Absolute Player Bios

Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, I grew up in the depression. At age six or so, my brother and I learned chess, more or less, from a neighbor. ["More or less" because it would be 10 more years before I learned the en passant rule or how to castle Queenside correctly!] Buying a chess set was out of the question, so we made one, gluing shaped pieces of cardboard to empty spools of thread my Mother provided. One evening a visiting Hungarian friend of our father's saw us playing with our home-made pieces and on his next visit he brought us a chess set. For years that was our set -- Hungarian pieces are similar to Staunton design except for the bishops which are completely different.

Next to baseball, chess was a high priotity...We taught our friends and most of them were fascinated as well. [If you run into a middle aged Pennsylvanian who doesn't know the en passant rule, he may be a former playmate!] Playing a lot we did develop some tactical skills [forks were especially exciting] but no real understanding of the game.

In high school, there was little time for chess because of an after-school job. But one day I did stop by the high school chess club and played a few games with the club champion, losing every one. Humiliated, I visited the local library that evening. To my surpise, I found lots of books devoted exclusively to chess! In ensuing weeks, I went through those books, learning a great deal, expecially from Lasker's Manual of Chess.

I began to improve and by the time the new U.S. Champion [Arnold Denker] came to town for a simultaneous, I was ready. Playing Black I grabbed the several pawns he offered me. Having no idea what the Danish Gambit was, in between moves I gleefully told my friends I was two pawns ahead of the champion of the USA! I lasted about ten more moves.

The next decade went quickly: chess competed with the discovery of girls and the stress of college [English major, Univ. of Michigan & UCLA]. In the '50's, I began playing tournament chess in the Los Angeles area. One-time U.S. champion Herman Steiner took a liking to me and gave me a free membership in his Steiner Chess Club, which became the Hollywood Chess Club. [Its most famous member was Humphrey Bogart but I was never lucky enough to be there when he was. I did meet, play and give a couple of lessons to Jose Ferrer.] In 1955, I qualified for the State Championship. With seven of the ten rounds completed, Herman and I were tied for the lead [we'd drawn our individual game]. Unfortunately, Herman died quite suddenly during Round 8 and the balance of the tournament was canceled.

A couple of months later, Jacqueline Piatigorsky sponsored a Steiner Memorial Tournament. [She subsequently sponsored a couple of Piatigorsky Cup tournaments involving the best in the world.] The very best California players were invited to a round robin -- though rated a Master, I just made the cut, bring ranked near the bottom of the 12 person field. After losing my first two games, I was able to relax -- nerves have always been my biggest problem in OTB chess, which is why I prefer correspondence! But there was no reason to be nervous with a 0-2 score. So I starting playing near-perfect chess, giving up only two draws the rest of the way and winning the tournament by a full point!

Over the next 15 years I remained active in California chess with a number of successes. I recall winning a tournament in Riverside in the '60's in which I beat a promising but inexperienced high schooler named Larry Christiansen...who went on to win the U.S. Championship half a dozen times or so. Larry was kind enough to include the game in his recent book. In between tournaments, I worked for the old Douglas Aircraft Co. rising to a managerial position in the Fiscal side of business. Negotiating and administering all the contracts for the Douglas portion of the Apollo [moon] program kept me pretty busy, but there was still time to marry and raise kids.

In 1970, we relocated to St. Louis and I joined the old Capablanca Club...as well as the Headquarters of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation [MDC]. During the '70's and most of the '80's, in between chess tournaments, I served as an executive at MDC Corporate Headquarters, commuting between St. Louis and Washington and St. Louis and the West Coast so often it ceased to be fun. I did manage to win a few events in Missouri and neighboring states before slowing down.

Retiring in 1988, my wife and I traveled a bit and I had the pleasure of playing in a few weekend tournaments in Britain. In the mid-90's my first wife died and I was fortunate enough to find and smart enough to marry Irene, my beautiful second wife. We, too, travel a good bit -- she was most understanding when I played in a weekend tournament in Denmark a few years ago and got destroyed by those darn Danes!

I've played correspondence chess on and off for the past 60 [no kidding] years. I'm still deeply into it although I fear that somewhere around Fritz 10 or 11, correspondence chess will become pointless. Fortunately, Fritz 8 is the best there is now, so there's some time left. I won the first [1976] USCF Absolute Correspondence Championship, to which the best of the U.S. had been invited. Playing in two more, I finished second and then third -- sensing a trend, I stopped playing in them for quite a while. But I recently accepted the invite to play in the 2002 event -- I'm rated 11th in the field of 12, but hope springs eternal....