ANovember 01 1983
The Oshkosh Northwestern, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Tuesday, November 01, 1983
Only Pawns In His Game
Arthur Bisguier, left, grandmaster chess player, studies a chess board. Seated across from him is David Cowles and in the foreground is Clair Palfrey. The two were among 24 players who Bisguier challenged in a simultaneous chess match night in Park Plaza, Oshkosh. After two hours of play, Bisguier had won 35 and lost one.
Chess Expert Vies With 24 Opponents
PATRIK VANDER VELDEN
Northwestern Staff Writer
Watching 24 chess players contemplate their chess boards like so many Buddhas, Arthur Bisguier looks boxed in.
Bisguier is a grandmaster of chess, the equivalent of a black belt in karate. He held an exhibition Monday night in the mall at Park Plaza in Oshkosh, playing 24 games simultaneously while his 24 opponents played one game.
Through 36 games, he lost one.
“I hung my queen,” explained the grandmaster.
Bisguier, who once competed against Bobby Fisher, is technical adviser of “U.S. Chess” magazine. He lectures, attends chess seminars and occasionally competes. This weekend he will compete in the Fifth Anniversary Open in Janesville. That tournament—Wisconsin's largest—will bring together 20 top-rated professional and 120 Wisconsin rated and unrated players.
Bisguier's appearance in Oshkosh was a promotion sponsored in part by the American Chess Federation and the U.S. Chess Federation.
While he walks smoothly inside the square, the players around him, six at four tables, furrow their brows, stroke their chins and stare with unblinking eyes at the pawns.
Facing a board, Bisguier leans forward, hands on the table top, eyes intent on the open squares and chess pieces. The clock inside his head ticks, sometimes once, sometimes 20 times; then he slides his countermove.
The opponent considers the move, sometimes with a solid face, sometimes jerking a shoulder or showing a smile.
There are two unwritten rules that make the whole exhibition civilized. Never embarrass anyone, and if dad, son or daughter are playing, beat dad first.
To Bisguier none of this is competition, only a day away from the office. “It's good for everyone who works to get a change of pace.”
It also keeps him in touch with the rest of the chess world. “I see some people who have talent, a future master once in a while. The interest is starting younger and younger.”
At the table sits a teenager in a jersey shirt, BENNETT spelled across its back. Ron Bennett says he is 14 and his father taught him to play at age 10. With only four years of experience, Bennett didn't think he had much chance of beating Bisguier. While he didn't let that intimidate him, he did come alone.
“I tried to get my friends to come along, but they wouldn't. I came to try and learn something.”
At the other end of the spectrum is 72-year-old Dr. Kurt Hoehne. Mouthing a cigar, head poised forward, eyes looking over a pair of glasses, Hoehne says in words fringed with a German accent, “I just wanted to see Grandmaster Bisguier. It's just something interesting. I'm a doctor … I don't have much time to play.”
Hoehne says he first played as a teenager. This spring he played in a tournament for the first time since who knows when. Then his wife bought him a computer chess board and here he is tonight.
“I get to see the other guys. This is a way to socialize. Last time I was here, four years ago, I didn't play. I'm old; after an hour or so you get tired. This is a game you have to play with a great deal of concentration and enthusiasm.”
Across the square from Hoehne, David Rice busies himself scrawling a coded script onto paper—P-K4, P-K4, N-KB3, N-QB3, and so on.
Rice, a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh student and president of the UW-O chess club, canceled the 7 p.m. Monday meeting in Reeve Union.
He's here tonight, he says “mostly for fun. You want to see how you do.”
Chess, claims Rice, takes no special skills.
“It's just your mind against his mind. It's intriguing because there are so many possibilities for moves. No other game has that.”
