An Unscientific Observation

Class Players Then and Now

     I was disappointed at the number of draws in the recently concluded London tournament. It seems nobody could beat anybody else. The results looked like an engine correspondence tournament! 
     Out of curiosity I looked at some older tournaments like Linares and the draw percentage in those events was pretty high, too. Then I went back to AVRO, 1938 where the best players in the world battled it out: Keres, Fine, Botvinnik, Euwe, Reshevsky, Alekhine, Capablanca and Flohr. Out of 56 games they drew 57 percent. Things have gotten worse, but then with big money at stake and the players being better, you can't expect much else. 
     Everybody knows you can't compare the players of the past against the players of today based on ratings. Fischer's rating, for example, only tells us how he performed against his contemporaries, not how well he would have performed in, say, the London tournament.
     Mark Glickman of the USCF’s ratings committee said, “You get into dangerous territory when estimating ratings of the past.” He added, “It is possible to say how much better Capablanca was than his contemporaries. If it were possible to put Capablanca in a time machine and transport him to this time, it would be virtually impossible to predict how strong he would be. Modern players have access to computers and games databases so they know more than their predecessors and are better than them, but the argument is that for a fair comparison, a player from another era would have to have the same resources as players of today and really, nobody knows what would happen."  Also, see the article Who was The Strongest Chess Player of All Time? 
     It makes sense to me that today's players are playing at a much higher level because of a variety of factors, but what about class players? Are today's 1800s better than 1800s of 50 years ago? 
     The other day I played over a rather ordinary game by a couple of 1800 rated players in a weekend tournament and it seemed to be pretty decently played. The game was a 51 move English opening featuring a minor piece ending and I got to wondering how they might compare to 1800s of 50 years ago. 
     Of course, like comparing grandmasters and world champions of different eras, there is no way to tell for sure. I selected four random games by players rated in the 1800s from recent tournaments and four games played by players from the 1960s that I know were also rated in the 1800s. The only criteria I had were that they had to be about the same length (45-60 moves) and similar openings, English and QP openings. My guess is that had I selected highly tactical openings the results would have been much different! 
     What I looked at was: 1) how soon they departed the Fritz 12 opening book, 2) how many changes in evaluation there were that Stockfish 6, at 10 seconds a move, recommended that fell between 0.25 and 0.50 and 3) moves where the evaluation jumped more than half a Pawn. 
     Although this survey wasn't very accurate, what I found was there wasn't that much difference in percentages between the 1800s of today and 60 years ago. The average move where the book was left was move 7. That seemed a bit early, but when I checked about a dozen of my OTB games from the 1960s they left the book between moves 5 and 12. If nothing else, it tells me that maybe we average players do spend too much time on the openings because most of our games are not going to follow the book very far anyway.
     Twelve percent of the moves were evaluated at being over a half Pawn worse and 15 percent were between a quarter and a half Pawn worse than Stockfish's recommended move. So in a 50 move game, about 6 moves will be serious mistakes while 7-8 moves, while not bad, are not the best either. 
     A quick observation was that those 4-6 moves per game where the evaluation jumped over a half a Pawn were usually because of a tactic that was missed. Way back when, the study of tactics wasn't emphasized like it is today, but today's emphasis on tactical study doesn't seemed to have helped the average player much. We still can't see them! 
     It also suggests to me that despite the glut of chess material that's available to us today, usually at high prices, we average players have not, unlike world championship class players, gotten much better. So, instead of paying $25-30 for a “modern” chess book or even more for training DVDs, one might as well buy Dover reprints of old chess books on Amazon for a fraction of the price; they'll give the same results.

Fritz Fonts

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Rea B. Hayes, Legend in Several States

     Rea B. Hayes (October 31, 1915 - February 15, 2001) was born in Weston Ontario, Canada. He was taught to play at age eleven by a neighborhood friend. He joined the St. Clair Chess Club in Toronto and became its champion a few years later. Hayes played in the Canadian Championship in 1936, 1947 and 1951 and authored a book on the 1937 championship. His best result was in1947 when he finished 3rd scoring 10.5-2.5. The Championship was won by Yanofsky. Hayes also finished first in the 1949 South Saskatchewan Championship in 1949 with a perfect score of 9 out of 9. 
     In 1953 Hayes moved to Greenville, South Carolina where he won his first tournament and two trophies: one for being the South Carolina Open Champion and one for being the highest scoring South Carolina resident. Why two trophies? At that time no one actually expected a resident to win the state championship! The following year when he again won the championship he only got one trophy. 
     After a brief two year job assignment in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where he remained for the next 30 years working as an actuary for Union Central Life. Hayes organized the Parkway Chess Club and the City League, a team competition. He revived the long dead city championship and won the city and club championships many times over the years. He was also instrumental in organizing the popular Cincinnati Open tournament. I played in a couple of those tournaments and remember them being held in a decrepit old YMCA building...creaky wooden floors and no air conditioning, but room rates were only $3.00 a night which is about $22-23 in today's currency. In 1963 Hayes won the Ohio State Championship and several times tied for first. 
     He spent 1980-1981 touring New Zealand. After returning to the US he continued taking part in tournaments and in 1981 he played in the 1st US Senior Open tournament which he won. In the process, he also won the upset prize by defeating the favorite, veteran master Dr. Eric Marchand. His prize was a wristwatch. The trophy he won was eventually donated to the US Chess Hall of Fame. 
     He again moved to Chattanooga in 1990 and regularly played in Tennessee events. In 1992 he won the Tennessee State Championship. 
     Hayes was the first player rated over 2000 I ever faced in tournament play; that was in Cincinnati, Ohio back in the early 1960s. I had him on the ropes, but ended up losing when I let him slip out of my grasp and then resigned in a position where I still had some play! It was a strong motivation to work harder at improving.
 

Howard Staunton

Staunton around 1850

     About all I knew about Staunton was: 1) he was famous for the Staunton chess pieces. I thought he invented them, but he didn't. In 1849 he endorsed the chess set designed by Nathaniel Cook and manufactured by his brother-in-law, John Jacques. Staunton recommended the sets in the Illustrated London News and it became known as the Staunton pattern. See the article The Conventional Chess Sets from 1700 to the introduction of the Staunton Design (1849) HERE. 
     I also knew he 2) refused to play Morphy and 3) he was a Shakespearean scholar and 4) he organized the first chess tournament in London in 1851. But, I admit it...I never played over any of his games...at least not until the last few days; I've been going over some of them. Along the way I also discovered that he was a pretty interesting guy! 
     I discovered there is a Howard Staunton Society in England. That shouldn't have surprised me. Over the course of my career in the working world I worked closely with the British for a number of years and they have a society for just about everything...that's not a criticism...they just do. 
     In addition to the above mentioned exploits Staunton also wrote a 517 page book on the history of English public schools. It was titled The Great Schools of England: An Account of the Foundation, Endowments, and Discipline of the Chief Seminaries of Learning in England; Including Eton, Winchester, Westminster, St. Paul's, Charter-House, Merchant Taylors', Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Etc., Etc. That one must have been a good read!
     Staunton (April 1810 – 22 June 1874) is regarded as having been the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851, largely as a result of his 1843 victory over Saint-Amant. He may have been the illegitimate son of the Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle. Also, it appears that Howard Staunton may not have been his real name. 
     From 1840 onward he became a leading chess commentator, and won matches against top players of the 1840s. In 1847 he entered a parallel career as a Shakespearean scholar. Ill health and his two writing careers led him to give up competitive chess after 1851. In 1858 attempts were made to organize a match between Staunton and Morphy, but they failed. It is alleged that Staunton deliberately misled Morphy while trying to avoid the match, but it is also possible his claims of other pressing obligations were true.
     Modern commentators consider Staunton's understanding of positional play to have been far ahead of his contemporaries. Although not an all-out attacking player, he attacked when his preparations were complete. His chess articles and books were widely read and encouraged the development of chess in the United Kingdom, and his Chess-Player's Handbook (1847) was a reference for decades. The English Opening and Staunton Gambit were named for his advocacy of them. 

     Staunton has been a controversial figure since his own time, and his chess writings could be spiteful. On the other hand, he maintained good working relationships with several strong players and influential chess enthusiasts, and demonstrated excellent management skills. Edward Winter has an interesting article titled Attacks on Howard Staunton.

     He was already a very strong player be 1836 when he arrived in London and in 1838 joined the Old Westminster Chess Club and lost matches to Captain W.D. Evans and Alexandre but two years later he defeated Popert in a match. From May to December he wrote a chess column in the New Court Gazette and was elected Secretary of the Westminster chess club. 
     In 1841 he became the editor of the British Miscellany which became the Chess Player's Chronicle, England's first successful chess magazine. He remained the editor until 1854. 
     In 1842 he played several hundred games with Cochrane and the following year he lost a match to France's leading player, Saint-Amant. In November, Staunton arrived in to Paris to begin another match with Saint-Amant which he won by a wide margin. The following year he was back in Paris for yet another match, but he caught pneumonia and the match was canceled. 
     In 1845 he became the chess columnist for the Illustrated London News, a position he held until his death: 29 years. In 1846 he defeated Horwitz and Harrwitz in matches. In 1847 he published the Chess-Player's Handbook and in 1849 he published the Chess-Player's Companion and Chess Player's Text Book. He also got married in 1849. 
     In 1851 he organized the world's first international tournament during the "Great Exhibition of Art and Industry" in London. Staunton was knocked out in the 3rd round by Anderssen, who won the 16-player knockout event. The following year Staunton published a book on the tournament. 
     In 1853 he went to Brussels to meet with v.d. Lasa, the German leading chess authority, to standardize the rules of chess. In 1856 he began work on an annotated edition of Shakespeare's plays that was published in monthly installments from November 1857 to May 1860. That was his reason why in 1858 he refused to play a match with Morphy; his publishers would consider it a breach of contract if he did not produce his regular articles.
     He was still working on chess though because in 1860 he published Chess Praxis, which included 168 pages devoted to Morphy's games as well as a code of chess rules. In 1865 he published Great Schools and edited another monthly chess magazine called The Chess World which he published until 1869. 
     Another little known fact about Staunton was that he also had an interest in correspondence chess and chess played by telegraph which was a fairly new invention at the time. 

     On June 22, 1874 Staunton was working on another chess book when he suffered a fatal heart attack and died in his library chair in London.

 

    Keene has written an interesting book on Staunton.  Here's a cute miniature that's a good lesson on how easy it is to miscalculate and overlook a simple tactic.

Thinking of Buying a Chess Set

     I don't own a chess set and am not really sure I want one. I lost a lot of chess books when our house flooded a couple of years ago. I also lost my nice Zagreb set. After being under water for a few days and then being set aside until it could get cleaned up all the finish was off and it was moldy. It wasn't worth the effort to salvage it, so it got thrown out with a tree lawn full of other stuff. I was left with a very nice 45-year old walnut and mahogany chess table though which survived without damage. After remodeling there was no use for it, so it got donated to a relative's barber shop...customers play a lot of chess there. 
     I haven't actually played an over the board game for a few years and for a long time have been playing over games only on the computer. It took a long time for me to be comfortable doing that though because it felt more like playing a video game than anything, but now I'm comfortable playing using the Fritz 12 GUI.  Still… I've been looking at the set shown.  
     It's available from the USCF for $130, but is on sale for $90 (there's probably also a fondling charge) and it includes the board. The King is the right height...4 inches. What I like is that though it's design is based on the Staunton pattern the K, Q and B have crowns made of the opposite wood type and the set sort of reminds me of those old Soviet style sets like this: 

   I think the set would go well with my vintage Soviet (1950 era) chess clock ....

 
...which I never use either. The thing is, do I really need a chess set? And if so, do I need a $100 one? Have I become one of those people I never used to consider real chess players...the ones that only play on the Internet and read electronic chess books?

George and Edith Kellner of Lima, Ohio

     You have to admire George Kellner and his wife, Edith. Like many people coming out of World War Two they were made of sterner stuff than most of us; they survived circumstances that would have destroyed lesser men and women. 
     Born on April 25, 1911 in the Czech Republic, George was a fixture in Ohio tournaments during his career and in 1964 he tied for first with Richard Kause, Thomas Wozney, James Harkins and David Presser in the Ohio Championship. 
     Then one weekend in February in 1971, his last weekend on this earth, Kellner played for Toledo in the Midwest Open Team Chess Festival, won all his games and the following day, on Monday morning, March 1st, he was gone. 
     As a young man in Czechoslovakia, Kellner was rich; his family owned real estate. Then Hitler arrived on the scene and Kellner, as a Jew, was doomed but somehow he managed to escape just two months before the war started. On arriving in the US, Kellner joined the Army because he felt he had to. Surviving the war, he got married to Edith Schweizer (born in Vienna, Austria, April 14, 1945) then returned to Czechoslovakia only to find most of his family dead. 
     Then came the Communists and for the second time he lost all his property with the exception of a small farm. The Communists ordered him to grow tomatoes to supply a cannery, so that's what he did.  When it was time to harvest them, he was told to forget it; there were no cans available. Leaving the rotting tomatoes, the Kellners returned to Lima, Ohio where he raised turkeys. But then another disaster struck...a rare disease hit the turkeys and they all died. Generally, turkeys are hardy, robust birds, but they are subject to a wide variety of health problems and diseases. I don't know what killed Kellner's turkeys, but back in April of this year poultry producers in the US were hit with a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza that forced producers to kill millions of chickens and turkeys. 
    After that misfortune, he took a job in a factory operating a drill press and all was well until another disaster struck; he had a heart attack. After his heart attack he became an inspector in the factory until his retirement.  Aside from his wife, daughter and grandson, Kellner's great love was chess. 
     His wife, Edith, passed away at the age of 78 on Thursday, March 29, 2001. She attended Business and Language School in Vienna, Austria, but because of the occupation of Austria, she was never able to complete her studies. During her working career, Mrs. Kellner was self-employed in real estate marketing through her own business, Kellner Enterprises. She was also an active chess player and a life member and Honorary Trustee of the USCF and a life member of the International Club of Toledo. In the late 1980's she also ran for City Council. 
     The following game is a win from the MOTCF event over a Master from Michigan; it was Kellner's very last chess game and it was quite amazing!
 

Opening Trivia

     There was a recent post on Reddit where the poster compiled statistics for openings played by everyone currently in the Top 10 in 2015 that was interesting. He included only openings with 10 or more games. What are they playing? Reti, K-Indian Attack, English, various QP Openings, K-Indian, Caro-Kann, Sicilian-Rossolimo, Sicilian-Najdorf, Giuoco Piano, Ruy Lopez-Berlin Defense, Ruy Lopez-other, QGD-various, Grunfeld, Catalan.
     Chessbase's Chess News has an interesting article on the popularity of openings over time dating from 1850 through 2010. About the middle of the page there's a Youtube video of a chart that shows a graph of openings over time that's pretty interesting. See also, Randy Olsen's explanation of this video HERE. 
     The AutoChess Blogspot also has some interesting and helpful information. The online library of AutoChess encyclopedia is a resource whether you’re looking for in-depth research or casually learning about autochess computer technology. The autochess encyclopedia include topics like Chessbase, chess GUs, chess engines,and more. The article on How to create an Opening Chess Book is HERE. 
     I don't know how useful it is for us to know what the top GM's are playing, or what value it is to see how what's being played today compared to the distant past is, but it's interesting.

Who Actually Studies a Chess Book?

     On Amazon reviewer Paul Cornelison has an article titled Chess Master reading list. Books I read from class A to Master. Article.  Most chess players have a ton of books, all bought with good intentions of actually studying them, but something happens between their purchase and shortly after opening them up. 
     We break out the set and start reading the book, but for some reason we soon get tired or bored and our enthusiasm wanes. Learning a new skill, or sharpening an old one, is exciting at first. You begin with boundless enthusiasm, full of good intentions and you self-study program is stimulating and enjoyable and you're determined to make progress. And then, suddenly, it all starts to seem like an impossible task!
     The endless new new stuff you need to learn is dwarfed by what still lies ahead and you seem to be forgetting what you’ve already studied faster than you can remember the new stuff. And every time you take a step forward, you fall back two and then you hit the wall...progress stops. 
     As a result, studying becomes a chore not a pleasure and it's hard to motivate yourself to study. The result is most give up thinking perhaps they weren’t meant to play chess very well. The thing is, whether it's chess or anything else, all this is absolutely normal.
     GM Nigel Davies' site, The Chess Improver, offers some good advice on how to read a chess book and the first thing he does is recommend buying a notebook to write down your thoughts. I've heard of that. Back in the old days (before computers) I've heard GM's mention the word “notebook” so there must be something to it. 
     Even Karpov once admitted that he found it boring to study openings and the truth is, studying chess can be boring, not to mention frustrating because progress comes so slowly, if at all. Add to that the fact that people have busy lives, full of commitments that they can’t afford to ignore and that doesn't help. Anyway, it's hard to sustain the determination we had when we bought the book, so what to do? One way might be to take the approach given in an article I read on learning a new language HERE.
     And remember: a beginner mindset is great when you’re just starting out and know little or nothing, but it’s not easy to maintain as your study progresses because to continue making progress requires sustained effort over the long haul. So, a slower, more regular pace is the best course of action. Being a distance runner, not a sprinter, is the most productive. 
     But, what if you still get stuck? You’re putting in the work, but not seeing any progress. What you did to get this far might now be the wrong thing to allow you to progress to the next stage. Or, maybe you are studying stuff which adds little value. You can try to vary your study activities. Also, this is another place where the notebook can help. Look back and see what worked and what didn't. Try something different.  
     The option most of us end up taking though is we become satisfied with where we are and just start enjoying the game at whatever level we find ourselves; it's much less frustrating.

Brilliancy Prize by Donald MacMurray

     I have posted about MacMurray, who died December 2, 1938 at age 24, and his brilliant accomplishments before. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of the 1930s was filled with his exploits and his name appeared in the paper 887 times. 
     You can read Blog post, Chess Essay by Donald MacMurray, Mathematician HERE. In the book, Language Maven Strikes Again by William Safire, a fellow named Arthur Morgan tells a story about how in the 1930s he was friends with MacMurray and they used to play chess with MacMurray giving Queen odds. Morgan says he won once. He also played a game where MacMurray said he would force Morgan to checkmate him. Morgan's strategy was to give away all his pieces so there would be nothing left he could carryout mate with. It didn't work. MacMurray, by a series of checks, arrived at a position where the only legal move Morgan had delivered mate!
     The following game from Boston, 1938 features a win over the city champion, Weaver Adams. MacMurray won the event with a score of 10.5 out of 11. This game also won him the brilliancy prize. 
     Brilliancy prizes, which usually involved a small cash prize and/or trophy, used to be a lot more common back in the days when spectacular swashbuckling combinations were played. These days at the highest levels you just don't see that type of play. Also, these days any troll with a smart phone can immediately refute a sacrifice, so players can't get away with faulty brilliancies as they often did in the past.  
     Back in 2013 at the closing ceremony at Linares where they offer a "most beautiful game" prize which was determined by a vote of  journalists in attendance (many of whom may not know a lot about chess), the award went to Radjabov for his win over Kasparov. The problem with the award was that Radjubov's position was lost when Kasparov committed a gross blunder allowing Radjabov to turn the tables. When the prize was announced Kasparov made a spectacle of himself when he pulled a Kanye West and stormed the stage.
     I, myself, being one of those ubiquitous Internet trolls with an engine, didn't find anything especially “brilliant” about this game. But, I tried to imagine playing it in a tournament...there were moments when it was really, really complicated, so I can see how it could have gotten a prize back in the day when players weren't so jaded.
 

Fun Online Game

Black just lost too much time in the opening. Michael Goeller has a nice bit of analysis on this opening at the Kenilworth Chess Club...HERE

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Of course you do, it's free.  I tell you how to get it from the United States Chess Federation on my book review Blog.  Seriously...it is free, all you have to do is provide them with your e-mail address so they can entice you with inbox offers to buy stuff from them.

Observations

     Magnus Carlsen thinks he would beat Tahl pretty easily and even Fischer, who would be more difficult. He said that in an interview with The Telegraph. Was he joking? His sense of humor is a little confusing to people at times, but in this case I don't think it was a joke. I think he really believes he could beat them. Read article… 
     I agree with Carlsen. It is my firm opinion that today's players are better than players of the past just like the post-WW2 players took what they learned from the previous generation and built on it. I remember reading a note by Alekhine who claimed 1...g6 was unplayable; today everybody knows that's not the case. 
     Back in 2002 Fischer said in an interview where, in between tirades against Americans and Jews, he commented on chess. “I'm finished with the old chess, it's rotten to the core!” he said. He went on to say he'd never play “old” chess again, only Fischer Random, because old chess is played out. 
     He went on to say that he did still follow the game though adding that at the highest level it is all prearranged, move by move. He said the games were very interesting, beautiful prearranged games being created by very intelligent players, working with computers, working in teams. He also stated that, while he had no objection to people creating such games, he thought they should admit that they were prearranged and not claim that they were finding the moves over the board. As for the annotations of said games, he called them “cooked-up notes,” fake and flawed. 
     According to Fischer, the first Kasparov match against Karpov was prearranged move by move. Why did he say all that? I think it was because he realized he couldn't beat either Karpov or Kasparov...chess knowledge, however it was come by, had passed him by. Those guys were better than Fischer...maybe their results weren't as spectacular, but that's because the opposition they faced was stronger than the opposition Fischer faced. 
     Reshevsky once said of Capablanca that the reason his results fell off in his later years wasn't because he played worse, it was because the players he faced were stronger. GM Alex Yermolinsky told about how is old trainer in the Soviet Union was stuck in a time warp when it came to how chess should be played. And, Alexei Shirov wrote of his meeting with Botvinnik where they discussed the Botvinnik system in the QGD. Botvinnik rejected modern analysis because he simply didn't understand it. There's a pattern there.

    Before his visit to the US to negotiate the venue of the 2016 World Chess Championship (Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York) FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has been hit by sanctions of the US Treasury. The reason: he supposedly has direct business dealings with Syrian banks. Currently US citizens are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with not only Syrians, but anybody who has business relations with them. Reminds me of the second Fischer-Spassky match! 
     The US government claims Ilyumzhinov has been assisting and acting on behalf of Syria, Central Bank of Syria, Adib Mayaleh, and Batoul Rida. This, like Fischer's match, has nothing to do with chess. It's because Ilyumzhinov has been linked to all sorts of shady financial deals and is considered a criminal. Read article...
     Without getting into a political discussion, it looks like there may be repercussions that could hurt the possibility of the match taking place in the US and that would be unfortunate. But, that's chess life in the real world. 
     About a year ago I posted on J. Edward Bomberg and the big brouhaha that got ignited in Chess Review after WW2 over the publishing of Alekhine's games. Of course that wasn't the only time politics touched the chess world...there are hundreds of examples of political decisions "interfering" with chess. That's just the way it is.

Charles R. Heising, Former Ohio Champion

     Charles Raymond Heising was a Class A (Elo 1800-1999) player who competed in tournaments for decades, passed away on September, 7, 2009 of lymphoma at his home in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. He was 84. Heising was born July 6, 1925 in Newark, New Jersey, and graduated from Summit, New Jersey High School and earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1945. That same year, he began a 38-year career with the General Electric Co., first graduating from that company's engineering program in 1950. 
     He was a controls designer for turbojet engines, first at GE's plant in Lynn, Massachusetts, and then at the company's operation in Evandale, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. 
     While living in Ohio, he tied for first place in 1956 in the Tri-State Chess Championship and from 1960 to 1962, he was stationed in Thule, Greenland, working on an early-warning radar system. GE then sent him to Houston, Texas, where from 1962 to 1966 he oversaw reliability management for NASA's Apollo spacecraft program. While in Houston on March 28, 1964 that he played Bobby Fischer in a simultaneous exhibition, losing in 47 moves of a Ruy Lopez Opening. 
     In 1966 he moved to GE's switchgear division in southwest Philadelphia, where he remained until he retired in 1983.  He was then a consulting engineer, dealing with the reliability of power transmission and distribution equipment. Heising authored a reliability handbook used in the design of industrial and commercial power systems. In 1981, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers awarded him its standards medallion for that handbook. 
     Heising's chess activity was extensive. Besides competing in many World Opens, the last one in 1999, he also took part in many National Chess Congresses, Liberty Bell Opens and Philadelphia Opens. In 1993, he played in the U.S. Open when it was held in Philadelphia.
     He also enjoyed correspondence chess and played in the Correspondence Chess League of America. He competed several times in the U.S. Correspondence Chess Championship Finals. 
     He won the Ohio Championship in1955 and in 1958 he tied for first with Ross F. Sprague, but Sprague took the title on tiebreaks. At his peak he had an Expert rating (2000-2199) and at the time of his death his rating was 1871. He also had a Life Expert title with the Correspondence Chess League of America. He left behind his wife of 44 years, a son and a daughter. 
     This game from a simul in Houston, Texas on March 28, 1964 where Fischer scored +51=3-3 was lost by Heising, but not after putting up a tough fight.