'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.