Hugh Meyers

      Hugh Myers (1930-2008) was primarily known as an opening theoretician who was an exponent of unorthodox openings. From 1979 to 1996 he intermittently edited and published The Myers Openings Bulletin, offering deeply researched openings articles (no opening seemed too offbeat to be considered), historical features, book reviews and commentary.
      Myers made a particular study of the Nimzovich Defence (1 e4 Nc6) and wrote several monographs on it. Some of his earlier works were New Strategy in the Chess Openings, Reversed King Pawns: Mengarini’s Opening and Exploring the Chess Opening. In 2002 he published a 239 page autobiography, A Chess Explorer, that included 130 of his games, and reminiscences. Concerning Bobby Fischer he wrote, “He won the U.S. Championship for the first time on 7 January 1958, clinching it with a short last-round draw against Abe Turner. It was a snowy evening. I was one of the few people he would listen to (Probably because he respected my taste in openings! I don’t think he knew anyone else who owned and loved a 1956 Russian openings book by Lipnitsky, as we both did). So I was the only person to escort Fischer and his mother to the subway station. He was celebrating by throwing snowballs at passing buses! I got him to stop that, telling him he wouldn’t want to see his name in the morning papers both for winning the championship and for getting arrested.’”
      In 1985 he disputed the termination of the 1984-85 world championship match between Karpov and Kasparov which lead to his becoming acquainted with Florencio Campomanes and he worked to ensure the Filipino’s re-election as FIDE President in 1986. Myers argued that the decision to stop the match and start afresh was in Kasparov's interest, since he had been trailing and would have needed three more victories to win the match, while Karpov needed only one. Chess historian Edward Winter later wrote, "This reasoning, originally voiced by hardly anyone except ... Myers, is now gaining ground." Myers also asserted that Kasparov’s statements, which suggested that Campomanes had terminated the match at Karpov’s behest and over Kasparov’s opposition, were duplicitous. In 1986, Campomanes hired Myers to write the bulletins at the Chess Olympiad later that year in Dubai, and to work for Campomanes' reelection as FIDE President. Campomanes' opponent was Lincoln Lucena, whose running mate was Raymond Keene, a candidate for General Secretary of FIDE. Myers wrote a series of ten bulletins for distribution to national chess federations, entitled F.I.D.E. Facts, that criticized Keene, as well as Lucena supporters such as Kasparov and David Levy. Myers also created a cartoon that portrayed Lucena as a marionette controlled by Keene and Levy. Just before the election, Lucena withdrew, ensuring Campomanes' victory. Myers took credit for Campomanes' reelection, writing, "It could be reasonably argued that Campomanes was either a good guy or a bad guy, but I'm proud that discovering the truth and telling it proved that his opponents were worse."
      Meyers was plagued by illness and other personal problems which lead to his playing less and less often, concentrating instead on writing whenever his health and other circumstances permitted. In January, 1997 Meyers had a heart attack. Heart trouble had been a problem for several years, but this one was the worst and he had three more attacks that year, all requiring paramedics and emergency ambulance rides. In November of 1997 he was finally persuaded to have a quadruple bypass operation. It was successful but he wasn't mentally or physically able to work for some time, but by late 1998, thanks to cardiac rehabilitation, he was again in good shape, and that continued. However, the result was that he was financially wiped out, living hand to mouth.
      He regularly used black setups with white, often adding an extra move. For example, 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. a3. He is best known for his Myers’ Defense: 1 g3 g5 and 1 c4 g5.
      Myers won or tied for first in the state championships of Illinois (1951), Wisconsin (1955), Missouri (1962), and Iowa (1983), as well as the USCF Region VIII (Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Nebraska) championship (1983). He played first board for the Dominican Republic in the 1968 and 1976 Chess Olympiads.
      Myers was born in Decatur, Illinois and learned to play chess from Lasker's Manual of Chess. After his father brought home the December 1943 issue of Chess Review, Myers began visiting the Decatur Chess Club weekly and in 1946, he played in his first tournament, finishing second in the Decatur high school championship. Myers majored in history and political science at Millikin University, graduating in 1951. In 1950–52, he won the Decatur city championship three years in a row by lopsided scores, scoring 14.5 out of 16 possible points, 15 out of 16, and a perfect 14 out of 14, respectively.
      In 1951, Myers tied for first in the Illinois championship with Kimball Nedved and John Tums, each scoring 6 out of 7 but Nedved won on tiebreaks. Myers challenged Nedved to a match, which Myers won in 1952 with 3.5 out of 4. Myers won the 1955 Wisconsin state championship with 6.5 out of 7. In 1962, Myers won the Missouri Open championship on tiebreak over Ivan Theodorovich of Toronto, each scoring 5 out of 6.
    From 1965 to 1968, Myers was the top-rated player in the Dominican Republic. He played first board for its national chess team at the Chess Olympiads at Lugano 1968 (scoring 4 wins, 5 draws, and 6 losses) and Haifa 1976 (scoring 3 wins, 3 draws, and 5 losses). In 1983, Myers tied for first in the Iowa State Championship and later that year, he also tied for first in the USCF Region VIII (Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Nebraska) championship.
      Myers achieved an rating of 2350 while living in the Dominican Republic and in the U.S. his held a master’s rating for many years. Myers died in Davenport, Iowa three days before Christmas in on 2008, a month short of his seventy-ninth birthday.

Modern Ideas in Chess

…by Richard Reti

      This classic has been on my shelf for a number of years (I don’t even remember buying it), but I’ve never read it. Recently however I’ve been taking a look at it. In the early 1920’s Reti published a series of articles in chess magazines partly to espouse his ideas, but mostly to blast a dirtbag named Franz Gutmayer. See my post on him HERE.
      Later though Reti expunged this controversial material and issued the book in the form in which it now available. In the book Reti explains he has tried to show the development of chess from Anderssen to Steinitz. He discusses the development of positional play, combinations and Morphy then Steinitz before moving on to “The Steinitz School” which includes a discussion on Tarrasch with several annotated games. Then he discusses perfecting technique and then moves on to “New Ideas” and finally there is a chapter entitled “Conclusion.”
      His comments on the hyper-modern style are interesting. He wrote, “As we younger masters learned to know Capablanca’s method of play, by which each move is to be regarded as an element of a scheme, that no move is to made for itself alone (contrary sometimes to Morphy’s principle that every move should have its concomitant development), we began to see that moves formerly considered self-understood and made, as it were, automatically by every good player, had to be discarded.”
      “…What is really a rule of chess? …an attempt to formulate a method of winning a given position or of reaching an ultimate object, and to apply that method to similar positions. As, however, no two positions are quite alike, the so called rule, if applied to an apparently similar position, may possibly be wrong, or at least as regards that particular position. It is the aim of the modern school not to treat every position according to one general law, but according to the principle inherent in the position. An acquaintance with other positions and the rules applicable to the treatment thereof is of great use for the purpose of analyzing and obtaining a grasp of the particular position under consideration…the source of the greatest errors is found to be in those moves that are made merely according to rule and not based on the individual plan or thought of the player.”
  I’m not really interested in trying to improve my chess these days, but the games are quite interesting to play over. This game between Tarrasch and Walbrodt remains one of my favorites ever since I first saw it many years ago. 

Walbrodt

    
      Tarrasch produced many games where the theme was exploiting greater commend of the board and this is one. The game was played in the last round and Tarrasch had to win in order to tie for first with Pillsbury.

Not Sure What to Think...

      There was an article on Living Revolution about a week ago by IM David Pruess, a very popular writer from Chess.com.  Living Revolution believes that "the proper mode of human interaction is cooperation rather than competition" and, as such, members joined together as a commune sharing with each other as needed. Sounds OK, I guess, if that’s how you want to live and few will argue that the idea of being nice, charitable and helping others is a bad thing, but the idea of trying to force employers to adopt your philosophy probably won’t work in the corporate world. That’s what Pruess did at Chessdotcom. 
      Apparently he didn’t like the fact that the site owner was making a lot more money than the staff, so he suggested that things should be different; the owner should share the wealth. When the owner refused Pruess quit what he described as “a job with so many good aspects– educating people, entertaining people, being creative, working in a field that I love and am an expert in, fun co-workers with similar interests, flexible hours, the ability to work from anywhere, good compensation, constant flattering feedback– that almost anyone would call it a dream job.”
      Pruess must live in a different world than I do. I simply can’t imagine anybody walking into a corporate executive’s office and saying, “Hey, your salary is 40 times mine. And besides that, everybody in the company is underpaid. That’s just plain wrong! You should pay all of us a lot more money even if it means you have to take a whopping pay cut.” That’s essentially that’s what Pruess did. The site owner wasn’t interested so Pruess did what he deemed the reasonable thing…he quit. A man of principle, or was it a foolish decision?

Isaac Kashdan and Correspondence Chess

      Few are aware that GM Isaac Kashdan (19 November 1905, New York – 20 February 1985, Los Angeles), the man who was known for being a powerful tactician, but whose real strength was in the ending, being very strong with the two bishops and who was once considered a possible challenger to Alekhine for the world championship, was also a postal chess player early in his career.
      In the late 1960s the Correspondence Chess League of America was in financial difficulties, but Louis D. Statham, known for his sponsorship of the Lone Pine tournaments and also a Class A CCLA postal chess player, stepped in and agreed to pay for the printing of the Chess Correspondent at his plant in Southern California if Kashdan, his personal friend, became the editor. The editor, Don Reithel, graciously stepped down, so in August 1969, Kashdan became the new editor. Kashdan was paid $250 a month for his efforts ($1590 in today’s buying power). In the fall of 1970, thanks to the Fischer Boom, the CCLA was in pretty good shape financially so Statham, though he continued to play postal chess with the CCLA, withdrew his financial support and Kashdan’s tenure as editor also came to an end.
      Kashdan played a “fair amount” of correspondence chess after he learned the game, claiming it was excellent training and undoubtedly speeded his development. The game below, against the captain of his high school chess team, was played less than three years after he had learned the moves. Kashdan said he was a “fair” OTB player in high school, but far from the best player. Unfortunately, I have been unable to uncover any other postal games by Kashdan other than this one which was originally published in the Chess Correspondent.

Alexander Petrov

      Alexander Dmitrievich Petrov (February 12, 1794 – April 22, 1867) was the first Russian player to gain worldwide fame. Born into a noble family her began his career in a modest post in a St. Petersburg office and eventually rose to assistant secretary to the State Administration in Warsaw.
      He became interested in chess in early childhood and played well by the age of seven. His teacher was his grandfather I. Sokolov, then considered the best player in St. Petersburg. Petrov wrote that they played daily from 4pm to 10pm. Petrov was soon better than his grandfather and when his grandfather began to tell others about the boy, Petrov was soon being invited to “chess evenings” and by age 16 he was recognized as the best Russian player, a reputation he was to hold for the next 50 years.
      Twice Petrov refused invitations to international tournaments, London 1851 and Paris 1862. According to another prominent player of the day, Sergey Urusov, it was because Petrov wanted to guard his reputation. In reply Petrov claimed he never sought to play against the European “celebrities” because chess was not his profession and his official functions did not leave him time for trips abroad nor did he have the money to travel. According to authors Kotov and Yudovich the real reason was because in the circles of society in which Petrov lived chess was thought of as a pleasant pastime, not a serious occupation and he was unable to bring himself to break away from the traditions of his environment. Does all this sound familiar to the reasons put forth by a couple of other fellows around the same time?
      Petrov deserves a great deal of credit for founding a national chess “school” in Russia and his theoretical works were considered classical and his games and problems were widely published. One important work he published was titled The Game of Chess Systematized with the Addition of Philidor’s Games and Accompanying Notes. They don’t publish books with titles like that anymore! The book was important because it contained valuable contributions to theory and practice and was a major factor in the emergence of Russian chess. In it Petrov criticized Philidor for paying more attention to attack than defense. Petrov also disagreed with Philidor that the advantage of the first move should lead to a win.
      Petrov was also the victor in the first postal game published in Russia; it was played against three amateurs and lasted from August 1837 and lasted 5 months. Because he rarely participated in tournaments few of his games survive. Petrov died in 1867, and was buried in Warsaw.

Counting Pieces

      In his interesting book, The Inner Game of Chess-How to Calculate and Win, Andrew Soltis writes that when mentally processing the branches of the tree of our analysis one has to ask several important questions. First, and most important, is the evaluation of the final position. Botvinnik wrote, “A master’s strength is in the evaluation of a position.” You can calculate 15 moves deep, but if your evaluation of the final position is wrong you’ve wasted a lot of time. Another important question is, “Is it truly the final position?” i.e. when can you safely stop calculating? Other important questions are, is it the right move order and if you’ve made a mistake in your calculation, do you have a way to bail out (say by taking a perpetual)?
      In most evaluations we are guided by the material situation, but how do you keep track of it in a complicated position with a large tree and many captures? Soltis recommends the simplest way is at the end of the variation count up what’s left on the board.
      Sounds simple doesn't it? Soltis gives several examples, one by Alekhine (!), where mistakes in counting pieces were made. Another problem exists when the sequence of moves involves a material imbalance because in those situations much depends on the specific nature of the position rather than on a simple piece count. It’s so complicated Soltis devotes 60 pages to the problem, more than any other subject in the book.
     Here’s a good example from one of my correspondence games. Should black capture the P with 16…Bxb2 or capture the B with 16…Nxf4? Or, simply move the attacked R? I suggest setting up the position and trying to run through all the possible variations then, if possible, checking your analysis with an engine. There are some lines which result in a material imbalance, so that adds to the difficulty.

Good N vs. Bad B

I’ve been playing over some more of the games from the 1953 Zurich Candidate’s Tournament and really enjoyed this Najdorf vs. Averbakh game. Averbakh had only a small advantage but the precision with which he nursed it to victory is impressive. It’s not often that a single positional theme is dominate throughout the entire game in such a clear manner.

Games are being made up and …

some competitions and players simply do not exist. At least that’s the claim of one person posting at Red Hot Pawn.
      As another poster pointed out, in the introduction to Dynamic Chess Strategy Mihai Suba tells of a student tournament in 1967 where he was the only person to show up. Suba needed a norm to become a second category player. He goes on to explain that the arbiter gave him the names of some of the other entrants and told him to produce some plausible games. So he copied some games out of a book about Alekhine and came second, in a tournament where he was the only entrant and Tahl wrote about helping people to get norms in his autobiography.
      The original poster believes the GM title should be awarded only to those players who have qualified for the World Championship Candidates and he lists 97 players who have done so. This number is a far cry from the 1300 plus GMs in the world today. Of course, FIDE has always allowed wheeling and dealing when handing out GM titles. Several years ago, The Week in Chess uncovered a fake tournament held in Chernobyl and as far back as 2006, FIDE tried to clamp down on fake events.

Related:
Dr. Mark Ginsburg – rating manipulation
New York Times article on rating manipulation
Chessbase articles on cheating

Dr. Ariel Mengarini

OK, after that last post, let’s get serious…

      Mengarini, a board certified psychiatrist who worked for the Veteran’s Administration, was born October 19, 1919 in Rome to what the Dictionary of American Biography calls ''a distinguished Roman family.'' Along with his mother, the sculptress Fausta Vittoria Mengarini, he came to the United States when he was still a young boy, finished his education in Washington, D.C. and in New York.
      He became a United States citizen in 1942 and served in World War II as a Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps-Neuropsychiatrist. In Germany, he was part of a team to take over the administration of a large prison-of-war hospital. He received three campaign medals and the World War II Victory Medal. Discharged in October 1946, he joined the VA as a psychiatrist. He was devoted to his patients and said that he was ''proud to have helped a great many of them.''
      Upon retiring he began playing in tournaments in earnest throughout the rest of his life. He wrote a book on chess: Predicament in 2-Dimensions: The Thinking of a Chess Player. He also wrote chess articles and articles on his medical specialty. Mengarini was an avid reader with a wide interest which included history, philosophy, poetry, fiction and the study of the human brain. He and his wife, Aristea had two children; a daughter Athena and a son, Will. He passed away in 1998 of brain cancer after an illness lasting eight months.
     Predicament in 2 Dimensions was focused on how to approach thinking about chess in a larger context. The book wasn’t written to help players improve so much as it was to help them  prepare mentally for a game or tournament. In 1940 he won the championship of Washington D.C. In 1943 he won the U.S. Amateur championship with a perfect 11-0 score. He also played in several US chess championships. He took last place in the 1954 US Championship (2 wins, 1 draw, 10 losses). He popularized the opening 1.e4 e5 2.a3, sometimes known as Mengarini’s Opening.
      He wrote, "Although I learned the moves of chess at six, I had no opportunity to practice nor enter a tournament until I won a competitive scholarship to Harvard in 1937." Mengarini assumed that Harvard, as he phrased it, "was a chess university" writing that he neglected going to classes so as to engage in innumerable skittles at the Harvard Union.  The result was he lost his scholarship and had to return home to Washington, D.C. where he attended George Washington University. Even though he continued to play a lot of chess while attending George Washington University, he eventually became a medical student there.
      Mengarini's skittles games and participation in simultaneous exhibitions brought him in contact with many well-known figures in American chess and he excelled at blitz chess, or as it was often played in the old days at 10 seconds a move, and he defeated many of the country’s top players doing it.
      In the following game he defeated Reshevsky in the 1951 US Championship in an extremely complicated game. In a new qualifying format Mengarini sneaked into the finals by defeating Al Horowitz in one of the preliminary tournaments. At 30 years old, he couldn’t be considered a threat, but he was one of top 25 or 30 players in the country in a day when masters were a rare thing. In an event of this caliber Mengarini’s real problem was his opening play.
      The 1951 championship was won by Larry Evans with a score of 9.5 out of 11 (8 wins and 3 draws) and Reshevsky was a full point back as a result of his sole loss to Mengarini. Dr. Max Pavey finished third while Mengarini (+3 -5 =3) finished eighth. Also, this tournament was of some significance because Reshevsky’s result pretty much marked the end of his reign as U.S. champion that for the most part had been interrupted only when he chose not to defend the title. The next championship tournament was to be held in 1954, but Reshevsky did not play in that one. In fact, none of the top five rated players (Reshevsky, Robert Byrne, George Kramer, Donald Byrne and Arnold Denker) accepted invitations. Mengarini played in the 1954 event (won by Bisguier a point ahead of Evans) but finished last (+2 -10 =1). That brings us to the 1957 championship and Reshevsky finished second to a kid named Bobby Fischer.

Missed Business Opportunity

Dating services!
1. Zoosk
2. Match
3. eHarmony
4. OurTime
5. HowAboutWe
6. ChristianMingle
7. SpeedDate
8. SingleParent
9. BlackPeopleMeet
10. Flirt

Those are the top ten, but there are others: DateHookUp, OKCupid, dating for married people, Jewish people, Muslims, etc, etc.

My e-mail keeps getting spammed by eHarmony (not interested...I have a girlfriend who also happens to be my wife) and I am always seeing ads on TV for dating services, so I had a brilliant idea. How about a dating service for chess players? Alas! Somebody beat me to it.  There's already a site in Great Britain. Can you believe it?  Anyway, as a public service announcement for anybody that’s interested, here you go:   Chess Lover Dating!

York Safe and Lock Company and the Laucks

 

     Sara Beth who does an interesting Blog at chessdotcom mentioned the Laucks and the York Safe and Lock Company played an important role in WW1 and WW2. I did locate some information about the company and its role during WW2 as well as some information on the Laucks. There is an interesting article about S. Forry Laucks and the York Safe and Lock company by James McClure in the York Daily Record/York Sunday News HERE

      McClure says not long after Laucks death, York Safe company, holding scores of millions of dollars in Navy contracts, ran into trouble. The Navy stepped in to operate parts of the company because so many defense contracts were at stake. Parts of the company became known as the Navy Ordnance Plant and later Blaw-Knox, a company the Navy brought in to manage the factories. So, the government played a big role in the company both before and during World War II. Defense contracts rescued the company from the Depression. Banks naturally weren’t buying safes during the 1930s. And the Navy had to step in to make the company work after Laucks death. York Safe and Lock closed some years after the end of the war.

 

There’s also an interesting piece on York’s past about Eliot Ness, Israel Laucks and S. Forry HERE    More on S. Forry

1948 US Championship

7th US Championship; 1948 August 10 - 31 South Fallsburg, NY 

1) Steiner x ½ 1 0 1 1 ½ 1 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 ½ 1 1 1 1 (15 - 4)
2) Kashdan ½ x ½ ½ 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 ½ 1 1 ½ 1 1 1 (14½- 4½)
3-4). Kramer 0 ½ x 0 0 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 ½ 1 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 (13 - 6)
3-4) Ulvestad 1 ½ 1 x 1 1 ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 1 1 ½ 1 1 1 1 (13 - 6)
5-7) Hesse 0 0 1 0 x 1 ½ 0 ½ 0 1 1 ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1 1  (12 - 7)
5-7) Rubinow 0 1 0 0 0 x ½ 1 1 1 ½ 1 1 0 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 (12 - 7)
5-7) Shainswit ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ x 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1 (12 - 7)
8-10) Adams 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 x 1 1 0 0 ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 (11½- 7½)
8-10) Evans 0 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 x ½ 1 1 1 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 ( 11½- 7½)
8-10) Shipman ½ 0 0 ½ 1 0 ½ 0 ½ x ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 1 1 (11½- 7½)
11-12) Sandrin ½ 0 0 1 0 ½ ½ 1 0 ½ x ½ 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 (10½- 8½)
11-12) Santasiere ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ 1 0 0 ½ x 1 ½ 1 1 ½ 1 1 1 (10½- 8½)
13) Poschel 0 0 0 1 ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 0 x ½ 1 0 1 ½ 1 1 (8 -11)
14) Platz 0 ½ 0 0 ½ 1 ½ 0 0 0 1 ½ ½ x 1 ½ ½ 1 0 0 (7½-11½)
15) Heitner 0 0 ½ 0 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 0 0 0 x 0 1 0 1 1 (7 -12)
16) Whitaker ½ 0 0 ½ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 ½ 1 x 1 ½ 0 1 (6 -13)
17) Howard 0 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ 0 ½ 0 0 x 0 1 1 (5½-13½)
18) Almgren 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ½ 0 1 ½ 1 x 1 0 (4 -15)
19) Suraci 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 x 1 (3 -16)
20) Janes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 x (2 -17)

      The 1948 U.S. Championship held in South Fallsburg, New York, was an interesting event. It had one of the best prize funds to date even though the USCF was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was played under excellent conditions in a resort town that was isolated from spectators and the U.S. chess scene. It had a large (20 players), but weak field. Reuben fine a few weeks earlier had turned down his invitation to the world championship match and excused himself from this tournament because he was working towards a degree in psychology. Samuel Reshevsky was willing to play if he received a guaranteed fee. This was no surprise because he had been paid a fee in some of the previous tournaments. But for this tournament the organizers had put all the money into the prizes. They had also saved money by moving the event out of New York City and, also, made other budget cuts so, no fee for Reshevsky. Reshevsky announced he would not play and, acting like a snot, demanded his name taken off all advanced publicity concerning the tournament. The USCF then invited Olaf Ulvestad of Seattle as a last-minute replacement for Reshevsky and scheduled the first round. 
      But then the day before the tournament started Reshevsky announced he was willing to play without getting his fee. What were the organizers to do? They wanted Reshevsky to play, but Ulvestad was already in South Fallsburg; they couldn’t just tell him to go home. At the same time they would have had to find an extra hotel room for Reshevsky and make arrangements for an extra day or two with the over twenty hotels where the players and organizers were booked. Plus, they would have to convince the players to revise their schedules to accommodate Reshevsky. The organizers did the right thing and told Reshevsky to go pound salt.
      That left Isaac Kashdan as the favorite because not only were Fine and Reshevsky not playing, but neither were Denker, Dake, or Horowitz, and Kashdan was the only GM in the rather weak field.
      Kashdan started out well with an 8-1 score with Steiner right behind him at 7-2. Steiner, who had had some difficulty qualifying from the regional event held in Los Angeles, had justified Ulvestad's inclusion in the tournament by losing to him in the fifth round. Most everybody thought Steiner was a good, strong master but not talented enough to rate as one of the best in the U.S. Earlier in the year he had played a match with Fine and had gotten thumped 5-1.
      But in the tenth round Kashdan lost to Sol Rubinow. Rubinow, at the time was a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and later become better known as a bridge champion and well known in the field of biomathematics; he a dangerous, aggressive player. Rubinow’s win over Kashdan left Kashdan, Ulvestad and Steiner tied for first followed closely by George Kramer and another promising young player named Larry Evans.
      Steiner had been born in Austria-Hungary and had for many years competed with the best New York players but had long since left New York and had become a ‘chess celebrity’ Hollywood.
      Going into the last round, Steiner and Kashdan were tied at 14-4 while Kramer was at 12.5. Kramer had to play Kashdan in the last round while Steiner faced a minor master named Franklin S. Howard. However, Steiner was soon in trouble against Howard, but to his good fortune, Howard got nervous, played poorly and lost in 65 moves. The young George Kramer forced a perpetual against Kashdan leaving Steiner the new U.S. Champion.
      See my post on Dr. Platz HERE. I once lost a game tthe site's discontino Dr. Paul Poschel whom I think was a college professor at the University of Michigan. I remember him as being very pleasant and having encouraging words about my play. Hermann Hesse was a strong master from Bethlehem, Pa. He finished 2nd in the U.S. Open in 1950 and he won an event limited to state champions in Yankton, South Dakota in 1958.

The Chessflash game has been deleted due to the site having been discontinued and associated spam issues.

Another Fatal Car Accident – and a Mystery

      365 Selected Chess Endings by Norman T. Whitaker was coauthored with an Expert named Glenn Hartleb; Hartleb died in an automobile accident a few months after the book came out.
      Prior to my being discharged from the US military in 1967 I played in a small tournament in North Carolina and Whitaker was there hawking the book. He told us that if we learned everything in the book we’d be a master. Of course a lot of us bought a copy. Whitaker’s claim of making one a master was hype. Or was it? I can’t truly say because I never learned everything in the book.
      Hartleb and Whitaker were returning by car from a tournament in the US Southwest and while Whitaker slept, Hartleb allowed their travelling companion, a 16-year old without a license, to drive. The result was an accident that instantly killed Hartleb and left Whitaker on crutches. The driver was not hurt. At least that’s has always been the story but…was there really a 16-year old driver?
      I discovered Hartleb’s obituary published 7 Sep 1961, Danville, Yell County, Arkansas. Yell County Record newspaper ... Man Killed In Wreck Near Ola. A Florida man was killed in a one-car accident on Highway 10 about six miles east of Ola last Thursday afternoon. State Trooper Richard Powell identified the victim as Glenn E. Hartleb, 45, Tampa, Florida, a passenger in the car. The driver of the car, a Volkswagen, was Norman Whittaker, about 70, of Washington, D. C. He was taken to the hospital at Russellville with head injuries. Powell said the driver of the car apparently lost control of it [and] hit a bridge abutment and over turned.

I found this Google image of a bridge on Route 10

approximatley 6 miles east of Ola.  It could be the one

that was hit in the accident.

      Of Whitaker and Hartleb, Sam Sloan wrote: “I was beginning to wonder whether Whitaker and Hartleb might be homosexual. They were, after all, two men traveling all over the US in Whitaker's Volkswagen Beetle playing in chess tournaments, with no woman ever around.”
      According to Sloan, Whitaker told him about the car accident. He said that after the US Open in San Francisco, as they were driving back, they were crossing Arkansas. Whitaker and Hartleb had been driving all the way and both were tired. They had a 16-year-old boy in the car with them. Whitaker said that while he was asleep, Hartleb, being tired too, decided to let the boy drive. The boy did not have a driver’s license. Shortly after Hartleb put the boy behind the steering wheel, the boy drove into a ditch and crashed. Hartleb, in the right front seat, was killed immediately. Whitaker, asleep in the back seat, was seriously injured. The boy who had been driving escaped uninjured.
      Whitaker told Sloan that he was maimed for life and would never walk again. He reserved his worst remarks for the doctor in Arkansas who had treated him. He said that the doctor was a quack. His prognosis that he would never walk normally again proved not to be true; when I saw him in North Carolina he was on crutches.
     Apparently Whitaker was the source of the story that an unnamed 16-year old was driving, but according to the Yell County Record newspaper, Whitaker was the driver and there’s no mention of a 16-year old passenger.

Tragic Auto Accident

      In 1940 Al Horowitz, owner and publisher of the fairly new Chess Review took on Harold Morton, a strong New England player as his business partner. Morton (born in 1906) had a dismal performance at New York 1936, finishing at the bottom in the first modern United States championship following Frank J. Marshall's retirement. This was followed by an equally dismal performance in the 1938 championship. Despite those results Morton was a solid player who was capable of defeating some of the best players in the country.
      Horowitz and Morton frequently traveled together giving tandem simultaneous exhibitions where they would follow one another around the boards, alternating moves. On one trip they were involved in a car accident that took the life of Morton and left Horowitz with serious injuries. Hermann Helms gave a brief account of the accident in the American Chess Bulletin in the January-February 1940 edition.
      On February 17, 1940 while traveling through Iowa, Horowitz and Morton were involved in a serious car accident while crossing Iowa on the return journey after a tour of the south and far west. Morton, driving the car, was killed outright in a collision with a truck and Horowitz, suffering a concussion and other injuries, was taken to St. Anthony's Hospital in Carroll, Iowa. Horowitz remained in the hospital for some time and his brother, Irving, went to Iowa to be with him while he was hospitalized. Horowitz had not recovered sufficiently to play in the 1940 US Championship.

      According to the Des Moines Register, the accident happened on highway 30, about seven miles west of Carroll, Iowa, when a van, driven by Frank S. Robbins of Denver, Colorado, collided with the car in which Horowitz and Morton were traveling eastward.

Route 30 approximately 7 miles west of Carroll, Iowa as it appears today.

 

      Deputy Sheriff Arnold R. Witt of Carroll County said that Morton was thrown out of the car and was killed instantly. Horowitz was taken to St. Anthony's Hospital, where he was able to give his name. The pair were en route to Minneapolis, Minnesota, when the accident occurred and was the first traffic fatality of 1940 in Carroll County.