The Best Ever Sports Talk Site blogger David Friedman has produced a section on chess where he has put together a brief history of Ohio chess, and it is the only site where this important information is available. Amazingly, the Ohio Chess Association, which has one of the crappiest state chess sites I have seen, has been unable or unwilling to do this. My old home state of North Carolina has a nice site where they actually have a history section and bios of many of the state's past champions. And, the West Virginia Chess Association has put together copies of the state's bulletins dating back to 1942. It seems like the OCA ought be able to do something similar.
Anyway, Mr. Friedman's site informs us that in 1954 Frank Ferryman scored 6-1 to capture the Ohio Championship on tiebreaks over James Harkins. In the following game from that tournament Ferryman defeats Tony Archipoff who won the title in 1952 and 1953.
Not much information on these two players is available. Anatoly (Tony) Archipoff lived in Toledo, Ohio where he started a business after emigrating to the US from Germany where he twice won the Hessen championship. According to the West Virginia Chess Bulletin, Frank Ferryman was from Middletown, Ohio and an article in the city's newspaper from March 1950 said that he was originally from New York City and had lived in Middletown for two years.
In this game I was surprised to see how closely the players' moves matched Stockfish 8's suggestions for much of the game. The game appeared in Chess Life in 1955 and was annotated by Dr. Joseph Platz; I did a post on him
HERE.
1954 was the first year the Ohio Championship was open to players from outside the state, attracting E. Leininger from Grand Ledge MI, David L Clark from Detroit MI, Donald Miles from White Plains NY, and Norval Stamm from Hastings MI. It was also a good year for Ferryman outside the state, according to the Ohio Chess Bulletin, Volume IX, Number 5 (December 1954). He won the Fort Wayne Open with a score of 4.5 - 0.5, finishing ahead of the Indiana champion P. Fischer and Iowa champion J. Penquite, and he also won the Tri-State Championship in Wheeling, WV with the same score. Ferryman did not defend his Ohio title in 1955, having moved to Detroit, as reported in the Ohio Chess Bulletin, Volume X, Number 3 (July 1955).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the additional info!
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