Chess to Enjoy / Entertainment 2012 National Open


Forty-four of the 92 players in the power-packed top section of this year’s National Open held international titles. But after six rounds it was GM Aleksandr Lenderman who emerged as the clear winner with five wins and a draw. The Las Vegas tournament provides our six quiz positions this month. In each of them you are asked to find the fastest winning line of play. This will usually mean the forced win of a decisive amount of material, such as a rook or minor piece. For solutions, see page 71.


Problem I


GM Aleksandr Lenderman IM Steven Zierk


Problem II Dharim Bacus GM Andre Diamant


Problem III WGM Sabina-Francesca Foisor IM Edward Formanek


WHITE TO PLAY


Problem IV GM Timur Gareev IM Roman Yankovsky


BLACK TO PLAY Problem V


GM Larry Kaufman FM Kazim Gulamali


WHITE TO PLAY Problem VI


WIM Mihaela-Veronica Foisor WFM Simone Liao


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When Taimanov arrived for one of the games and there was no sign of Fischer he strode across the stage and shook Peter’s hand. Biyiasas thought this was “some kind of Communist gesture” to show that they were equals.


Biyiasas also recalled seeing Taimanov chewing sugar cubes during a game and concluding it must be some new Soviet dietary discovery. But the most striking recollection he had was of a crucial point in the match: Taimanov made a dramatic- looking move, got up from the board and, as he spotted Biyiasas, winked at him. Biyiasas, who had been studying the position, felt confident enough to look into the Russian’s eyes and shake his head, to say, “NO.” He was prescient. Taimanov lost the game and match, 0-6. During the years that the U.S. champi- onship was held in New York, wallboarders were often chosen at the last minute. Bruce Altschuler, who was in the U.S. Army, had just returned from a tour of duty in Viet- nam in 1968 and was enjoying a 30-day leave before his next assignment at Fort Hood. He decided to drop by the playing site, the Henry Hudson Hotel. “They were short of wall boys and asked if I could help out,” recalled Altschuler, now a political sci- ence professor at the State University of New York at Oswego. He handled a drawn game between Bill Lombardy and Sammy Reshevsky and what he remembered most was the post


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mortem: “Lombardy used some very un- priest-like language in complaining that Reshevsky was never willing to admit mak- ing a mistake,” Altschuler recalled. But few demo-boarders could match the experience of 15-year-old Russell Gar- ber. Six months after he learned how the pieces move he went to the Henry Hudson and ended up standing in front of a few hundred spectators: He was chosen to handle the magnetic demo board for a game that would become immortal. “I was struggling to understand the action since I had only been playing for a short time and had read only two chess books, Reinfeld’s Great Short Games of the Chess Masters and The Golden Treas- ury of Chess,’’ he said.


Benko, unhappy Bobby Fischer Pal Benko U.S. Championship 1963-64


(see diagram top of next column)


“I knew about mates on KR7,” he said. But he didn’t realize that 19. e5, threaten- ing Qxh7 mate, could be foiled by 19. ... f5!. “Fischer did, and didn’t take much time to play 19. Rf6!.”


“Benko stared unhappily at the board,” Garber said. After he put the rook on f6, he heard the audience react. “The gallery noise was the chess match equivalent to


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the cheers in a football stadium that occur during a long kickoff return.”


He explained: “A slight increase in noise after the returner gets past the first wave, then cheers steadily rising to a thunder- ous roar as the returner races into the clear, outrunning the coverage to the end zone.”


The game ended with 19. ... Kg8 20. e5 h6


21. Ne2 and “sustained applause” from the crowd when Benko resigned.


But what Garber felt most was a feeling of relief—because he had gotten through the game without making an error. “I had- n’t the slightest idea that anything ‘historic’ had just occurred.”


Put your favorite “Face Across the Board” in Chess Life! Send the name, reasons, and your contact information to faces@uschess.org. See the column on page 10. “Faces Across the Board” highlights class-level players each month.


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