ARichmond Times-Dispatch Richmond, Virginia Sunday, July 03, 1949 - Page 8 — Teen-Age Champs Spotlighted As Chess Tourney Opens Here by John Wessells
The conception that a double-domed cranium and the patience of Job are essential accessories for a chess player is taking a beating this week end at the Southern Chess Association's annual tournament here.
Thirty-eight average Americans turned up at Hotel John Marshall yesterday to spend the holidays playing the ancient game. The accent was on teen-agers.
Defending his association title was 18-year-old Gerry Sullivan, from Knoxville, Tenn., who just completed his sophomore year at the University of Tennessee.
Another sport-shirted champ was Kit Crittendon, 15, who licked a college professor for top honors in North Carolina, Richmond's Leigh Ribble, Jr., Class A champ of the Richmond Chess Club, at 14, is a strong contender.
Youngsters Strongest
“The strongest players are youngsters, just like any sport,” according to J. L. Harrington, a retired executive and lifelong chess devotee. “One of our two American grand masters, Sam Reshevsky, toured the country as a prodigy before he was 10.
The group paired off in the roof garden competition, most of them under 21, make up the strongest tournament in years, in Harrington's judgment. “The only trouble is that the association had us use the ‘Swiss System,’ with a time limit on the game,” he pointed out.
“In Russia, chess is a national game like baseball, but over here, the players can't even get off work for a national tournament,” Harrington sighed.
In order to get through by Tuesday, each player is limited to two and one-half hours for 50 moves, or an average of three minutes per move, win, lose or draw. You get to time your opponent by means of a chess clock, two stop watches mounted together. Push a level and his clocks starts ticking while he thinks. He stops his and starts yours when he moves.
At two games per player per day, that comes out 10 hours of chess daily, but nobody appeared to be getting excited about it. There were some knotted brows among the nonrated players, but most of them wandered around kibitzing or huddled around the ice-water pitcher between moves.
Over-the-shoulder chess is standard procedure, as long as you don't offer any advice. One middle-aged couple attend tournaments together regularly, but never player. Tournament chess players can concentrate the kibitzer right out of the picture.
“I used to set up my correspondence games right next to the radio,” Harrington said “First thing you know I would come to and Bing Crosby would be over without me hearing a note. Made me so darn mad!”
You can get up a good argument in chess circles over where the game originated. Etchings on the pyramids of Egypt attest that the game was played centuries before Christ, but the only agreement seems to be that it was thought up in the East somewhere.
Slightly Complex
Six different types of pieces make it a little complicated, but nothing that the man in the street can't tackle, according to C. S. Boggess, another Richmond contestant.
“People think you need an oversize brain to figure the whole game out in advance,” Boggess said. “but even the masters seldom think more than two or three moves in advance. They can't because they don't know what the other fellow's going to do.”
Chess is a lot more fund the way they play it in a local department store during lunch hour, according to Boggess. They toss out the books on precise chess and have a good name-calling time.
“Only one thing wrong with this tournament,” Boggess said. “They ought to give everybody a 20-minute time limit. Then we could get through with this thing and go home.”
Caption: Washington's Hans Berliner (left) Tests Southern Chess Champ Gerry Sullian. Kit Crittenden, North Carolina Champ, Nestor Hernandez Watch Tournament Play.
Teen-Age Champs Spotlighted As Chess Tourney Opens Here 03 Jul 1949, Sun The Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) Newspapers.com
