The U.S. Chess Center is pleased to join the Kensington Day of the Book Festival again this year. On Sunday, April 27, two of our ambassadors (pictured above), Lang (on left) and Kyle (on right), will play all-comers from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm. Both of these young players are National Masters.
This will be the third year we have joined the festivities and we hope that many chess players will come for the books and chess.
Ambassadors Lang and Kyle have volunteered with us before. Lang performed two simultaneous exhibitions in Silver Spring earlier this school year, and Kyle helped us with a camp in Oakton this past summer.
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, is only 90 minutes from the District of Columbia, but as a town of 750 residents it can feel like a world away. Chess provides common ground between our communities.
High School Spanish teacher Pedro Miguel, an experienced tournament player from Spain, has created a successful chess team that finished second in their state last year. They have higher ambitions for this year.
To help them, we donated more than 20 books to help them start a chess library in their community. We also plan to stage a virtual match between their students and ours. Because they are not so far away from us, they will try to come to DC for an in-person tournament.
Chess is universal and can bridge cultures. Whether opponents are rural, small town, suburban, or urban, no matter their politics, without regard to their native languages, we can all enjoy playing the game together.
Sr. Miguel (with the help of his daughter Itaca) accepts chess books to start a library
Judit Polgar is an inspiration to chess players throughout the world. The strongest female player ever, she is outspoken in encouraging girls, women, and children to learn to play chess.
The Queen of Chess was written by Laurie Wallmark and illustrated by Stevie Lewis. Written and illustrated for children, this book avoids the problems many books about chess have faced. Polgar’s story needs no embellishment. She became an international chess sensation by the time she was nine years old, and during her career she defeated 11 World Chess Champions, including Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen when each was ranked the best in the world.
The book takes its readers through her history, starting when she learned the rules of the game at age five. Children will be able to relate to her path and should find inspiration from the success that came from her dedication and hard work.
Appropriately, the book avoids all mention of controversies. There is no mention of the game she lost to Kasparov that was marred by his violation of the touch move rule. Later, Polgar beat him after he had suggested that she was a “circus puppet” and that women should stick to having children instead of playing competitive chess. Polgar faced discrimination both because she is a woman and because she is Jewish. That she overcame irrational prejudice in a game of logic and skill makes her journey more impressive, but it was good judgment to avoid those subjects in a book for children.
Polgar has written her own series of instructional chess books for children. Chess Playground, illustrated by her sister International Master Sofia Polgar, is in use in schools in her native Hungary and in China. https://www.juditpolgarmethod.com/
The Queen of Chess offers a few basics about the game and provides a puzzle that comes from a game Judit won at age nine. The book is not designed to teach chess but provides a wonderful introduction to one of the heroes of chess. Published by Little Bee Books, this book is a suitable gift for students in the primary grades (kindergarten through third grade).
In addition to the chess tent, there will be live music, authors reading from their books and engaging in discussions, children’s programs, cookbook demos (and quite a variety of food vendors), poetry readings, and booksellers.
For many years, Allan Savage performed a simultaneous chess exhibition at the festival. Allan, a friend of the Center, passed away unexpectedly during the pandemic, and the Center has picked up the torch.
David Sherman, a former Maryland and DC Champion who used to teach chess with us, volunteered last year and again this year to continue Mr. Savage’s tradition.
Looking for Chess Books? The U.S. Chess Center also has over a thousand used chess books for sale, starting at $1.00 and up and your purchase helps support the charitable mission of the Chess Center. Peruse our inventory of used chess books at https://chessctr.org/usedbooks/
We try to inculcate our motto of Friendship, Courage, Integrity to all our students. We see examples of these traits in many strong chess players, although, regrettably, not all. The best female player ever, Judit Polgar, with the active participation of her sister, International Master Sofia Polgar, recently performed a simultaneous exhibition in the German Parliament in Berlin to honor the hostages taken from Israel into Gaza. The exhibition strengthened the ties of friendship between Germany and Israel, while allowing 40 chess players the opportunity to face the Polgar sisters, who are retired from active competitive play.
The simul in the German Bundestag on March 14
With anti-Israel sentiment running high in many places, it took considerable courage to speak out for the hostages. Judit is a chess player of unquestioned integrity. Despite facing discrimination as a young player, which deprived her as a teenager of opportunities to compete for the World Chess Championship and to represent her country of Hungary in the Olympiad (she was offered, but declined, the chance to play in the Women’s Division of each), she steadfastly worked to become the strongest female player ever.
In rising to the top of the chess world, Polgar defeated 11 current or past World Champions including Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov when they were each ranked #1. She broke Bobby Fischer’s record of becoming the youngest grandmaster ever and did so before the changes in the system that allowed the rank of grandmaster to become more common. She is the only woman ever to be ranked among the top ten players in the world.
When she speaks on an issue, the world listens. Now, she speaks on the topic of hostages. As she recently said, “Speaking up for hostages is not political. It is humanitarian. The world of sports is asking all athletes to heed the call to protect the safety and security of all hostages.”
The exhibition was staged by Chess4Solidarity, a collaboration between Germany and Israel.
Two teams associated with the U.S. Chess Center played in the World Amateur Team Chess Championship in New Jersey over the weekend, and both returned with impressive awards. The Spring Hill Elementary team was the top elementary school team, and our team from the Theophilus Thompson Club was the top team with an average rating of under 1900. Congratulations to our students!
The World Amateur Team Championship, which was the US Amateur Team Championship when I was competing, was one of my two favorite tournaments (along with the U.S. Open) each year. Instead of scoring wins and losses as individuals, scores are based on the team results. Each team is four players, and they line up against the four players of another team. If a team scores more than two points (one point per win, a half-point for a draw) they score a win. With two points, a team draws that match.
Teams often decide on clever names, and the tournament offers special prizes for creative names. My favorite came from a group of women from the DC area about forty years ago. They dressed in nuns’ habits and called themselves Our Lady of Perpetual Check.
The team format relieves a lot of the pressure ordinarily experienced in chess tournaments, making the event more relaxed and fun. As a player in a team competition, if I lost my game but the team won, I could be happy. If I won my game and the team lost, I could still be satisfied that I did the best I could for the team. If I won and the team won, that was best of all. When I lost and the team also lost, we could accept that our team was out-matched and we would move on to the next round. In short, the result of each game and match was tempered and every round was a fun experience.
Both the Spring Hill Elementary and the Theophilus Thompson teams consisted of players who had experience in big tournaments, so being in a ballroom with more than 1,000 players was not daunting. The teenagers went 4.5/6; the elementary team scored 3.5 points in the six rounds.
No American made a greater impact on chess than Bobby Fischer, and his phenomenal ability would be reduced to an interesting series of chess tales had he not captured the World Chess Championship in the most-watched chess match ever. The Cold War implications of the 1972 match brought attention to chess from the whole world, including millions of people who had never played the game.
Gudmundur Thorarinsson’s book, The Match of All Time, featured as New in Chess’s eBook of the Week for this week, describes in brilliant detail the intrigue, luck, and phenomenal effort that allowed this match to be played. No one was in a better position to record the drama: Mr. Thorarinsson was the President of the Iceland Chess Federation at the time the small island nation produced the winning bid for the match, and it was Mr. Thorarinsson who negotiated with all the parties involved with the match that changed the chess world forever.
The Match of All Time sets forth the context of the match, provides excellent short biographies of Fischer’s predecessors as World Chess Champion, and describes coherently and concisely the personalities of the parties who made the match a reality. Thorarinsson’s perspectives are fascinating, as he was the organizer of the event and ultimately responsible for all its details. While he was never privy to the discussions taking place in America or the Soviet Union, he was the force that brought the two sides together despite the many obstacles thrown up by the American player and the leadership and bureaucracy of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet World Champion, Boris Spassky, described by everyone who knows him as a perfect gentleman and sportsman, wanted to play the match. His score against Fischer up to the point of the match (three wins, two draws, no losses) gave him confidence. Soviet leaders, however, were more concerned with keeping the championship title a Soviet possession, which it had been since 1948. Those who ran the Soviet Union needed to be convinced, both by its own citizens and by the match organizers, to allow Mr. Spassky to play against Fischer, who flouted the norms and rules of the sanctioning body of chess, FIDE.
Of course, dealing with Fischer was not easy. He refused to commit to play and made demands of the organizers, which became more strident as negotiations lurched forward. Even by the time of the opening ceremony, it was not clear that Fischer would board the airplane in New York to come to Iceland to play. With the intervention of National Security Advisor (and later, Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger, Fischer finally showed up. Thorarinsson describes his involvement in getting leaders of the greatest antagonists of the Cold War to agree to have a chess match played.
Bobby Fischer (left) in 1972 with then-FIDE President, Max Euwe. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Thorarinsson criticizes the United States for the way it treated Fischer late in his life, complaining that our country wanted to incarcerate the chess hero it had celebrated in 1972. It is true that Fischer was indicted by a District of Columbia grand jury for alleged crimes committed by playing chess in former Yugoslavia. It is also true that he was not indicted during the George H.W. Bush administration, when the match was played, and was not indicted during the eight years of the Clinton presidency. It was not until years later, after Fischer commended the 9/11 attacks on the United States, that the George W. Bush administration decided to prosecute Fischer. (Boris Spassky, who performed the same acts as Bobby Fischer, and as a French resident was subject to the same UN sanctions as pertained to Fischer, was never charged with a crime.) However, as a chapter of Julius Kaplan’s legal memoir, Secrets and Suspense, suggested, the prosecutors had no great interest in putting him in jail but wanted to confiscate much of Fischer’s money. Nobody but Thorarinsson could have written this book, and its value for the posterity of chess history cannot be matched. It is wonderful for the game that he wrote the book, and it will be a valuable resource for chess historians to come.
If there are any better tools than chess to teach life skills to young people, we don’t know what they are.
Robert Katende has spent the last two decades helping impoverished Ugandans escape some of the hardest slums in the world using sports, especially chess. Every year, he comes to the Washington, DC, area to host a free chess tournament, most recently this past Saturday in Lanham.
Several volunteers, including Scott Low and Andy Tichenor, helped make the event fun for children and adults. (Scott played in events at the U.S. Chess Center as a child and teenager. That was 15 years ago, and we are proud that we contributed to his development as a chess player and terrific human being.)
Katende’s best-known student is Women’s Candidate Master Phiona Mutesi, who was illiterate and hungry when she entered his chess classes in Katwe, Uganda, looking for food. Now a college graduate and an analyst for Deloitte, she credits learning chess for developing the skills she uses as an adult.
Hundreds of students come through Sports Outreach, Katende’s organization to help impoverished Ugandans and we appreciate that the Washington Education Zone in Lanham provided beautiful space in which to host a screening of Disney’s movie Queen of Katwe, the free tournament, and a simultaneous exhibition of chess. We will see them back here next year.
Phiona Mutesi (seated left in the photo below) is one of the most inspiring stories to come from the chess world. As an under-nourished child in a slum of Uganda, Phiona discovered chess and became a champion of the African continent. Her story was written in The Queen of Katwe, then turned into a successful Disney movie.
We never would have heard of Phiona, however, had Robert Katende not created a chess program that welcomed her. Katende’s story, while not as well known, is equally inspiring. He also was brought up in difficult circumstances by his grandmother in Uganda. Through hard work and perseverance, he went to college, played soccer at a high level, and created a charity to help impoverished young people in his home country. On National Chess Day this year, you have a chance to meet him and hear him speak.
A book that describes not just the rules of chess but also abstract concepts and basic strategy, while at the same time introducing a plot with about 10 named personalities in 48 pages, is asking a lot of a pre-adolescent reader. In my opinion, it’s too much.
Jonathan Ferry’s Across the Battlefield, beautifully illustrated by Caroline Zina, is such a book. He takes an interesting game, gives pawns and pieces individual names and personalities, and creates a story about the development of Prunella the Pawn. That would be enough, but the book uses the story as a vehicle to describe the rules and strategy of chess. For many readers, especially early readers, the effort to remember characters and their traits will take precedence over the chess vocabulary and chess strategy the book describes.
A child could well be captivated by the pictures on each page. If read to second graders who had not been exposed to the game, the book could generate interest in learning to play. However, children are likely to be overwhelmed by the firehose of information about the rules, vocabulary, and strategy of the game.
In short, the excess ambition of Across the Battlefield works against its effectiveness in introducing chess concepts to its target audience of 6- to 10-year olds.
Across the Battlefield: A Pawn’s Journey, written by Jonathan Ferry and illustrated by Caroline Zina, is published by Chess Tales, LLC, of St. Louis, MO.
Fifty-one years ago this month, the chess match that changed the game forever began in Iceland, and since then that tiny island in the North Atlantic has been excited about the game. Iceland has had the most grandmasters per capita in the world since the 1970s and is unique in being the only country with more International Grandmasters (14) than International Masters (12).
In 2005, Iceland conferred citizenship on Bobby Fischer and sent a plane to retrieve him from Japan, where he was being held in custody at the demand of the United States. Fischer remained on the small island nation for the rest of his life.
After he passed away, a group of chess enthusiasts created the Bobby Fischer Center near his final resting place in Selfoss. The Center celebrates Fischer’s life and chess career with particular emphasis on his connection to Iceland.
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit. Its director, Aldís Sigfúsdóttir, is very knowledgeable and gave my wife and me a comprehensive tour. The museum emphasizes Fischer’s life in Iceland and has an excellent display of photos from the 1972 match. We also saw the Letters of Citizenship prepared by Iceland’s Parliament granting Fischer a method of exit from the Japanese jail where he had been held.
The 1972 match pitted the Soviet Empire, which had dominated high-level chess since the second world war, against a young American who eschewed assistance. Fischer knew the world champion, Boris Spassky, but had never beaten him over the board. He had lost three times while securing two draws in their previous matches. However, Fischer had gone on a record-setting run of victories leading up to the World Championship match, including winning 20 games in a row against players competing for the right to challenge for the world championship. Fischer’s international rating was 125 points higher than Spassky’s, a formidable difference. The match attracted more attention than any previous chess match because of the international politics involved. Fischer made demands on the match organizers up until the games began, and for a while refused to travel to Iceland for the match. It took a series of efforts, including a call from the U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to implore Fischer to play the match and win for his country, to convince him to compete. By then, the match had been postponed for two days and the Soviet Union had to be persuaded to allow Spassky to compete after the insult of waiting for Fischer to arrive. At last the match began, and the daily analysis of the games became the most-watched television in America. I had a personal stake in this, as it was in the run-up to the match that people asked me to teach them the game. It proved to be an avocation I would never relinquish. The museum provides quite a bit of space to Boris Spassky, mainly about the 1972 match. It also covers their second match twenty years after the first, this time in the former Yugoslavia, which led to the indictment of Fischer for violating the U.S. embargo.
Despite their rivalry, the two World Champions became friends. The moving note of condolence that Spassky sent to be read at Fischer’s funeral in 2008 called Fischer his brother.
The Bobby Fischer Center also is used as a place to teach junior players. A substantial library of chess books is available for students to use, and there is space for about a dozen students at a time to play or receive lessons from volunteer grandmasters. The Bobby Fischer Center is one of only three museums dedicated to World Chess Champions. (Emmanuel Lasker and Max Euwe are the other World Champions to have museums devoted to their memories.) Iceland is a fascinating and beautiful country, and chess players who travel there should make a point of visiting Selfoss, about 45 minutes outside Reykjavik on the Ring Road, and plan to spend an hour or two there.
The51st Annual World Open of Chess just concluded in Philadelphia. It was my first tournament in several months, and I looked forward to taking one of the top places in my section. It was, in a word: humbling. As chess players, we expect to study and see improvements in the form of wins and higher game accuracy. As an instructor, I felt I was in a good position to crush opponents at the rating that I’ve held flat for 2 years. Instead, I found that Caïssa comes for all of us. Of my 14 classical games, only 2 entered what could be called an endgame. Four ended because of significant blunders: 2 were mine, 2 were my opponents’—4 more than I had hoped, but I’ll take the wins with the losses.
I finished 2.5/5 in the women’s tournament (winning the U1400 prize), and 5/9 in the World Open. A supremely average result, in my opinion. I performed poorly in the blitz side tournament but did well in the rapid one. Both were extremely fun aspects of tournaments that I had never experienced before, but that I will seek out every chance I can. I learned some things about chess, and about myself. But what will stay with me forever is not Rxe6 in Game 9 (well maybe that too) but the time I spent with friends.
At the previous tournament that I competed in, the Eastern Open last December, I met a friend who has become my primary training partner. We’re evenly matched, but play very differently, which proves useful. Every Friday we’d meet to play a long time control game and analyze afterwards. At the tournament, we shared a hotel room and excitedly called each other after our games. When we got back to the room together after the round, we’d go through each other’s games and explain our reasoning to each other like sinners in a confessional. I met other new friends as well and exchanged numbers.
Chess can’t be learned in isolation, as so many are inclined to do these days. Meeting other people, with wildly different backgrounds and philosophies, adds diversity to our understanding of the royal game. Some of them have bad ideas, some ingenious, and some ideas have questionable merit but are fun to explore. What I do know is, I’ll be back.
“Competitive chess is for the young,” a chess master once told me. Looking at the top players in the world, one might suspect this to be true. Carlsen, Liren, Nepomniachtchi, So, Caruana are all in their 30s and of course have been playing chess for many years. I began playing competitive chess at an “advanced age” (over 45) and wondered if this statement might have some validity to it. I decided to speak to several “senior” players and get their takes on this theory.
Most older players relayed to me that they felt there were two areas where younger players had an advantage. They included memory and processing speed. From a personal standpoint, I might agree that memory does seem to diminish as we get older; however, it is not necessarily a given. With enough repetition and practice, older players can improve their ability to remember openings, strategies, etc. In terms of processing speed i.e. the ability to make and spot a strong move more quickly, this could be dependent on the amount of time a player has to practice and study and how long they have been playing. (For the most part my experience with younger players has been that they tend to move very quickly, but often their move is not the optimal one.)
As we age, it is a known fact that our brains shrink and learning new skills may take more time; however, it is also a known fact that older adults can still learn new information and should do so in order to keep their brains healthy. This concept is called neuroplasticity or the forming of new neural pathways.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a well-known neurosurgeon, medical writer and journalist says in his book Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age that reasoning and problem solving are “key to building cognitive reserve” (brain resiliency). He goes on to say that the greater one’s “cognitive reserve”, the more likely we are to “stave off the degenerative brain changes” associated with many of the common brain diseases including dementia.
Even though we may not have any illusions about becoming chess masters, playing competitive chess can be a wonderfully challenging brain building activity. At the very least it is definitely a cognitively stimulating activity that I am sure Dr. Gupta would approve of. I would encourage anyone, including seniors, to give it a try. After all, who knows for sure what the long-term benefits may be!
The 47th Annual Eastern Open wrapped up Thursday evening with a record-breaking turn-out. More than 400 players came to this year’s iteration, held at the Hyatt Regency in Arlington, VA. The competition included a number of innovative additions (Mixed Doubles and Senior prizes, in addition to a rated blitz tournament) to the traditional 8-round main event.
Among the competitors were dozens of students of the U.S. Chess Center, including players from the Theophilus Thompson Club, and Kent Gardens, Spring Hill, Colvin Run, and Churchill Road Elementary Schools.
It was also wonderful seeing graduates of our classes and camps, including students returning from college and post-college adults. We saw players as young as six years old and another (a grandpa of one of our summer campers) at age 82.
2,463 students turned up to this past weekend’s National K-12 Grade Championships, held at National Harbor, MD for the first time ever. The field size shattered the previous record of approximately 1,700 students from five years ago. Students showed up from all over the country to compete for the national championships in their respective grade levels.
We had hoped for strong local representation, and were not disappointed as large contingents of students turned up from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Spring Hill Elementary (pictured below) took home the 5th place trophy in the 6th grade section, as well as the 8th place trophy in the 3rd grade section. Students at our clubs at Spring Hill, White Oaks and the Theophilus Thompson Club also won individual medals.
Win or lose, it’s always an incredible experience for kids to play an event with thousands of other young people who possess the same love for chess.
A full list of results is available on the website of the U.S. Chess Federation, here.
The 2022 U.S. Chess Championships have concluded in St. Louis. A day after Fabiano Caruana won the open section of the championship, U.S. Chess Center honorary co-chair Jennifer Yu won the women’s championship for the second time, following on from her win in 2019. Congratulations to both the winners!
Jennifer Yu’s victory in particular is a testament to one of the most fundamental values we espouse at the U.S. Chess Center: the value of not giving up. Going into the late stages of the tournament, Jennifer led her closest opponent, eight-time U.S. Women’s Champion Irina Krush, before losing their individual matchup in Round 12 to fall half a point behind her in the standings. Undeterred by the loss of that game, Jennifer battled back to win in Round 13 whereas Irina could only draw. This forged a tie for first place and ensured that the championship title would be settled the following day with tiebreak games at a faster time control.
Jennifer Yu, U.S. Women's Chess Champion, pictured in September 2018 giving a simul at the U.S. Chess Center.
Diagrammed here is a position during the opening of the decisive game of that tiebreak match, with both competitors knowing that the winner of this game would be the new champion. Jennifer, as Black, made an uncharacteristically big error with 9…Bg4, hanging the bishop, which Irina quickly took on the next move with 10. Qxg4. In tournament games, it’s sadly common for players to resign after making a mistake like this. Facing the prospect of playing on down a piece against a player as strong as Irina Krush, perhaps to some players it would seem less unpleasant to just give up. But Jennifer chose to play on and keep trying her hardest, and what happened later on is a testament to the merits of doing exactly that.
The players eventually reached the position in the second diagram on the left. Irina, still ahead by a piece, had just taken Black’s knight, 22. Nxd6. But instead of recapturing right away, Jennifer combined an in-between move (zwischenzug) with a discovered attack: 22…Bxh2+ 23. Kxh2 Qxd6+ 24. Kh1 Rxe2 25. Rxe2. After the tactics, Black ended up with a queen and pawn in exchange for White’s two bishops and rook – still a material advantage for White, but a position with the kings exposed like this tends to create tactical chances for the side with the queen, and Irina felt compelled to use a lot of time on the clock.
White’s time ultimately ran out after the 47th move, giving Jennifer the win in the game and the championship. The lesson to our students, as always – don’t quit, because until the two players shake hands to end the game, no outcome is guaranteed.
If a chess player is caught cheating, every notable accomplishment that follows is viewed with suspicion. The recent controversy during Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis serves as a reminder to our students that nothing good comes from dishonesty. If Hans Niemann had never been caught cheating before, his win over Magnus Carlsen would have been seen as a magnificent performance, perhaps a once-in-a lifetime accomplishment. That he has admitted cheating repeatedly in his young life, however, has caused this result to be viewed more skeptically.
Many prominent figures in the chess world have weighed in on the likelihood or lack thereof that Niemann broke any rules during the game in question. This much is certain: in the third round of the annual elite Sinquefield Cup round-robin event, Niemann, the lowest-rated player in the tournament, defeated Carlsen, the long-time World Champion and highest-rated player. The day after the loss, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, the first time in his career he has pulled out in the middle of an elite event. Carlsen’s only public explanation for the withdrawal was an enigmatic Twitter post that was viewed by many as a possible allegation that Niemann had received some form of outside assistance in the game the day before.
At the present moment, any evidence of foul play during that game is subjective and inconclusive. What has truly amplified the contention is Niemann’s self-confessed history of cheating in online games, some as recently as three years ago.
Our experience shows that most people enjoy playing with strong players but nobody likes playing without confidence that the game will be played fairly. If players don’t follow the same rules, the game is no fun. Trash-talking diminishes the competition, as distracting or annoying an opponent is not supposed to be part of chess. Trying to get away with a touch-move violation, taking a move back, moving an opponent’s piece, or using a computer during a game, all are things that might tempt a player, but players of character resist those thoughts.
There is no game, and there is no tournament, so important that it is worth damaging your reputation or honor. Once either is lost it can take a long and miserable time to get it back.
Fifty years ago today, Boris Spassky resigned the 21st and final game of his match with Bobby Fischer, making Fischer the World Chess Champion. Fischer’s rise to the top had long been a story that transcended the world of chess, and the Cold War undertones ensured that the 1972 championship match in Reykjavik would be the most followed chess competition in history. His PBS coverage of the match made Shelby Lyman a household name in America, and the PBS coverage of the match had higher ratings than the commercial broadcasts competing against it.
The image of the self-taught Fischer, working alone against the Soviet Union’s combined force of world-class coaches and players who helped Spassky prepare, fueled the narrative of the triumph of individual brilliance over collectivism. No player outside the USSR had even qualified for a championship match since the end of World War II, so his title win was an improbable underdog story as much as it was the tale of a generational talent realizing his potential. Although Fischer’s run to the World Championship included a string of twenty wins in a row against world-class players (even today the closest any player has come to that record is eight straight wins), Fischer had failed to win any of the five games he had previously played against Spassky so there were plenty of doubts about his ability to defeat him in a match.
Bobby Fischer in 1972. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
It also caused a surge of popularity for chess in the Western world, and in the United States in particular. Sales of chess sets reportedly climbed more than 20 percent in the wake of the 1972 match, and tournament participation ticked up as more Americans were drawn to learn the game to better identify with Fischer’s genius. It was that year that David Mehler, the founder of the U.S. Chess Center, first taught chess to people who wanted to know what all the fuss was about.
Spassky took an early lead in the 1972 match, after an infamous blunder by Fischer in the first game and an even more infamous forfeit in the second game. Fischer then won the third game, his first-ever win against Spassky, and after a draw in game 4 the two players reached the position on the left in game 5. It was Fischer’s (Black’s) turn to move here. What is the best move?
The answer is at the bottom of the page!
The events of 1972 secured Fischer an iconic legacy in the history of chess. The events after 1972 ensured that that legacy would be a complicated one. It is saddening to recount how Fischer tarnished his personal reputation with his abhorrent public statements. And the chess element of Fischer’s life story following his win in Iceland is also disheartening to retell, because the 50th anniversary of Fischer winning the title is also the 50th anniversary of his departure from competitive play. After that 1972 match victory, Fischer became a recluse for 20 years. He declined to compete in any tournaments, turning down what would have added up to millions of dollars in endorsements and appearance fees, and he refused terms for any future world championship matches and forfeited the title three years after winning it.
For Fischer, giving up chess meant not only vanishing from the public’s eye, but also disappearing from the lives of nearly everyone he had met during his years as a chessplayer. He resurfaced only briefly in 1992 for another, unofficial, match against Spassky, who at that point was no longer a contender for the world championship. By playing that match in war-torn Yugoslavia in possible violation of international sanctions, Fischer became the subject of a U.S.-issued arrest warrant. Fischer never returned to the United States, nor did he ever play a public game of chess again after winning the second match against Spassky. He eventually received political asylum in Iceland, where he died in 2008.
As much as we may take inspiration from Bobby Fischer’s immense talent and try to follow the examples Fischer set with the strategies and tactics he used to win his games, we implore young people to not have the same approach to the game that Fischer had. We want our students, whether or not they become top-class players, to be interested in playing chess and to sustain that interest for their entire lives, because that is more satisfying than becoming world champion and leaving the game before turning thirty. Don’t set out on a chessplaying journey with the sole goal of achieving a specific rating or attaining a specific title – even if it is the world championship title. Instead, play to improve your skills, play to make new friends, and play for the fun of playing.
Solution to the above puzzle: Fischer won with 27…Bxa5. If 28. Qxa4 Qxe4 quickly forces mate, due to the dual threats of Qxe1# and Qxg2#. If White moves the queen to b1, c1 or d2, Fischer would have continued 28…Bxd1 29. Qxd1 Qxe4 30. Qd2 Nxg2 and he is three pawns ahead, so Spassky resigned. After drawing level by winning game 5, Fischer then immediately won game 6 to take the lead of the match, a lead he would never relinquish.
The Chess Center invites all of our grown-up patrons (over 21 years of age) to join us the first Tuesday of each month for Bishops and Beers at Silver Branch Brewing Company.
Starting June 7, participants will be able to come out and play chess while enjoying the beverage offerings at one of Silver Spring’s finest local production breweries. One of our certified U.S. Chess Center instructors will be hosting proceedings. Board, sets, and some clocks for those who wish to play rapid and blitz games will all be provided.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or a seasoned master, you’re welcome to come play with us.
A piece from the Parenting section of last week’s Washington Post highlights the value of chess not just as a tool for sharpening children’s intellect, but also for improving their social skills. In particular, Paul Rogers notes the ease with which chess can help children connect with people from older generations. Whether bonding with parents and grandparents or playing with adults outside of the family, chess instills in kids the belief in kids that win or lose, they are part of something that everyone enjoys. And for children who struggle in ordinary social situations, the game can provide a special value.
Rogers’ observations are in line with what we at the Chess Center have seen throughout our history of organizing events for young people. Few other pursuits can match the universal accessibility of chess to players of all ages, genders, backgrounds, and physical capabilities. And unlike with an electronic game franchise that has new editions or sequels coming out every year, parents who take up the hobby of chess alongside their children don’t have to worry about the game being replaced. Chess is an activity that has stood the test of time. The rules have not changed in half a millennium, but the strategic complexity of the game keeps us all interested.
All of our instructors who were fortunate enough to learn chess in our childhoods now look back on those years with great fondness; we remember the first time we sat across from an adult at a chess board, playing or discussing a game, and were treated as equals.
A curious reader of our website sent in the following question:
“In the Big Nate comic strips, there is a recurring theme: Nate is put into check, and Nate responds by making one move to checkmate his opponent. This led me to wonder about actual plausible board configurations that could result in this outcome. Has anyone come up with such configurations?”
It doesn’t happen often, but here is a silly example:
This specific position would not likely arise in a game, but the concept of answering a check with a winning discovered attack is known in chess. Thanks for your question!
Congratulations to Sal Rosario and David Sherman, two of the Center’s former teachers, for splitting the championship honors as 2021 District of Columbia Champion and Senior Champions.
Eighteen players competed over the weekend in this year’s DC Championship, where Dennis Norman went 4-0 to capture first place overall and Bijan Tahmassebi took clear second with 3½. The top two finishers are from Maryland, so were ineligible for the DC titles. Rosario and Sherman each went 3-1.
Special congratulations to the students who played. Two of our young champions, Ben Nemelka and Amanda Lossef both did well against the adult competition, and we are very pleased to see Anna Miller and newcomer Samson Neuberger playing.
All photos provided courtesy of Mr. Bill Simmons, used with permission.
Eugene Meyer accepted an award for his 29 years of service on the Center’s Board of Directors.
One of the co-founders of the U.S. Chess Center in 1991, International Chess Master Eugene Meyer was instrumental in the success of the Center in establishing chess classes in hundreds of local schools.
IM Meyer was among the twenty highest-rated players in the country for a couple of decades and was an active participant in local and national tournaments and leagues, winning many championships. For many years, until he emigrated to Virginia, he was the District of Columbia’s highest-rated player.
In honor of his 29 years of service and generosity to the U.S. Chess Center, Executive Director Christopher McCleary presented IM Meyer with an award last week. Thank you, IM Meyer!
Thank you to Money Muscle BBQ and everyone who came out on Thursday, October 14, 2021, to spend the evening with us playing chess, eating barbecue, making new friends, and enjoying beautiful fall weather under Piggy Smalls’ tent.
Want to play more chess? Our offices are finally re-opening for limited hours and open play starting this Saturday, October 16th from 1:00-5:00pm.
WHERE U.S. Chess Center 8560 Second Avenue, Suite 118 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
WHEN (New Hours) Saturdays 1:00pm – 5:00pm
For the rest of October, play chess for free. Starting in November table fees are $5/day, but Chess Center Members always play for free, so Become a Chess Center Member!
Please join the U.S. Chess Center team and our friends at Money Muscle BBQ for an evening of “Bishops & BBQ.” Come play chess and enjoy delicious barbecue at this family-friendly event while helping support the U.S. Chess Center.
Door prizes for lucky guests and Money Muscle BBQ will donate a percentage of event sales to the U.S. Chess Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Chess play and conversation is free!
To make a donation in support of our mission to promote self-confidence, social skills, and academic success for all, click here.
July 20th is International Chess Day, the day the International Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded, in 1924. First proposed by UNESCO in 1966, International Chess Day has been celebrated annually ever since, and on December 12, 2019, the UN General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution also recognizing the day.
How are you celebrating International Chess Day? Send us a picture of you and/or your student(s) playing chess; or share an anecdote about learning or playing chess; or how it has made an impact in your life; and we’ll feature your pictures/stories right here on our blog, Notate. Email your photo or story to: admin@chessctr.org.
Support the U.S. Chess Center: In honor of International Chess Day, please donate to help us teach students to play chess in order to promote self-confidence, social skills, and academic success.
The U.S. Chess Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and charitable donations, which are tax-deductible to the maximum extent allowed by law, enable us to:
► Keep our fees exceptionally low; ► Provide scholarships/discounts to financially challenged families; ► Offer free or low-cost chess instruction to Title I public schools.
Thank you!
Some Fun Facts About Chess
► Mathematically there are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the Observable Universe. ► 605 million adults play chess regularly. ► Chess comes from the 6th century Sanskrit game chaturaṅga, which translates to “four arms.” The arms refer to the elephants, horses, chariots, and foot soldiers of the Indian army, which evolved into the modern bishops, knights, rooks, and pawns. ► Although the rule allowing pawns to move two squares on their first move was first proposed in the late 13th century, it was not generally accepted until 1492 when a large group of chess players in Paris also adopted the en passant rule.
Celebrating #InternationalChessDay
Kendrick Smith: I didn’t come to the game of chess until 2012, when I was thirty-six years old. I picked up a book by John Nunn entitled, Learn Chess. My first attempts to play were against friends, whom had been playing since their childhood. It is inevitable to say that they annihilated me causing me to take an early hiatus. Fast forward to April 2020, the pandemic. To implement social distancing in our office, they broke our team up into a day and a night shift. To keep people engaged and morale up, someone had a bright idea to bring in a chess board, where the night shift would play a move against the day shift. I thought to myself, it would take forever to finish the game. So I brought in a board of my own, and set it up at my desk. When work was slow, my coworkers would stop by to play. I got beat often, but I began to learn. I had read that five was a good age to introduce a child to chess, which was the exact age that my son was. Each day that I came home from work, I showed him a piece and how it moved. I next showed him pawn promotion, En passant, and castling. Then the following week I showed him how to set up the board. We immediately began playing games. The beautiful thing was that on the days I was teaching Manny about chess, my wife would be at the island in the kitchen, listening and watching. She quickly picked up the game just from our sessions. We would each then take turns playing one another. it was it at this point that I began to enjoy the game of chess. I began watching several movies about chess, i.e., Fresh, The Queen’s Gambit, Critical Thinking, Brooklyn Castle, The Knight’s of the South Bronx, End Game, and Searching for Bobby Fischer. We now play every chance we get. Win, lose, or draw, we love the royal game. As matter of fact, when we’re eating at restaurant’s outdoors, we’ll play games, while waiting on our food. Attached is a picture of my son Manny and I playing at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Cher Cher. We plan on having Manny join the chess center this fall.
The US Chess Center played a match with a team from the Lusaka Province Chess Association (LPCA) in Lusaka, Zambia, on Saturday afternoon (evening in Africa), June 12th. Each team was supposed to field 12 students, but the Zambian team had a few technical difficulties and only nine were able to participate. The games were hard-fought, with every player having plenty of opportunities.
Before and after the match, the students went to break-out rooms to meet and learn about each other. In addition to having common interests in sports and music, the kids from both locations like to play video games and have parents who restrict how much time they may spend online.
The coaches discussed the challenges of attracting and keeping girls involved with chess. In Zambia, much competition is played among teams and the leagues require that at least one player per six-person team be female. The coaches have succeeded in educating parents about the long-term value, both cultural and educational, of chess so that their attrition rate is low. An excellent relationship was established and more matches between the two groups are expected to occur starting this summer.
Here are some of the games played (Click the board to view the game at Lichess):
Woman Grandmaster (WGM) Jennifer Yu, the 2019 US Women’s Champion, spent time with our Sunday Chess group on May 16, answering students’ questions and playing a consultation game with them. Jennifer spoke about her training for tournaments, her expectations of playing chess indefinitely but not making it her career, and her passion for doing the best she can. Watch some of the Q&A here:
After chatting with the students, WGM Yu played a consultation game with them. In a consultation game, a group (in this case the US Chess Center’s Sunday Chess students) plays collectively, discussing and determining each move together as a team.
USCC Sunday Chess (White) - WGM Yu (Black)
Nearly three hours later, the match resulted in a draw. Watch each move in the match on Lichess here: https://lichess.org/kl7LM8LG#1
Thank you to WGM Yu for spending a Sunday afternoon with our students!
The Emmy-nominated documentary film Brooklyn Castle is being re-released this Friday, March 5, 2021.
BROOKLYN CASTLE tells the stories of five members of the chess team at a Title 1 – below-the-poverty-line – inner city junior high school that has won more national championships than any other in the country.
To celebrate, Soledad O’Brien will host a panel discussion with Rochelle Ballantyne and Pobo Efekoro (students in the film), as well as Elizabeth Spiegel and John Galvin (teachers from the film) on March 5th at 8pm ET following the nationwide re-release. Soledad will discuss the power of chess, teaching, and defying the odds. Visit http://brooklyncastle.com/ for theater listings, streaming options, and more information.
Masterminds is an exhibition that tells the stories of notable chess prodigies including Bobby Fischer, World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen, and the Polgar sisters. Through photographs, videos, and mementos of important chess matches and tournaments from the collection of the World Chess Hall of Fame, viewers will learn more about these talented young players as well as their later accomplishments. The exhibition will also highlight the achievements of players who took up the game later in life and still made a mark on the world of chess.
“Unlike many other fields, in chess, kids can sometimes compete with—and defeat—adults,“ explains Emily Allred, curator at the World Chess Hall of Fame. “Whether we’re exploring the real-life story of Tanitoluwa (Tani) Adewumi, an eight-year-old Nigerian refugee who won the K-3 New York State Championship only a year after beginning to play the game, or fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon from The Queen’s Gambit, the genius behind these chess prodigies is truly awe-inspiring.”
A virtual tour of the exhibition will be available on WCHOF’s YouTube and Facebook channels. The exhibition runs through November 7, 2021.
