cancelled.  On January 7, 1960, Frederick Borders, who won acclaim on British TV as a human calculating machine, died of a heart attack while trying to solve a chess puzzle.  He was 62.  He was found by his wife dead in a chair with a chess puzzle and a chess board in front of him.  Borders won $3,000 by answering mental arithmetic teasers in a television quiz show in 1959. [source: The Berkshire Eagle, Jan 9, 1960]On July 31, 1965, E. Forry Laucks (1897-1965), founder of the Log Cabin Chess Club, collapsed of a heart attack and died after the 6th round of the U.S. Open in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  On May 26, 1967, Gideon Stahlberg (1908-1967) died of a heart attack during the 1967 Leningrad International chess tournament.  On September 25, 1968, Russian grandmaster Vladimir Simagin (1919-1968) died of a heart attack while playing in a chess tournament in Kislovodsk, Russia. [source: San Bernardino County Sun, September 27, 1968]  In 1970, Charles Khachiyan, President of the New Jersey Chess Association, died of a heart attack while playing chess at the Montclair Chess Club in New Jersey.  On November 6, 1979, Cecil Purdy (1906-1979) died of a heart attack while playing chess in the Sydney, Australia chess championship. His opponent was Ian Parsonage. His last words were, “I have a win, but it will take some time.”  On September 10, 1983, Romanian GM Victor Ciocaltea died of a heart attack at the chess table while playing in a tournament in Manresa, Spain.  He was 51.  On April 19, 1985, JozefGromek died during a blitz game in Poland. He was 53. In 1955, he had won the Polish chess championship.In 2000, Latvian grandmaster Aivars Gipslis (1937-2000) died of a stroke while playing chess in Berlin. He was playing for a local Berlin chess club when he collapsed from a stroke during the chess game. He died in a German hospital after being in a coma for several weeks.  In 2000, GMVladimir Bagirov (1936-2000) died of a heart attack when in a winning position in a tournament game in Finland. He had just finished a move while in time pressure and his flag fell. As both players moved to a separate board to reconstruct the game, he collapsed and died.  In 2004, at the Canadian Open, Donal Hervieux collapsed and died over the chess board while playing a FIDE master during round 8.  In July 2007, Bernard Papet, age 73, died right after completing his 10th round game in the Veteran’s French championship. On January 17, 2010, Dale S. Lyons of Milton, Vermont, died of a heart attack while attending a chess tournament in New Hampshire. He suffered a fatal heart attack between the 3rd and 4th rounds of the Portsmouth Open. He was 60 years old.  On the final day of the 2014 Chess Olympiad,  Alisher Anarkulov of Uzbekistan died in his hotel room.  This was just after Kurt Meier of the Seychelles team died while playing his final round match.[source: The Guardian, August 15, 2014 and “Deaths at the Chess Olympiad,” ChessBase News, August 16, 2014] [further reference: “Death and Chessplayers,” White Knight Review, March/April 2012, pp. 27-30]

Divorce.In March 1920, Alexander married Alexandra Batayeva, a Russian baroness several years older than he. They divorced the next year. In March 1921, he married Anneliese Ruegg, a Swiss woman journalist, who was 13 years older than he. In June 1921, he divorced his second wife in Paris and went to Berlin. In 1927, he married his third wife, NadiezdaVasiliev (nee Fabritzky), another older woman, the widow of the Russian general V. Vasiliev.  They later divorced.  His fourth wife, Grace Freeman Wishard (1876-1956) was a chess player. They were married in 1934. She was 16 years older than he.In September1925, Mrs. June Sawyer was granted a divorce from her husband, Barritt Sawyer of Philadelphia, on the charge of cruel and barbarous treatment.  Mrs. Sawyer alleged that her husband lost control and hit and beat her following chess games in which she defeated him in a game of chess.  [source:Delaware County Daily Times, September 23, 1925]  In 1927, the artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1978) married his first wife, Lydie, and went on their honeymoon.  One night, she glued all of his chess pieces to the chess board because he spent his honeymoon week studying chess.  They were divorced 3 months later.Reuben Fine first married Charlotte Margoshes in 1937. They were divorced in 1938.  His second marriage was to Emma Thea Keesing (1916-1960) in 1939. She was a newspaper reporter in the Netherlands. They were divorced in 1944. His third marriage was to Sonya Lebeaux of New York City in 1946. They had 2 children together, Benjamin and Ellyn. They were soon divorced.  His 5th marriage was to Marcia Fine.In April 1963, Mrs. EdvigeRuinstein, the wife of a chessplayer in Milan, Italy was granted a separation (there was no divorce in Italy) from her husband, Alfredo Ruinstein, age 43, on the grounds that he was so obsessed with chess that he refused to work and support their two children.  The court ordered the husband to pay 25,000 lire monthly allowance.  The court decision read, “Playing chess would be all right if at the same time he would also have looked after his family’s needs.” [source: Delaware County Daily Times, Apr 13, 1963]In 1987, USSR Women’s World Chess Championship contenderWGM Elena Akhmilovskaya (1957-2012) divorced her husband in Russia and married International Master (IM) John Donaldson after they eloped from the Thessaloniki Chess Olympiad in 1988.  They divorced later.  In 1995, she married IM Georgie Orlov.

Draw.In 1963, the shortest drawn World Championship game, 10 moves, was played between Mikhail Botvinnik and Tigram Petrosian.  In 1966, the game Filipowicz-Smederevac was drawn in 70 moves under the 50-move rule, without any piece or pawn having been captured.  It was played at PolanicaZdroj, Poland. [source: Whyld, ‘Quotes and Queries,’ British Chess Magazine, March 1985]  In 1989, the game Nikolic-Arsovic, is the longest draw, which lasted 269 moves and took over 20 hours to play.  In 1999, the Petrosian Memorial had the highest percentage of draws in a tournament.  42 of the 45 (93.3%)  games were drawn.  Five of the 10 players drew all of their games.

Duchamp.Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was a renowned artist (father od Dadaism) and chess player.  In 1910, he began painting chess players playing chess.  In 1925, he competed in the French chess championship, scoring 50 percent.  In 1933, he represented France in the 1933 chess Olympiad.  From December 12, 1944 to January 31, 1945, Duchamp organized an "Imagery of Chess" exhibition at the Marshall Chess Club and the Julien Levy Gallery in Manhattan. He invited artists to redesign the standard chess sets or create works that explored the symbolism of chess. Duchamp designed the catalog and was the arbiter in a blindfold match given by George Koltanowski(1903-2000) on 7 boards, played on January 6, 1945. The seven players were: Julien Levy, Frederick Kiesler, Alfred Barr, Vittorio Rieti, Schawinsky, Dorothea Tanning, and Max Ernst. Marcel Duchamp was his teller who called out the moves. Koltanowski won 6 and drew one (to Kiesler).  Duchamp famously remarked that “While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” [sources: The New Yorker, Jan 6, 1945 and McClain, “Duchamp as a Chess Player, New York Times, October 11, 2009]In 1961, in order to raise funds for sending an American chess team abroad, Duchamp persuaded eminent painters to donate some of their work for the cause.  Duchamp visited the set of Paris Blues to teach Duke Ellington (1899-1974) to play chess.  Ellington watched Duchamp demonstrate the fundamental moves, then made his sole comment, “Crazy, man, crazy.”   [source: Daily News-Texan, May 10, 1961]

Earthquake.In April 1906, the earthquake and fire in San Francisco destroyed the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club, the only chess club in the city.The Mechanics’ Institute Library contained over 250,000 books.The 1980 Italian Chess Championship was postponed until 1981 because of an earthquake.  The 1980 Irpinia earthquake took place in the Irpina region in southern Italy on November 23, 1980, measuring 6.89 on the Richter Scale.  [source: Chess Life, September 1981, p. 13]

Edmondson.  Edmund Broadley Edmondson, Jr.(1920-1982) was the former president (1963-1966) and executive director (1966-1975) of the U.S. Chess Federation (USCF).  In the 1060s, he was the President of the Texas Chess Association,  He was instrumental in getting Bobby Fischer to play Boris Spassky for the 1972 World Chess Championship.  The Edmondson trophy goes to the winner of the National Open, which he helped establish in 1965.  He was a navigator on KC-135 tanker aircraft and retired as an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel.  In 1977, at the U.S. Open, I defeated Ed in the final round of the putt-putt golf championship,  In 1982, he died of a heart attack while playing chess on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii.  He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1995.  [sources: “Edmund Broadley Edmundson, Jr.” U.S, Chess Hall of Famewebsite and New York Times, Oct 30, 1982]

Einstein.  Contrary to published statements, Albert Einstein did not play chess.  He also didn’t play bridge either.  He said that bridge was work, not relaxation.  For relaxation, he walked or played the piano or violin.  [source: The Daily News (Canonsburg, PA), April 8, 1936]In 1936, he told a reported that he played chess as a boy and have been good friend with Emanuel Lasker since 1927.  In an interview with the New York Times in 1936, Einstein said, “I do not play any games.  There is no time for it.  When I get through work, I don’t want anything which requires the working of the mind.”

Endurance.  On January 11, 1965, three Ohio State University students claimed the world endurance record for chess players.  Karl Stechle, Carl Jackman, and John Phythian stayed at the chess board for 58 straight hours.  [source: Dover, Ohio Daily Reporter, Jan 11, 1965]On August 9, 1968, Auckland student Glenn Turner, age 20, completed 68 hours of nonstop chess, claiming a new world record.  He played 535 games before quitting.  He was the 1968 Auckland University chess champion.[source: Logan Daily News, Ohio, Aug 9, 1968]

Everest.In 1982, a chess tournament was held on Mount Everest (8,848 meters or 29,029 feet high) at a base camp at 7,000 meters (22,965 feet). Eight players took place.  In 2997, Michael Schimmer of Frankfurt, Germany played several games of chess with the main tour guide at the altitude of 5,200 meters.  [source: “The highest level chess tournament in history?” ChessBase News, Jan 25, 2010]  In 2019, the first Mount Everest Chess Championship was held, with 13 players, all from Nepal..  It was won by JashirSendang.  [source: chess-results.com, Sep 27, 2019]

Fagan.  Louisa Matilda Fagan (née Ballard) (1850-1931) was an Italian-British female chess master.  She was born in Naples, Italy of an American father and an Italian mother.  She married an Irishman, J.G. Fagan, who was an officer with the Bombay Lancers.  In 1882, while living in Bombay, she won a chess tournament in which 12 men took part.  She scored 12-0, winning all her games against all the men.  However, she was disqualified because she was a woman playing at the Bombay Gymkhana Sports Club who membership was confined to men.  She appealed this decision in court and won.  Back in England, she was one of the founding members of the Ladies’ Chess Club in London.  The club boasted 100 women members at its peak and the club lasted until after World War I.  In 1897, she took 2^nd place, behind Mary Rudge, in the first Ladies’ International Chess Congress, held in London. [sources: British Chess Magazine, 1897, p. 289 and British Chess Magazine, 1931, pp. 456-457]

Ferdinand of Portugal.Around 1213, Prince Ferdinand of Portugal (1188-1233), the Count of Flanders, lost a chess game to his wife, Joan (1194-1244), Countess of Flanders and the daughter of Baldwin IX (1172-1205), count of Flanders and first emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople.  Ferdinand got so mad at being beaten by his wife in a game of chess that he hit her with his fists.  In revenge, she left her husband in French captivity from 1214 to 1226, refusing to ransom him after he was imprisoned by the French during the Battle of Bouvines.  He died at the age of 45. [source: Murray, History of Chess, 1913, p. 436]

Fight.In 1954, the Argentine Chess Federation called off the national tournament after a chess player punched a referee.  [source: Chess Review, December 1954, p. 358]  In 1960, a U.S. sailor, Michael George got in a fight with a spectator, Clinton Curtis, in a Greenwich Village bar when Curtis criticized the George’s chess game.  George  struck Curtis with a broken beer bottle, which struck his jugular vein and killed him.  [source: Anderson Herald, June 2, 1960]  George was eventually acquitted of murder and was charged with accidental death instead.In July 1957, Alexander Piotrowski was playing chess with Kazimierz Oslecki on the lawn on their jointly-owned house in Clapton, England. Osiecki captured Piotrowski's queen without saying "guard" when he threatened it on the previous move. Piotrowski told Osiecki to take the move back. Osiecki refused. That's when Piotrowski picked up a garden chair and hit Oslecki. Oslecki then picked up the wooden chess board and threw the board in Piotrosski's face. A more serious fight then broke out. Both players were then sent to the hospital with a fractured rib and assorted cuts and bruises. The case went to court in London. The magistrate observed that this was the first chess match in 2,000 years to send both participants to the hospital. He declared the match to be a draw and dismissed both charges. [source: The Ottawa Journal, July 18, 1957)]In the 1959, a Russian scientist got into a fight and killed another colleague with an axe after losing a chess game at the Vostok Research Station in the Antarctic.In May 1962, during the Candidates Tournament in Curacao, Bobby Fischer and Pal Benko got into a fight after Fischer asked Arthur Bisguier to assist him during an adjournment.  But Benko also wanted Bisguier to help with his own adjournment with Tigran Petrosian.  Benko supposedly insulted Fischer and Benko responded by slapping Fischer.In 1966, Mikhail Tal got into a bar fight and was beaten up and hit on the head with a beer bottle during the 1966 Olympiad in Havana.  He was drinking and had been flirting with a woman in a bar when her jealous boyfriend got in a fight with Tal.  He missed the first five rounds of the Havana Chess Olympiad because of his injuries.In 1981, future grandmaster John Fedorowicz and grandmaster Andras Adorjan got into a fistfight at the Edward Lasker Memorial on New York. Fedorowicz was upset that Adorjan beat him when Adorjan was drawing all his earlier games. Most of the blows landed not on each other, but on the tournament director, Eric Schiller (1955-2018), who was trying to break up the fight.   In 1989, during the French championship, IM Gilles Andruet and IM Jean-Luc Seret got into a violent fight over an argument whether Andruet resigned before Seret checkmated him. After the fight, Andruet needed 8 stitches and had to withdraw from the tournament, despite the fact that he was in the lead after 10 of 14 rounds.In March 1997, two teenagers got into a fight over a school chess game. 13-year-old John Slack was in critical condition. His 15-year-old opponent was arrested on an assault charge.In 2002, two players got into a fight at the World Open in Philadelphia when one of the players threw a basketball at another player between rounds.In October 2004, the FIDE vice president, Zurab Azmaiparashvili, was punched, wrestled to the floor and dragged to jail by a group of security agents.  During the closing ceremonies, he tried to get closer to the stage, but security people stepped in front of him, bushed him back, and assaulted him.In October 2008, David Christian of Iowa City got in a fight with Michael Steward while playing a game of chess at the rooming house where they both lived.  He was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.  Christian choked Steward to death.

Fire.In 1883, the Milwaukee Chess Club burned down.  In 1890, the New Orleans Chess Club burned down, destroying all its Paul Morphy memorabilia.  On December 29, 1930, Alexander Alekhine nearly escaped death from asphyxia or burning.  He fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth at a hotel in Esseg, Yugoslavia.  The lighted cigarette dropped from his mouth and set the bed linen on fire.  Alekhine awoke and tried to reach the door in his hotel, but fell to the floor unconscious.  Hotel clerks responded to the fire and entered the room just in time to rescue Alekhine and to extinguish the fire.[source: The Winnipeg Tribune, December 29, 1930]

Fischer.  On January 17, 1951 Bobby Fischer (1943-2008), age 7, played a game against Senior Master and U.S. Speed Chess Champion Dr. Max Pavey (1918-1957), who was giving a simultaneous chess exhibition at the Grand Army Plaza Library in Brooklyn. Bobby lost in15 minutes (he lost a Queen) and burst into tears when he lost the game. Another player, EdmarMednis (1937-2002), age 14, also participated in this simul and drew.  Pavey took on 13 players that evening.  Fischer later admitted that his loss to Pavey had a great effect in motivating him to get better at chess.   The January 18, 1951 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle said this about the exhibition.  “In his exhibition at the library, Pavey played 13 games with different opponents without losing one.  He drew two games against EdmarMednis, a junior member of the Marshall Chess Club, and Sylvan Katske.  The other 11, including eight-year-old (sic) Bobby Fischer, were defeated.”  Max Pavey's 1951 USCF rating was 2442 (#15 in the US and about #90 in the world).   Watching in the crowd was Carmine Domenico Nigro (1910-2001), president of the Brooklyn Chess and Checkers Club, located in the old Brooklyn Academy of Music. After the game, Carmine (rated 2028) went up to Regina and Bobby and invited Bobby to join his club.  He told Regina Fischer, Bobby’s mother, that Bobby would not have to pay any membership dues At the time, Nigro was teaching chess to his son, William, and offered to tutor Bobby Fischer as well. William was uninterested in chess, and Carmine increased William's allowance if William agreed to take a lesson in chess. Bobby couldn't wait to have a lesson every Saturday and became absorbed in the game.   William was slightly younger that Bobby.  The very next evening, Regina took Bobby to the Brooklyn Chess Club, headed by Carmine Nigro. Bobby, age 7 (but looked 5), was the first child permitted to join the Brooklyn Chess Club (there were also no women chess members).  On that first night, Bobby lost every game at the club.  Despite his losses, Bobby continued to show up at the Brooklyn Chess Club. [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan 18, 1951, p. 23]On May 21-22, 1955, Bobby Fischer played in his first U.S. Chess Federation (USCF) tournament. He scored 2.5 points (out of 6) in the U.S. Amateur Championship in Lake Mohegan, New York (played at the Mohegan Country Club). Carmine Nigro took him to the event. Fischer, age 12, only wanted to watch, but was persuaded to play by Nigro. Nigro paid the $5 entry fee for Bobby and his USCF membership.  The only known Fischer game from this event was Humphrey-Fischer in round 6. Fischer drew that game. Fischer won 2, drew 1, and lost 3 (2.5-3.5). He tied for 33rd place. The event was won by Clinton L. Parmalee of New Jersey and organized by Kenneth Harkness (1896-1972). There were 75 entrants. The event was open to anyone except rated masters (masters were anyone rated 2300 or over). Fischer’s post-tournament provisional USCF rating was 1826. [source: Chess Life, June 5, 1955 and Chess Review, June 1955, p. 164]In July 1956, Bobby Fischer took first place at the 11^th Annual U.S. Junior Championship (July 1-7) in Philadelphia with 8 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss (8.5-1.5). He became the youngest-ever junior chess champion at age 13, a record that still stands (he placed 20^th with 5-5 at Lincoln, Nebraska in 1955). The event was held at the Franklin Mercantile Chess Club with Bill Ruth as tournament director, assisted by D. A. Gianguilio. Fischer's USCF rating after this event was 2321, making him a master at age 13 years, 3 months, 29 days and ranked #33 in the nation. He had become the youngest chess master in history. The rating was not published until August of 1956. There were 28 participants from 12 states and Canada. He was interviewed and said he liked rock and roll music and was a Brooklyn Dodger fan.[source: Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Aug 3, 1956]On January 8, 1958 Robert James Fischer at age 14 years and 9 months won the 1957/58 U.S. Championship and Zonal with 8 wins, 5 draws and no losses. He drew his last round with Abe Turner. His score of 10.5/13 was a point more than 4-time champion Sammy Reshevsky, who lost in the final round (Reshevsky took 2nd place). The event was played at the Manhattan Chess Club and Marshall Chess Club. At 14, he became the youngest US champion in history, a record that still stands. His USCF rating after the event was 2722. His USCF rating average for 1957 was 2626, and #2 in the USCF (behind Samuel Reshevsky at 2713). Players over 2600 were considered American Grandmasters, so Reshevsky and Fischer were the only grandmasters with the USCF. He now qualified for the 1958 Interzonal in Portoroz. Since this was a Zonal event, he qualified for the Interzonal and was given the International Master (IM) title by FIDE at the age of 14 years, 10 months. Except for Santa Monica 1966, Bobby Fischer would win every U.S. tournament he played in. On the entrance to the chess tournament hall, someone posted a sign that read "Spectators are requested not to snore in the tournament room." [source: Lubbock Evening Journal, Jan 10, 1958]In May 1958,  Fischer, age 15, appeared on the television show I've Got a Secret and stumped the panel, which included Dick Clark (his secret was that he was U.S. chess champion). The made-up newspaper headline for Bobby was "Teen-Ager's Strategy Defeats all Newcomers." Dick Clark asked if what he did made people happy. Fischer responded, "It made me happy." Garry Moore asked him how long he had been playing chess. Fischer responded that he had been playing since he was six, but that he had not been playing seriously until age 9.On October 10, 1977, Bobby Fischer was accused of forcing his way into Holly Ruiz’s apartment in Pasadena and assaulting here over a story she helped write about him for the Ambassador Report, a magazine printed by the Worldwide Church of God.  The story, “Bobby Fischer Speaks Out,” was based on tape-recorded interviews with Fischer in which he was critical of the church.  Fischer threatened to hurt her and said, “I’m going to smash your face in.” [source: The Fremont Argus, Nov 16, 1977]

Ftáčnik.ĽubomírFtáčnik (1957- ) is a Slovak grandmaster (1980) and former European Junior Chess Champion (1976/77).  His older brother was the mayor of Bratislava from 2011 to 2014.  His twin brother is a physicist at the Physics Department of the Comenius University in Bratislava.  [source: New in Chess, March 1985, pp. 36-39]

Garcia.GM Guillermo García (1953-1990) won the championship of Cuba 3 times (1974, 1977, 1983).  In 1988, he took clear 2^nd place in the New York Open International.  His $10,00 prize was confiscated by the U.S. Department of Treasury, invoking the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917 because he was Cuban.  VassilyIvanchuk, a Soviet who won the tournament was allowed to return him with the $20,000 first prize because the law did not apply to the USSR.  Garcia’s money was placed in a blocked, interest-bearing account in his name in a U.S. bank.  The money was never claimed.  In 1990, he died in an automobile accident near Havana.[sources: New York Times, Apr 10, 1988, p. 34B and Los Angeles Times, Oct 30, 1990]

Goebbels.Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was the Reich Minister of Propoganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.  He was also honorary President of the GrossdeutschSchachbund, a new German chess federation.  He created an “All-German Chess League,” and barred all Jewish chess players.  He did not allow any Jews to play in any German chess tournaments, clubs, or café playing rooms.  [source: Chess Review, September 1933, p. 5]  He sponsored several National Masters tournament in Germany from 1933 to the 1940s.  During World War II, he ordered German chess masters to visit hospitals and barracks to play chess.  They played in exhibition tournaments and gave simultaneous exhibitions.  By late 1942, Goebbels lost interest in chess and considered it a frivolity for the German people. [source: O’Connor, Butcher of Poland: Hitler’s Lawyer Hans Frank, 2013]

Groningen.  On September 7, 1946, Mikhail Botvinnik (1911-1995)won the first major international chess tourney after World War II, at Groningen, Netherlands.  There were 20 players in the event from 13 different countries.  This was Botvinnik’s first outright victory in a tournament outside the Soviet Union and Max Euwe’s last major success.  This was the first tournament outside the USSR to which Soviets sent a team of chess masters to compete.  Botvinnik was presented with a silver cigarette case, a gift of Queen Wilheimina, even though Botvinnik didn’t smoke.  Botvinnik won the tournament despite losing his last-round game (lost to Najdorf).  Former world champion Max Euwe, Botvinnik’s only rival who had a chance to pass him at the end, also lost his last-round game, to Alexander Kotov after four hours of play. [sources: Eugene Guard, September 8, 1946 and “Groningen 1946,” Golembek’s Encyclopedia of Chess, 1977, p. 133]From 1963 to 1987, Groningen was the site of all the European Junior chess championships.  [source: New in Chess, 1990, #3, p88]

Gruenfeld.Ernst Franz Gruenfeld (Grünfeld) (1893-1962) was a leading Austrian chess grandmaster.  In 1961, Ernst Grünfeld (1893-1962), age 67, was playing in a chess tournament at Beverwijk in the Netherlands (the Hoogovens tournament).  Grünfeld had lost a leg when in his early childhood and had an artificial leg. Despite his age, and this handicap, he spurned the organizers’ offer of a car, and insisted on walking the mile or so from where he was staying to the chess tournament hall each afternoon. On one particular day, he set off, but fell down in the road, and his wooden leg came off and fell into a ditch!  A distressed Grünfeld managed to get to a phone booth and ring the organizers.   The organizers contacted Max Euwe, who came on the line. Hearing of Grünfeld’s plight, he jumped into a car, and a few minutes later, he managed to rescue  Grünfeld and his wooden leg and take him back to the house he was staying at.  After a refreshing cup of coffee and a few minutes’ rest, Grünfeld was re-united with his artificial leg and driven to the tournament hall. Unfortunately, he faced the East German GM Wolfgang Uhlmann that day, and despite having White, the trauma took its toll on him. He lost in just 21 moves.[source: “Did You Know There Were Two Ernest Grunfelds?” Tartajubow On Chess II blog, March 1, 2018’

Grundy.In January 1880, the 5th American Chess Congress was held in New York. It was controversial for James Glover Grundy (1855-1919) and Preston Ware (1821-1890) as the two were caught up in a scandal. In the last round, Ware threw his game to Grundy, hoping for a draw, but lost instead. The next day, Ware presented a written statement alleging that Grundy had offered him $20 ($400 in today's currency) to play for a draw. Grundy agreed, but when Ware played some weak moves, Grundy changed his mind and played for a win, tying for 1st place with George Henry Mackenzie (1837-1891). Grundy was forbidden from ever taking part in an American tournament again. Preston Ware never got his $20 and he was suspended for one year from playing chess in any tournament. Ware didn't need the money but agreed to the shady deal because he wanted his friend, Captain George Mackenzie, to take first place.  [sources: Chess Life, Dec 1985, p. 10 and Gilberg, The Fifth American Chess Congress, 1881, pp. 149-151]

Guns and chess.In May 1860, a pistol shot occurred in Vicksburg, Mississippi during a chess game. Mrs. Lafayette Lee and Mr. U. G. Flowers sat down to play a game of chess. During the game, Mr. Lee, who was standing behind Mr. Flowers looking on, pulled out a pistol and shot his wife after a quarrel about Mrs. Lee wishing to visit her mother. He then aimed his pistol at Mr. Flowers, but Mr. Flowers pulled out his own pistol and shot Mr. Lee five times, killing him. Mrs. Lee was in critical condition but survived. [source: London Stratford Times, Jun 23, 1860, p. 2] On November 14, 1892, a gunshot occurred at the home of world chess champion William Steinitz (1836-1900) in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. His previous American secretary and butler, Nathaniel W. Williams, accidently shot his new German secretary, Ernest Treitel, in the house. Treitel lost an arm. It may have been attempted murder as there was an uneasy rivalry between Williams and Treitel. Williams then placed himself at the front door and threatened to kill anyone who attempted to leave Steinitz 's house. He was finally overpowered and arrested. Treitelsurvived, but his left arm had to be amputated. In the end, Williams was found guilty of assault and battery with intent to kill. In the meantime, Treitel had died from typhus fever in February 1893.[source: New York Times, Nov 6, 1892, p. 1]On September 4, 1926, W. B. Victor, age 55, shot and killed himself at the New Orleans Chess Club.[Greenwood Index-Journal, September 5, 1926]  During the Bled 1931 International Chess Tournament, Geza Maroczy (1870-1951) challenged Aron Nimzowitsch (1886-1935) to a pistol duel at dawn after the two got intoan argument.Nimzowitsch refused.[sources: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 1, 1931 and Chess Life, March 1988, p. 11]

Gunsberg.Isidor Arthur Ginsburg (1854-1930], born in Hungary, was a British chess master.  In his early years, he was the hidden operator of the remote-controlled chess automaton Mephisto.  He listed his occupation as tobacconist and professional chess player.  He had a dealership arrangement with cigar makers and supplied cigars to chess clubs and chess rooms.  Gunsberg himself did not smoke.  In 1891, he listed his occupation as chessplayer and journalist.  In 1890, he challenged William Steinitz for the world championship title, but lost with 4 wins, 6 losses, and 9 draws.  In 1916, he sued the London Evening News for libel when that newspaper said that his chess column contained “Blunders.”  He won the suet after the High Court accepted a submission that in chess matters, 8 oversights did not make a blunder.  In 1901, he listed his occupation as author and journalist.  At one time in his career, he edited more chess columns than any living player,   [source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 4, 1932, p. 32]

Hanham.James Moore Hanham (1840-1923) was an American chess master.  Even though he was from the South (born in Mississippi), he fought on the side of the North during the Civil War, reaching the rank of Major.  The Hanham Variation of Philidor’s Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Nd7) is named after him. He also introduced a number of other opening lines, including the Grand Prix Attack against the Sicilian Defense (1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.f4), the Indian Opening (1.e4 e5 2.d3), and the Hanham Variation of the French Defense (1.e4 e6 2.d3). He was a long-time member of the Manhattan Chess Club and the New York Athletic Club.  He won the Manhattan CC championship five times.In 1891, he won the New York State championship.  At the time of his death, he was the oldest player of master rank in the United States.  He died 5 days before his 84^th birthday.  [source: American Chess Bulletin, 1924, pp. 10-11]

Helms.Hermann Helms (1870-1963) was formally recognized by the USCF as “Dean of American Chess”from 1943 until his death in 1963.   He wrote a chess column for 62 years, from 1893 until the paper folded in 1855, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  He published the American Chess Bulletin from 1904 until his death in 1963, a period of 59 years. He was a chess reporter for The New York Times for over 50 years.  In 1906 and 1925, he won the New York State Chess Championship.  He died in Brooklyn, one day after reaching the age of 93.  He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1988.  [sources: “Hermann Helms,” World Chess Hall of Fame website and New York Times, Jan 8, 1963]

House of Commons.  In December 1919, the British House of Commons allowed a simultaneous chess exhibition in its chambers for the first time,  Jose Capablanca (1888-1942) played 38 Members of Parliament, past and present, all at one.  He was undefeated and his final score was 36 wins and 2 draws.  The drawn games were with Sir Watson Rutherford (1853-1927) and Arthur Strauss (1847-1920).   [source: American Chess Bulletin, 1920, pp, 2-4]

Hudson.From May 15 to May 21, 1960 (Armed Forces Week), the first U.S. Armed Forces Chess Championship  was held at the American Legion Hall of Flags in Washington, D.C. There were 12 invited participants. Air Force Captain John A. Hudson (1930-2012) and Army SP4 Arthur W.Feuerstein (1935- ) tied for 1st place. Both scored 10-1 (9 wins and 2 draws). Czapski, Krauss, and Grande all tied for 3rd-5th place, each scoring 6-5. Henry Giertych and Robinson had 5-6 scores. Mott scored 4.5. Moran scored 4. Sobczyk scored 3.5. Walker and Leuthold scored 3. Hudson was a chess master by his early 20s.  His father was a career naval officer.  John graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Botany.  John Hudson later joined the Air Force and became a bombardier-navigator on B-47 and B-52 bombers.  He was also a navigation-training instructor and served as the editor of The Navigator magazine. He retired from the Air Force in 1971, with the rank of Major.  He was a former US Amateur chess champion (1956 and 1957). He also won the Louisiana State Championship in 1952 and the California State Open in 1965. The Air Force and Army tied for the team championship. The top 6 scores from each service were added to determine the team winner. The event was sponsored by the Department of Defense, American Legion, American Chess Foundation, and several patrons. Hans Kmoch (1894-1973) served as chess referee. Hudson and Feuerstein split the $1,500 prize money for 1st-2nd place. The money was put up by Thomas Emery, a New York capitalist who served in the Marine Corps during World War I. Emery provided $100,000 to support Armed Forces chess in the future Hudson won the Armed Forces Championship in 1960, 1961, and 1970.  After retiring from the Air Force John returned to school to pursue graduate courses in English literature at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.He died in Bellingham, Washington on October 9, 2012 following complications from a stroke. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.  [sources: Sports Illustrated, June 6, 1960, pp. 66-68, Chess Review, July 1960, p. 223, and Chess Life, June 20, 1960, p. 1, “John A, Hudson,” Tartajubowon Chess II blog, Sep 23, 2019]

Ilyin-Genevsky.Alexander FyodorovichIlyin-Genevsky (1894-1941) was a Soviet chess master who had to learn the game twice.  While in high school, he was a member of an underground Bolshevik organization, which led to his expulsion.  Forbidden to re-enter any Russia school, he went to Geneva, Switzerland, where he performed party work for Lenin.  He won the chess championship of Geneva and added the city’s name to his own.  When World War I broke out, he returned to Russia and joined the tsarist army.    During World War I, he was gassed and shell-shocked, which took away his memory.  Another source says that a bullet penetrated a portion of his brain controlling his memory.  [source: Chess Review, April 1933, p.9] He had to learn the game of chess all over again, starting from how each piece moved.  During the October Revolution, he was head of the Moscow Reservists.In 1918, his wife shot herself.  In 1920, he organized the first USSR chess championship and started the first Russian chess column.  In 1927, he won the first Trade Unions Championship of the USSR.  On September 3, 1941, while trying to escape from Leningrad during the siege of Leningrad, he was on a barge on Lake Ladoga with dozens of other passengers.  The Germans bombed the barge, which was displaying Red Cross flags.  Alexander was the only one killed.His second wife, uninjured on the barge, was so overcome by despair that she killed herself a few days later.  [sources, “The Father of Soviet Chess,” Tartajubow on Chess II blog, Jan 21, 2016 and Soltis, Soviet Chess, 1917-1991, 2016, pp.3-6]

Immortal Game.The Immortal Game is one of the most famous games in all of chess. It was played by Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879) and Lionel Kieseritzky (1806-1853) as an informal game, played at the Simpson’s-in-the-Strand Divan (chess cafe, men’s club, and tavern) in London on June 21, 1851. The game was played during a break of the first international tournament (May 27 to July 15, 1851), London 1851.Anderssen sacrificed his bishop. two rooks, and potentially his queen in the game. This may have been a swindle and Black may have resigned in a drawn position, at least prematurely if Black had continued with 20...Ba6 instead of 20...Na6. Black’s 20th move may not have been played as Kieseritzky resigned rather than allow checkmate after 20...Na6, ensuring an immortal combination of a Queen sacrifice that leads to mate after sacrificing a Bishop and two Rooks earlier. When Kieseritzky sent his game by telegraph to a chess magazine, the game ended after White’s 20th move. But another chess magazine during that time published Black’s last move as 20… Na6, stating that “Black (sic) gave mate in three moves.” It is also possible that Kieseritzky played 20…Na6 and Anderssen announced a mate in three without actually playing the moves.The opening was a King’s Gambit Accepted (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4), Bishop’s variation (3.Bc4), Bryan Counter Gambit (3…b5). When the game was over, Kieseritsky was so impressed with the game that he telegraphed the moves to his chess club in Paris. The game was publicized in the French chess magazine La Régence in July 1851 (page 221, game 186). In this game, the last move was 20.Ke2. The game was also published in Chess Player, volume 1, July 1851, by Horwitz and Kling. In that game, the last move was 20…Na6, with the note “And Black gave mate in three moves.” It should have read “And White gave mate in three moves.” The game was first called the “Immortal Game” (Eine unsterblichePartie) by the Austrian player Ernst Falkbeer(1819-1885) in 1855 when he annotated the game in the August 1855 German chess magazine Wiener Schachzeitung, page 293. He included the move 20…Na6 as the last move and annotated several other possibilities (20…f6, 20…Bb7, and 20…Ba6) for Black’s 20th move. On September 2, 1923 the town of Marostica, Italy played the immortal game with living persons. They have been recreating this game with living persons every year. In 1954, the science fiction writer Poul Anderson wrote a short story, The Immortal Game, in which computer chess programs reproduce the Immortal Game moves.  The short story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, pp. 115-124.  The final part of the game was used in the 1982 movie Blade Runner but the chessboards are not exactly arranged as in the Immortal Game. Sebastian’s (Batty) board does not match Tyrell’s board. A position of thegame after the 20th move has been recreated on a chess stamp from Surinam in 1984.[source: “The Immortal Game,” White Knight Review, January/February 2012, pp. 22-23]

Anderssen-Kieseritsky, London 1851,  1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 Qh4+ 4.Kf1 b5 5.Bxb5 Nf6 6.Nf3 Qh6 7.d3 Nh5 8.Nh4 Qg5 9.Nf5 c6 10.g4 Nf6 11.Rg1 cxb5 12.h4 Qg6 13.h5 Qg5 14.Qf3 Ng8 15.Bxf4 Qf6 16.Nc3 Bc5 17.Nd5 Qxb2 18.Bd6 Bxg1 19.e5 Qxa1+ 20.Ke2 Na6 21.Nxg7+ Kd8 22.Qf6+! Nxf6 23.Be7#

Japan.Japanese chess is known as shogi.  Shogi was the earliest chess variant to allow captured pieces to be returned to the board by the capturing player.  In 1933, Alexander Alekhine visited Japan and gave a blindfold exhibition at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.During World War II, the Japanese confiscated chess books found on prisoners, thinking the notations in the books were military codes.  In 1967, Japan organized its first official chess federation, then known as the Japan Tournament Chess Association (Nihon TonamentoChesuKyokai).  In October 1968, Japan became the 75^th member of FIDE.  In 1969, Japan held it first national chess tournament.  In 2004, Bobby Fischer was arrested in Tokyo, Japan for using an expired passport.  Currently, the strongest chess player is Hikaru Oka (2004- ), rated 2421.[source: “Japan,: The Chesspedia website]

Kashdan.Isaac Kashdan (1905-1985) was an American chess grandmaster an an insurance agent.  He won the U.S. Open chess championship in 1938 and 1947.  He played five times for the United States in chess Olympiads, winning a total of nine medals, and his Olympiad record is the all-time best among American players.His wife was asked to join a harem for 150 English pounds by Umar Khan during one of the chess Olympiads.  [source: Chess Life, May 1985, p. 12]On February 9, 1956, he appeared on You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx (1890-1977) and partnered with Helen Schwarz, the mother of Tony Curtis (1925-2010), but lost.  Groucho kept calling him Mr. Ash Can.Kashdan told Groucho that it was pretty hard to cheat in chess. Groucho responded, “If I can’t cheat, forget it. The only fun I have in any game is cheating.” They failed to win any money and did not say the secret word.

Kasparov.  The original name of Garry KimovichKasparov was GarikKimovich Weinstein.  He was born in Baku, Azerbaijan on April 13, 1963. His father,Kim Moiseyevich Weinstein, an engineer by training, was Jewish and his mother, Klara ShagenovnaKasparova was Armenia.  Garry learned the game of chess in 1968, at age 5, after he saw a chess problem set up by his parents. They had been solving chess problems published in a local newspaper and edited by chess master SuryenAbramian (born in 1910). Both his parents taught him the moves of the chess pieces.Garry’s father died of leukemia in 1970 at the age of 39, when Garry was 7 years old.In 1972, at the age of 9, Garry was a first category player rated around 2000. He reached the final of the Baku lightning championship. His exceptional memory helped him remember almost all the world championship games at that time.In June 1973, at age 10, Garry played in his first serious chess tournament, the Youth Team Championship at Vilnius. He won the event despite being the youngest player. A month later, on the recommendation of Alexander Nikitin (1935- ), Garry was invited to a session of former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik’s(1911-1995_ Soviet chess school in Moscow. World champion Anatoly Karpov(19510 ) had been an earlier student of Botvinnik. Botvinnik’s school was limited to 20 boys and girls,  In January 1975, he was the youngest player in the 1975 USSR Junior Championship and took 7th place. He was the youngest Candidate Master since Karpov. One of his games was published by Leonard Barden (1929- ) in The Guardian on February 24, 1975. It was the first western report of Garry Kasparov (still known as Garry Weinstein). Barden also predicted that Kasparov would be the successor to Anatoly Karpov for the world championship.His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. Kasparov also holds records for consecutive professional tournament victories (15) and Chess Oscars (11).  [source: “The Incomparable Kasparov,” White Knight Review, January/February 2012, pp.10-15]

Keres.Paul Keres (1916-1975) was an Estonian chess grandmaster.  During World War II, it was reported that Keres was bombed by the Germans and had to have his leg amputated. Keres saved the lives of several radio operators after warning them that the NKVD (the Russian People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) was looking for them.  [source: Chess Review, February 1945, p. 9]  In 1944, when the Soviets occupied Estonia, he unsuccessfully attempted to escape to western Europe.  He was suspected of collaboration with the Nazis.Keres was stricken with a heart attack at Helsinki, Finland, where his plane touched down returning from his Canadian visit and before he could cross by boat to Estonia.  His wife was notified by phone, but the shock hospitalized her, too, with a heart attack.  Keres was under intensive care for several days before succumbing on June 5, 1975.  His body lay in state in the city’s concert hall and tens of thousands filed past.  His obituary ran three pages in a local paper. [source: Ottawa Journal, Jul 15, 1975]  Over 100,000 were in attendance at his state funeral in Tallinn, Estonia.  In 2000, he was elected the Estonian Sportsman of the Century.

Korchnoi.  Viktor LvovichKorchnoi (1931-2016) was a Soviet-Swiss grandmaster.  In 1976, he tied for 1^st place at an international tournament in Amsterdam.  At the end of the tournament, he defected from the USSR and asked for political asylum.  He became the first grandmaster to defect from the Soviet Union.  He left his wife and son behind.  Korchnoi eventually settle in Switzerland, becoming a Swiss citizen.  The Soviet Chess Federation never admitted that he was boycotted from chess.  But all major chess tournament organizers knew that they could not get Soviet chess players if they would invite Korchnoi.  From 1977 to 1984, there were 15 major international chess tournaments.  Korchnoi was not invited for any of them.  Finally, the boycott was broken in 1984, when Korchnoi played at Wijkaan Zee with other Soviet chess players (Beliavsky and Tukamov).  [source: New in Chess, March 1984, p. 6]

Larsen.Bent Larsen (1935-2010) was a Danish chess grandmaster.He studied Civil Engineering in Copenhagen, but never graduated.  Instead, he gave up his studies to become a professional chess player.In 1953, Larsen labored all night on an adjourned game to find a winning line.  Then he tried to get a few hours’ sleep.  He lost the game because he had overslept and failed to appear at the adjourned game on time.  In 1954, was awarded the International Master title at the age of 19 after his strong performance at the Amsterdam Chess Olympiad.  In 1956, he was awarded the GM title after his gold-medal performance on board one at the Moscow Chess Olympiad.  In 1966, Larsen beat Efim Geller in a chess match.  It was the first time in a match that a Soviet GM had ever lost to a foreigner.  In 1988, Larsen was the first GM to lose to a chess computer in tournament competition.He lost a game to Deep Thought in the SotwareToolsworks Championship.  Larsen won the Danish championship 6 times.  He won more than 40 international tournaments.  He died at the age of 83 in Buenos Aires, where he spent the last few years of his life.[sources: New York Times, September 11, 2010 and “Bent Larsen,” ChessBase News, February 28, 2018]

Lasker, Edward.Edward Lasker (1885-1981) was a German-American International Master.  At one time, he was champion of Berlin (1910), Paris (1912), London (1914), New York (1915), and Chicago (1916).  He won the U.S. Open (then known as the Western Chess Association Western Open) 5 times (1916, 1917, 1919, 1920, and 1921).  He was president of the Western Chess Association.  He was an engineer by profession (degrees and mechanical and electrical engineering).  In 1921, he invented the mechanical breast pump, which saved many premature infants’ lives and made Lasker rich.  He friends referred to him as “the chest player.”In 1946, he was elected president of the Association of American Chess Masters.  Edward and Emanuel Lasker were third cousins twice removed.  Edward was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall f Fame in 2017.  [sources: American Chess Bulletin, 1921, p.177 and “Edward Lasker” World Chess Hall of Fameand New York Times, March 26, 1981]

Lasker, Emanuel.Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941) was world chess champion from 1894 through 1921.  While world chess champion, he had time to get a PhD in mathematics.  In 1893, he was a mathematics lecturer at Tulane University in New Orleans.  In January 1902, Lasker gained his doctorate degree in mathematics and philosophy from Erlangen University. His dissertation was titled, ÜberReihen auf der Convergenzgrenze ("On Series at Convergence Boundaries"). His mathematical researches were based upon his earlier studies at the universities of Berlin, Gottingen, and Heidelberg. His advisor was the famous mathematician Dr. David Hilbert. His dissertation was published by the Royal Society in Philosophical Transactions. After he defended his dissertation, Lasker was given assistant professorship at Owens College (merged with Victoria University of Manchester in 1904) in England. [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 5, 1902]However, he was unable to secure a long-term position.  In 1906, he published a booklet title Kampf (Struggle), in which he attempted to create a general theory of all competitive activities.  In December 1919,Lasker was in Berlin and wrote a letter to the officials of the Manhattan Chess Club in New York requesting sufficient engagements for simultaneous exhibitions in America.  He was interested in coming to the United States to live.  He had lost all his fortune in Germany after World War I.  Lasker wrote that he was busy writing a chess book “because there was nothing to do” in Germany.  He wrote that chess in Germany was shelved indefinitely and that chess would not be popular in Germany for many years.[source: Courier-Journal (Louisville), December 16, 1919]On February 1, 1921, the U.S. State Department refused to give a visa to world champion Emanuel Lasker and his wife for his proposed trip to the United States and Cuba to meet Capablanca for the world championship match.  Lasker planned on going to Cuba via New York, but the State Department refused to give Lasker a visa for any American port city because of his German background.  Lasker then made arrangements to travel via Amsterdam direct to Havana.[source: Des Moines Register, February 2, 1921]In 1933, Lasker and his wife were driven out of Germany and their property confiscated.  They moved to England.On March 24, 1935,Lasker announced that he would make his permanent home in Russia, where he would organize and direct a chess academy. He was then invited to become an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which he accepted, and took permanent residence in Moscow. He became involved in mathematical studies and was offered a professorship at a university. On January 11, 1941, Lasker died of a kidney infection (uremic poisoning) in Manhattan at the age of 72. He had been a charity patient at Mount Sinai hospital. About the same time, his sister died in a Nazi gas chamber.  A condolence letter was sent to Martha Lasker by Dr. Albert Einstein (1879-1955), when Emanuel Lasker died.  Laskerwas the second official World Chess Champion, reigning for a record 27 years after he defeated the first World Champion, William Steinitz, in 1894.[source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan 12, 1941]

Lawson-Stevenson.On August 20, 1935, Agnes Lawson-Stevenson(1873-1935) was killed by a propeller blade in Poznan, Poland when she accidently walked in front of it. At the time, she was on her way to the 1935 Women's World Championship and left the aircraft to complete a passport check. On returning to the plane, she forgot the propeller was rotating, stepped in front of the plane, instead of approaching the aircraft from the rear, and the rotating propeller hit her and killed her instantly, cutting her head in two. She won the British Ladies' Championship 4 times. She was married to Rufus Henry Streatfeild Stevenson, editor of the British Chess Magazine.[source: Times (London), August 21, 1935, p. 10]

Lombardy.William James Joseph Lombardy (1937-2017) was an American grandmaster and former Catholic priest.  He started playing chess at age 14.  In August 1957, Lombardy, age 19, became the first American to win the 4th World Junior Chess Championship. He won the tournament in Toronto, held at the YMCA, with a perfect score of 11-0, a record that still stands today. Following Lombardy was the German player Matthias Gerusel and the Dutch player Lex Jongsma. The USSR representative, Vladimir Selimanov, could only manage 4th place and later committed suicide. The mayor of Toronto presented Lombardy with the first place trophy. His performance at Toronto was the first time an individual world title had been won by an American since the Paul Morphy (1837-1884). Based on his performance, he was automatically awarded the International Master title. Years later, FIDE awarded the clear winner of the world junior championship an automatic Grandmaster title. He held that title until August 1959, when he was too old to defend it. [source: Chess Review, September 1957, p. 259] Lombardy attended the City College of New York for three years.  He later attended Saint Joseph’s Seminary where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, a Master of Arts in ethics, and a Master of Divinity.  In 1960, he was awarded the title of International Grandmaster.  In 1980, he left the priesthood, married and had a son.  In 2016, he was evicted from his apartment and for a while, he was homeless.  He died of a heart attack at a friend’s home in California on October 13, 2017.

London-Paris Correspondence Match.In February 1834, the Westminster Chess Club in London began a high-profile correspondence chess match with the Paris Chess Club.  Each side put up 50 British pounds, winner take all. JacquestChamouillet (1783-1872) was on the committee of Paris in the London vs. Paris correspondence match, and he convinced the Paris team to adopt the defense advocated by Jacques François Mouret  (1787-1837), which became known as the French Defense (1.e4 e6). By October 1836, after over 2 years, Paris won both games in the match, with the help of Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant (1800-1872). [source: Chess, the Match by Correspondence, Recently Played by the Chess Clubs of Paris and Westminster, 1837]

McCormick.Edgar Thomas McCormick (1920-1991) was a very active chess master.  During World War II, McCormick served in the U.S. Army as a cryptographer.  He won the U.S. Amateur Chess Championship in 1961.  29 years later, in 1990, he won it again at age 75.  He played in more U.S. Open chess tournaments than any other person (37 times).He served as Vice President of the USCF and was a Life Master.  He founded the Independent Chess Club in East Orange, NJ.  [source: “Edgar Thomas McCormick ’35,” Princeton Alumni Weekly\

Memory and Chess.In 1881, an article called "Memory in Chess Playing," appeared in Scientific American. It stated that wonderful as are the feats of chess-players who can work out a game or a series of games without seeing the board, there is nothing really remarkable in them. When once mastered, the trick is not only fairly easy of performance, but the fact that the process is purely mental rather facilitates than impedes the action of the mind. To the "blindfold" chess player, there is present a mental picture of the board with the pieces in position. He can change the position of the men as easily as he can think, and after he has mastered the difficulty of fixing the mental picture, it is distinctly before him. As a rule, chess-players are mental-picture-readers, and can at pleasure call up any one of several pictures of boards as they last conceived them. The most difficult feat is to play two or three games simultaneously blindfold, the moves made by their opponents being told them in close sequence and their own moves being directed after all the reports of the proceedings of their opponents have been received. [source: Scientific American, Dec 10, 1881, Vol. 45, # 24, p. 378]Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1872-1906) was one of the strongest chess players in the world and known for his blindfold chess play and mental feats of memorization.  He suffered from syphilis which may have led to mental illness.  Before he died at the age of 33, psychologists were studying Pillsbury’s brain and his mental powers.   After he died, his brain was actually studied.How good was Pillsbury’s memory?  One day in London in 1896, Pillsbury was approached by two professors (Dr. H. Threlkheld-Edwards and professor Mansfield Merriman) just before Pillsbury was to play 20 chess players blindfolded.  They had a list of words or phrases designed to test his memory.  The list consisted of the following: antiphlogistine, periosteum, takadiastase, Plasmon, amborisa, Threlkeld, strepoccus, straphyloccus, microccus, plasmodium, Mississippi, Freiheit, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, athletics, no war, Etchenberg, American, Russian, philosophy, Piet Potgelter’sRost, Salamagundi, Domisellecootsi, Bangmanvate, Schlechter’s Neck, Manzinyama, theosophy, catechism, Madjesoomalops.Pillsbury took the list, quickly studied the words and passed the list back.  Then he recited the whole list to the two professors.  Then he recited the whole list backwards.The next day, the professors asked him if he could remember the list.  Pillsbury was able to repeat the list again, forward or backward.

Menchik.VeraMenchikStevenson(1906-1944) was a British-Czech-Russian chess player who became the world’s first women’s chess champion.  Chess was women’s champion from 1927 until her death in 1944.  Vera was killed, along with her sister Olga and mother, in a bombing raid on the night of Tuesday, June 27, 1944, at the age of 38. A Nazi V-1 buzz bomb hit her home at 47 Gauden Road in the Clapham area of South London. The house was razed to the ground. A total of 11 people were killed on Cauden Road from the V1 bomb that hit.  Vera, her mother, and her sister, Olga, had all taken shelter in the house basement, rather than going to the backyard bomb shelter or the neighborhood bomb shelters, which went untouched. The V-1 rocket was a direct hit on their house, leaving the backyard bomb shelter unscathed.  [sources: The Ottawa Journal, June 29, 1944 and The Times of London, June 30, 1944, p. 7]

Minckwitz.On May 17, 1901, Johannes von Minckwitz (1843-1901), a former German chess champion, who had been reduced to poverty, stepped in front of an electric car in Berlin and was cut to pieces.  He was 58.  He had been past editor of the German chess magazine, Deutsche Schachzeitung.   [source: Chicago Daily Tribune, May 19, 1901

Naro.Constantino Patrizi Naro(1798-1876) was a long-serving Italian Cardinal who became Dean of the College of Cardinals.  In the 1870s, Cardinal  Naro (1798-1876) challenged five other nobles to a pistol duel because they denied him membership in the Noble Chess Circle of Rome.  [source: Chess Review, February 1951, p. 50]

National Chess Centre.The National Chess Centre opened in September 1939 and was the largest chess club in London with 700 members.  It was located in the Cavendish Square building of the John Lewis Partnership on Oxford Street.  The National Chess Centre evolved from the City of London Chess Club, which was formed in 1852.  World woman champion Vera Menchik Stevenson(1906-1944) was the manager of the club.  It was a populare place to go and advertised, “Large and well-appointed Air Raid Shelter on the premises.”  On September 23, 1940, a German air raid landed bombs on the building that housed the National Chess Center.  The building and the club was burned down.  The contents of the National Chess Center were entirely destroyed.  The British Chess Federation headquarters, the London Chess League, and the County Chess Association were all wiped out completely when the Centre was bombed.  The National Chess Center was re-opened in September 1952.  It went out of existence in 1957 due to financial problems.[sources: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 31, 1940 and CHESS, 1952, p. 93 and British Chess Magazine, September 1952]

O’Kelly.CountAlbéric Joseph Rodolphe Marie Robert Ghislain O'Kelly de Galway (1911-1980) was a Belgian grandmaster.  In 1956, he was awarded the Grandmaster title.  In 1962, he became the first grandmaster of over-the-board (OTB) and correspondence chess.  He won the third World Correspondence Chess Champion (1959-1962) and became an ICCF Grandmaster.  He won the Belgian championship 13 times between 1937 and 1959.  He was fluent in 7 languages.  He was a descendent of Charlemagne.  [source: “Alberic O’Kelly de Galway,” Tartajubow on Chess II blog, August 26, 2014]

Older Players.Perhaps the oldest person to finally make master (rated over 2200) was Bernard Friend  of New Jersey.  In 1991, at the age of 71, he became a master for the first time.  [Source: Chess Life, September 1991, p. 37]  Yuri Averbakh was born in 1922 and is currently the world’s oldest grandmaster at age 97.  Jane Lady Carew (1797-1901) was a chess player who lived to 104 and lived in three centuries.  She played chess up to age 100.Harlow Daly (1883-1979) won the chess championship of Maine in 1969 at the age of 85.  He had previously won in 1961 at the age of 77, and in 1965 at the age of 81.  He was still playing chess in his 90s.  At age 90, in 1973, he won the New Hampshire Open tournament with a perfect 5-0 score.  He died at the age of 95.  He played chess for 75 years.  Rea Hayes (1915-2001) won the Tennessee championship in 1992 at the age of 76.  He was the winner of the first U.S. Senior Open in 1981.  He was still playing in it in 1998, at the age of 83.Hermann Helms (1870-1963) wrote a chess column for 62 years.  He published the American Chess Bulletin for 59 years.  At the age of 84, he was awarded the International Arbiter title.  He died one day after he reached his 93rd birthday.  George Koltanowski (1903-2000) edited a chess column in the San Francisco Chronicle for 52 years.  He was still playing blindfold chess in his 70s.  He was still giving his Knight’s Tour in his 80s.  He was awarded the Grandmaster title (honorary) at the age of 85.  He died at the age of 96.  Viktor Korchnoi (1931-2016) was still playing grandmaster level chess at the age of 81.  In 2005, he was still ranked in the top 100 in the world at the age of 74.   In 2007, he tied for 2nd in the National Open.  In 2009, he won the Swiss championship at the age of 78.  He won it agin in 2011 at the age of 80.  In 2011, at the age of 80, he beat Fabiano Caruana, currently ranked #5 in the world.  In 2015, he won a match against GM Mark Taimanovv (1926-2016).  The combined ages of the players was 174.

Olympiad.From July 12-20, 1924, the first world team chess competition (called the Chess Olympic Games or Tournament of Nations) took place at the Hotel Majestic in Paris, France, to coincide with the 8th Summer Olympic Games. It is not counted as an official Chess Olympiad, because it was not organized by the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and because the scoring was not the same as for later events. There were 55 players from 18 countries. Each team had a maximum of four players. Ireland, Canada, and Yugoslavia (Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) only had one player. Although officially chess was not part of the Olympic Games, the rules of the Olympiads applied with a ban on professional players. The two players representing Russia were refugees living in Paris.  The artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), played board 1 for France.  Future world chess champion Max Euwe (1901-1981) played board 1 for Holland and took 5th place.  The World Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded by the players at this event on the closing day, July 20, 1924. Czechoslovakia (Hromadka, Schulz, Vanek, Skalicka) took 1st place in the team competition, followed by Hungary and Switzerland. The individual Gold went to Herman Mattison (1894-1932) of Latvia and was given the title “Amateur World Champion.” He scored 5.5 out of 6. 2nd place went to FricisApsenieks (1894-1941) of Latvia, followed by Edgard Colle (1897-1932) of Belgium. World champion Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946) was the tournament director. The attempt to include chess in the Olympic games failed because of problems with distinguishing between amateur and professional players. The Great Britain team included Harris K. Handasyde (1877-1935) of Scotland, Charles Wreford-Brown (1866-1951), and Edith Holloway (1868-1956), the first woman to participate in a Chess Olympiad, although it was an unofficial Chess Olympiad. [source: British Chess Magazine, Aug 1924, p. 316]

Parratt.In the 1890s, Sir Walter Parratt (1841-1924), and English organist and composer, was able to play a Beethoven Sonata at the same time that he was conducting two games of chess blindfold. Parratt was a musical child prodigy.  He was able to play Bach’s complete The Well-Tempered Clavier by heart at the age of ten.  In 1893, he became organist to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle.  He was a member of the Huddersfield Chess Club and played his blindfold games while playing a selection of tunes on the piano at Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire. He served for a few months as president of the Oxford University Chess Club and for two years was captain of the Oxford Chess Club, playing board 1. [source: Shinn, Musical Memory and its Cultivation, 1898, p. 134]

Penquite.John Penquite (1935-2007) had the highest chess rating ever recorded by the United States Chess Federation.  In 1993, his correspondence rating was 2939 with a perfect 58-0-0 score from correspondence play.  He won the Iowa State Chess Championship 8 times between 1951 and 1973.  In 1990, he won the Golden Knights championship with a perfect score, which is the U.S. open correspondence chess championship.  In the early years,he was unable to compete in over-the-board (OTB) tournaments due to a severe tobacco smoke allergy during the time when smoking was still allowed.  [sources: Chess Life, April 1993, p. 36 and Dunne, “Highest Rated CC Player Ever,” Chess Life Online, June 1, 2019]

PiatigorskyCup.From July 2-28, 1963, World Champion Tigran Petrosian and Paul Keres tied for 1st at the First Piatigorsky Cup Tournament. It was held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. 3rd-4th went to Najdorf and Olafsson. 5th went to Reshevsky. 6th went to Gligoric. 7th-8th went to Benko and Panno. Bobby Fischer was invited, but he requested a $2,000 appearance fee. His invitation went to Pal Benko. Isaac Kashden directed the event. The Piatigorsky Cup was the strongest U.S. chess tournament since New York 1927.  One of the spectators at the first Piatigorsky Cup was Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), who took some chess literature home with him.  Since dollars brought back to the USSR were exchanged by the Soviet government for rubles at an unfavorable rate, Keres and Petrosian both bought a Rambler automobilewith their winnings. Keres's Rambler is today preserved in Halinga Car Museum near Pärnu in Estonia.[source: San Bernardino County Sun, Jul 30, 1963]The second Piatigorsky Cup was held at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica in July-August 1966.  8 countries was represented in this 10-man event.  Over 500 spectators attended most sessions.  The Spassky-Fischer game in the 17th round attracted over 1,000 spectators, the largest game in U.S. history.  Spassky won the event, followed by Fischer.

Pillsbury.Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1872-1906) was a leading American chess player and U.S. chess champion from 1897 until his death in 1906.  In 1895, at the age of 22, he won one of the strongest chess tournaments of all time, the Hastings 1895 International Tournament.  The Hastings tournament included the world’s champion, the ex-champion, and the champions of England, Germany, Frac, Russia, and Italy.  In 1896, Pillsburyresigned from the Manhattan Chess Club because someone stole his umbrella.[source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 3, 1896]  In the late 1890s, he contracted syphilis and succumbed to the illness in a Philadelphia hospital in 1906.  He was 33.  During his lifetime, he was able to play as many as 22 simultaneous blindfold games at once.[American Chess Bulletin, 1906, pp.121-128]

Pilnik.  Hermann Pilnik (1914-1981) was a German Argentine chess Grandmaster.  In 1945, as Argentine champion, he was invited to play in the Pan American Chess Congress in Hollywood.  In his long trip by air from Buenos Aires to Dallas, Pilnik lost his plane reservations to Los Angeles.  In an effort to get to Hollywood for the Pan American Chess Congress, he proceeded by car.  He later crashed into a parked and unlighted truck near El Centro, Arizona.  Pilnik woke up in a hospital in Yuma, Arizona, where he was cared for two days.  He showed up three days late with a thoroughly bandaged head.  [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug 2, 1945]  Pilnikwas undefeated and took 3^rd place, behind Reshvesky and Fine.He also won the Brilliancy Prize.  The Pilnik Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 O-O 8.c3 d6 9.d3) of the Ruy Lopez is named after him.  Pilnik eventually moved to Venezuela where he taught chess at the Caracas Military Academy.

Police Raid.  In 1989, the Los Angeles Police Department vice officers raided a nightly chess tournament at Dad’s Donuts in Los Angeles.  They cited three men for gambling after officers infiltrated the chess tournament and found $1.50 on the table next to rows of chess pieces.  [source: Los Angeles Times, January 27, 1990]  In 1973, police raided a chess tournament in Cleveland, Ohio.  The arrested the tournament director and confiscated the chess sets on charges of allowing gambling (cash prizes to winners) and possession of gambling devices (chess sets).

Portisch.Lajos Portisch (1937- ) is a Hungarian chess Grandmaster.  In 1956, he was almost shot and killed during the Russian invasion during the Hungarian Revolution.  As he was walking down a street in Budapest, a Russian tank about 200 yards away fired at him with a machine gun, but missed.  Portisch calmly walked on.  [source: New in Chess, 1990, #3, p. 45]  He won the Hungarian chess championship 9 times.  He participated in a record 20 Olympiads from 1956 until 2000, playing a record 260 games, over a record six decades, and won 11 medals. His total Olympiad score is: (+121−26=113), for 68.3 per cent.In 2004, he was awarded Hungary’s highest national sports achievement medal.

Preti.Jean-Louis Preti (1798-1881) was a musician and chess writer, specializing in the endgame.  He was born in Italy and studied music.  In 1826, he was involved in a political conspiracy against Austria which caused him to flee Italy and settle in France.  He was a flutist at a Bordeaux theatre and gave music lessons.  In 1844, he moved to Paris to run an export business.  He was later a music professor at the Royal College in Paris.  In September 1858, he was one of Paul Morphy’s opponents in an 8-player blindfold simul held at the Café de la Régencein Paris.  Preti was able to draw Morphy.  ln December 1858, he was one of the few witnesses of the Anderssen-Morphy match in Paris.  In 1866, he founded the chess magazine, La Stratégie.  Preti authored the first books devoted to the practical chess endgame.  Preti died at the age of 83.[source: British Chess Magazine, March 1881, p. 74]His son, NumaPreti, succeeded his father as editor of the magazine from 1875 to 1907.   Henry Delaire edited the magazine from 1907 to 1940, a run of 74 years. 

Prizes.In 1916, during World War I, Siegbert Tarrasch (1862-1934) and Jacques Mieses (1865-1954) played a chess match in Berlin in which the prize was ½ pound of butter.  Tarrasch won the match and the butter with 7 wins, 2 losses, and 4 draws.  At a New York chess tournament during the Depression, the first prize was a keg of schmaltz herring. [source: Chess Review, December 1947, p. 16] In 1925, in a blitz tournament held in Breslau, the first-place prize was enough silk to make six shirts.  Hans Kmoch(1894-1973) was the winner of the tournament and the silk.In 1983, some of the prize fund for a tournament held in Ohio went to the Ohio Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign.

Radio. In February 1902, the Minnetonka merchant ship defeated the Cunard liner Etruria in a game of chess conducted over radio.  The Minnetonka crew proudly proclaimed her victory to the Minneapolis wireless operator.  [source: Atlantic Transport Line]On June 10, 1902, six passengers on the American liner SS Philadelphia and one passenger (Paul Ginther) on the Cunard liner SS Campania 80 miles away in the Atlantic played the first match by radio, transmitting their moves by wireless operators aboard the ships. The match was not concluded after 21 moves and several hours since the radios were needed for navigational use and the ships failed to reestablish communications. Later, the SS Philadelphia played other ships, winning its chess games, and claiming to be the first mid-ocean wireless chess champion.  [source: New York Times, June 15, 1902]On April 14, 1920, a radio match between Washington DC and Chicago was played.  It was the first recorded long-distance radio chess match.  The moves in Washington DC were telephoned from the Capital City Chess Club to the United States naval laboratory wireless operator in Arlington, Virginia, and relayed to an amateur’s station in Evanston, Illinois, then relayed to the Chicago Chess Club.  Edward Lasker (1885-1981) played for Chicago and Norman Tweed Whitaker played for Washington DC.  25 moves were played in almost 3 and ½ hours.  The contest closed according to an agreed time limit.  Jose Capablanca was to adjudicate the game.   [source: Chicago Daily Tribune, April 16, 1920]On June 7, 1922, a radio chess match was played between E. T. Gundlaen, a passenger on the steamship President Taft in the Atlantic Ocean, and Edward Lasker at the Chicago Chess Club.  It was billed as the world’s first radio chess match between land and sea. Lasker won the game in 24 moves.[source: Courier-Journal (Louisville), June 8, 1922]In May 1926, the Shanghai chess club defeated the Manila chess club in a radio match over shortwave.  It was the first chess contest ever staged by radio in the Far East. [source: Oakland Tribune, July 30, 1926]  In December 1926, the first international radio match between Argentina and Uruguay took place between the Club Gimnasia y Esgroma de Rosario and the Uruguayan Chess Federation in Montevideo.  The match lasted nearly 24 hours.
In May 1927, a 12,000-mile wireless radio match was played between the London House of Commons and the Australian Parliamentarians in Canberra, Australia.  The match ended in a draw.  The Duke of York made the opening move in Canberra and Prime Minister Baldwin made the first move in London.In May 1929, Dr. Norman Shaw of McGill University, Montreal issued a challenge to play a radio match with Frank Davies, physicist of the Byrd expedition in the Antarctic, a distance of 11,000 miles.   Shaw sent his challenge over radio station KDKA.  [source: Harrisburg Evening News, May 11, 1929] In 1930, a radio match was played between a chess club in Los Angeles (headed by Herman Steiner) and a chess club in Rosario, Argentina.  It was the first time an international radio match was contested between teams of four players.  Two amateur radio stations, owned by T. E. La Croix of Long Beach and Dr. Adolfo Elias of Rosario, were used for the communication.The 1945 USA-USSR radio chess match was the first international sports event since the outbreak of World War II. It was also the first international chess match played by radio. It was conducted over the radio from September 1 through September 4, 1945.  It marked the debut of the USSR in international sport. Never before had a team representing the USSR played another country in any form of sport. Mayor LaGuardia made the opening move for the U.S. Ambassador Averill Harriman officiated the match in Moscow.  The ten leading masters of the United States played the ten leading masters of the Soviet Union for chess supremacy.  Nine of 10 Americans and 6 of 10 Soviets were Jewish.The USSR team won the match 15½–4½.[source: Chess Review, October 1945]In 1947, Britain won a radio match against Australia.  The match, which lasted 2 days, was the longest-range chess match ever played, with 10,500 miles separating the contestants.  The players notified their moves through Overseas Telecommunications.In April 1948, the first Polar radio chess game started between Australian scientists on Heard Island and South Africans on Marion Island, 1,400 miles away.  The Australians were studying cosmic rays in the Antarctic, while the South Africans were maintaining a weather station in the Antarctic.In April 1955, a group of Russian chess players, stationed at a weather station on an Arctic ice flow, defeated a chess team in Moscow in an extended match played by short wave radio.  The Arctic team won, scoring 16.5-10.5 after 5 months of playing.  [source: Daily Reporter, Dover, Ohio, Apr 21, 1955]In September 1964, a radio match between a South African Antarctic outpost and Radio Nederland had to be called off because Moscow radio was jamming their frequency. 

Ratings.In 1928, the first work to give serious attention to modeling chess ability was a paper by Dr. Ernst Zermelo (1871-1953).  He presented a paper on measuring participants’ playing strengths in chess tournaments.  In 1933 the first modern numerical chess rating system was used by the Correspondence Chess League of America (CCLA).  In 1942, Chess Review magazine began using the Harkness rating system, designed by Kenneth Harkness (1896-1972).  The ratings were used for correspondence chess players.  In 1948, the Ingo system was designed by Anton Hoesslinger and was used by the West German Chess Federation,  On November 20, 1950, the first published rating list appeared in Chess Life magazine, which rated 2,306 USCF members based on chess events from 1921 to 1950.  The highest rated players on the first USCF rating list were Reuben Fine (2817), Samuel Reshevsky (2770), A. Kevitz (2610), Arthur Dake (2598), Arnold Denker (2575), Isaac Kashdan (2574), I.A. Horowitz (2558), and Larry Evans (2484).  In 1954, the British Grading List was published, which listed 49 British players.  In 1960, the USCF switched to the Elo rating system (designed by Dr. Arpad Elo), which was adopted by FIDE in 1970.  [source: Elo, The Ratings of Chessplayers, Past and Present, 1978]

Reshevsky.Samuel Herman Reshevsky (1911-1992) was born Szmul Rzeszewski in Poland.He learned how to play chess at age 4 and was considered a child prodigy.  He was never a full-time professional.  His family moved to the United States in 1920.  By profession, he was an accountant.  Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears, Roebuck & Co. paid for his education.Reshevsky attended the University of Detroit for two years.  He then transferred to the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a degree in accounting.  [source: Chess Review, May 1933, p. 9]  From the 1930s to the 1970s, he won the US championship 7 times (at least once in each decade) and competed in a record 21 US Championships.  He also holds US Championship records for most finishes in the top three places (15), most games played (269), and most games won (127).  He played 11 world chess champions.  [source: New in Chess, 1992, #4, pp.62-69 and “The Remarkable Reshevsky,” White Knight Review, March/April 2012, pp. 10-15]

Réti.Richard Réti (1889-1929) was an Austro-Hungarian, later Czechoslovakian chess master.In 1925,Réti set a world record for blindfold chess with 29 games played simultaneously in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He won 21, drew 6, and lost 2.   On June 6, 1929, he died of scarlet fever in Prague.  He had just turned 40. .  He was crossing the road and was hit by a street car in Prague.  He was taken to a hospital to heal, but developed scarlet fever while in the hospital in Prague and died.  [source: Star (Lincoln, Nebraska), June 6, 1929]  He was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2018.  In 1942, Alekhine fell ill and nearly died from scarlet fever at the same hospital in Prague that treated Réti.

Rio de Janeiro.The first chess tournament ever played in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil occurred in 1880.  It was won by Arthur Napoleon. [source: British Chess Magazine, January 1881, p. 13]In 1979, one of the chess Interzonals was held in Rio de Janeiro (the other Interzonal was held in Riga).  Robert Huebner, Lajos Portisch, and Tigran Petrosian all tied for 1^st place at the Rio de Janeiro Interzonal.On January 25, 1982, UK master Ian Duncan Wells (1964-1982) drowned in Rio de Janeiro. The day after he finished an international junior tournament in Brazil, Wells, 17, went swimming with a group of players at the famous Copacabana beach and got caught in an undertow. Rescued by lifeguards, he never regained consciousness and died after six days in a coma.The Rio de Janeiro Variation is a variation in the Ruy Lopez: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4 5.d4 Be7. 

Rosenthal.The first French National Chess Tournament was held at the Cercle des Echecs chess club in Paris in 1880.  It was won by Samuel Rosenthal (1837-1902) at the age of 43, followed by Albert Clerc and Jules Arnous de Riviere. [source: British Chess Magazine, February 1881, p. 43]  Rosenthal was a professional chess player.  He started out as a law student in Warsaw.  During the Polish revolution in 1864 and after the failure of the January Uprising, he moved to Paris.  In 1865, he won the Café de la Régencechess championship.  He won again in 1866 and 1867.  Rosenthal suffered from bad health, which affected his chess results.  From 1885 to 1902, he edited a chess column for the Le Monde Illustré, and also wrote for La Strategie, La Vie Moderne, and other French newspapers.  In 1898, Rosenthal successfully sued one of his chess students, Prince Balaschoff, when his chess instructor contract was terminated. The First Chamber of the Civil Tribunal at Paris awarded Rosenthal 15,000 francs. The Prince had been paying Rosenthal 500 francs (£25) a month, and 1,000 francs (£40) when Rosenthal traveled with the prince.  This may be the first time that compensation for chess services has figured in a court of law.[source: Montgomery County Times, April 15, 1899]  Rosenthal died 5 days after his 65^th birthday.

Rosenwald.Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1979) was an American businessman and chess patron. His father was president of Sears, Roebuck and Company from 1908 to 1923.  Lessing succeeded his father and was chairman of Sears from 1932 until 1939.  He sponsored the U.S. Chess Championships from 1954 to 1969.  The Rosenwald Trophy for the U.S. Chess Championship was engraved incorrectly.  Itsaid Lavore Praetium Honoris (washing is the price of honor) instead of Labore Praetium Honoris (labor is the price of honor).  Some chess players thought the prize might be a bar of soap. [source: Chess Life, January 5, 1955, p. 2]   He was a co-founder of the American Chess Foundation,

Rothschild.  Baron Albert Salomon Anselm Freiherr von Rothschild (1844-1911) was a banker in Austria-Hungary and a chess patron.   He helped to finance the Vienna tournaments of 1873, 1882, 1898, 1903, and 1908. He was also President of the Vienna Chess Association 1872-1883 and a strong amateur player.  He was president of the Vienna Chess Club from 1885 until he died in 1911.  He gave brilliancy prizes to a variety of international chess tournaments.  Several chess masters were employed at his banks, such as Kolisch and Schwarz.  Albert acted as umpire of the Anglo-American cable matches from its start in 1896 to when he died.  Baron Rothschild belonged to a chess-playing family.  Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1912), the founder of the famous house of Rothschild, was the best chess player at Frankfort-on-Main.  To chess he owed his relations with Kaiser Wilhelm I (1797-1888), who confided to him his fortune. [sources: American Chess Bulletin, 1911, pp. 98-99 and Harper’s Magazine, January, 1874]  Jacqueline Piatigorsky (1911-2012), French-born American chess player and patron, was a member of the Rothschild banking family of France.  [source: Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2012]

Rou Manuscript.In the September 15, 1733, issue of the Tory journal Craftsman, there appeared a paper with the title of “A Short Essay on the Game of Chess” with the signature R.  Some sources say that R was Lord Henry St. John Bolingbroke (1678-1751) a Tory Party member and editor of the Craftsman.  The article discussed chess, but it also was a political bias in favor of the Tory party.  It was, in fact, a Tory pamphlet and the authors had only a slight knowledge of the game of chess. In reply, Rev. Lewis Rou, pastor of the Huguenot Church in New York, wrote “Critical Remarks upon the letter to the Craftsman,” dated December 13, 1734. The manuscript, now lost, is the oldest reference to chess in the New World.  The manuscript consisted of 24 pages, of a quarto size. It was prepared for the press, but never got printed.  In the beginning of the manuscript, Rou dedicated the pamphlet to the Governor of New York, William Cosby.  Rou showed several chess mistakes, errors, or blunders committed in the article.  The manuscript was never printed.Rou’s language throughout the manuscript showed that he was thoroughly acquainted with the game and its literature and history.  Rou owned two editions of Vida’s chess poem and gave quotes both in the French and English translations of Gioachino Greco.  He gave chess terms in Persian, Spanish, and Hebrew.  He discussed Scholar’s mate, which he also called Sheppard’s mate among the French. [sources: Murray,A History of Chess, 1913, p. 846 and New York Times, August 2, 1902, p. 8 and Winter, Chess Notes 3296, 3302, and 3439]

Rousseau.On March 22, 1745, François-André Danican Philidor(1726-1795) played chess with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and helped Rousseau with is first opera-ballet, Les Muses gallants. Philidor's contribution was praised by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century. Philidor's overture was also praised by the art critic Friedrich Melchoir, Baron von Grimm (1723-1807). However, Rousseau's opera was a disaster and complained that Philidor failed to commit himself to the work (only showing up a few days to work on it).[source: Rousseau, The Confessions, 1782, p. 384] Rousseau mentioned chess several times in his autobiography.  In book five, he described his introduction to chessfrom Gabriel Bagueret of Geneva. In book seven he recorded meeting several famous chess players in Paris, such as Philidor, de Légal, and Husson, and wrote about his own the lack of improvement in his own play. Book ten described his chess encounters with Prince Conti.

Ruodlieb.An old Latin Poem entitled Ruodlieb, was written in medieval Latin around 1000 A.D.  It was supposed that “chess” was mentioned for the first time in a poem.  A later ragment of  the poem was discovered in the monastery of Tegernsee in Austria.  The fragment was part of the Exhibition of Chess Antiquities at the Brunswick, Germany Chess Congress in 1880.  [source: British Chess Magazine, March 1881, p. 73]The poem was first translated by Baron Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa (1818-1899). It described the adventures of a medieval knight named Ruodlieb. He was a youth of noble birth who goes out to seek his fortune. Chess (“ludusscachorum”) was featured in one setting when Ruodlieb was forced to play for stakes with the court of a foreign king. Ruodlieb has been regarded as an ancestor of the German novel. The poem was left unfinished. The manuscript was cut up and used for binding books. Fragments of the poem were only gradually discovered and pieced together in the early 19th century. Some fragments were discovered in 1838 under the binding of some old books in the Abbey of Tegernsee. These fragments were sent to the Munich Library, which had 34 leaves of the poem.  Ruodlieb serves a powerful king. At the conclusion of a war with another king, peace was arranged by Ruodlieb. Ruodlieb spends some time in the enemy’s camp where he plays chess with the Viceroy. Ruodlieb wins most of the games, and only loses when he deliberately plays to lose. After five days of playing chess with the Viceroy, Ruodlieb is then admitted to the king’s presence.

Shackleton.Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922) was a British Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic.  He was a chess player and always brought a chess set on is expeditions.  In 1908, Ernest Shackleton led the Nimrod Expedition in Antarctica. His men alsoplayed chess during the expedition. The Chess Amateur magazine reported "Lieut. Shackleton, in his memorable Antarctic expedition, had on board, amongst other games and diversions, sets of chessmen, and no doubt many a tough fight took place in the solitudes of the Great Southern Unknown." [source: American Chess Bulletin, 1909, p. 255]In 1964, Baden Norris (1926-2018), Canterbury, England Museum Emeritus Curator, went to Antarctica and recovered 10 wooden chess pieces used by members of the Ross Sea party of Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Atlantic Expedition (1914-1917).

Shoup.David Monroe Shoup (1904-1983) was a general of the United States Marine Corps who was awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II.  He was also an avid chess player.  He said this of chess, “Chess is conductive to the kind of mental gymnastics with which a man must be equipped in this day and age.  It makes you look all around the problem instead of looking at just one side of the pie.  It makes you consider all the possibilities before you move.  And that’s good training.”   He often played chess at his office at the Pentagon. [source: Life, May 23, 1962, p. 49]He became the Honorary President of the American Chess Foundation and provided support to Armed Forces chess.

Smoking.  In the 1850s, Louis Paulsen (1833-1891) established a tobacco trade in Dubuque, Iowa and was a tobacco farmer and broker, but not a smoker.  At the 1927 New York International, when Milan Vidmar (1885-1962) put a box of cigars on the table before sitting down to play Aaron Nimzowitsch (1886-1935) , Nimzowitsch hurried to the chief umpire, Geza Maroczy (1870-1951),  to complain that his opponent was threatening to smoke.  The umpire went to the table to check and told Nimzowitsch that Vidmar was not smoking.  Nimzowitsch responded, “I know he isn’t, but he threatens to do so, and the threat in chess is more powerful than the execution.”    In 1927, M.L. Lederer accused Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941)  of employing unfair tactics while playing chess.  Lederer charged Lasker with smoking foul cigars and exhaling the smoke towards his opponent while playing chess.  Lasker denied the allegations.  In response, he wrote, “If my cigars are terrible and I blow the smoke in my opponent’s face, why do my opponents never object at the time of blowing.  If my cigars were of inferior quality, they would destroy the subtle, inimitable fabric of my own game.  Those who have seen me play and watched the smoke curve will bear witness that it curves away from rather than toward my opponent.”  In the 1930s and 1940s, Frank Marshall and Arnold Denker were in advertisements for cigarettes.  In 1973, Bill Goichberg was the first tournament director to ban smoking from major chess tournaments.   In 1973, Jan Donner was smoking his 5^th cigarette in a row while playing Penrose, when his incomplete extinguished cigarettes in his ashtray burst into flames.  The ashtray cracked and burning paper, tobacco, and ash fell on the chess table.  Ray Keene took Penrose’s cup of coffee and poured it on the fire, which turned everything into a steaming, sticky, black ooze, which now spread all over the chessboard.  A draw was istanly agreed as they called a janitor to clean up the mess.  [source: New in Chess, September 1984, p. 49]  In 1976, smoking was banned for the first time at a major chess tournament (National Open) in the United States.  In 1990, FIDE completely banned smoking from all FIDE events.  In 2009, two top Chinese grandmastes, Wang Yue and Li Chao, decided to take a smoke break before their round 3 game began in the World Chess Cup in Khanty Maniysk.  They were forfeited under new FIDE rules for being late.

Space and chess.In June 1963, a space symposium was held in Denver, with the conclusion that chess was not a good activity for astronauts.  Dr. Julien Christiansen of Wright-Patterson AFB presented a paper of a study of men who spent 15 days in a space-like capsule.  Chess was an early favorite of an off-duty pastime, but the mental excitement created by chess interfered with their sleep.[source: Colorado Springs Telegraph, Jun 7, 1963]On October 12, 1964, Russia launched Voskhod I, the first space flight to carry more than one crewman in orbit.  It launched three cosmonauts and it was the first flight without the use of spacesuits (there was no room).  The command pilot was Vladimir Komarov.  The medical doctor was Boris Yegorov. The engineer, Konstantin Feoktistov (1926-2009), was described as a chess-playing intellectual.  He was the first civilian and the first chess expert to make a space flight.  Other cosmonauts that were chess players include Georgi Beregovoy (1921-1995), Boris Volynov (1934- ), Georgy Shonin (1935-1997), Valery Kubasov (1935-2014), PyotrKolodin (1930- ), Vladislav Volkov (1935-1971), Alexey Leonov (1934- ), and Viktor Patsayev (1933-1971).[source: Albuquerque Journal, October 13, 1964]A chess set designed with pegs and grooves was aboard Soyuz 3 and Soyuz 4 in 1968 and 1969.  The chess set is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum.  In 1970, cosmonauts Vitaly Sevastyanov (1935-2010) and Andrian Nikolayev (1929-2004) played a chess game against ground control.  The game ended in a draw.  Sevastyanov later became president of the USSR Chess Federation.  In 2001, the Mir spacecraft burned up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. A magnetic chess set and a Fritz chess computer were burned up and lost. [source: Casado, "The Soul of Fritz," ChessBase News, Oct 3, 2018] In 2008-2009, astronaut Greg Chamitoff played chess from space against the earthbound 3^rd grade Stevenson Elementary School chess team in Bellevue, Washington.  The kids won.

Stalemate.Stalemate is a situation in the game of chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check but has no legal move. The rules of chess provide that when stalemate occurs, the game ends as a draw.The rule regarding stalemate first appeared in Europe in A. Saul’s Famous Game of Chesse-Playin 1614. In England, the player who gave stalemate lost the game. In Italy and France stalemate counted as a draw. In Spain and Portugal, it counted as an inferior win. Some countries didn’t even allow it. Finally, in 1807, the London Chess Club laws gave stalemate as a draw and it has remained so ever since.[source: Murray, A History of Chess, 1913, pp. 61, 229, 267, 781]

Stanley.Charles Henry Stanley (1819-1901) was the first chess champion of the United States.  Stanley was an Englishman who had emigrated from London to New York in 1843 to work in the British Consulate.  On December 27, 1845, Stanley defeated Eugene Rousseau (1810-1870), a bank clerk, in New Orleans.  Stanley had 15 wins, 8 losses, and 8 draws.  It was the first US chess championship (although the term "US Chess Champion" did not exist at the time).  The stakes for the match was $1000.  This was the first organized chess event in the U.S.  The match took place at the Sazerac Coffee House in New Orleans.  Rousseau's second in the match was Ernest Morphy, who took his 8-year-old nephew, Paul Morphy (1837-1884), to the match. [source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, Dec 27, 1845 and Bell's Life, Feb 15, 1846]In 1846 he published the first U.S. book on a chess match, 31 Games of Chess. In 1855, he organized the first World Problem Tournament.  Stanley suffered from alcoholism and later became destitute as a result of his drinking problem.  When Paul Morphy won the First American Chess Congress in 1857, he gave his winnings to Mrs. Stanley, claiming he couldn’t give it to Charles because “he would drink it all up.”   Mrs. Stanley named her next child Pauline after Paul Morphy. 

Strazdins.Latvian-born Arkadijs Strazdins (“Straz”) (1923-2007) won the New Britain Chess Club of Connecticut (NBCC) chess championship 21 years in a row (from 1952 to 1972), and a total of 27 championship wins.  He also had been president of the chess club for 31 years.  He was a member of the club for over 50 years.  His son, Andris, was the club treasurer for over 34 years  Arkadijs served in the Latvian Army during World War II and moved to the United States in 1951.[sources: Chess Life, June 1975, p. 379 and “Remembering ArkadijsStrazdins,” Connecticut Chess Association]

Tarrasch.SiegbertTarrasch (1862-1934) was one of the strongest chess players in the world in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  He was a medical doctor by profession.  He was Jewish, but converted to Christianity in 1909.  Despite that, he faced antisemitism in the early ages of Nazism.  He had 5 children, 3 sons and 2 daughters,  He lost two sons during World War I,  His eldest son, Dr. Fritz Tarrasch of Munich, died at the front on May 14, 1915.  He was a lieutenant in the 15th Bavarian reserve infantry regiment.  He had twice been wounded before and had been decorated with the Iron Cross for showing bravery on the field of battle. [source: American Chess Bulletin, 1915, p.153]Tarrasch’s second son committed suicide during World War I.  In 1916, Tarrasch’s third son died when run over by a tram in Munich.Tarrasch was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2008. The Tarrasch Defense, 1.d4 d5 2,c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5, is named after him. 

Tchaikovsky.  The Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow was built in 1901 and has over 1,500 seats.  The first FIDE match for the world championship between Botvinnik and Bronstein was held here in 1951.  The Botvinnik-Smyslov matches were held in the Hall.  In 1985, the Karpov-Kasprov match was held in the Hall.[source: New in Chess, November 1985, p. 37]  In 2019, the Russian chess championship was played at the Museum Estate of the Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchiakovsky (1840-1893).

Television.In May 1953, the first chess match over television was shown in London.  It was limited to three sessions of 10 minutes each.  [source: La Crosse Tribune, May 27, 1953]On December 15, 1953, an episode (Season 6, Episode 12) called “Cagliostro and the Chess Player,” starring Jack Palance (1919-2006), appeared on Suspense (TV series from 1949 to 1954).  Count Alessandro di Cagliostro engages Poland’s King Stanislaus in a game with his mechanical chess player.On November 12, 1954, an episode (Season 8, Episode 49) called “The Chess Player” appeared on Topper.  Cosmo Topper is expecting a visit from his pen pal chess partner, whom he has never met.  When he meets him for the first time, he is surprised that his correspondence chess opponent was a young boy genius who doesn’t believe in ghosts.  Topper was a TV series from 1953 to 1955, starring Leo G. Carroll.In 1956, chess first appeared on Russian television. It was a report on the 23rd Soviet Championship that was broadcast from a Leningrad studio.On May 21, 1961, Lisa Lane (1938- ), appeared on What's My Line? (Season 12, Episode 38), and stumped the panel as a professional chess player and the reigning U.S. women's chess champion during the first game.  What's My Line? was a TV series from 1950 to 1967.

Thessaloniki.  Second-largest city in Greece.  In November-December 1984, the 26^th Chess Olympiad was held there.  Yugoslavia was the only country to field 6 grandmasters.  The USSR team won their 3^rd consecutive gold medal (and 15^th in total).  For the first time in Olympic history, the USSR team did not have a single world chess champion playing in the event – past, present, or future.  The only world champion present was Boris Spassky, who had defected and now represented France.  He drew 12 of his 14 games – an Olympic record.  This was also the site of the 11th Women’s Chess Olympiad, with a record of 51 women’s teams.  The first Women’s Chess Olympiadwas organized by the Dutch at Emmen, and had 21 teams.The USSR women’s team won, followed by Bulgaria and Romania (with only 3 players). [sources: New in Chess, Jan/Feb 1985, pp. 4-47 and New in Chess, March 1985, pp. 16-22]Ion Gudju (born in 1897) of Romania served on the appeals committee. He was 87 years old and may be the oldest player to participate in the chess Olympics (but not as a player).He played in the first unofficial chess Olympiad in 1924 in Paris.John Nunn of England won three gold medals: best score on board 2, best performance rating, and winner of the problem-solving contest. The USA team defeated the USSR team for the first time in Olympiad history. The youngest player in the event was 12-year old Isabelle Kintzlere, who played 3rd board on the French women's team.  In December 1988, the USSR team won the Thessaloniki Olympiad (107 teams). Judit Polgar, at age 11, won a gold medal. She is the youngest Chess Olympiad gold medalist. The game between Yasser Seirawan and Xu Jun ended in stalemate after 198 moves, the longest stalemate ever. During the Olympiad, Woman Grandmaster Elena Akhmilovskaya, playing on the Soviet women's team (she had a score of 8.5 out of 9 on board 2), defected and eloped with International Master John Donaldson, who was captain of the USA men's team. The two were married at the U.S. Consulate in Greece.  Hungary won the Thessaloniki women's Olympiad (56 teams). The Hungarian women's team (Susan, Judit, and Sofia Polgar with IldikoMadl) displaced the Soviet team for the gold. It was the first time that the Soviet women's team did not win the women's event.

Titanic.When the RMS Titanic sunk on 14-15 April 1912,  it was thought that U.S. chess champion Frank J. Marshall (1877-1944) was on the ship. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall were on the passenger list of the Titanic. It turned out to be Henry Marshall and not Frank Marshall. Frank was still in Paris giving chess exhibitions. [source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 18, 1912 and April 20, 1912]  One of the first-class passengers was Peter Dennis Daly (1860-1932) of Peru. He graduated from Cambridge University and was fluent in 7 languages.  His hobby was playing correspondence chess with overseas opponents. He remained on deck of the Titanic as long as possible before being washed off the deck by a wave.  He then swam in the water before being picked up by a collapsible boat.[source: Encyclopedia Titanica]  In 2014, a chessboard made from actual wood retrieved from the wreckage of the Titanic in 1912 was purchased at an auction for $16,385.

Turner.  In 1962, Abe Turner (1924-1962), 38, was stabbed 9 times and killed.  He was a 280-pound chess master, whose body was found stuffed in a walk-in safe.  Turner did general office work for Chess Review magazine.  He had been stabbed in a hallway of the building and his body dragged to a basement laboratory used by a doctor who had an office on the front floor.  He was found by the building superintendent, Miguel Vasquez, later that afternoon.  Seized was Theodore Smith, 38, a clerk-typist with Chess Review.  He admitted to the slaying and said he threw away the knife in Central Park, but it was never found. Smith said he killed Turner because the Secret Service agents had told him that Turner was a Communist spy and Smith needed to kill him. [sources: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Oct 26, 1962 and New York Times, Oct 26, 1962]

Variants.There are over 2,000 chess variants. These are versions of chess that do not conform to the normal laws of international chess.  They are games related to, derived from, or inspired by chess.  Forms such as chaturanga, chatrang, shatranj, and medieval chess were orthodox in their time. The difference from chess might include one or more of the following: Different board (larger or smaller, non-square board shape overall or different intra-board cell shapes such as triangles or hexagons). Addition, substitution or removal of pieces in standard chess (non-standard pieces are known as fairy pieces) Different rules for capture, move order, game objective, different victory conditions (losing chess), players have incomplete information regarding the game state (kriegspiel), elements of chance (dice chess), multiple boards (Alice Chess), three-dimensional chess, and more than two players.[source: “Chess Variants: Unorthodox Chess Variations,” White Knight Review, January/February 2012, pp. 17-20]

Weinstein, Raymond.On April 21, 1941, Raymond Allen Weinstein was born in Brooklyn.  He was an American chess master.  He attended the same high school as Bobby Fischer and Barbra Streisand.  In 1958, he was U.S. Junior Chess champion.  He was awarded the IM title in 1962.  In 1964, he attacked International Master Johan Barendregt (1924-1982) while in the Netherlands.  Soon after the incident, he was deported back to the United States.  There, he was detained in a half-way house, then arrested for murder after he killed his 83-year old roommate with a razor after an argument.  Weinstein was judged mentally ill and was confined to the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island for the mentally ill.[source: Sloan, “I Have Found Raymond Weinstein.: Sam Sloan blog site]

Whitaker.Norman Tweed Whitaker (1890-1975) was an American  lawyer, civil servant, and International Master.  In 1918, he was one of the strongest chess players in the country.  In November 1921, Whitaker, his brother and sister, were arrested and indicted for stealing automobiles and collecting on the insurance.  Whitaker was convicted, but escaped. [source: Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, November 26, 1921]  Years later, he was convicted of several other crimes, was disbarred from the practice of law, and served several terms in prison.  In September 1927, Whitaker won the first National Chess Federation chess tournament, held  in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  [source: Decatur Evening Herald, September 5, 1927]  In 1932, Whitaker gained notoriety during the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. A former FBI Agent named Gaston Means concocted a scheme to swindle $104,000 from a wealthy heiress by claiming to be in contact with the kidnappers. Means intended to use Whitaker as the bagman to pick up her money, but both were arrested and convicted. Whitaker was later convicted of attempted extortion. He claimed that the Lindbergh kidnappers had refused $49,500 of the ransom money paid by Mrs. Evalyn McLean because the serial numbers on the money had been published. Therefore, he demanded replacement money in the amount of $35,000, in exchange for which he promised to return the original $49,500 plus the baby. That was when the FBI was finally called in. Whitaker never got any of the money and, when asked what happened to the money, Whitaker replied, "I do not know, and I wish I did". Whitaker got out in just 18 months. Earlier in his life, he was convicted of several other crimes, including auto theft, sending morphine through the mail, and sexual molestation of a minor. He served time in Alcatraz and was a friend of Al Capone there. [source: New York Times, June 29, 1932, p. 9 and Hilbert, Shady Side: The Life and Crimes of Norman Tweed Whitaker, Chess Master, 2000]