May 1975 & 2000 'On the Cover'

Continuing this blog's monthly look at American chess from 50 and 25 years ago, who was featured on the cover of CL&R/CL in the month of May? For last month's post see April 1975 & 2000 'On the Cover' (April 2025).

Left: '?'
Right: 'Bruce Pandolfini - An American Master'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Grandmaster Pal Benko, winner of the National Open. Story [inside]. Photo by Burt Hochberg.

The 'story [inside]' was titled '9th National Open' by George Koltanowski, USCF Vice-President.

This event, staged at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, was by far the most spectacular of all the National Opens. The rooms were large, airy and exceptionally well lighted. The total of 242 participants was below last year's record entry, but the battle for prizes in the various sections was no less keen.

Four players tied for lst-4th: the trophy and title of National Open Champion went to Grandmaster Pal Benko of New Jersey (S-B 35), with second place on tiebreaks going to GM Walter Browne of California (S-B 34 1/2). The other two were Alfonso Ferriz, a young player from Mexico who also won the Expert trophy, and Alex Suhobeck of California, who also won the over-50 trophy. All scored 7.1.

I've mentioned in previous 'On the Cover' posts, e.g. November 1971 & 1996 (November 2021), that Koltanowski's tournament reports were often unusual. Two of his six paragraphs on the 1975 National Open were about adjournment incidents.

GM Benko's previous appearance 'On the Cover' was November 1974 & 1999 (November 2024). That year's report (1974) on the 8th National Open, won by GM Arthur Bisguier, was covered in July 1974 & 1999 (July 2024).

Back to May 1975, the monthly CL column 'The Editor's Page - News & Views' by Burt Hochberg carried unwelcome news for U.S. chess fans. Hochberg wrote,

When April Fool's Day passed with no word from Bobby Fischer, FIDE President Euwe had no choice but to declare Anatoly Karpov the new World Champion by default. (FIDE regulations set the April 1 deadline for each player to announce his intention to play for the world title under rules established at the FIDE Extraordinary General Assembly in March.)

Few people could have realized that the forfeit signalled the beginning of the end of the great Fischer boom which had started in 1971/-72. Two more articles in the same CL&R issue were also about Fischer: 'The Mind of Bobby Fischer' by Fischer biographer Frank Brady and 'Hochberg vs. Darrach', by CL&R editor Burt Hochberg.

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

Getting an exclusive interview is always exciting -- a challenge to live up to. As a photojournalist, I wanted the images of Bruce Pandolfini to be as exclusive as his words. After photographing him at Washington Square Park and at the famous Capablanca table in the Marshall Chess Club, I still wanted something more. When I suggested a formal black and white portrait to Bruce, he quickly agreed. The result is this month's cover.

Technical Information:
* Nikon F100, 28-105 mm
* f11 @ 125, T-Max100
[...]

And you thought chess notation was confusing! - Brian Killigrew

The first of two articles involving Pandolfini was 'An Interview with Fred Waitzkin' by Bruce Pandolfini. The editor introduced the three pages saying,

Yes, there is life beyond chess, often referred to as "the real world." Fred Waitzkin flutters between both worlds, much like the time shifts in The Last Marlin. Bruce Pandolfini caught Fred on the cusp, so to speak, and the result is a fascinating interview.

Pandolfini prefaced the interview saying,

Readers of Chess Life are quite familiar with Fred Waitzkin's insightful writings on the world of chess. In addition to his penetrating pieces written for The New York Times Magazine, New York, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated, Fred has given us two moving and unforgettable narratives. Searching for Bobby Fischer (1988, Random House) is a poignant account of the relationship of Fred to his gifted son Joshua as the two of them experienced the vicissitudes of the scholastic chess scene.

It was later adapted by Paramount Pictures (1993) into an inspiring film of the same title, and the book and film have subsequently drawn legions into the chess world. Then Fred wrote Mortal Games (1993, G.P. Putnam's Sons), which portrays the expanding universe of Garry Kasparov through the machinations of welt politik and top tier chess.

The second article was 'Profiles in Chess: Bruce Pandolfini - An American Master'. The four pages were bylined 'Interview and Photography by Brian Killigrew'. He started,

There is something about Bruce Pandolfini that makes people want to be around him. Call it the Pandolfini mystique. Kids flock to him at tournaments. Adults constantly come up to him and whisper things like: "Is the King's Indian good against I. d4?:' walking away from Bruce as if they have just received some ancient secret.

Starting in April 2023, Killigrew has been mentioned in many 'On the Cover' posts, most recently January 1975 & 2000 (January 2025). Pandolfini has been mentioned in a handful of posts, mostly in relation to his involvement in scholastic chess.

'WOW!' Capablanca Signed Letters

In this long running series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010; already 15 years and still chugging along), autographed items pop up frequently. Autographs by World Champions, where the previous post was Lasker's Future Community (December 2024; book '1940 signed by Emanuel Lasker'), are particularly sought after. For this post I noticed four similar items, pictured below.

The item in the top left was titled, 'WOW! Letter 1903 Chess Legend Jose Raul Capablanca AUTOGRAPH SIGNED'. It sold for '$1,599.99 or Best Offer', which was around $1500. The other three items appear to have sold for their asking price.

The titles of those three items were nearly identical to the top left 'Letter 1903', i.e. 'Letter 1904', 'Letter 1898', and 'Letter 1908'. All four letters sold in April, within a span of three weeks.

What were the letters about? Only the buyers can answer that question. The descriptions of the four items were just copies of their titles, adding no other information.

For a previous auction from another seller -- 'Signed by famous actor and chess player Jose R Capablanca' -- see Not a Coincidence (August 2019). A few years ago I corresponded with a collector of chess autographs. He signed off the conversation saying,

Of course I can't guarantee that all my chess autographs are genuine, but I mostly buy from people I think I can trust. Besides, who would try to sell fake chess autographs? There is much more money to be made with movie stars, musicians and sportsheroes.

I would compare collecting autographs to hunting wild mushrooms. If you don't know what you're doing (and I don't) you risk getting a belly ache. For more about the subject, see ChessAutographs.com (May 2016).

Language, Math, Music, and Yahoos

Last month's Yahoos post, Yahoo Sources Are Back! (March 2025), marked a new era in the Yahoo series. As I wrote then,

If you're not sure what Yahoos are, see the footnote. The problem at the time was that we could no longer see from where all the Yahoos hailed. [...] Now we've come full circle. Google News has restored the names of all sources and I can create a small chart like the first one shown below.

This month's equivalent chart shows five sources accounting for 61 of the 100 stories returned by Google News. Once again Chess.com was the top source, with five times the number of stories attributed to runner-up ChessBase.

The second chart on the left counts the number of stories attributed to specific Chess.com writers. The same two names top the list for the second straight month while last month's third name has disappeared. The only other non-Chess.com writer to have more than one story was Carlos Alberto Colodro of Chessbase.

Each time I prepare a post about Yahoos, I have the same challenge: Which of the 100 or so stories should I feature in the post?

This month, two stories stood above the rest because they were published by well known non-chess sources. The first was:-

• 2025-04-27: The Botez Sisters Are Already Chess Icons. Now They’re Ready to Go Beyond the Board (rollingstone.com) • 'The sibling streamers are gearing up to commentate the sixth amateur PogChamps tournament, but that's not all they have in store.'

What else do 'they have in store'?

(Alexandra:) We just partnered with Freestyle Chess. They’re trying to bring this new format that randomizes the starting position of the pieces, and a lot of top players really like this, because engines [chess computer models] have taken a lot of the creativity away from tournaments -- people just prepare the first moves with an engine.

So whenever we go there, we film with all the top players, and we spend the weeks leading up to it crafting good thumbnails, titles, story lines and ways to try to show the players beyond just playing chess with them.

On top of this significant mention, there were at least a half-dozen other stories on Freestyle chess (aka chess960, aka Fischer Random). I should cover these on my blog dedicated to the subject (see the right sidebar), but it's currently hibernating.

The second attention grabbing story from a non-chess source was:-

• 2025-04-23: Exposed: The links between world chess and Russia's war machine (politico.eu; 'By Daria Meshcheriakova; Illustration by Natalia Delgado') • 'Here's how Vladimir Putin uses the iconic strategy game to his advantage.'

It starts,

For more than 1,000 years, chess has been synonymous with war. Now, Vladimir Putin is combining the ancient game with modern skulduggery as he tries to win an all-too-real 21st century conflict.

The geopolitical strategy of the Soviets and Russians has been deeply entwined with knights, rooks, kings and queens for so long that it’s difficult to tell where sport ends and real battle begins.

That last sentence doesn't make much sense -- 'sport ends and real battle begins' when real people start dying -- but the article still offers valuable insights. For example, following is an excerpt that summarizes the end of Soviet/Russian influence in chess:-

The Soviet dominance of the world championship, with eight winners spanning several decades, was testament to the state’s investment. However, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 dismantled much of the infrastructure that had sustained this control. Clubs were privatized, top players emigrated and funding dwindled, marking a decline in Russia’s once-unquestioned supremacy.

One other Yahoo topic is worth noting, but only because it accounted for six separate stories. Here's one:-

• 2025-04-22: Duolingo adds chess to educational offers. Here's what to know about new, free course (usatoday.com) • 'The new course is Duolingo's first since its music and math courses were released in 2023.'

Since I'm certainly not the only person with an obvious question, let's tackle it here.

What is Duolingo? • Duolingo is a language-learning mobile app that uses game-like lessons to teach more than 40 languages, mathematics and music. The app, available on Apple and Android devices, launched in 2011.

Chess, like music, like love, hath the power to pop up in all sorts of unexpected places. What will next month's Yahoos bring?

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]

Phun with Photos

In the previous post for the monthly featured Flickr photo, Enhanced Chess Art (March 2025), I asked and answered,

Why put 'photos' in inverted commas (' ')? Because I didn't understand how they were done.

That could just as easily apply to this month's 'photo', shown below. At first glance it certainly could be a photo, but the first clue to the contrary was the unnatural arrangement of the pieces on an 8x7 board.

Playing chess keeps you fit! // This is an AI image... © Flickr user Günter Hentschel under Creative Commons.

The second clue was in the title: 'This is an AI image'. So how was it created? Here the first clue was the start of the description; it said,

ChatGPT generated this image based on a text description that I had entered.

The second clue was a tag that said, 'Luminar Neo'. What's that? Wikipedia to the rescue in Luminar Neo (wikipedia.org):-

Luminar Neo is a photo editing software application developed by Skylum (formerly Macphun) available for Windows and macOS. [It] was released in February 2022. It works as a standalone application and as a plugin for Adobe and Apple products.

Macphun? Thus arose the title of this post.

April 1975 & 2000 'On the Cover'

In last month's look at U.S. chess magazines from 50 and 25 years ago, March 1975 & 2000 'On the Cover' (March 2025), we saw a non-American player on the left (GM Robert Huebner) and an American player on the right (George Koltanowski, the 'Dean of American Chess'). This month the pattern continues, with a pair of Soviet players on the left and a quartet of American teams on the right. Was U.S. chess more attentive to international chess 50 years ago?

Left: '?'
Right: 'The Teams! A 30-year Odyssey • Upcoming Scholastic Nationals!'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Winners of the 1974 USSR Championship -- Mikhail Tal (left) and Alexander Belyavsky. See [inside] for the story by Paul Keres. Photos by TASS from Sovfoto.

The story '[inside]' was the 'Keres Annotates...' column, titled 'USSR Championship, Leningrad 1974'. It started,

The USSR chess organization, with its 35 grandmasters, has the ability to put together a very strong group for its national championships. As an example, the 1973 USSR Championship, with all the leading grandmasters competing, was one of the strongest tournaments ever held in the Soviet Union.

With this in mind, the 1974 Championship was probably a little disappointing. Most of the leading grandmasters were unable to take part for various reasons and were replaced by other players, while the number of participants was reduced from 18 to 16. Despite this fact, it was quite interesting to see experienced grandmasters such as Tal, Polugaevsky, Vasiukov and Taimanov fight their younger rivals, many of whom had splendid records in last year's tournament, and to see just how good the young players are in really strong competition.

The tournament was a hard fight from the very first round. One is used to seeing grandmasters like Tal and Polugaevsky leading the field, but this time they did not have it so easy, being severely pressed by Belyavsky, Vaganian, Romanishin, Alburt, Dvoretsky, and other young stars, most of whom are not very well known in international chess. And when we look at the final crosstable, we see that the young players came out very well in this tough test against their experienced "examiners."

It's noteworthy that, besides Keres, the other authors of feature articles in the same issue were Pal Benko, Laszlo Szabo, Lubosh Kavalek, Svetozar Gligoric, and Edmar Mednis. All had roots in Eastern European countries.

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

Thank you, Ed Edmondson. If you were convinced that an idea was good, you ran with it. And 30 years ago, the idea of an amateur team championship, as presented by Denis Barry, sounded good. No bids, no committee approval. You just filled your station wagon with books and equipment and drove out to the VFW Hall in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and ran a concession for the 17 teams that played in that first event. Your faith and Denis' enthusiasm grew "The Teams" to over 100 teams, playing in Atlantic City.

Ed is gone. Denis is still around, kicking up dust here and there. But they left a legacy and a framework that will last forever. Hire a good staff, put the players first, chess for fun and chess for blood, in equal proportions. Steve Doyle (who celebrated 25 years of being associated with the event) operates within that framework and has built the USATE into a 200+ team event. Friday's snow and ice storm had almost no effect, and more than 920 players took part in the 30th Anniversary of the U.S. Amateur Team Championship (East). Worthy of a cover? You betcha. And a special report in our annual yearbook section.

The related article was 'Turning the Big 3-0 Was Totally Brutal at the U.S. Amateur Team East' by Al Lawrence. The mysterious title referred to the winning team, Total Brutality, a 'three-master team'. The report on the event started,

Over the telephone from St. Louis, my brother Leo was having a hard time with what would take place at the U.S. Amateur Team East Chess Championship. "Team chess," he said, "wouldn't that be like four-man diamond cutting?" After a few forced chuckles, I said "No, it's more like having four brothers backing each other up in a schoolyard scrap." From our old days on South Chicago's playgrounds -- in an era when fights were barehanded and forgotten as soon as the shiner faded -- he understood the point.

As tournament chessplayers, we're normally lone operators. In more jet-age terms, we sit in a room full of would-be top guns whose weekend happiness is a net-sum war game. For every ace exhilarated to see black smoke pouring out of his counterpart's engines, there's a wounded pilot spinning miserably down in flames. Strangers, friends, roommates -- all morph into hoped-for airplane silhouettes painted below the cockpit glass, plusses on the wall chart.

After the one-page introduction to the USATE, the story continued on the first page and across the outer column of the next 12 pages of the '2000 USCF Yearbook - Our Heritage'. A footnote to the story informed,

The U.S. Amateur Team East Championship is one of over 25 national title events co-sponsored by the USCF and participating affiliates. Al Lawrence, president of OutExcel! Corp., is the author of eight books on a variety of subjects.

A common thread united the April editions of the two magazines. Just as with the March 1975 edition of CL&R, Burt Hochberg's April 1975 column 'Editor's Page - News & Views' carried news of the ill-fated 1975 Fischer - Karpov World Championship title match. The April 2000 edition of CL carried opinions on the controversies surrounding the World Championship in 2000: Who was the real World Champion?

Dojo Talks Doggers

According to my records, I've had Youtube's ChessDojo channel on the short list for monthly featured video a total of 16 times since 2021. After four years the channel finally gets the recognition it deserves.

The Chess Revolution w/ Peter Doggers | Dojo Talks (1:00:31) • '[Published on] Apr 3, 2025'

The description said,

IM Kostya Kavutskiy, IM David Pruess, and GM Jesse Kraai talk about the book The Chess Revolution with guest journalist Peter Doggers on today's episode of Dojo Talks, the ChessDojo podcast!

For an earlier post mentioning the same book, see World Championship Yahoos 2024 (November 2024). There I highlighted an introduction to the book by Doggers and quoted him saying,

2024-11-19: The Chess Revolution: Understanding The Power Of An Ancient Game In The Digital Age (chess.com; PeterDoggers) [...] It is for chess fans but definitely also for non-chess playing readers. I am super excited that almost two years after starting this project, the book hit book stores in October. Let me tell you more about it and the writing process.'

The book is currently no.16 on Amazon's list of best sellers for chess, just behind 'Dinosaur Bingo' (?!). No.1 on the list is currently 'Check & Mate' by Ali Hazelwood: 'Life's moving pieces bring rival chess players together in a match for the heart.' I'm sure I would enjoy the Doggers book more than the Hazelwood book.

Beating a Dead Horse?

As announced in a post on my World Championship blog, It's Later Than You Think (April 2025), I've temporarily suspended posting on that blog. The reason I gave was,

Since I'm not seeing an easy fix to the technical problems, I'll skip posting to [the WCC] blog until I get my affairs in order.

For the same reason, I'm going to suspend the Monday series on this blog. Since the beginning of the year it has been mostly been used for exploring AI comics, last seen in The Most Conceptual of the Conceptualists (March 2025). I have a big stockpile of AIC images to use, but I'll close with this one...

'Dead horse plays chess.'
AI Comic Factory