Chess Room Newsletter #544

Mechanics' Institute Chess Club Newsletter #544

"The stupidest rule in chess is losing on time. The idea of the chess clock was to make the players move more quickly, not to decide the out-come of the game."   

Yasser Seirawan (New In Chess - 2011, issue 4, page 106)

Note - The Mechanics' Institute Chess Club Newsletter will take a three week break while MI Chess Director John Donaldson travels to China to captain the US entry in the 2011 World Team Championship

1) Mechanics' Institute Chess Club Newss

2) Two Ches Poems by Dennis Fritzinger

3) GM Alex Baburin visiting Bay Area

4)  Jacqueline Piatigorsky  

5) Upcoming Special Events at the Mechanics' Institute

1)    Mechanics' Institute  Chess Club News

Photographs from the early 1900s to the present are displayed on the walls of the Mechanics' Institute Chess Club. Some of the classiest and most distinctive were taken by Nancy Roos who ranks among the best chess photographers of all.  The following short bio, written for her induction into the California Chess Hall of Fame (www.chessdryad.com) , offers a quick summary of  this remarkable individual's most important accomplishments.

NANCY ROOS (1905-1957):

Nancy Roos packed a lot of living into a relatively short life. Born Nancy Krotoschin (mother Cohn) in Germany she later moved to Belgium before immigrating to the United States in the late 1930s. Mrs. Roos was active in New York City between 1939 and 1944 distinguishing herself not only at chess (=2-3rd in the 1942 US Womens Championship) but also at Go where she was also recognized expert.  

Mrs. Roos and her husband Martin moved to Los Angeles in 1944 where she opened a photo studio in the Wilshire district. Her artistic eye and skill in photography played an important role in promoting chess in her new home state of California. She served as staff photographer, first with George Koltanowski's publications California Chess News and Chess Digest and later with the California Chess Reporter. She took all the photos that appeared in the tournament book of Hollywood 1952 edited by H.J. Ralston and Guthrie McClain. Many of her timeless black and white photos from the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s can be found hanging on the walls of the Mechanics' Institute Chess Club in downtown San Francisco. They provide ample evidence that Nancy Roos belongs on the short list of the great chess photographers of all time.  

Besides being an outstanding photographer Nancy Roos was also the first women from California to win a US Women's Championship, tying for first with Gisela Gresser (who she beat in their individual game) in the 1955 event. The next Golden State winner would be Diane Savereide twenty years later. What made this victory particularly significant for Mrs. Roos is that she did it near the end of a nine year battle with cancer.

2)    Two Chess Poems by Dennis Fritzinger

fourth of july

fourth of july
chess:
look out for the fireworks.
look out,
because that bishop move
might be a skyrocket
streaking across the sky.
look out,
because the opening moves
are tentative,
and the first fireworks
are tentative.
look out
because the cannon roars,
the rook moves,
and the night
is pierced with explosions.
the knights, like helicopters,
dance from one square
to the next.
the pawns move like sparklers
marching across a field,
while the queen--it's impossible
to adequately describe the queen,
except to say
whatever seems most extravagant, is hers.

 chess moves

  there's a lot
  of chess moves
  i wish i could
  take back.

3) GM Alex Baburin visiting Bay Area

Irish-Russian GM Alex Baburin is currently visiting the Bay Area through July 22. The seven-time Olympiad participant and founder of the online daily Chess Today (www.chesstoday.net) currently in its 11th year of operation, is available for lessons during his stay.  

Baburin is an experienced coach who worked for some time with super GM Alexander Morozevitch.   

Contact GM Baburin at [email protected].

4)    Jacqueline Piatigorsky

Jacqueline Piatigorsky, one of the most important sponsors in the history of American chess, will be 100 on November 6.

A woman of many talents, Mrs. Piatigorsky is best remembered in the chess world for organizing the Piatigorsky tournaments with her husband Gregor. These two events, held in 1963 and 1966 respectively, featured many of the elite players in the world at the time with Tigran Petrosian and Paul Keres tying for first in the earlier event and Boris Spassky winning the latter with Bobby Fischer a close second. These were not the only major competitions Mrs. P. (as she was often called) was involved with. The 1961 Fischer-Reshevsky match and the 1967 playoff between Sammy Reshevsky, Leonid Stein and Vlastimil Hort are two others that quickly come to mind.

Jacqueline Piatigorsky was mentored in chess by Herman Steiner and when he died suddenly in 1955 she took over the operation of his club, The Hollywood Chess Group. Mrs. P. was a perfectionist who was heavily involved with the organizational nuts and bolts of all the events she was engaged in. These ran the gamut from creating an innovative relay system for transmitting moves from the stage to the analysis room at the Piatigorsky Cups to the mundane day to day activities of keeping a chess club going for twenty plus years. Mrs. P. even designed the cup that the winners of the Piatigorsky Cup received.  

Mrs. Piatigorsky did not only confine her chess activities to elite competitions. The Piatigorsky Foundation, which she founded with Gregor, sponsored chess in public schools and for underprivileged and disabled children throughout Southern California for several decades. This was in many ways her most lasting legacy as tens of thousands of children were exposed to the Royal Game thanks to her efforts.  

One of the highest rated women in the United States in the 1950s and 60s, Mrs. P. played in many US Womens Championships these two decades. Her best performance came in 1965, when at the age of 53, she finished half a point out of first with the excellent score of 7 1/2 - 2 1/2. She represented the United States internationally in the first womens Chess Chess Olympiad held in Emmen in 1957 where she scored 7.5 from 11 to win the bronze medal on second board.