1949
Columbia University Chess Team: (left to right) Team Captain Eliot Hearst, James T. Sherwin, Edward Scher, Philip Schwartz and Karl Burger.July 04 1949
The Richmond News Leader, Richmond, Virginia, Monday, July 04, 1949
PROXY DECISION—Hans Berliner (left), Washington chess champion, makes a move in a match against Stuart Wagman (right), also of Washington, to determine the winner of a match in the all-Southern tournament here. The two are “adjudicating” a match between Major J. B. Holt, of Long Beach, Fla., and Steven Shaw, of Miami, under the Swiss tournament system because they failed to complete their games in five hours. The “proxy” winner was Shaw. Kibitzing are Kit Crittenden, 15, North Carolina champion, and Carl Burger, 16, of New York.
Questions Fly As Champs Vie For Chess Title
By William Bien
“Do you like the Nimzo-Indian defence to the Queen's Gambit declined?”
“Or do you prefer the fried liver variation in the Two Knights defense?”
Those are common questions being tossed around at random at the Southern Chess Association's annual convention meeting at the Hotel John Marshall.
While ordinary folks are cooling themselves in various vacation spots, 38 chess experts are sweating out the 1949 chess championship, trying to beat 18-year-old Gerry Sullivan, defending champion from Knoxville, Tenn.
ANOTHER THREATENS
One of the top contenders for the crown in another teen-ager, Kit Crittenden, 15, of Raleigh, N.C. He is the son of the director of the archives and history department for the State of North Carolina.
Just recently Crittenden upset several old-timers to win the Tennessee Open, but this is his first really “major-league” test.
Another player to be reckoned with is young Leigh Ribble, Jr., 14, who is Class “A” champ of the Richmond Chess Club.
Martin Southern, president of the Southern Chess Association, says this is the strongest group ever entered in an SCA tourney, despite the fact that a majority of the players are under 21.
Only one woman is entered in the championship play. She is a Richmond housewife, Mrs. Willa White, who also is president of the Richmond Chess Club.
FAST GAME NOW
These tournament players knocked into a cocked hat the outdated idea that chess is a game for people with nothing else to do. They play the game fast nowadays, under the Swiss system used at this tournament. According to the rules each player must make a minimum of 40 moves in the first two hours.
“A game will normally be won in 35 to 55 moves,” says Southern, “but sometimes it takes as many as 100 or more.”
At any rate, the contenders are putting in a full 10-hour day every day of the tournament, scheduled to end tomorrow morning. Tomorrow, that is, unless too many games bog down after the first 100 moves!
Tomorrow afternoon, the various winners will receive trophies, provided by Miller & Rhoads, or cash awards, taken from the $3 entry fee each player must pay to enter.
