October Yahoos

Has it been nearly three months since Yahoo last found a newsworthy chess story? The last one I posted was about Fabulous Fabiano (August 2017), and this month there were two more.

The first story was picked up by many mainstream news sources, probably because it was distributed by the Associated Press. Most of the AP story appeared in the Yahoo summary above.

2017-10-02: Chess player fired by Iran over headscarf joins US team (foxnews.com; AP)

TEHRAN, Iran – An Iranian news agency says a woman who was kicked off the national chess team for attending an international competition without wearing an Islamic headscarf has joined the U.S. team. The semi-official ISNA news agency reported Monday that Dorsa Derakhshani, who refused to wear the headscarf, known as a hijab, during a February competition in Gibraltar, has joined the U.S. national team. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has required women to wear the hijab in public places.

The second story was a feature. It was frequently shared on social media, where the level of skepticism was considerable.

2017-10-28: This NYC chess hustler makes $400 a day (nypost.com)

Six years ago, Ambakisye Osayaba made his big move -- he quit his part-time city job cleaning Central Park and began playing chess full-time. Now he earns up to $400 a day, taking on all comers from a 2-by-2-foot fold-out table, chairs and chess board he rolls in a metal shopping granny cart every morning to the southwest strip of Union Square Park. "It’s the best living I’ve ever made," said Osayaba, 59, known by the initials T.C., which stand for "teaches chess."

Back to the first story, the chess press provided a more comprehensive report: US Chess Welcomes Dorsa Derakashani, IM and WGM (uschess.org). And no, it hasn't been a three month lapse since the last of the 'Fabulous Fabiano' Yahoo reports. It was two months between the last Caruana story and the first story in this post. In the meantime there were several Kasparov stories. Good thing we have Garry to take up the slack.

Improve Engine Software

At the end of last month I wrote a post on my chess960 blog titled Engine Trouble. It started, 'Talk about a disastrous tournament!' and made some general observations about a particularly poor result. One of the observations was 'Insufficient engine power' and at the end of the post I set myself the task 'to investigate what sort of engine setup I would need to improve my result.'

I've been using chess engines long enough to know that I have four specific areas to investigate. Here they are in the order they should be addressed:-

• Upgrade software
• Upgrade hardware
• Link engine(s) directly to tablebase
• Improve GUI

All of this needs to be within a certain budget, but I would also like to know what I could do given (nearly) unlimited funds. As for the tablebase, what are the possibilities of using a seven piece (or more) TB?

A Google search on 'chess engine best software' returns a list of results in a format unlike most Google searches. There is no count for the number of results and certain top results are displayed above the traditional results in a banner that scrolls left and right. I've seen the format before, but have never understood why it is used in certain searches. Perhaps it has something to do with shopping.

I split the 16 'best software' results into a 4x4 display that reads top-to-bottom, left-to-right in the same order presented by Google, where the most important results are presumably presented first. It works for me in a second way because I've used the four engines that are displayed in the top row

chess engine best software

All engines have their peculiarities, their strengths and weaknesses. I often run two different engines on the same position to see if their evaluations match. If they don't match, I try to determine why not -- which engine understood the position better?

For the next few posts in this series, I'm going to assume that my main engine will be Stockfish. Because it is open source, more information about its internals is available to the public. I can come back to this decision after I've investigated the other points on my list.

'Chess Behind Bars'

In this ongoing, fortnightly series about The Sociology of Chess, a few months ago we saw An Education in Hustling (May 2017), which featured a video titled 'How Prison Taught This Man How to Play Chess'. This video discusss the organizational side of the same topic.

Interview with Carl Portman on Chess in Prisons (12:48) • 'Published on Oct 15, 2017'

In the screen capture for the embedded version of this video, Portman is holding up a book titled 'Chess Behind Bars', written by himself. He discusses it during the interview. The product page, at Chess Behind Bars (Hardcover) by Carl Portman (qualitychess.co.uk), says,

At a time when prisons are in the news due to increasing violence, drug taking and low morale, it has never been more important to focus on education and rehabilitation. [...] Carl Portman is the English Chess Federation’s Manager of Chess in Prisons. In 2015 he was awarded the ECF President’s award for services to chess.

Also visible in the video behind Portman is the domain name www.chessplus.net. Its home page says,

ChessPlus is changing the world of chess education. Our unique approach is based upon decades of experience of teaching games to develop thinking skills.

Portman is pictured on a page on the site, ECU Chess Teacher Training Course – London, dated 20 October 2017.

Lombardy Documentary

This video appears to have been published at the same time I was looking for a selection for this current edition of Video Friday. It said 'No views'!

WILLIAM LOMBARDY - WikiVidi Documentary (12:48) • 'William James Joseph Lombardy was an American chess grandmaster, chess writer, teacher, and Catholic priest.'

The description continued,

He was one of the leading American chess players during the 1950s and 1960s, and a contemporary of Bobby Fischer, whom he coached from the time Fischer was age 11½ through the World Chess Championship 1972. Lombardy led the U.S. Student Team to Gold in the 1960 World Student Team Championship in Leningrad. He was the only World Junior Champion to win with a perfect score. After attending the City College of New York for three years, Lombardy received his B.A. in philosophy, an M.A. in ethics, and an M.Div., all from Saint Joseph's Seminary . He also studied educational psychology at Saint Louis University....

The 'documentary' sounds like it is read electronically from another source. At about 2:20 into the clip, the text is the same as the anecdote I used last week from Lombardy's book, 'Understanding Chess'; see that post, Understanding Lombardy, for more.

California Chess Periodicals

I ended my previous post, Of Grass Stains and Prison Breaks, with a quote:-

A striking feature of the early issues of the USCF's flagship publication, Chess Life (CL), was the lack of balance between the two coasts of the United States. Particularly in the 1950s, the East Coast was heavily favored. Did the [The California Chess Reporter, CCR] provide sufficient counterbalance?

An index for PDF copies of CCR is at California Chess Reporter (chessdryad.com). It says, 'Most of these magazines were digitized by Sam Sloan; whom I heartily thank.'

That first issue started,

The unhappy demise of CHESS DIGEST early this year left the chess players of California without any organ for the systematic publication of chess news. It has been the fate of chess publications in the past to quietly expire unless they enjoyed the support of some solid organization of chess players. The present issue of the Reporter is made possible by the generous financial support of the San Francisco Bay Area Chess League, which voted funds for publication at the meeting of May 6, 1951.

Which Chess Digest publication was that? Gino Di Felice's book, Chess Periodicals, 1836-2008, informs,

543. Chess Digest [USA] (1950) Vol.3, no.1 (Jan 1950) - Vol.3, no.10 (Dec 1950). 10 issues per year. Senior Editor George Koltanowski; Editor-in-Chief Phyllis Seidkin. Publisher Chess Digest. Santa Rosa, CA. USA. Illus., 23 cm. Magazine. General. English. Note: Continues California Chess News and News of the Pacific Coast, with the same numbering. No longer published.

As for the California Chess News mentioned in the note, the same book says,

420. California Chess News and News of the Pacific Coast (1947-1949) Vol.1, no.1 (Nov 1947) - Vol.2, no.10 (Dec 1949). Monthly. Editors George Koltanowski (Nov 1947), R.D. Taylor (Vol.1, no.10/1948), George Koltanowski (Feb 1949). Publisher George Koltanowski. Santa Rosa, CA. USA. Newsletter, from Vol.2 magazine. General. English. Note: Continued by Chess Digest.

As long as we're tracking chess periodicals, let's add Di Felice's entry for CCR:-

421. California Chess Reporter (The) : Official Organ of the California State Chess Federation (1951-1976) Vol.1, no.1 (June 1951)-Vol.25, no.6 (May/June 1976). 10 issues per year, later 8 issues per year, more later 6 issues per year. Editors H. J. Ralston (Jun 1951), W. Guthrie McClain (Oct 1953), W. Guthrie McClain & Robert E. Burger (July 1971). San Francisco. USA. Illus., 21-23 cm. Magazine. General. English. Note: With supplements California Chess Reporter: Special Bulletin, and California Chess Reporter Supplement. No longer published.

The mention of Sam Sloan on the Chessdryad page triggered a few memories, because he has appeared on this blog in the past. The last occasion was Sam Sloan and Gulf News (July 2014). The first issue of CCR had a note about ratings that triggered another memory.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHESS RATINGS • The second revised version, as of May 1, will be published in the San Francisco Chronicle and in Sacramento Chess News. Hereafter, the Reporter will be the official organ for publication of ratings. It is strongly to be hoped that the Northern California and Southern California ratings will be incorporated into a single system and published simultaneously.

According to my recent post, The First USCF Rating List (July 2017), 'The first rating list was published in the 20 November 1950 issue of CL.' How long did it take California chess to adopt the new national rating system?

Of Grass Stains and Prison Breaks

While researching any topic in old chess magazines, one thing invariably leads to another, and other topics offer frequent distractions. A case in point is yesterday's post on Early U.S. Ratings : A Summary and an Exercise, where I noted dozens of other, non-rating topics during the months that I was working on it. Here are a couple of short takes that I noted over the last week.

The first short take, from CL 1953-09-20, is a photo that illustrated the Chess Life report on the 1953 U.S. Open at Milwaukee. Who said mass interest in scholastic chess was a recent phenomenon?

The caption says,

View of the open-air Milwaukee Children's Tournament at Hawthorne Glen where 400 finalists competed for the Milwaukee Junior titles -- an event written up in Collier's and sponsored by the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Department of Recreation. • Photo: Courtesy Milwaukee Sentinel

From Wikipedia's page on Collier's:-

Collier's was an American magazine, founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was initially launched as Collier's Once a Week, then changed in 1895 to Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal, and finally shortened in 1905 to simply Collier's. The magazine ceased publication with the issue dated January 4, 1957, though a brief, failed attempt was made to revive the Collier's name with a new magazine in 2012.

The second short take, from CL 1954-08-05, is an atypical filler that appeared on the same page as CL's first photo of William Lombardy. It left me scratching my head.

Chess problemist William J. Couture injured his back in an abortive attempt to escape from Norfolk Prison Colony, Mass. He is now hospitalized and limited to one letter per month. This will explain his inability to continue with his numerous correspondence chess games.

I imagine that escaping from prison would also have resulted in an 'inability to continue with his numerous correspondence chess games', unless he didn't think the whole thing through. The 'MESON Chess Problem Database' has a List of problems by Couture, William J, of which five of the six problems are from other Chess Life issues of the 1950s. Another short item on Couture was in The California Chess Reporter, Vol.1 No.9 (chessdryad.com; PDF):-

William J. Couture is a well-known American problemist and correspondence player. He recently finished serving a long sentence at Rhode Island State Penitentiary, and upon being paroled was reincarcerated in Suffolk County Jail, Boston, on an old charge.

It was during Couture's imprisonment in Rhode Island that his chess talents as player and composer became manifest. He is in need of funds for attorney fees, and has asked THE REPORTER to help him. He is trying to raise $250, and promises to pay back any money lent him. Letters should be addressed to Mr. Couture at 163 West Canton Street, Boston, Massachusetts. (CCR p.189)

A striking feature of the early issues of the USCF's flagship publication, Chess Life, was the lack of balance between the two coasts of the United States. Particularly in the 1950s, the East Coast was heavily favored. Did the CCR provide sufficient counterbalance?

Early U.S. Ratings : A Summary and an Exercise

After three months of exploring early U.S. ratings, it's time to move on to other topics. Here is a summary of the posts so far:-

• 2017-07-24: The First USCF Rating List
• 2017-07-31: The First USCF Rating System
• 2017-08-07: USCF Rating Lists in the 1950s • '16 rating lists were published in the 1950s'
• 2017-08-14: Master Ratings and Master Titles
• 2017-08-21: Masters Emeritus in the 1950s
• 2017-08-28: Early USCF Rating Issues • 'Issues provoked by the introduction of ratings'
• 2017-09-11: Ratings Correlated to Performance • 1951 U.S. Championship
• 2017-09-18: A Quarrel About Ratings • How to determine invitations to the U.S. Championship?
• 2017-09-25: The Harkness Rating System
• 2017-10-02: The Harkness System Explained
• 2017-10-09: Harkness Ratings for the Swiss System
• 2017-10-16: Harkness Pairings for the Swiss System

I'll probably continue the rating topic sometime in the future. In particular, the transition from the Harkness system to the Elo system might be worth exploring.

***

Last week I did a preliminary post on GM William Lombardy. Since the start of the GM's career coincided with the early U.S. rating lists, what can we learn about him from the lists? The third post above, 'Rating Lists in the 1950s', is a useful starting point and we discover that Lombardy's first published rating was in the December 1953 issue of Chess Life.

CL 1953-12-20: EXPERTS (2100 to 2299 points); Lombardy, W.J. (Bronx, NY) ... 2250* (where '*' meant 'Provisional rating, representing performance in only one tournament.')

At the end of the list of published ratings, we find:-

RATED TOURNAMENTS • To compute ratings for the Fall 1953 official ranking list, the performance of 2435 players in 172 tournaments and matches were measured and recorded.

The list included around 20 foreign tournaments, of which the first was the 1953 Zurich Candidates Tournament. The first U.S. event in the list happened to be the tournament where Lombardy played.

U.S. Open, Milwaukee, Wis., Aug. 10-21, 1953, 181 players (marked with '*', which here meant '100% USCF Rated Tournament.'

The result of the tournament, one of the most important annual events on the U.S. chess calendar, had been reported in full.

CL 1953-09-20: U.S. Open, Milwaukee; Final Standings of [all 181] Players
1. Donald Byrne (Brooklyn, NY) +9-1=3 / 10.5-3.5
[...]
24. Wm. James Lombardy (Bronx, NY) ... +7-3=3 / 8.5-4.5

The tie for places 13 to 26 was broken by something called a 'Percentage'. CL 1953-10-20 included a full crosstable for the 50 top players. Skipping ahead a few months, we find more mentions of Lombardy.

CL 1953-12-05: 'Chess Life in New York' by Eliot Hearst [...] 'Manhattan C.C weekly rapids now attract about 40 players each Friday night. The contestants are divided up into three classes, A, B, and C, and there are prizes in each three sections; such an arrangement gives one a chance to work his way gradually up the ladder toward 'A' (as Willy Lombardy did, for example), while not missing out on a chance to be a prize winner.'

CL 1953-12-20 [the same issue as the rating list]: 'Chess Life in New York' by Eliot Hearst [...] 'Willy Lombardy of LaSalle High School is unbeaten in the N.Y. Interscholastic Championship and should easily take the title wich last year's champ, Edmar Mednis of Stuyvesant H.S. was unable to defend this year. Lombardy has also scored two straight wins to take an early lead in the annual Marshall CC Junior Championship.'

Lombardy's progress over the next few years can be measured by his USCF rating.

CL 1954-06-05: EXPERTS; Lombardy, W.J. (Bronx, NY) ... 2168

CL 1955-05-05: MASTERS; Lombardy, W.J. (Bronx, NY) ... 2302

CL 1956-05-20: MASTERS; Lombardy, W.J. (Bronx, NY) ... 2349

CL 1957-05-20: SENIOR MASTERS; Lombardy, W.J. (Bronx, NY) ... 2464

That 1957 issue of CL listed him at no.7 of the '15 Top-Ranking Active U.S. Players (1955-56)'. Lombardy mentioned his first rating in his book 'Understanding Chess: My System, My Games, My Life' (see another recent post, Understanding Lombardy, for more about the book). Re the 1953 U.S. Open (p.31):-

I arrived at Milwaukee with my first USCF Rating of 2250! My performance more than justified that preliminary rating and my prize almost covered my living expenses.

Although this doesn't match the facts given in Chess Life, where the 2250 rating was earned during the 1953 U.S. Open, it's a minor detail. It's worth noting that Lombardy's first published USCF rating was the same as my peak FIDE rating, which I achieved after nearly 20 years of playing chess. That's the difference between talent and no-talent.

[NB: While writing this, I noticed that CL 1953-10-05 is missing from the digital file containing all issues of CL from 1953.]

Lombardy's MCO

For the second consecutive edition of Top eBay Chess Items by Price, the featured item is a copy of 'Modern Chess Openings' (MCO). The first was described in Bogart's MCO, and the second is shown in the composite image below. The item was titled 'RARE Historic "Modern Chess Openings" + Photo SIGNED John Collins BOBBY FISCHER' and sold for around $700, 'Best offer accepted'.

The description said,

9th edition copy of Modern Chess Openings 1957 by Walter Korn and John W. Collins. Interior is signed "Ex Libris [Grand Master] Lombardy" and signed and dedicated by the author "John W Collins" to his cousin Clara "for [her] help with this book!"

Book itself is in absolutely mint condition, zero marks damage or wear to the cover or any of the pages, minus the inscriptions and signatures of the chess players themselves. Dust jacket has much foxing and some fading as well as very slight tears here and there along the top and bottom edges, please see all photos and close ups!

Additionally, this listing includes a photograph of John W. Collins playing chess with Bobby Fischer as a young man in the same exact place and table at his apartment that he played with Bill Lombardy and Bobby Fischer as seen in the photo on his Wikipedia article.

The same article explains the 'urban legend' around Collins having been the person who taught Bobby Fischer (whose coach was Lombardy) and several other grand masters as well as Lombardy himself; it states Lombardy as having said -- "All had entered his home in friendship and were already superior masters, far past the ability of Collins to impart anything but trivial knowledge [...] I cannot imagine even today that anyone could consider that Collins had the strength of knowledge to coach the champion that Bobby already was by the time he reached Collins apartment! Somehow the myth of Collins' professional skills persists." -- in regards to having been taught by Collins who was nonetheless a renowned chess teacher.

Photograph measures 8x8. Both items are signed by John W. Collins.

The referenced Wikipedia page is John W. Collins. The quote ('All had entered his home in friendship') is from Lombardy's book 'Understanding Chess: My System, My Games, My Life' (p.219 & p.28). By coincidence, last week I featured the book in Understanding Lombardy, and expect to have more to say about it in future posts.

As for the copy of MCO sold in the auction, the copyright page listed previous editions as: 'Seventh edition 1946 • Reprinted 1947 • Revised and reprinted 1948 • Eighth edition 1952 • Reprinted 1954 • Reprinted 1955 • Ninth edition 1957'. The full inscription said,

Dec. 25, 1957 • To My Dear Cousin Clara A. Collins • Merry Christmas and many thanks for your help with this book! • Love, John W. Collins

Inside the front cover (shown in the composite image) was 'Ex libris W Lombardy'. Given that the book was in 'absolutely mint condition', I doubt that he used this particular copy as a reference.

Chess Knives Chopping (*)

For this week's edition of Flickr Friday, I noted a handful of interesting photos, all from the same source and all lacking additional information. I'm not even sure how Flickr associated them with the search term 'chess', other than through the name of a common album: 2017 Wereldschaakdag (Global Chess). Here's a composite image showing several of the photos in the album...

Photo bottom row, center:
Taken on October 14, 2017 © Flickr user schaakbond under Creative Commons.

...The album carries a description in the Dutch language, which Google translates as...

On 14 October 2017, it was the world chess day (Global Chess). On this day, it's the goal of chopping as many knives around the world as possible. The strongest female Grandmaster allertijde [of all time], Judith Polgar, is the initiator of this action. Thousands of chessmen have already heard of her call. In the Netherlands, in the Huttonto tournament in Rotterdam, an important contribution was made by the strongest 150 youth scouts in the Netherlands. Also, a special match was organized by the Royal Dutch Chess League between Oscar Verwer and the 97-year-old Win Witvliet. Under the slogan #chessconnectsus, social media received successful attention for the world chess day.

...I suspect that the part about 'the goal of chopping as many knives around the world as possible' was mangled in translation, but the rest is clear enough. For more about the Judith Polgar initiative, see Global Chess Festival. For a previous post on this blog, taken from the Chess in School series, see Polgar Global Chess Festival, Budapest (February 2016).

(*) Another catchy phrase from the translation that I considered using as a title was 'Thousands of chessmen have heard her call'. Take your pick.

Understanding Lombardy

In my previous post, GM William Lombardy, I promised to 'do a short series of posts on Lombardy', with the objective of getting up-to-speed on the man. It turns out that the fastest way to understand Lombardy is to study his book, 'Understanding Chess: My System, My Games, My Life', which is available via his own site Understanding Chess | Grandmaster William Lombardy (williamlombardychess.com).

'Understanding Chess' (Russell Enterprises, 2011)

The back cover of the book says,

In His Own Words... William Lombardy made his mark early and often. Still in his teens, he became the first American to win the World Junior Chess Championship. His 11-0 record in his 1957 title run still stands today. He followed up by leading the U.S. Student team to the gold at the 1960 Student Olympiad.

He has been a mainstay of chess in the United States for decades, participating in seven Olympiads, many U.S. Championships, and winning three U.S. Open titles.

Along the way, he briefly retired from competitive play when he entered the priesthood, only to return as Fischer's sole second in Reykjavik during the "Match of the Century" against Boris Spassky, where Fischer was crowned World Champion.

The 119 annotated games (including several unpublished games and 37 supplemental appendix games) are embellished by anecdotes and observations drawn from Lombardy's remarkable career, spanning almost 60 years, from the early 1950s to the present.

A short 'Biographical Sketch' ends with an anecdote:-

I was about 10 when I decided to see if I could get a game at Lion's Square Den Park. So I crossed [Faile Street] to PS 75, walked to the end of the playground at Bryan Avenue, crossed that street, turned right to the corner and entered the park where in the afternoon I discovered those I dubbed "the old men in the park." Conservatively, the men ranged in age from their 20s through 70s. Most of them were Jewish, so I not only won a lot of chess games early on, but also learned a fair quantity of Yiddish. "Mach aah moof chal-yee-kah!". One day, an old man approached me, "How come you're not dressed up?" I was wearing my usual dungarees play clothes. As everyone was dressed up, I was reminded that the Jewish High Holy Days in the fall had arrived. Almost everyone else wore shirt, tie and suit coat. The neighborhood was almost exclusively Jewish. So although I was secluded at St. Athanasius Catholic Grammar School, I had learned something of Judaism. I answered the man's question, "I'm not Jewish." Fearful of embarrassing me, the man adroitly exclaimed, "You're not Jewish? You look like such a nice Jewish boy!" Without further formalities, we played chess.

Day after day I came to play chess in the park. About a week later, the same old man singled me out to talk and brought me something that would change my life. He took out a marble design notebook from a brown paper bag. "Here," he said, pushing the notebook into my hands, "You will have better use for this than me. I'm finished with it." I thanked him for the book, put it back in the bag and played chess with the man. When I got home, I looked at my book. For a kid I played better than every other kid I knew and quite a few adults. But I had never even heard that there were chess books, let alone seen one. Back in those days, there were five or six newspapers that carried a chess column. Over many, many years the old man had studiously pasted some two thousand of those chess clippings into his book. I had never asked him whether he had actually played over the games in those clippings. I was about to do what he himself may not entirely have done.

I was very enthusiastic. I had to decipher the games' code by discovering the ins and outs of descriptive chess notation with a trip to the public library around the corner from my school. Once I had grasped the notation, I began enthusiastically playing over the games with a vengeance! I would estimate that within a month of receiving the gift, I had played over some 20% of its contents. The process was necessarily slow. After all, I had to set up the pieces for every game on my little chessboard. But the process was becoming more and more a great and exciting pleasure. Without knowing what really was happening to me, I was becoming a better and better player in the process of reviewing the games. Using that book I discovered the power of eidetic imaging. I had improved to become a very powerful player and I was also a thorough student of the game.

I have never forgotten the "old man" who kindly gave me that awesome gift. I can still see his dear face, although he never thought to tell me his name. I hope he learned that his gift brought me along to make a special mark on world chess. I am not a general but as a "chess general," I will likely never be forgotten. A strange little magical book with lots of chess diagrams transformed me from a wandering kind to a wunderkind! And that wunderkind taught Bobby Fischer from the time the crew cut, blond-haired boy in a flannel shirt and dungarees was six months short of his twelfth birthday. That I was Bobby's only chess teacher from that time, and right through Reykjavik, is a fact. Some may not like hearing this surprising news, but I assume that they will get over the shock. I don't know who taught the Byrne brothers, for example, but it was not Jack Collins. The Byrne brothers were tutored at the Manhattan Chess Club and other chess haunts around New York City, as was I, Bobby and Raymond Weinstein. Thus Spake Zarathustra!

As for Lombardy's claim that he was "Bobby's only chess teacher" starting end-1954, I am astounded!

GM William Lombardy

The death of GM Lombardy -- see William Lombardy, Chess Grandmaster Turned Priest, Dies at 79 (nytimes.com; Dylan Loeb McClain) -- reminded me how little I knew about one of the USA's strongest chess players of the 20th century. The first paragraph of Wikipedia's article, William Lombardy, sums up nearly everything I know.

William James Joseph Lombardy (December 4, 1937 – October 13, 2017) was an American chess grandmaster, chess writer, teacher, and Catholic priest. He was one of the leading American chess players during the 1950s and 1960s, and a contemporary of Bobby Fischer, whom he coached from the time Fischer was age 11½ through the World Chess Championship 1972. Lombardy led the U.S. Student Team to Gold in the 1960 World Student Team Championship in Leningrad. He was the only World Junior Champion to win with a perfect score.

Google search returns not only the principle Lombardy page of top chess resources,

• Chessgames.com: The chess games of William James Lombardy
• Chess.com: GM William Lombardy, 1937-2017 (Mike Klein)
• Chessbase.com: William Lombardy 1937-2017 (Macauley Peterson)

it also returns some specialized material.

• WilliamLombardyChess.com: William Lombardy American Chess Master
• KevinSpraggettOnChess.wordpress.com Bill Lombardy: My chess friend (Spraggett on Chess)

As for my blog, Posts for query lombardy picks up only nine posts, most of which are brief references to GM Lombardy in a monthly 'On the Cover' post. The only post about Lombardy, A Chess Playing Priest (August 2017), has little to with chess.

I also searched my collection of chess images, the majority from eBay, and among the many thousands of images, found exactly eleven. Half of those mentioned Lombardy only in passing in the associated text. Of the other half, two were copies of the same photo, shown below.

Combining the essential elements of the text for both photos gives,

14th Chess Olympiad, 1960, Leipzig, Germany; William Lombardy watching over Ghitescu vs Fischer.

To rectify this unsatisfactory situation, I'll do a short series of posts on Lombardy. One angle worth exploring is from 'Spraggett on Chess':-

One of the fondest memories of the time I was a high school student at Rosemount High in Montreal was hiding away in the library stacks, poring over the back issues of Chess Review, at that time the most popular chess magazine in North America. [...] In particular, the articles written by Grandmaster William Lombardy (who was also at that time a Roman Catholic Priest) were among my favourites. There was something unpretentious about the GM’s style of writing that made it seem as though he was speaking directly to the reader, one on one as it were.

This ties into another of my own posts, The Trainers’ Tree (June 2015), where I learned that the FIDE Trainer Awards listed 'Lombardy William (USA), 2014' in the Hall of Fame.

Harkness Pairings for the Swiss System

In the two previous posts for this series on early U.S. chess ratings,

• The Harkness System Explained and
• Harkness Ratings for the Swiss System,

I outlined a series of eight articles written in 1952 by Kenneth Harkness. He added a ninth article in the 20 September 1952 edition of Chess Life (CL).

Swiss System Pairings
by Kenneth Harkness
USCF Rating Statistician
The pairings of a Swiss system tournament produce some peculiar results, as anyone who has played in those results knows well. The winner's title may be clouded because he failed to meet some of his strongest competitors. Others place high in the final standings after meeting comparatively weak opposition. A player may shoot up from nowhere in the last round or two and outdistance contestants who played far stronger opponents.

In a tournament for an important title, the Swiss System must be regarded as inferior to a round-robin if the winner does not meet all the strong contenders. However, the Swiss has a great many practical advantages. These advantages so greatly outweigh its known defects that the system is now used in practically all state, regional and national tournaments with the exception of the United States Championship. If a better method of pairing contestants will cure the faults of the Swiss System, the quality of all the present tournaments will be improved and the system can he used for the U.S. Championship itself.

As an example of what can happen, we present in the table below an analysis of the pairings for the top twenty players in this year's U.S. Open Championship at Tampa. In doing so, we imply no criticism of the tournament director. Our quarrel is with the present method of pairing by lot, not with the director who follows standard procedure in this respect.

The table showed how many top players each top player faced.

Rank, Player, Score, Opponents Among Top 20, Opponents Below Top 20

Harkness continued with comments on the table. They provide more detail than is needed for this blog post, but I like the background about U.S. chess in the early 1950s.

Bearing in mind that the winner's pairings are the first consideration, we are bound to ask why Larry Evans played the men who came in 42nd, 47th and 49th instead of three of the strong contenders he did not meet -- especially Hearst. Mengarini and Donovan, three rated masters who performed well at Tampa. The answer is that Larry played the opponents who finished below the top twenty in the first three rounds of the tournament. With 76 players in the contest, the luck of the draw gave Larry three opponents who failed to make the grade later. Being the highest rated player by a wide margin, the U.S. Champion would probably have kept the open title in any case. Even if he had played Hearst, Mengarini and Donovan, Larry would probably have risen to the occasion and put forth the extra effort needed to win the tournament. However, the actual outcome cannot be considered entirely satisfactory. After all, Mengarini beat Reshevsky in the last U.S. Championship!

Below top place, it is clear that some of the men in the list might have finished lower if they had met stronger opponents. Our sympathy goes to Jimmy Sherwin who was unlucky enough to draw the strongest field of the entire tournament. Measured by the rating system, Sherwin's competition averaged 2306 points! Steiner also met pretty stiff opposition -- stronger than most of the players who finished above him. While Sherwin and Steiner were batting their brains out against practically every master and leading contender in the field, some of the other players coasted in ahead of them by scoring against comparatively weak opponents. Needless to say, the players who came in below the top twenty were not pushovers by any means. Many were probably stronger than some of the prize-winners who slipped into the money brackets on pairing flukes. However, all the active masters placed among the top twenty. and only a few of the strong experts failed.

It has occurred to this writer that the rating system might be used to advantage when pairing the contestants in a Swiss System tournament. Based on this conception, we have developed a method of pairing which may correct most of the faults and inequities described above. At present, the method is theoretical. It has not been tested in practice, so it remains in be seen whether the theory is sound With the co-operation of the directors of some forthcoming tournaments, we hope to check the results achieved and report the outcome later.

To use the method successfully, most of the players in a tournament must have national ratings. We hope the day will come soon when practically all players are rated, and we are rapidly reaching that goal. In the U.S. Open this year, only 5 of the 76 entries had no previous ratings. However, we cannot guarantee that this method will help much if you are running a tournament with a large number of unrated players. Furthermore, the method Will prove most effective when nearly all the entries have given us an opportunity to measure their ability by playing in several tournaments. A rating that is based on the results of only one or two tournaments is not necessarily a true indication of a player's strength.

Since the method is based on the rating system, the ranking of the entries must be done by your rating statistician who alone has all the necessary data. The up-to-date ratings of some players may be higher or lower than the published list indicates, and a great many names in our files may be missing from the list. If you wish to test this method, mail a list of all the possible entries, giving their full names, to this writer at the address given in the masthead of CHESS LIFE. We will send you by return mail the up-to-date ratings of players on your list. The provisional ratings of players who have competed in only one rated tournament will be marked with asterisks. Then, about an hour or two before the tournament begins. You may telegraph the full names of unexpected entries and we will wire back their ratings (collect!) adding the prefix "pro" to the name of a player with a provisional rating. For example, PROWILLIAMS 1850 Would mean that player Williams, has a provisional rating of 1850. Please note that all ratings supplied for the purpose of ranking tournament entries are confidential, for your own use exclusively as tournament director.

The pairing method is explained in the following paragraphs:

1. Make up a ranking list of all entries, arranged in the order of their ratings, from the highest down to the lowest. Add at the bottom the names of all unrated players, arranged in alphabetical order. [...]

The rest of the Harkness article, which nearly filled the equivalent of a full page in an issue of CL having only six pages, gave eight steps for making the pairings. These steps -- including advice about the 'fundamental rule' of Swiss system events ('a player must not meet the same opponent twice'), about color allocation, and about unrated players -- are well known to anyone who has played in a Swiss. What tournament was the first to use this method of pairing?

A Three Day Kiss

After my first idea fizzled for this current edition of The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), I had to fall back on the idea from the previous edition, Only a Million Dollar Game ... show a video. Since the most recent Video Friday, Update on FIDE's CIS, already used the best sociological choice from my current short list of videos, I looked at a few other choices.

A discussion of the recent marriage between Levon Aronian and Arianne Caoili (congratulations to both!), Should Armenians marry a non-Armenian -- the Armenian Chess player story, was topical, but it delved into too many non-chess issues that I don't want to confront on a chess blog. What about another romantic story, The Thomas Crown Affair - chess scene kiss - spin and crossing the line? The video pointed to a quote from TCM.com's The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)...

One of the film's most famous sequences is the chess match between Crown and Vicki, played in the study of Crown's mansion. The scene is played with very little dialogue, rapid cuts and a mixture of extreme close-ups and regular shots. After Vicki defeats Crown, he suggests that they play something else, then kisses her. In his DVD commentary and autobiography, [director Norman Jewison] stated that the chess and kissing scenes took three days to shoot.

...but again I had a small problem -- the video doesn't show any chess; it's just about the kiss. Here's a longer version showing the chess game *and* the kiss.

Chess Scene - The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) (6:57) • 'The chess scene from the film "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968) with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway playing a game of Chess (Music composed by Michel Legrand).'

The description said,

While this scene is famous (or infamous), the whole film is great and worth watching. McQueen and Dunaway have charisma individually and chemistry together. Intertwined with a cat-and-mouse game of detective and thief, it's a near perfect film. It was nominated for two Academy Awards -- Best Original Score and Best Original Song -- winning Best Original Song for Michel Legrand's "Windmills of Your Mind".

Some of the Youtube comments:-

'No more fancy first date dinners. I'm buying a chess board tomorrow!' • '007's Daniel Craig has stated that this scene is by far the sexiest scene in cinema, because Faye Dunaway was acting natural and not forcing sexiness. His point proven!' • 'Makes me wish I knew how to play chess!' • 'Michel Legrand appropriately named the classic jazz improv background music to this scene "His Eyes, Her Eyes".' • 'This is maybe the longest kiss I've ever seen.'

More from TCM.com about the music:-

Another hit song from the film was set to the love theme heard during the chess game. Alan and Marilyn Bergman later wrote lyrics for the theme, and under the title "His Eyes, Her Eyes," the song has been recorded by numerous singers.

Who said chess isn't romantic?

Update on FIDE's CIS

The video starts,

Our main objective is to persuade ministries of education and other educational establishments to incorporate chess, because to get chess into schools all around the world is beyond the capability of almost all national chess federations.

The arguments for chess in school are compelling and are based on Bloom's taxonomy (wikipedia.org; 'a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity'). According to Kevin O'Connell, 'Chess is the perfect vehicle'.

"Chess should be used as an educational tool", Kevin O'Connell, Chairman of FIDE CIS Commission (4:59) • 'Role of chess in education; 88th FIDE Congress.'

Although it's been a year since I stopped following CIS regularly on this blog -- see 'Chess in School' Summarized (October 2016) for the signoff -- I haven't lost interest in the subject. For more about O'Connell, see a previous post in that series, FIDE's CIS Chairman O'Connell (January 2016). The Youtube channel that made this video available, European ChessTV, started about six months ago and has other recent clips that are worth viewing.

Another Chess Metaphor

Remember the post Only a Million Dollar Game? 'Why settle for a million dollar game when you can have a billion dollar game?', featuring a video 'How to make chess a billion dollar game'. Be careful what you wish for; seen on eBay earlier this year...

Billionaire's Fantasy • A Game of Living Chess

...The eBay description said,

Original old French historical magazine color engraving folio print with text on the back (not a modern reproduction) comes from old magazine "La Petit Journal", 1904. The overall size of this print with margins approximately 17" x 12".

The text on the left says, '232 - Supplement illustré du Petit Journal'. Wikipedia's Le Petit Journal (newspaper) informs,

Le Petit Journal was a conservative daily Parisian newspaper founded by Moïse Polydore Millaud; published from 1863 to 1944. Together with Le Petit Parisien, Le Matin, and Le Journal, it was one of the four major French dailies.

Is this illustration a chess metaphor for life in the world of 1904? In today's world?

Bogart and Chess in Photos

In my latest eBay post, Bogart's MCO, I wrote, 'it's fairly well known that Humphrey Bogart played chess'. This is confirmed by Google.

Google image search on 'chess bogart'

Let's use chess notation to identify the three rows of six images. Calling the rows 'A' to 'C' (from top to bottom) and numbering the images in each row '1' to '6' (from left to right), we find:-

• Lauren Bacall in seven photos: A4, A5 ('*' = see notes), B2, B3, B4, B5, C5.
• The movie 'Casablanca' in six: A3, B1, B6, C1, C3, C6.
• Miscellaneous subjects in the other five (all '*'): A1, A2, A6, C2, C4.

As for the notes ('*'):-

• A1: Casablanca Rare Photos (cineweekly.com) • 'Claude Rains watching Bogart during a break', although Rains has been cropped out of the Google image
• A5 (& A2): Actor Humphrey Bogart and Chess (chess.com; June 2011) • From Chess Review, June-July 1945; the photo on p.18 of the same magazine is Google's A2.
• A6: We're No Angels (1955; imdb.com) • Joan Bennett and Humphrey Bogart
• C2: Chess and Hollywood (chesshistory.com) • Chess Review, May 1954, page 131 (the web page has another half-dozen Bogart photos)
• C4: Bogart with Scottish Terriers; see similar photos with other props.

All photos present and accounted for?

Harkness Ratings for the Swiss System

Continuing with The Harkness System Explained, in that post I used excerpts from Harkness's own writings in Chess Life (CL), more than 65 years ago:-

[Harkness, CL 1952-05-20] was the first in a series of eight articles under the title 'How the Rating System Works'. [...] The last two articles in the Harkness explanation of his rating system described rules for rating a Swiss System. I'll cover that in my next post in this series.

1952-08-20: '7. Rating Swiss System Tournaments' • In this post, I'll look at those last two articles.

To rate a Swiss System event we evaluate the performance of each player as though he were competing in an independent tournament. No contestant plays against the same set of opponents as any other contestant, so we must measure the strength of the competition each player meets. We do this in the same way as we determine the average strength of a round-robin tournament -- by listing the ratings of a player and all his opponents, then finding the median value. This value is called a player's "competition average." Then we compute performance ratings as described in parts 5 and 6 of this series, adding or subtracting points from each player's competition average in accordance with his score.

The process of rating Swiss System tournaments is summed up in the above paragraph, but a great many of the details have been omitted. For the sake of those who want to know exactly what we do, this article and the next in the series are devoted to a fuller explanation. If you find the description too boring to read, you will have to take our word for it that we go to a lot of trouble to achieve a high degree of accuracy.

Perhaps the simplest way to explain the process is to describe the various steps in detail, using the recent U.S Open Championship as an example.

1. After correcting the usual mistakes in the round-by-round analysis of the tournament report, and after cancelling all byes and defaults, we list down on our work-sheet the names of all players and their net scores. By net scores we mean the points won and lost for games actually played. Although the U.S. Open was a 12-round event, some of the contestants played less than 12 games.

2. The second step is to write down what we call the "work-sheet ratings" of all players whose performances during the previous five years have been recorded on cards in the active files. Each player's rating is written after his name. As described below, some ratings are taken from the records of rating one tournament. [...]

3. The third step is to issue performance ratings to the unrated contestants. so that these figures may be used to find the competition averages of the rated contestants. The process is complicated and consists of three operations: [...]

Harkness introduced his next article with a visual overview of his calculations.

U.S. Open championship, Tampa 1952; Average: 1980
(Column Headers:) No., Player, Net Score, Last Avg., Work-Sheet (1 & 2), Competition, Performance

1952-09-05: '8. Rating Swiss System Tournaments (continued)'

In the seventh article of this series we started a description of the various steps that are taken to rate a Swiss System tournament, using the U.S. Open of 1952 as an example. In the present article we continue the explanation.

4. The fourth step of the process is to issue performance ratings to the players with provisional ratings. This is done as a separate operation so that we may correct the work-sheet ratings of these players before tackling the fully-rated contestants.

When a player has never before competed in a rated event we have to accept the performance as the only available indication of his ability; but we can do something about correcting a possible error in the figure used to represent the strength of a player who has competed in one previous tournament. What we do is to average his provisional rating and his performance rating, then substitute this new figure in the column of work-sheet ratings. We use this corrected rating when finding the competitive averages of his opponents [...]

5. As the final step, we issue performance ratings to the fully rated contestants in the tournament. As a result of the work done up to this point we now have a column of work-sheet ratings that is more accurate than our original list. (The final list is column 2 of the work-sheet ratings in the table above.) We have done all that we possibly can to make sure that the performances of the players with established ratings will not be distorted by mistakes in the ratings of their less experienced opponents. [...]

In that series of eight articles written in 1952, Harkness went to great lengths to describe the mechanics of his system. I've left out (indicated by '[...]') most of the detail and all of the examples. He also considered the use of ratings to produce Swiss System pairings. In the next post in this series, I'll look at his thoughts on pairings.

Bogart's MCO

Although it's fairly well known that Humphrey Bogart played chess -- he even has a page on Chessgames.com, Humphrey Bogart -- he has never been mentioned on this blog. Thanks to this ongoing series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, that's about to change.

The item below was titled 'Chess book signed by Humphrey Bogart'. It sold for US $666.00 after four bids from two bidders. The first bidder entered the auction with an unknown maximum bid and a few days later the second bidder placed three bids, finally giving up at US $656.

The description said only,

This is a chess book presumably owned by Humphrey Bogart, who was a 2100 ranked player. (Google it.) The book is in tattered shape but the collectible value to the right individual is "priceless".

Under Bogart's signature are two phrases. Taking a clue from the 'p' in his signature, the first phrase appears to be 'Comparative Chess' (no clue what that means), while the second is 'Chess Fundamentals'. The title page says something like,

Modern Chess Openings By Griffith and White Completely revised by P.W.Sergeant (Author of Morphy's Games of Chess, etc.) R.C.Griffith (Editor, British Chess Magazine; British Chess Champion, 1912-13) and M.E.Goldstein, B.Sc. (Middlesex Champion, 1924-25) Specially Compiled for Match and Tournament Players Fifth Edition Leeds: Whitehead & Miller Ltd. Elmwood Lane

 

This appears to be the 1932 edition. (Project for a rainy day: sort out the various editions of MCO.)

No Knight Presence

But that could be a (half) Bishop on the left or maybe a Pawn. As for the piece on the right, it could be a King/Queen fusion sort of thing.

Art on Park Ave Chess Pieces © Flickr user J J under Creative Commons.

The description said,

Night Presence IV • This sculpture of welded Cor-Ten steel was given by Louise Nevelson to the City to commemorate her 50th year of living and working in New York. Said Nevelson, "New York represents the whole of my conscious life and I thought it fitting that I should give it something of myself."

Other sources say the gift was made in 1973. Nevelson's Wikipedia page, Louise Nevelson, says,

Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century.

For more about the sculpture, see Night Presence IV, Not Present (full-stop.net), where the word 'chess' isn't mentioned. The game doesn't appear to have had much additional influence on Nevelson's work.

1967 World Juniors

My previous post October 1967 'On the Cover', had a paragraph on the 1967 World Junior Championship. Quoting from Chess Review (CR),

Puerto Rican Champion Julio Kaplan, who is 17, won the Junior World Championship, held in Jerusalem. [...] Raymond Keene of Great Britain was runnerup with a total of 5 1/2 points; and Jan Timmans [sic; Timman] of the Netherlands was third with 5.

Along with a photo of winner Kaplan, the article included photos of Keene and Timman, reproduced below.

As far as I can tell, Kaplan never advanced to a World Championship qualifying tournament. Keene and Timman both played in European zonals in the 1970s, without qualifying further:-

• (C09) 1972-1975 Zonal Cycle
• (C10) 1975-1978 Zonal Cycle

In subsequent zonal cycles, Keene was replaced by other English players, of whom the strongest was Tony Miles:-

• (C11) 1978-1981 Zonal Cycle
• (C12) 1981-1984 Zonal Cycle

Timman tied for first with Miles in the 1978 Amsterdam zonal, and qualified to play in the Interzonal stage:-

• 1979 Rio de Janeiro Interzonal
• 1982 Las Palmas Interzonal

In 1979, Timman finished a half point behind a trio tying for 1st-3rd, narrowly missing qualification into the Candidates matches. He was less successful in 1982, when he was seeded by rating, but starting in 1985, qualifed into the Candidates stage for four consecutive cycles.

October 1967 'On the Cover'

Fifty years ago, the Chess Life half of the two major American chess magazines got a new look. See last month's post, September 1967 'On the Cover', for an example of the old cover.

Left: 'International Master William Addison'
Right: 'World Junior Champion'

Chess Life (report by tournament runner-up 'Sammy' Reshevsky)

A serious problem arose just before the start of the recent International Tournament at Maribor, Yugoslavia. The organizing committee was anxious to have the event classified as a "1A" tournament, which required, according to FIDE regulations, the participation of eight International Grandmasters and four International Masters. However, William Addison of San Francisco was erroneously considered the fourth International Master. The problem was solved when International Master N. Minev was substituted for Yugoslav Master S. Puc. Fortunately, Minev was in Yugoslavia at the time and was contacted just as he was about to depart. The advantage of a "1A" tournament is that a Master has the opporunity of acquiring the coveted International Master title by achieving a 50% score.

The tournament classification worked in Addison's favor. He scored exactly 50% to make the norm and gain the IM title.

Chess Review

Puerto Rican Champion Julio Kaplan, who is 17, won the Junior World Championship, held in Jerusalem. He looks a fighter and, scoring 6 1/2 - 1 1/2, went undefeated. Raymond Keene of Great Britain was runnerup with a total of 5 1/2 points; and Jan Timmans [sic; Timman] of the Netherlands was third with 5. [...] Most communist entrants boycotted the tournament. Our Sal Matera had an unfortunate preliminary result.

Where are they now? Enshrined in Wikipedia, like so many other chess players of yesteryear. Addison's page, William Addison (chess player), informs that he died 29 October 2008 in San Francisco. Kaplan's page, Julio Kaplan, tells us, 'born 25 July 1950, Argentina [...] emigrated in 1964 to Puerto Rico', and that the World Junior Championship earned him the IM title.

The Harkness System Explained

My previous post on early U.S. chess ratings, The Harkness Rating System, ended with a direction for further investigation.

This was the first in a series of eight articles under the title 'How the Rating System Works'. I'll look at the following articles in the next post.

1952-05-20: That first Harkness article was in the 20 May 1952 edition of Chess Life (CL). Here is its first paragraph repeated:-

Many readers of CHESS LIFE were favorably impressed by our recent forecast of the results of the international tournament at Havana. With one or two exceptions, which we will hasten to explain now that the race is over, the predictions were about as near as you can come without the use of a crystal ball. [...]

1952-06-05: Following are the first paragraphs from subsequent articles in the series. They provide some insight into the technical underpinnings of the rating system.

The National Rating System, now in operation for two years, is like one of those mechanical brains you read about in the papers. Tournament results are fed in at one end and ratings come out at the other. The machine has no feelings or emotions. When presented with the results of a tournament, it pays no attention to fancy titles. The sponsors may call it a Masters' Tournament to Decide the Championship of Fifteen Counties; but the system adds up the ratings of the players, strikes an average, and calls the contest an 1843-point Class B event, if that is how it turns out.

If you win a tournament you get the highest rating. Others may claim that you were just lucky and got all the breaks, but the system looks at your score. It knows nothing about luck. Never heard of it. Sad to relate, though, the eagle eye of the rating system sees your name as clear as can be if it shows up at the bottom of the final standings. The machine measures your failures as well as your successes. This is not a one-way system. Your rating can go up or down. [...]

1952-06-20:

If your ambition is to become recognized as a chess Master the rating system gives you the opportunity to prove your ability and earn the title. In fact, the system will seek you out and shout Your name from the housetops. You are listed as a Master if you average 2300 points or more in at least two tournaments, not counting preliminaries. Or you are listed as an Expert if you average 2100 to 2299. Other officially rated players below the Expert division are grouped in Classes A, B, C and D, each class covering a range of 200 points.

In the upper echelons, there are grades of Masters, too. The common or garden variety ranges from 2300 to 2499. Above this comes the Senior Master class, between 2500 and 2699. At the top of the pyramid is the Grandmaster Class, from 2700 points up. The air up there is pretty thin.

Unless you live in one of the big chess centers, where strong players congregate, you cannot expect to qualify as a Master by playing only in local events. You can probably reach the rank of Expert, but you will not go beyond this point until you compete in stronger tournaments. [...]

1952-07-05:

The use of median values to represent the average strength of tournaments is one of the latest refinements of the rating system. As another example, we give below the results of the 1951 Pittsburgh Metropolitan Championship.

[list of 7 players in order of rating]

The sum of the ratings divided by the number of contestants (13,143 divided by 7) gives 1878 the average, but a player who made an even score in this company would not be entitled to such a high rating. The distortion is caused by the presence of one highly-rated expert among two Class A and four Class B players. In such cases, a median value is more accurate.

Since there is an odd number of contestants, one rating is at the middle of the list. Waltz' 1785 is lower than the top three and higher than the bottom three. However, one player's rating in such a small group may be off center, so we find a better medium value by averaging the three middle ratings. Thus, we add the figures 1922, 1785 and 1750 (the ratings of Taylor, Waltz and Leiter) for a total of 5,457, and divide by 3 to get an average of 1818 points for this tournament. [...]

1952-07-20: '5. Round Robin Performance Ratings'

After the average strength of a round-robin tournament has been determined, each player is given a performance rating. When there are ten or more rounds, the ratings are issued as follows:

1. A player who makes a 50% score gets the tournament average as his performance rating

2. A player who makes a score of more than 50% gets the tournament average plus 10 rating points for each percentage point of his score above 50%.

3. A player who makes a score of less than 50% gets the tournament average less 10 rating points for each percentage point of his score below 50%.

Applying these rules to the 1951 Log Cabin Chess Club Championship, performance ratings were issued as shown in the table below and in the chart [below].

1952-08-05: '6. Rating Short Tournaments'

When a tournament has ten or more rounds, the performance ratings are issued in proportion to the percentage scores, but this relationship cannot be maintained successfully when rating shorter tournaments. As the number of rounds decreases, ratings based on percentages become less and less accurate.

The natural inclination of a statistician is to reject competitive events that do not furnish data in sufficient quantities to use percentages. Fortunately, the popularity of short tournaments in the United States has forced us to labor and bring forth a practical method of evaluating performances in thew contests. A new measurement scale makes it possible for us to rate competitions with any number of rounds from one to nine and opens the way to rate team tournaments and matches, hitherto impossible.

The development of this yardstick required several weeks of unpaid labor in tests and experiments, but the result is beguilingly simple. We just substitute game scores for percentage scores. As before, a 50% score earns the tournament average. but for each half-game above or below an even score, a player gets the average plus or minus 50 rating points. This puts a necessary brake on the number of points that can be won or lost in a short tournament or match. [...]

The last two articles in the Harkness explanation of his rating system described rules for rating a Swiss System. I'll cover that in my next post in this series.

Only a Million Dollar Game

Continuing with the Sociology of Chess (November 2016), why settle for a million dollar game when you can have a billion dollar game?

How to make chess a billion-dollar game (10:01) • 'Chess is a great game, and people have been trying to figure out how to market it for years.'

The description continues,

I follow it myself, and came up with a few ideas, both in marketing and radical technical changes, that I think would make a huge difference in how entertaining the game is to casual fans, and the amount of money that top players are able to make. Of course, a billion dollars may seem like a lot, but single NBA teams are worth more than that now, so I do believe that chess as a whole could be worth 1/30th of the NBA. Anyway, check out the vid to hear how!

While there are no really new ideas in the clip, it presents a few ideas that have never been put into practice. Here are a few external references from early in the video:-

• (0:17) How America Forgot About Chess (theatlantic.com; May 2012) • 'The once-popular game is suffering from boring grandmasters and controversial leadership.'
• (0:45) Andrew Paulson (1958-2017) • I wrote about his impact last month on my World Championship Blog: 'The Best Mind Wins' (August 2017)
• (2:50) Magnus Carlsen; page 3150 (!; chessgames.com)

The main advice near the end of the video is to follow the lead of poker, although with a novel, live-action twist. For previous posts on this blog about the same subject see:-

• Chess @ Yahoo Finance, and The Money Game (May 2016; Maurice Ashley)
• Adding Prestige to the Game (May 2017; Rex Sinquefield)

Perhaps one of the problems in these analyses is the excessive focus on chess in America. The 'How America Forgot' article from 2012 linked above knocks the influence of GM Anand and speculates on the potential of GM Nakamura. Which of the two players has done more to raise the popularity of chess, Anand in India or Nakamura in the USA? Chess is, after all, an international game.