New Chess Server

Funnode: Play Chess, checkers, Go, and other games. 

Nothing really going on in the forums. The server, although still in beta, has been online for several months now. They are open to comments/criticism.

Offering:
Ladder Tournament
Totally free nothing to install and works on most smartphones and tablets
Play Humans or Bots (p4wn and Stockfish)
"Undo Move" and "Offer Draw" options available
Personalized Player Pages to keep track of Ratings and Ranks
Private Games (useful for teaching)
All games are Saved - Reviewable and Downloadable in PGN format Chatting allowed

I signed on at 11:38 am and found no players waiting for a game.

Another Master Lost to Mathematics

A recent photo

     Robion Kirby (born February 25, 1938) was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley who specialized in low-dimensional topology. He co-invented the Kirby–Siebenmann invariant …whatever that means. Along with his significant mathematical contributions, he is an influential figure in the field.
     Kirby received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1965 and soon became an assistant professor at UCLA. While there he developed his "torus trick" which enabled him to prove some of the most important problems in geometric topology. Consequently, in 1971, he was awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry by the American Mathematical Society.
     In 1995 he became the first mathematician to receive the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing from the National Academy of Sciences for his problem list in low-dimensional topology. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Kirby is also the President of Mathematical Sciences Publishers, a small non-profit academic publishing house that focuses on mathematics and engineering journals.
     His parents were both educated with a bit of graduate school, but comparatively poor. His father was a quiet conscientious objector during World War II and hence lost a few jobs. Kirby's father became a teaching assistant in 1948 and during Kirby's childhood and teenage years he grew up in small towns in Washington and Idaho. Knowing arithmetic and how to read before he entered school meant that he was usually bored and spent his time reading or daydreaming in the back of the class.
     In high school, although he was quite good at mathematics, he was far from certain that it was the subject in which he should specialize and he was still undecided when, in 1954, he entered the University of Chicago. Mathematics was the subject he was best at, but still he had no special love for the subject and, seeing some friends enthused by their law courses, considered a law career. After some thought, he decided that he should stick with mathematics. During that time he tended not to listen to lectures and was interested in games: chess, poker, and a wide variety of small sports, but not team sports, where one spent too much time listening to a coach or standing in right field. In fact for his first years at the University of Chicago it was chess that was his main passion.
     The University of Chicago chess team won the US intercollegiate championship twice, and Kirby became ranked twenty-fifth in the country without too much effort but then began to lose interest and sometimes wondered if he could do anything else as well as chess.
     In 1958 he took a course in general topology which he really enjoyed and his interest in chess faded into the background. According to Kirby, he discovered that “mathematics was a better game than chess,” These days Kirby is nominally retired, although he still pursues an active research program and looks back on his long career with satisfaction.
     In the 1963 US Open held in Chicago, won by William Lombardy on tiebreaks over Robert Byrne and ahead of such players as Gligorich and Benko, Kirby tied for places 11 through 19 (9 pts out of 12) with a group that included GM’s Arthur Bisguier and Duncan Suttles. 
     Unfortunately, because he was “only” a journeyman master back in the days before the internet, I was unsuccessful I finding any games that he won but only a couple of lost games.  I remember seeing his name a lot in the list of top finishers in tournaments in the Chicago/Milwaukee area back in the 1960's. 
     In this game, played in the California State Championship of 1966-1967, Raymond Schutt played a hard hitting game against Kirby, the other mathematician in this event.  Their game was typical topical for the Paulsen variation of the Sicilian Defense in those days. Charles Henin came in first with 5 ½ - 2 ½ with Irving Rivise and Kirby finishing 5th – 6th with even scores.

Chess Engine Downloads

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Fun Grob Attack with a Tricky Ending

     The Grob Attack is a gambit unlike anything else in modern chess theory and I like to play it from time to time just for fun. Every basic concept of development and piece placement must be discarded once 1. g4 has been played and this applies both players!
     Accepting the gambit pawn is accepting immediate problems and it has been my experience that players facing the Grob for the first time are most likely to get into trouble in a hurry. In this game my opponent was rated in the mid-1900’s, so he handled the opening very well and I played a very risky continuation that shows one of the disadvantages of the Grob.

After 7...e6

White has lost a lot of time and even more time will be lost extricating the Q from its exposed position. In addition, white’s P’s are a mess and black has a lead in development. That’s why I decided on the N sally 8.Nb5?! just to muddy the waters even though it wasn’t the best. The ending we eventually reached was a really tricky one.

C.H.O’D. Alexander’s Fantastic Move

      The following game between Sir Stuart Milner-Barry and C.H.O’D. Alexander was played in Cambridge, 1932 and it was, according to Tartakower, “A feast for the eye and mind.”
      The Cambridge, 1932 Premier final standings were:

1)Sultan Kahn (5.0)
2-3) Johannes Van den Bosch and Alexander (4.5)
4) Sir George Thomas (3.5)
5-7) Vera Menchik. T.H. Tyler and F.D. Yates (3.0)
7) F.D. Yates
8) Milner-Barry (1)

van den Bosch (right)

     All the players are well known names except perhaps Johannes Hendrik Otto graaf van den Bosch (12 April 1906, The Hague – 15 November 1994, Hilversum). He was a Dutch noble, lawyer, banker and chess master. He represented The Netherlands in the Olympiads three times.
     The opening, a Pierce Gambit which is a branch of the Vienna, arising from 1 e4 e5 2 Nc3 Nc6 3 f4 exf4 4 Nf3 g5 and now characterized by the move: 5 d4 has a fascinating history. The gambit gets its name from English master William Timbrell Pierce (1839-1922) and his brother James Pierce (1833-1892).
     The first mention of it was apparently in the January 1886 issue of British Chess Magazine, to which they both regularly contributed. They played a lot of test games with the line, both in friendly and correspondence tournaments, including many games between the two brothers. Chess players in Brighton, Sussex also held a tournament in 1886 to investigate the gambit and numerous articles about it appeared during the later 1880s and 1890s. Towards the end of 1888 the publication of Pierce Gambit, Chess Papers and Problems by the brothers appeared.

Milner-Barry

Alexander

     This game features threats, counter threats, sacrifices and counter sacrifices and lots of tension. Alexander’s 21st move is one of the most versatile I’ve ever seen. It fulfilled many functions: 1) masked the d-file 2) unmasked his own g-file 3) deflected white’s Q 4) attacked a N and 5) cut off the white K’s flight. What more could you ask from a single move?

Basman Defense

     That’s what I’m calling Black’s defense in this game in honor of IM Michael Basman of Great Britain. Basman (born 16 March 1946 in London) is an International Master and author who has made many contributions to opening theory. He is particularly known for frequently choosing bizarre or rarely played openings, including the St. George Defense, the Grob (for Black and White) and also The Creepy Crawly (a3, then h3 followed by a quick c4).
     There’s an amusing story about this game. I stopped in at the local coffee shop and was watching a couple of players doing a post mortem of a game they had just played. I knew one of them from way back and he used to be rated somewhere around 1800, I think. His opponent asked him a question about a move and my friend replied, “You have a master standing behind you, ask him.” Master?! Either he was being generous or age has dimmed his memory.  I ended up playing the other guy and he advised me he had been rated circa 1700 as a result of a few tournaments he had played in back during the Fischer Boom. I had to question that rating when he played his first move, 1…h6, but later I discovered that it’s a defense Basman has played on occasion so I had to take back my condescending thoughts.
     I see openings like this quite often on the internet and the people playing them almost always make the same mistake.  Their play is way too passive and they allow me to build up the center; at some point you have to challenge your opponent in the center or his space advantage will confer an overwhelming position. My sacrifice on move 11, while not unsound, was objectively not the best, but it made things difficult for Black’s defense.

Whitaker vs. Marshall, the Match that Never Was

     Norman T. Whitaker was a unique character among U.S. chess masters. As one of America's top players in the 1920s, he began a life of crime that would bring him national notoriety, infamy and years in prison. GM Arnold Denker, with what seems a trace of admiration, dubbed him "Stormin' Norman, Caissa's Conman" while historian Edward Winter disdainfully called him "irredeemable."
     Early in his career Whitaker began showing an argumentative streak, started becoming sensitive to real or imagined slights and showing hostility toward established chess authority, which led to his expulsion from the Franklin, Philadelphia's premier chess club.
     In 1916 he lost a match to former U.S. champion Jackson Showalter 6-1, but improved rapidly and defeated Showalter 5½-2½ in 1918. Whitaker peaked as a player in the 1920’s and in 1928 and played in one of his few major events outside the U.S., at The Hague in the 1928 FIDE "Amateur Championship," where he scored a respectable 9½-5½, finishing fourth-sixth of sixteen, 2½ points behind future world champion Max Euwe. His Elo rating for the 1920s has been estimated at 2420 to 2490, which during that period placed him probably in the country's top five or six.
    From 1916 on Whitaker three times began negotiations for a title match with Marshall, but for various reasons one never took place. Most likely a match never took place because of Whitaker’s life of crime. He committed his first felony, car theft, in 1921 and would spend substantial portions of the years 1925-1950 behind bars and virtually all of 1932-1946 away from organized chess. Whitaker felt little obligation to keep promises, tell the truth, respect the feelings or possessions of others or honor debts. The result was his penchant for committing numerous thefts and frauds. Some were petty such as not paying parking tickets, using fake coins, stealing library books, bouncing checks, failing to pay business debts, dodging the military draft, using aliases, filing false insurance claims, stealing cars, dealing in narcotics, attempting extortion, seducing, swindling and jilting women.
     His worst crime was his conviction for sexually molesting a twelve-year old girl, committed when Whitaker was fifty-nine. At the age of 68 he proposed marriage to a girl of fourteen.
     His most famous crime, committed with Gaston Means, a notorious swindler, was in 1932, when the baby of Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped. The two convinced a wealthy heiress that they had contact with the kidnappers, and could, for $104,000, secure release of the child. Whitaker posed as a gangster in the scheme. Means and Whitaker were arrested, but the money was never recovered.
     In 1958 Whitaker was accused of forging the will of a sister but it provided him with a small, but steady income. In 1965, after years of heavy lobbying on his own behalf, FIDE awarded him the International Master title, based mainly on his 1920's achievements. He was a thorn in the flesh of the USCF, filing innumerable nuisance lawsuits. In his late years, Whitaker's reputation began to improve, mostly because those who remembered him were no longer on the scene and he participated in chess education and organization. As time passed though he was increasingly alone and at age eighty-four a series of strokes gradually left him incapacitated and friend got him into a nursing home in Alabama, where he died a pauper on May 20, 1975. I met Whitaker at a small weekend tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1967. He was selling one of his endgame books, adjudicated a game and spun a few yarns.
     Frank Marshall’s title of U.S. Champion which he wrested from Jackson W. Showalter at Lexington, Kentucky by a score of +7 -2 =3 in 1909 had not been contested for 12 years. Marshall’s title was coveted by the nefarious Whitaker of Washington D.C.
     Whitaker had just won second place in a masters tournament at the Eighth American Congress that had been held in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1921. The event was won by David Janowsky with 8.5 – 2.5 a half point ahead of Whitaker even though Whitaker had handed Janowsky his only defeat in the tournament. Whitaker had lost two games: Vladimir Sournin and I.S. Turover. He defeated Frank Marshall, with three losses had tied for fifth place with Sournin and Samuel Factor.
     The relatively unknown Sournin (1 August 1875, Mstislavl, Russia – 21 August 1942, Baltimore, USA) was born into a Russian family of an Army officer, studied in Paris where he met Emmanuel Schiffers, and also learned about the Spanish-American War preparations and decided to join the Volunteers and crossed the Atlantic to fight for the United States. In 1896, he lost a match to Marshall (+2 –7 =2) in New York. He played at Ostend 1906 but was eliminated, took 19th at St Petersburg 1911 and tied for 14-15th at Vilna 1912 (B tournament).  He was the Washington D.C. champion in 1932 and 1933, with a comeback in 1938 at the age of 63.
     Isador S. Turover (July 8, 1892 - October 16, 1978) was a Belgian-American master. Born in Poland, he moved to Belgium and then to the United States. He was a champion of Baltimore from 1918 to 1921 and enjoyed success in many master tournaments on both the east and west coasts. Turover settled in the Washington, DC area and had a very successful lumber business. Turover became a director of the American Chess Foundation and was also known as a chess patron and philanthropist. He sponsored Bobby Fischer's attendance in the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal. Throughout his life he offered cash prizes for brilliancies.

     In a letter dated September 16, 1921, Whitaker sent the following letter to Marshall:

Mr. Frank Marshall
Marshall’s Chess Club
146 West 4th Street New York, N.Y.

Today I returned from the West and note with pleasure in the Brooklyn Eagle that there is a possibility that we might play a chess match. I, therefore, challenge you to play a chess match for the championship of the United States. Please let me know the conditions and if I can meet them I will promptly go to New York and sign the match agreement. It is my sincere desire to avoid any misunderstanding and I shall endeavor to co-operate with you in every way to promote this match. Awaiting your early reply, I am, very truly yours.

Norman T. Whitaker

     Upon receiving Whitaker’s letter Marshall consulted friends and sent a reply in which he outlined his conditions. Marshall’s reply listed only the financial conditions, leaving the playing conditions open to further negotiations. In addition to a $300 for living expenses he demanded a purse of $2000 of which he wanted 60 percent.

Dear Mr. Whitaker:

I have the honor to acknowledge your valued favor of the 16th inst., and am pleased to state that it will give me pleasure to consider playing you for the chess championship of the U.S., if mutually satisfactory terms can be arranged. I tentatively suggest the following terms which I would consent to enter the proposed match: (a) Since I shall be rising my present title, I will require that you put up, or cause to be put up, $2300 with such party or parties as we may mutually agree upon: the same to be disbursed as follows: (b) Three hundred ($300) dollars to be paid over to me upon the signing of the agreement between us, covering the terms of our understanding. (c) Two thousand ($2000) dollars to be held in trust by a party or parties to be designated by us, pending the outcome of the proposed match and is to be subsequently divided as follows: Sixty (60%) percent, twelve hundred dollars to go to me, win, lose or draw and forty (40%) eight hundred dollars, to go to you, win or lose. Trusting the foregoing suggested general terms for the proposed match meet with your approval, I beg to remain;

Very sincerely yours,
Frank J. Marshall
Chess Champion, U.S.
New York, September 25, 1921

All things considered, it’s probably best for Marshall that the match never took place. Who knows what scheme Whitaker had up his sleeve?

More on Rooks vs. Minor Pieces

     I recently did a post on this subject where Tahl’s R defeated Botvinnik’s minor pieces as a follow up to the post Two Minor Pieces vs. Rook and Pawn….which to choose? where I gave some general guidelines on playing these positions. I mentioned in that post that GM Arthur Bisguier once said that against a weaker opponent he could win with either side and maybe that’s the best rule concerning this situation…be the stronger player!
     I recently came across the game by Bisguier where he made that comment. In the game his opponent, John Donaldson, came up with a nice combination early on that won a N and B for a R and P. Donaldson managed to outplay Bisguier in the opening and middlegame, but after they traded down to a position where Donaldson had a B,N and 5 P’s vs. Bisguier’s R and 5 P’s they had a position where theoretically Donaldson should have won. He failed to win though because, being the stronger player, Bisguier understood the position better.

Trounced by a 2300

Trounce is a transitive verb. Transitive verbs are action verbs that have an object to receive that action. Trounce means to defeat (someone or something) easily and thoroughly. In this case, the someone that was easily and thoroughly defeated was me. The game shows why some guys are rated 2300 and I’m not.

Harriet Worrall

 

    Her husband, Thomas Worrall, a strong amateur, is probably better known.  He had good results in 1850’s against some top players. Worrall was reported to have played 45 games against Howard Staunton, winning 22 and losing 23.  These were apparently odds games as Worrall played a match against Staunton at N odds which he won +8 -7 =0. Morphy played 15 games against Thomas Worrall and only scored +8 -7 =0.  Like her husband, Harriet (1836-1928) also played a few games at N odds against Morphy and managed to draw one.  Her husband, Thomas Herbert Worrall (1807-1878), whom she married in 1856, was a former British Army officer and in 1864, after serving as British Commissioner in Mexico as part of the British Mexican Legation moved to New York where he continued to play chess and serve as a public speaker about his experiences in Mexico.

     Harriet learned chess from her husband.  She was known as the country's strongest woman chess player. The Worrall’s lead a life of wealth and privilege but when her husband died in New York on September 6, 1878, Harriet at age 42 was left with little money. Most of her husband's money had been lost shortly before his death. Finding herself in modest circumstances she eventually ended up living in the house of a friend, one Arthur Cole and his family.

     As the years passed after her husband's death financial struggles wore her down and by the mid-1886 she was suffering from epileptic attacks, which were followed by what people who knew her described as "periods of mental depression and melancholia."

     About six and a half years before sailing to England to compete in the women's international tournament, she attempted suicide.  Just before Christmas 1890, while living in the house of Arthur Cole, on Sunday morning December 21, the Cole family was ready to have their breakfast but Harriet didn't come down.  They were not alarmed because that was not unusual.  But at about 11:00 a.m. groans were heard from her private room. Alarmed, Alfred Cole Jr. tried to open the door, only to find it locked. The boy then went outside and climbed through Worrall's window, and opened the door for his father.  Harriet was writhing in agony on the floor with a bottle of carbolic acid, a disinfectant, was found open on the table.

     Mr. Cole sent for a doctor who administered emetics and three days later Harriet was still struggling between life and death and the doctor estimated the poison must have been in her stomach for at least twenty minutes; all he could offer was a "possibility" of her recovery. Had she not been found for another half hour, she would have died.  This attempt likely was not a complete surprise as the  Coles had frequently heard her speak of suicide during moments of depression.

     The news regarding her attempted suicide traveled quickly to the chess community and two days before New Year's Eve, the following appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's chess column: "Mrs. Worrall, a noted woman chess player, who last week attempted suicide during a fit of mental despondency, is in a fair way to recover. Mrs. Worrall was a great admirer and friend of Captain Mackenzie." Captain Mackenzie had died in 1891 and the cause of his death was a matter of speculation.  The New York Times reported on April 27, 1890 that Mackenzie was suffering from tuberculosis, and on April 15, 1891, a day after his death, mentioned that the immediate cause of death was pneumonia, noting that his condition had worsened from a fever caught while visiting Havana. However, on April 29, 1891, The Sun carried a report by Dr. S. B. Minden, who had visited Mackenzie before his death, claiming that he had committed suicide by an overdose of morphine, which he had requested earlier to ease the pain from his tuberculosis, but Dr. Minden had refused. The coroner who had presided over Mackenzie's death dismissed this assertion as ridiculous, insisting that tuberculosis was the cause of death.

     Between January 1891 and mid-1894 Brooklyn's leading chess columns published nothing on her.  Harriet recovered slowly and mid-1894 she was back to chess and was sending solutions to problems given in newspaper columns. In early November of 1894 she visited the masters' tournament that started in New York where Steinitz was among the participants.

     She then began a match for the U.S. women’s championship with Nellie Showalter, the wife of Jackson W. Showalter and a very accomplished player in her own right. The match was for seven games, with twelve moves an hour. When Nellie Showalter was leading 3-1 with one draw, the match was interrupted on account of Nellie Showalter's illness and never resumed. Several accounts point out that because Worrall was a friend of Nellie Showalter she never claimed victory.

     On May 16, 1897 sixty-year old Harriet Worrall boarded a steamer and sailed for England as America's representative at the First Ladies' International Chess Tournament to be held in London that June and July.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that she was optimistic, saying anything less than a first or second prize would be a disappointment.

     The tournament (with Pillsbury acting as arbiter) resulted in Worrall finishing fourth with 13 points out of nineteen games behind Mary Rudge (18½), L. M. Fagan (15½) and Thorold (14). In early September 1897 she returned home disappointed in her performance believing she could have done better had she been more accustomed to playing with a time limit, keeping score and clocks.  She lost a great deal of time in her games simply because she often forgot to stop the clock. Also, eight hours' chess every day, with only a two hour break between games, was very hard on all the players.

     The players were a mixed group and it was confusing to her.  Hertzsch, the youngest, was 18 years old and could not speak a word of English. Lady Thomas was afflicted with a "nervous ailment" which caused her hands to shake constantly when she made her moves; her hair was white and she is nearly 70 years of age.  Muller Hartung of Germany, talked constantly while she was playing against Worrall and in garner conversation was unrestrained while the games were in progress.  Also, during the tournament, the heat was oppressive so that fans were kept running constantly.

     With few opportunities for serious matches or tournament play she made a habit of taking a board against any visiting master visited the Brooklyn Chess Club. There she had the opportunity to play many of them.  In 1894 she lost a game to Albert B. Hodges in a simultaneous exhibition and in she was one of 17 players who played Jackson W. Showalter in another simultaneous exhibition at the local club; she lost a King's Gambit.

     In 1895 she took part in a seven-board simultaneous given by Harry N. Pillsbury and lost. She met Pillsbury again when he gave a 14 board simultaneous to players in consultation at the Brooklyn Chess Club.  During that exhibition Harriet was in consultation with Walter Frère and they held Pillsbury to a draw.

     She also became involved with the British Ladies' Chess Club, curiously enough founded in New York, in 1894 and in 1895 Worrall was behind a "Junior Chess Club," an organization of young people affiliated with the Ladies' Chess Club.

     In 1896, when Jackson W. Showalter gave a fourteen-board exhibition at the Brooklyn Chess Club, Worrall occupied one of the three tables reserved for consultation games and she, again paired with Frère, defeated Showalter.  Later the same year, they lost a fourteen-board simultaneous display by John F. Barry.  Shortly after that she played a board, this time on her own, against Hermann Helms and scored a victory.  The Eagle reported that she was the strongest woman player in the city.

     In 1898 she played in a four-board blindfold simultaneous exhibition given by Albert B. Hodges at the Brooklyn Chess and the same year in consultation with Walter Frère, she took a board in Pillsbury's 27-board simultaneous and was defeated. Two weeks later, on December 17, 1898, when Dawid Janowsky visited the club Worrall and Frère managed a win.

     In 1899, Worrall helped to organize another ladies' chess congress, this time in the United States but nothing came of it  That same year she and defeated Steinitz in a simultaneous.  After that, chess news related to Harriet Worrall becomes scarce.

     She eventually reemerged and on Saturday, March 26, 1910, according to the Eagle of March 27, Worrall was one of the five women among the twenty-eight players, members of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, who faced the young Capablanca in simultaneous exhibition; she lost a Sicilian Defense.

     Harriet Worrall died of natural causes in New York at ninety-two, on November 23, 1928.

 

The first Ladies' International Chess Congress



Glamorous ladies of the congress

     …was played under the management of the Ladies' Chess Club, of London, was finished July 3, 1897.  The schedule was two rounds with one evening being devoted to the adjourned games.

     It was one of the most successful tournaments in the history of the game, no friction occurred, everything went on with the regularity of machinery and the Congress was a credit to the executive ability of the able match captain of the club, Mrs. Rhoda Bowles.

     Games were commenced at the Hotel Cecil, in the Masonic Hall, on June 23, hours of play being from 1 to 5 and 7 to 11 P. M. The hall had only been engaged for six days and the concluding rounds were played at the home of the club in the Ideal Cafe, Tottenham Court Road.

     During the tournament it was announced that M. Eschwege, father of one of the contestants, had offered four gold medals as consolation prizes for those below the money prize winners. The full scores and distribution of prizes were as follows :

 

1)   Miss Rudge, London ($300)

2) Signorina Fagan, Italy ($250)

3) Miss Thorold, London ($20o)

4) Mrs. Harriet Worrall, Brooklyn, NY, USA ($150)

5) Madame Marie Bonnefin, Belgium ($100)

6-7) Mrs. Barry, Ireland and Lady Thomas, London (divided $75)

8-9) Miss Watson and Miss Gooding

10-11) Mrs. Sidney and Miss Hooke

12) Miss Fox

13) Frau Hertzsch

14) Miss Eschwege

15) Frau Muller- Hartung

16) Madame De la Vigne

17) Miss Forbes-Sharp

18) Mrs. Stevenson

 

     The longest game of the tournament was 90 moves, and the shortest ended in a mate in 9 moves.

     The American Chess Magazine commented, “It is really the entry of women into chess club life. It is reasonable to expect that women will work reforms in chess clubs that they have in all other lines where they have gained the right to equal competition.”

     “Miss Mary Rudge, winner of the first prize, is a well-known London player, ranking in chess strength with the first class of the leading men's clubs. She is past middle age and has had a large experience in chess. Her record is very fine and stamps her as a steady player. She won first prize in a minor tournament at Clifton last year, and while considered one of the best players in this Congress she was not expected to make such a fine score.”

     “Mrs. Fagan, the Italian representative, winner of the second prize, is a sister of the well-known English amateur, Dr. Ballard. Miss Thorold is also of a chess family, her brother being the originator of the Thorold-Allgaier variations of the King's Gambit.  Mrs. Worrall is well known to American players and her victory will be a gratification to her friends. Lady Thomas is a middle-aged lady of matronly appearance; she won first prize in the ladies' section of the Hastings tournament in 1895. Miss Field is one of the younger players of the Congress, steady and with good judgment.”