Last month's post on the top U.S. chess magazine of 50 and 25 years ago,
July 1972 & 1997 'On the Cover'
(July 2022), featured the U.S. Championship on the left. A month later we have the U.S. Women's Championship on the left.
Left: '1972 United States Women's Championship'
Right: 'Najdorf 1910-1997'
Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)
Co-winners of the 1972 Women's Championship: Marilyn Braun,
left, and Eva Aronson, right. Between them is Mrs. C. Bette Wimbish,
Vice-Mayor of St. Petersburg. Photo by St. Petersburg Times and Evening Independent.
The tournament report, 'The 1972 Women's Championship' by TD Bob Braine, started with three paragraphs that could have been the introduction to a tourist guide:-
The Europeans have an expression:
There is a city for everybody. St. Petersburg on Florida's suncoast is for
chessplayers. It is a modern, clean,
peaceful and dignified city. Its inhabitants are friendly, courteous, elderly and
unhurried. The cost of living, particularly for essentials, is very low and
the lifestyle is leisurely. Shopping is
well within a four block radius of downtown and great sightseeing at Busch
Gardens is an hour away, Disneyland
two hours. "St. Pete" is a mecca for
fishermen and boat enthusiasts. It is a
city designed for enjoyment.
[...]
Then it got back to the main subject:-
The pre-tournament favorite was the
nine-time champion, Mrs. Gisela Gresser,
but even after a few rounds it was apparent that this was going to be a tight
tussle. Five of the eleven players were
newcomers to this event and when their
initial nervousness wore off we noticed
that each one was a stylist. It's a new era
in women's chess.
The St. Petersburg Times, which covered the tournament daily, took a lively
interest in Mrs. Eva Aronson who is a
resident of the city. The newswriters,
an easygoing, friendly group, received
each of her victories with jubilation
and the one time she lost a game we had
to console the newspaper staff.
[...]
Her co-champion, Mrs. Marilyn Braun
(formerly Koput) of Milwaukee, is an
attractive young woman with an ideal
chess playing disposition. She is serious
about her game and should go far in the
chess world. She was the only player
to go undefeated and from the beginning spectators were aware of her self-confidence.
And what about the other championship that was taking place 50 years ago? A one page story, 'The Match: Fischer Leading!' by Burt Hochberg, gave the raw game scores for the first six games, where the sixth game had been played on 23 July.
Chess Life (25 Years Ago)
Miguel Najdorf, who once promoted himself as
Champion of the Western Hemisphere, has died at
the age of 87, while visiting in Spain. His claim was
not without merit. After WWII, he was probably one
of the four strongest players outside the Soviet
Union.
And while he wasn't the first to play it, he was
certainly responsible for popularizing the variation
of the Sicilian Defense which bears his name. The
cover photograph is by Bill Hook, taken in 1992.
Inside was a two page (anonymous?) article, 'Miguel Najdorf 1910-1997'. It started,
A living legend is no more. Miguel
Najdorf died on July 4, while visiting in Spain. Born on April 15,
1910, he was 87. He was a fixture
at almost every world championship
match for the past 25 years, holding
court in the press room, analyzing, playing blitz, and just enjoying the moment.
Exuberant is how Arthur Bisguier
described him. His love for the game may
be matched, but it will never be surpassed.
Perhaps the first mention of Najdorf in
the west came after the 1935 Olympiad
held in Warsaw, where he scored 9-2-6
(70.6%). It was enough to get him invited
to his first international tournament, the
Hungarian Championship, in June of
1936. The following is reprinted from
The Chess Review, August, 1936:
'The Hungarian Championship tournament'
by Lajos Steiner
[...]
Half of the 1997 article was a copy of the 1936 article, but it also included a box 'Najdorf and the Najdorf' by IM Elliot Winslow.
'As White, he distinctly favored 1.d4, with a secondary interest in the English/Reti complexes; 1.e4 was far less common.'
A month later the September issue of CL included a six page tournament report '1997 Najdorf Memorial' by GM Patrick Wolff. It started with a four paragraph summary of Najdorf's career (and a one paragraph summary of GM Wolff's impending retirement from chess.).
I once had the opportunity to review
Najdorf: Life and Games
(archive.org -> chess.about.com) by Tomasz Lissowski, Adrian Mikhalchishin and Miguel Najdorf (Batsford/Sterling, April 2005);
see also
Two Books about World Chess Championship Candidates
(ditto; 'Two of the world's best players [Najdorf and Adorjan] annotate their games in completely different ways.')
My conclusion: 'A good book on all counts!' ... and a great player on all counts.
Before the match started, originally scheduled for the beginning of July, the focus was on aspects of the cold war between two nuclear superpowers, the USA and the USSR.
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