BogusAurelius

The more i study, the less I experience. The less I experience the more i think i understand. The more I think, the less I know. That just about sums it.

I'm older now then i was then.
I started playing chess when my sister gave me a chess set when i was 9. Sound familiar?
I played for a few years against my best friend who was two doors away. We played non-stop chess and ping-pong every day for years. When I disovered the library had books about chess then our rivalry began again in spades. I read Hans Kmoch Pawn Power in Chess, that had a big influence.
I started learning Cyrillic so i could read the Tal newsletter from Riga. I subscribed to 64 and chess digest, and had all of Euwe's writings. I read Keres in German on King Pawn, and especially his book on the Petroff.
I played in the US Junior when I was twelve, quite a big stage for a little tri-city Rochesterian. I did ok, and had a game published in the NY Times; we had Rosenbloom, Rosenthal, and Rosenstein in that tourney, all from Rochester.
I had a very good game against Bernard Zuckerman, while Asa Hoffman watched our game, they would go off to the corner and snicker at me. Zuckerman was i think either in the Manhattan or Marshall club in NY, and was writing the next encyclopedia on the chess openings. Anyway i remember i played the black side of a K-Indian, and pushed an early C5 blockading, and he snickered at that. I did my best after that, and ended up sacrificing a queen a rook two pieces and finally marched his king across the backboard and mated him. That was worth the cyrillic alphabet

I won the city championship at 16 from Eric Marchand, who has to his credits accumulated more chess tournaments than any other living master at that time.
After that chess went pretty much downhill, as one night i read Goren's book on Bridge, just so i could speak to my parents. I probably reached my peak back then...
When I lived in Berkeley after my stint in the Marines, I took up chess again because I was befriended by some very nice chess players/people; Dennis Fritzinger, John Grefe (US Champion), Larry Gilden(US Champion), James Tarjan all crashed one time or another on Dennis' Floor, where I also lived.
I've met Reshevsky, Fischer, Benko,Santasiere, and while I traveled in Europe met and played lots of grandmasters on trains, hotels, for fun. I beat the Phillipine Champion on the train headed for Olot, Eugene Torre, of course i probably couldn't do that easily after that, he woke up...

In Olot ( in Spain, small town, and at the time no other American had probably even heard of it ), I went to a movie with 7 or 8 GM's, all speaking in Russian, Spanish, Hungarian. Bukic, Csom I remember. The movie was a western subtitled in Spanish of course, but i think the movie was American or an English film, cannot remember. So I heard it being translated into all these different languages in the dark. That was fun and way over my head..

I've had some good experiences and bad experiences playing chess. I had to start smoking early because in those days they blew smoke across the tournament board at you, sometimes thick cigar smoke, sometimes menthol lung killers. I got sick from smoking so much i had to hypnotize myself to stop. I learned to believe I would throw up on every inhale, that cured me.
One bad experience I had had to do with Alan Benson, a well known chess book collector and tournament director. Before I went to Europe I had a really nice English Sports Car - it was a Rover with a smooth ride and floor shift. I got a check from Alan for 200.00 for the purchase of my car, but he said not to cash it until I got to New York. at the time I also had a very bad back and couldn't hardly walk, but since chess i could do sitting down it was no big thing. But then I heard that Benson broke the car by somehow blowing the engine. He claimed it was the car's fault and I never did get to cash that check. so if you ever get the chance, boycott his books!


Santasiere at a tournament would paint, that was great. Am I dating myself enough now?
I want to dedicate this little bio to David Love, one of my greatest chess mentors and friends, who loved the two knights and kings gambit and the furious foray of sacrifice and had legendary energy for the study of the game, whilst at the same time scorning himself for it.

Also an 80 year old man, George Switzer, who was retired, and on cold wintry days was a salvation army bellringner - other tiimes he played chess in the rochester chess club, a dark and dusty dungeon of chess players.

G. would be reading his paper and sacrificing constantly, and it took a few years to finally get a decent game from him and forced him to put down reading.
There were people there who swore by the kings gambit, others by the berlin ruy and some odd openings. The bellringer would almost always beat me when I played Pk4 Pf5 - and even if i chased his king he would gleefully hide... He had a lot of humor in his chess.
The good ol' days!