Friday, January 16, 2015

Pestaño: Controversial figures in chess

Chessmoso
Thursday, January 15, 2015

JOSEPH Henry Blackburne’s nickname was the Black Death . He was known for his temper.
After losing to Steinitz in a match, he threw him out of a window. Luckily for Steinitz, they were on the first floor.
In 1963 a wife of a chess player in Milan filed for divorce because he was so obsessed with chess that he refused to work and support their two children. The court ruled that Mrs. Edvige Ruinstein was entitled to a separation from her husband Weaver Adams was a US master who won the US Open in 1948. In 1939 he wrote a book entitled, White to Play and Win. After publication, he played a tournament in Dallas and lost all his games using the white pieces and won all his games using the black pieces!
Claude Frizzel Bloodgood was a controversial American chess player. As a young man, he got into trouble with the law and was arrested several times. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering his mother. He was scheduled for execution six times, but received a reprieve on all occasions. While on death row, he played over 1,200 postal games. The postage was paid by the State of Virginia.
Nick Down joined the 1985-86 British Ladies Correspondence Chess Championship as Miss Leigh Strange and won the event. He was later caught and admitted his deception was a prank that got out of hand. He was later banned from the British Correspondence Chess Association.
Marcel Duchamp was one of the founders of Dadaism, surrealism, and cubism. He is a chess player who used chess themes in many of his paintings. In 1927 his bride Lydie glued all his chess pieces to the board because he spent his honeymoon week studying chess. They were divorced three months later. He played for France in four Olympiads.
In 1868, Georg Carr played chess with a friend five miles away using a telescope and semaphore, which is a system of sending messages by holding two flags or poles in certain positions according to an alphabetic code.
Robert Wyller was a chess addict who played 1,001 correspondece games at once in 1948.
Willie Sutton was a famous bank robber who was arrested by the FBI in 1952. In his possession was a book entitled “How to Think Ahead in Chess.”
Norman Whitaker tied for the US Open Championship in 1923. He received $100,000 from Charles Lindbergh on a promise to return the Lindbergh baby. It was a scam in which he went to prison for five years. The money was never found.
Diana Lanni ran away from home to escape domestic turmoil, worked as a topless dancer and a prostitute. She entered a women’s tournament in Michigan and won. She was a drug addict and suicidal and wound up in Bellevue Hospital in New York.
Lev Loshinsky is considered the greatest of all problem composers. He won over 70 first place prizes in problem-composing contests
Picpa team tournament. On Jan. 24 and 25, there will be an Open tem tournament composed of at least four players with a time control of 30 minutes plus 10 seconds increment.
Format is a single round robin among the participating teams.
Prizes are P12,000 and P8,000 for the top two and P6,000 and P4,000 for the third and fourth-placed teams. The venue is SM City and the registration fee is P1,200. Each team must have a CPA as one of the members.
Tata Steel. The first Super tournament of the year is the greatest challenge of Wesley So.
Wesley (2770) is doing well with a win against the 2014 winner Lervon Aronian 2797 and three draws against world champion Magnus Carlsen (2862), Fabiano Caruana (2820) and Radislaw Wojtaszek (2744), who defeated Carlsen in the rhird round. He has a performance rating so far with 2901. Vassily Ivanchuk is leading with 3.5 points.
(boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com)

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