1980 US Championship

Some of the participants, only slightly older!

     This tournament marked a significant change in US chess. The tournament was held Greenville, Pennsylvania, which is located about 80 miles from both Pittsburgh and Cleveland, Ohio. Greenville has a population of about 6,000 and the town's biggest employer is the Werner Company, a world leader in the manufacturing and distribution of aluminum and fiberglass ladders. It's also home to the venue, Thiel College, a private liberal arts, sciences and professional college related to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. 
     The tournament had some new faces: Yasser Seirawan, Joe Bradford, Mark Diesen, John Peters, Peter Biyiasas and Vitaly Zaltsman. Leonid Shamkovich, Anatoly Lein and Vitaly Zaltsman were Soviet emigres of which Zaltsman was the newest. Arriving in 1976, he had been making a living on Swiss tournaments. 
     Larry Christiansen and Seirawan represented the young generation while the old guard was represented by Robert Byrne, Arthur Bisguier, Larry Evans and Pal Benko. The success of this last group had been slowly but perceptibly declining and it was becoming clear that their chances of winning the championship were slim to none given the crop of strong new players.
     Also, this was the first championship into which players could be seeded by scoring wins in Swiss System tournaments under a Gran Prix format that had been sponsored by Church's Fried Chicken.
     The fact that the Old Guard was on the skids became apparent in the first round when Seirawan crushed Evans and Peters likewise crushed Bisguier. Robert Byrne fared no better when he was tactically outplayed by Joe Bradford. Who was Joe Bradford? He was an unknown who came out of nowhere when he qualified by scoring an upset victory in the 1978 U.S. Open in Phoenix, Arizona. Bradford was from Austin, Texas and was the lowest rated player in the event and so was considered an easy point which was seemingly verified when Byrne built up an overwhelming position in round one.  Unfortunately for Byrne, he blundered away the game. Then in round two Bradford was stomped by Walter Browne.  Bradford worked for the Texas Department of Transportation and at his peak had a FIDE rating of over 2400. The late Ken Smith thought he had enough talent to be a GM if he worked at it full time. He didn't become an IM until after he retired from his job. 
     You won't see the name of Mark Diesen, one of the most promising young players in the country at the time and a former world junior champion, in the crosstable because on the night of the third round he suffered injuries when he fell down a flight of stairs and had to withdraw. He soon abandoned chess and graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He worked as a reservoir engineer for Shell Oil, Pennzoil and Noble Energy. Diesen (born September 16, 1957) passed away suddenly on December 9, 2008 in Conroe, Texas.
     The tournament appeared to be a horse race between Browne and Evans. Larry Evans, the old man in the tournament at the age of 52, was there more or less by accident. At the last minute Lubosh Kavalek canceled and based on ratings, the next two players in line were Evans and 23-year old Nick deFirmian. In a typical no brain fashion, the USCF decided to break the tie on the basis of the two players' average rating. Evans hadn't played in a tournament for two years, so his average rating was his current one. 
     As a result of Diesen's withdrawal, which resulted in there being a bye in each round, by the last round there was a four-way tie for first place between Evans, Christiansen, Browne and Seriwan. That meant the last round was a tense one. A win could mean $5000 and first place while a loss could mean $900 and sixth. 
     The pairings were Zaltsman vs. Seirawan, Shamkovich vs. Christiansen, Evans vs. Lein and Browne vs. Bisguier. 
     Evans played cautiously against Lein and drew at adjournment after 35 moves. Christiansen lost a Pawn against Shamkovich but had enough play to force a draw. 
     Browne emerged from the opening against Bisguier with what appeared to be an endgame advantage and so he kept pressing until the game was adjourned.  Meanwhile, Seirawan wasn't doing so good against Zaltsman when they also adjourned. 
     Both games were to be resumed later that night and the final result hung on those two games. Within minutes of resumption Bisguier demonstrated a clever defense that he had discovered during adjournment in their N and P ending and forced Browne to accept the draw.  That meant three of the four leaders had drawn and first place depended on the outcome of the Zaltsman vs. Seirawan game. 
     Seirawan had played a risky opening and ended up defending an inferior position. He was lost at adjournment and could not find a way to salvage the game and ended up losing in 67 moves. 

1-3) Browne, Christiansen and Evans 7.5-4.5 
4-5) Seirawan and Shamkovich 7-5 
6-7) Lein and Zaltsman 6-6 
8-12) Benko, Biyiasas, Bradford, Byrne and Peters 5-7 
13) Bisguier 4.5-7.5

     Withdrawals...in the 1978 championship Walter Browne withdrew in a snit, Diesen had to withdraw in this one and in the next championship (1981) Larry Evans was to withdraw in a huff. Anatoly Lein whipped Evans pretty badly in the first round and in the second round Evans was horribly outplayed in the opening by Robert Byrne and forced to resign before his 21st move. Evans then decided it was time to head home to Reno, Nevada, making it the third straight championship in which someone had dropped out. 
     The following game was one of the crucial games and received the "best overall game" of the event prize. Christiansen demonstrated how much he had improved since his five straight losses in the previous championship in Pasadena when he scored +3 -6 =5 to finish in 13th place out of 15. That was the event from which Walter Browne had withdrawn.
 

A Game From the 1954 Ohio State Championship

     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.

Donald Byrne

     Donald Byrne (June 12, 1930 – April 8, 1976) is best known for losing The Game of the Century in the 1956 Rosenwald tournament to Bobby Fischer and as being the younger brother of Grandmaster Robert Byrne.   It's a little appreciated fact that Donald was one of the strongest US players during the 1950s and 1960s. 
     Byrne won the US Open in 1953.  In the 1954 radio match against the Soviet Union, Byrne defeated Yuri Averbach 3-1 in their individual match. And, at one point, rated just below Reshevsky, he was the second highest rated player in the US, but he was not awarded the International Master title until 1962. He played for or captained five US Chess Olympiad teams between 1962 and 1972. 
     Unfortunately due to illness and lack of opportunity he was never really very active as a player, but genial and diplomatic by nature, he was well known and well liked by everybody who met him. The one exception was Samuel Reshevsky. One time a student commented that he seemed to be on good terms with everyone in the chess world. Byrne's reply was, "Yes, that is everyone except Reshevsky. But then, no one likes Reshevsky." 
     It's little known, but after Fischer's combination in The Game of the Century, Byrne consulted the other players to see if they thought he should honor Fischer's brilliant play by allowing Fischer to mate him. How unusual is that for a chess player?
     The Byrne brothers were students of the famous coach John W. Collins. Besides the Byrne brothers and Bobby Fischer, Collins also coached William Lombardy, Raymond Weinstein, Sal Matera and Lewis Cohen. When it came out, I purchased My Seven Chess Prodigies hoping to find what Collins' secret was and was very disappointed. There was no secret. He invited the kids to his apartment where he and his sister Ethel, who also served as the handicapped Collins caregiver, fed the kids cakes, cookies and soft drinks while they studied openings, analyzed games and played blitz. 
     As a player Byrne popularized the ...a5 line in the Yugoslav Attack in the Sicilian Dragon and against 1.d4 he often preferred to play the Gruenfeld. As White he preferred the English. As might be guessed from his opening preferences, Byrne preferred positional battles and it's hard to find any of his games that were tactical melees.   For the most part they seem colorless positional battles which probably explains why I don't recollect ever seeing too many of them published. 
     Byrne was a professor of English and taught at Penn State University from 1961 until his death, having been invited there to teach and to coach the varsity chess team. He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2002. Byrne died in Philadelphia of complications arising from lupus. 
     In the following game he defeats the champion of dozens of Ohio tournaments and former US Armed Forces Champion, attorney Ross F. Sprague.
 

Reshevsky Rolls Over Evans at the 1951 Wertheim Memorial

     This 12-player tournament was held from June 3-17, 1951 at the Manhattan Chess Club to honor former Manhattan Club president Maurice Wertheim, who had died the previous year. You can read my post on Maurice Wertheim HERE. 
     There were problems from the beginning with this event when a number of invitees were unavailable. For those that did accept invitations, there were problems right at the start. Carlos Guimard of Argentina arrived late because his plane was delayed a whole day in Puerto Rico. Dr. Max Euwe, on a tight schedule, had to leave New York the day after the tournament. George Kramer was commuting to New York from Philadelphia. That's about 95-100 miles. Today you can make the drive up I-95 in about two hours and by train it still takes and hour and a quarter to two hours. Who knows how long it took in 1951?! Dr. Reuben Fine, Al Horowitz and George Shainswit could only play in the evenings and Samuel Reshevsky, because of his religious observances, had to have several games rescheduled. 
     To cut down on the number of adjournments the time control was 50 moves in 2 and a half hours, giving some time to play off adjournments for players who finished early in the five-hour session. The plan worked as there were only five adjournments in the tournament.
     Reshevsky finished first, losing only one game when he blundered badly in his game against Euwe.  Euwe's play was a little spotty, losing to Najdorf and Larry Evans while being held to draws by Horowitz, Robert Byrne and O'Kelly who was having a bad tournament (+1 -3 =7). 
     Najdorf, the only undefeated player, started slowly by drawing his first four games and only scored two wins, against Evans and Fine. Still, first place was riding on his last round game against Reshevsky, but the game ended in a draw. 
     This was Fine's last professional tournament and he played in the evenings after he got off work.  Hans Kmoch wrote that Fine had played the entire tournament in a state of exhaustion, but I can't imagine that he was any more fatigued than Horowitz, Shanswit and, especially, Kramer. 
     Bisguier, a bright young 22-year old of promise, was playing while on leave from the US Army. The 19-year old Evans was also rising star who would win the US Championship at the end of the year when he finished a point ahead of Reshevsky to become the youngest US champion in history. 
     At the closing ceremonies the president of the Manhattan Chess Club, Al Bisno, announced negotiations had been concluded for a match between Reshevsky and Najdorf, with games to be held in both the US and Argentina. At the time the match was referred to as the Championship of the West or of the Free (non-Communist) World. The venue was also changed and the games were played in New York City, Mexico City and San Salvador. 

1) Reshevsky 8.0 
2-3) Najdorf and Euwe 7.5 
4) Fine 7.0 
5) Evans 6.5 
6-7) Horowitz and Byrne 6.0 
8) Guimard 5.0 
9) O'Kelly 4.5 
10) Bisguier 3.5 
11) Kramer 3.0 
12 Shainswit 1.5 
 

Larry Gilden

A recent photo

     Lawrence C. Gilden (born September 25, 1942 in Washington DC) was awarded the FM title in 1983. Although he was at one time a Senior Master (rated over 2400) his current USCF rating is 2213. 
     In 1961 he won the Intercollegiate Championship; he has also won the Washington DC championship and the New Jersey State Championship four times. Gilden played in the 1974 US Championship but finished last, scoring +3 -9 =1. His lone draw was against Larry Evans who tied with Pal Benko for second place a full point and a half behind Walter Browne. His wins were over Bernard Zuckerman, Andrew Soltis and Kim Commons. 
     For whatever reason, in the mid to late 1970s he began suffering a rating decline. He currently lives in Maryland. 
     Kingpin magazine has an old article by W.R. Hartson about the 1967 Students’ Olympiad that has an anecdote about Gilden and teammate Bernard Zuckerman. 
     Gilden's opponent in this game was Ross Stoutenborough (born 1953) from Virginia. His rating is listed at 2308, but he has been inactive since 1992. The game was pretty uninteresting up until Gilden made a speculative sacrifice on move 22 which resulted in some real complications. Stoutenborough defended reasonably well, but at move 40 made a gross blunder in a drawn position when he trapped his own Q with a move that was most likely made in time pressure.
 

Winning With Bad Openings and Blunders

     Back in 1969 a fellow named Arthur M. Stevens published a book, the Bluebook of Charts to Winning Chess that was all the rage. The concept was to create a database of openings and calculate the winning percentage of different moves. Of course the book is worthless these days because opening theory has changed tremendously. Also, the games weren't always those played by stronger players, plus the database of games was quite small. 
     This concept is still around today. For instance, Chess Assistant uses a CAP (Computer Analysis Project) value. The CAP data numbers give the computer's evaluation regarding the position that tells you when a move is good or bad. The Fritz opening book also displays a move's success rate as a percentage. The disadvantage is the same as for Charts. Openings are constantly changing plus you don't know what games were included. 
     GM Arthur Bisguier observed that in the Bluebook of Charts there were some surprises. For example, the Grob Attack (1.g4) had a success rate of 77 percent and the Orangutan (1.b4) won 68 percent of the time. Neither of these openings is highly regarded and their success is probably due to their shock value and the fact that many of the games were played by lower rated players. Still, back in 1980 the game Karpov - Miles opened 1.e4 a6 2.d4 b5 (the St. George) and Miles won. So, as Bisguier observed, unorthodox openings must be taken seriously! 
     Chess Opening Explorer shows that based on 192 games with the opening 1.h4, white wins 33.9 percent and loses 41.1 percent with 25 percent of the games being drawn. For the opening moves in this game (1.e4 d6 2.h4) white scores quite well: 50 percent wins, 25 percent lost and 25 percent drawn. Of course, that's only based on four games, with only two (a loss and a draw) played by masters. 
     The following online game was played at G15 and I should have lost thanks to all the blunders I made, but as Tartakower put it, “The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.” That shouldn't be surprising because it was a typical amateur game. But, just how many tactical mistakes there were surprised me when looking at the game with an engine; Stockfish found some tactics that were quite deep. Also, several positions had unbalanced material and even though Stockfish was giving one side a huge plus, for those of us who are rating challenged the game could have gone either way. 
 

Lilienthal Defeats Capablanca

     The Hastings tournament of 1934-35 was one of the most memorable. Playing were the former world champion Capablanca, two future champions, Euwe and Botvinnik, and Flohr who at the time was considered a serious contender. It also had the brilliant young Hungarian, later to become a Soviet player, Lilienthal. 
     With all the big names that were playing, going into the final round with 6.5 points, the surprise leader was Sir George Thomas followed by Euwe (6.0), Flohr (5.5) and Capablanca (5.0). Then came Lilienthal and Botvinnik (4.5). Michell, Menchik, Milner-Barry and Norman were the local cannon fodder. 
     Sir George was having the tournament of his life and with his last round opponent being his countryman Reginald Michell, a friendly draw was in order which would have meant that, at worst, Thomas would tie for first. But, the game turned out to be hard-fought and Thomas lost! Being the gentleman that he was, Euwe, who had a better position against tail-ender George Norman, agreed to a draw resulting in a tie with Thomas for first. Salo Flohr, at the time from Czechoslovakia and later to also become a Soviet citizen, won his game with the result that there was a three way tie for first. 
      Lilienthal's defeat of Capablanca was one of the more exciting games and this game illustrated his tactical prowess. He rarely sought to obtain an opening advantage, but when the time was right he gave full reign to his imagination and a firestorm of tactics was the result.