Light Mummies Play Chess

There's not much chess in this picture, but I couldn't shake the question: How did the photographer do it?

That's the Spirit © Flickr user Levi Turman under Creative Commons.

The description said,

Light drawing at an outdoor chess table. Unfortunately there is a very bright light on the nearby trail, I'll want to bring a ND filter next time so I can paint slower.

Light drawing? ND filter? That raises more questions than it answers. The photographer's 'Groups' page points to Strobist.com | Flickr, which might offer further clues for the clueless, like me. For more unusual chess partners, see Big Dummies (February 2010) and Sand Dudes (June 2015), playing chess, of course.

Young Bobby in Chess Life

My previous post, Young Bobby's First 'On the Cover', was about the January 1956 issue of Chess Review. When was Fischer first featured on the cover of Chess Life (CL)? In the early years of its existence, CL was published as a small newspaper twice a month, with eight pages per issue. There were few photos other than the likenesses of columnists or imagery on ads. The first half of 1956 used only a half-dozen photos, none showing Fischer. CL's first four photos of young Bobby are shown below.

Top left: CL 1956-07-20

'U.S. JUNIOR CHAMPION! Bobby Fischer (right) of Brooklyn in the process of defeating veteran Samuel Sklaroff of Philadelphia at the U.S. Amateur Championship in Asbury Park. Bobby is only 13 years old but shows strong indications of becoming a master.' • What does the U.S. Amateur Championship (May 1956) have to do with the U.S. Junior Championship (July 1956)? Fischer's victory in the U.S. Junior was announced on the same page as the photo, which was undoubtedly the most recent photo available.

Top right: CL 1956-08-20

'U.S. Junior Champion Bobby Fischer of Brooklyn, 13, poses for the cameraman of "The Oklahoman" before the start of the U.S. Open. Bobby stole the show at Oklahoma City, appeared twice on television, played like a master, finished in 8th place on tie-breaking points, scored 8.5-3.5 without losing a single game.'

Bottom left: CL 1956-12-05

'STUDY IN TENSION. Bobby Fischer fidgets, bites his nails and squirms in general when in trouble. Here, in the last round, facing acute time pressure (See the clock -- 12 is the deadline) and a very critical position, he falls into a characteristic pose. (Photography and comments by Dr. Harold Sussman)' • Sussman also wrote the full page report on the tournament, the 3rd Rosenwald, New York, October 1956. This was the tournament where Fischer beat Donald Byrne in the 'Game of the Century' and finished +2-4=5. The left half of the photo, cropped at Fischer's elbow, was reused in later issues of Chess Life.

Bottom right: CL 1957-09-05

'At the U.S. Open Championship -- Photography by Marshall Rohland. [...] Champion-to-be Bobby Fischer gets set to play Edmar Mednis in the eighth round.' • Fischer won the game. His final score was +8-0=4 at the event held in Cleveland, August 1957.

The tournament report started, 'At 14 years, Bobby Fischer, Erasmus High student of Brooklyn, becomes the youngest master to win the U.S. Open title, as in 1956 he was the youngest player to win the U.S. Junior title. Fischer scored 10-2 in a games-won tie with U.S. Champion Arthur Bisguier but gained the title on adjusted tie-breaking points, with Bisguier placing second.'

Chess Life shifted to magazine format in January 1961, with Fischer biographer Frank Brady as editor. The first cover featured a photo of Fischer playing Reshevsky in the 1960-61 U.S. Championship.

Young Bobby's First 'On the Cover'

In this month's 'On the Cover' (see June 1967 'On the Cover'), I wondered,

As for Chess Review, how many times through the years was Fischer featured? In the previous month he was pictured twice for the May 1967 'On the Cover'.

While I can't yet answer that question, other than to say 'a lot!', I can point to the first Chess Review (CR) cover that featured Fischer. It's shown below, bearing the date January 1956.

That's Bobby inside the rectangle of tables, top left corner, facing left. A full page story inside carried the same title as the cover photo: 'Small Time Big Time'; I have to admit that I don't understand what it means. The introduction to the story said,

ON THE COVER: Small Time Big Time • MOSTLY, it is the big time masters who put on simultaneous exhibitions. So we present with pleasure this (cover) picture and story offered by Joseph Brooks of the Yorktown Chess Club and manager of the Youth Group there. (The picture on this page, which gives a better close-up of Bobby Fischer, is by Virginia Williamson. And the event was recounted fulsomely in the New York Times, also.)

The story continued,

The astonished members of the oldest American Chess Club -- the Manhattan Chess Club of Central Park South of New York City -- witnessed the most unusual and unique chess exhibition, November 26. Bobby Fischer, age 12, the chess prodigy of the Manhattan Chess Club, played simultaneously twelve members of the Youth Group (age 7 to 12) of the Yorktown Chess Club. Bobby won all games, eliminating the first opponent in 50 minutes and the last one in two hours and twenty minutes.

Chess is recognized as the foremost game of intellectual skill -- it is most cosmopolitan of all games and it develops the mind to face occasions as they arise, it demands foresight, brilliancy and resource. Up to now, it was considered a game for adults, and the occasional appearance of a child player was an exception to the general rule.

A year ago, the Yorktown Chess Club sponsored the first known Youth Group. The membership has rapidly grown, and there are now 86 active children between the ages of 7 and 12 who meet regularly once a week to receive instructions and to play regular tournament games. It was 12 youths of this unusual group that Bobby Fischer played, opening the door to chess to the youth of America.

The next paragraph shows why it's useful to be bilingual in both algebraic and descriptive chess notation.

Bobby Fischer, who played White, opened on 12 boards with 1.P-K4, followed by 2.N-KB3 and 3.B-B4. The Yorktowners who were expecting Bobby to play the Queen's or King's Gambit were caught by surprise and five of them made the error of replying with 1...P-K4, 2...N-QB3 (which is good) and 3...N-KB3 (instead of 3...B-B4).

That naturally gave Bobby five winning games as he promptly followed with 4.K-KNS and then NxP. From that point on, however, the youngsters got real busy, setting up the strongest defense possible and fighting to the bitter end.

The other seven players put up good opening resistance to the middle game. Bobby played a strong offensive game with his Pawns and basically used the technique praised by the famous Steiner. He received from the Manhattan Chess Club a watch with an inscription and a check from the Yorktown Chess Club.

After more details about the exhibition, CR attached a coda to the Brooks story.

Not told in the foregoing story is one of interest. Bobby Fischer is a Brooklyn product, lives not too far from the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ebbets Field. When Dr, Harold Sussman started to teach chess to his own son, he collected a group of youngsters for livelier interest in learning competitively. Brightest light of the group was -- you guessed it -- Bobby Fischer!

A few years ago, in Young Bobby Punched the Wrong Clock (November 2013), I noted an early story about Fischer from the February 1956 issue of Chess Life (CL). The 20 May 1956 issue of CL contained the 'tenth national chess rating list'. One entry was

Fischer, Bobby (Brooklyn NY) ... 1726

On the next rating list, a year later, he was listed in the MASTERS section at 2231. 'Bobby' had changed to 'Robt. J'.

Chess Stats Year-Over-Year

Last week I used my Monday post to finish with Korchnoi's Career 1946-1977 (Crosstables; 'it's time to move to another project'), and now I'm going to take a few weeks to look at statistics on my main site m-w.com (linked on the right). In the past few months I've noticed a big drop in the number of daily visitors and I would like to know why.

Since chess has a seasonal bias -- peak interest in the winter, trough in the summer -- the best way to analyze a trend is with a year-over-year comparison. Normally I would compare stats reports from the same month in two consecutive years, but this is infeasible right now. The stats reporting package on my server host has changed twice in the last two years, as documented in two posts:-

• New Stats for M-W.com (October 2015)
• Stats for Bored People (October 2016; 'problem started when my web site went missing for a week, then ended up migrated to a different host')

That second post explains the main use of stats.

I look at the overall stats once a day to make sure that everything is working correctly and to identify any anomalies as quickly as possible. After watching the stats for a while, I get used to certain recurring patterns in the numbers and know intuitively when something is off.

Since something is definitely off, I need to analyze the server log files from this year and last year. While I'm at it, I'll go back one more year to identify any bias introduced by the transfer to a new host server last year. I extracted my monthly archive log files for May 2015 and May 2016, then downloaded the daily files for May 2017 and concatenated them into a single month. Here are the first numbers I derived:-

Logs:-
2015-05: 374144 recs, 27504 HTML, 13.6 recs/page
2016-05: 434545 recs, 31724 HTML, 13.7
2017-05: 268142 recs, 23124 HTML, 11.6

Those numbers show an increase from to 2015 to 2016 on the old server, then a decrease from 2016 to 2017 on the transfer to the new server. The last number, 'recs/page', indicates that something might have changed in the server mechanism that delivers pages. I'll investigate those numbers in another post.

Award Winning Chess Photos

Maybe I made a mistake calling this series The Sociology of Chess (November 2016). Maybe I should have called it instead 'The Imagery of Chess'. The most recent post was a video:-

• An Education in Hustling (May 2017)

Before that were posts on art and on photography, of which the last were:-

• Chess Strategy Woodcut (March 2017)
• Branching Investigations (ditto)

Now let's get back to photography. This post is inspired by the 2017 Photo Contest (worldpressphoto.org), where chess featured in 'Sports, second prize stories': Youth Chess Tournaments; Michael Hanke, Czech Republic.

Michael Hanke was born in Kladno, Czech Republic, in 1972. His photographic career began when he was 40 years old, however, only one year later, he began to receive prestigious awards for his work, both at regional level (Czech Press Photo) and international level (Sony World Photography Awards, International Photographer of the Year). From the very beginning of his career, he has dedicated his work to the humanistic and social black-and-white documentary photography, focusing on long-term projects.

For more photos, see the photographer's personal site at Michael Hanke Photography : Youth Chess Tournaments.

Google image search on
'site:michaelhanke.photography chess'

1.h4 h5 2.g4 g5

With 419.113 views and 12.161 likes, this sketch from Studio C (youtube.com; BYUTV) must be funny, right? After all, the 'C' in 'Studio C' stands for comedy.

A Chess Player Prodigy (4:49) • 'Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Even a chess playing prodigy?? Well get ready to sweep up the floors cause your jaw is going to DROP!'

To see the 1.760 comments, use the usual trick of right-click on the video. Those numbers are all very impressive, but I have a problem: I couldn't muster as much as a chuckle. The 'BYU' in BYUTV stands for Brigham Young University, so it must be a generational difference. Maybe I'll have better luck with the non-chess sketches on the 'Studio C' channel.

June 1967 'On the Cover'

Fifty years ago, for the second time in three months (the April 1967 'On the Cover' was the first), Chess Life used a crosstable on its cover with the promise of a future article. As for Chess Review, how many times through the years was Fischer featured? In the previous month he was pictured twice for the May 1967 'On the Cover'.

Left: 'Sarajevo 1967'
Right: 'Pause to Reflect'

Chess Life

GM Byrne, left, explaining the game of chess to Savon, center, and USSR Champion Stein. Byrne later treated Stein to another lesson over the board, accounting for Stein's only loss of the tournament. • A full report on this important tournament will appear in July's Chess Life.

Chess Review

On the Cover • Rumor has it, most strongly from Soviet sources, that Robert J. (Bobby) Fischer will not play in the Interzonal this year at Tunis. Those so stating may be indulging in wishful thinking. But, if Fischer plans not to play, it's time for him to pause and reflect!

He has expressed the thought that, in the "good old days," it was simple: the would-be challenger of the World Champion just put up the cash and got his chance. Now he must compete over three years in ill-paying affairs.

Actually, the FIDE program to qualify a challenger is laborious as others than Fischer can attest. Former World Champion Botvinnik has denounced this labor and strain and refuses to descend to participation in it.* The program does repay by meager prizes as Fischer is not alone in protesting. Many grandmasters stay out to earn lusher prizes in other tournaments while FIDE candidates grind their way through the program. And the program does take time: a zonal tournament near to home, the distant interzonal of some twenty-odd rounds, a good month expended; and then three more (at least for the ultimate challenger) distant and grueling contests in the challenger round. A lot of time and strain and little reward, truly.

Fischer has also vented the thought that, if he can build up a good enough reputation and perhaps defeat the top Soviet players, especially in matches, the Soviet will be brought by pressure of public opinion to concede his right to a match for the world title. And he is thinking again that, if he puts up the lure of a purse...

Here is the time to pause to reflect. In the old days, the champion bit when a purse was tempting enough -- but seldom when the challenger was the most formidable. Lasker never got a return match with Capablanca not even though he won the great New York Tournament of 1924, nor a match with Alekhine. Capa never got a rematch with Alekhine who took on his "cousin" Bogulyubov repeatedly, instead. And the Soviet players, well subsidized by the government, are not so susceptible to cash lures. And the Soviet has repeatedly stressed that it considers the FIDE program the only legitimate route for a challenger. Reshevsky vainly pressed for matches for years. He even gained the title, Champion of the West, but could not get a match even with a lesser Soviet light. And he even outscored Botvinnik personally 2.5-1.5 in the International Team Tournament. Fischer should meditate on how the Soviet coolly ignored Reshevsky's claims.

The FIDE program does have some drawbacks as we can see by now. But it does guarantee any would-be challenger -- if he's the good-enough player -- a match for the world title. It is worth some present sacrifice, after all, to have that chance. If Fischer doesn't play at Tunis, he forfeits it. Pause to reflect!

* Botvinnik of course rankles under a special grievance: the FIDE deprived him of his right to a return match for his former title.

That CR editorial has some noteworthy statements. • 'Rumor has it, most strongly from Soviet sources': How could the Soviets know what Fischer was planning to do? • 'Botvinnik has denounced this labor and strain and refuses to descend to participation in it': Didn't he help design the qualification system? • 'Lasker never got a return match with Capablanca': Did he seek one? • '[Reshevsky] gained the title, Champion of the West': Was this the 1952 match with Najdorf? • '[Reshevsky] outscored Botvinnik personally 2.5-1.5 in the International Team Tournament': What tournament was this? (Chessgames.com says, Classical games: Mikhail Botvinnik beat Samuel Reshevsky 5 to 2, with 7 draws.) • Plenty of follow-ups here!