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September 05 1947
Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York, Friday, September 05, 1947
Byrne Takes Chess Crown
Donald Byrne of New York City last night won the New York State speed championship chess tournament at the IBM Country Club. Runnerup was Hans Berliner of Washington, D. C.
A gathering of 100 watched the competition.
The State Chess Association Congress will hold its annual dinner at 7 o'clock tonight at IBM.
June 13 1956
Evening star, Washington, District of Columbia, Wednesday, June 13, 1956
Hans Berliner Wins D. C. Chess Tourney
Hans Berliner, an international chess master, has been named winner of the 1956 District Individual chess championship after a 12-week round robin tournament at the Washington Chess Divan.
L. Russell Chauvenet, former Eastern amateur champion, won second place and Norman T. Whitaker of Shadyside, Md., veteran international chess master, was third.
August 20 1955
The Buffalo News, Buffalo, New York, Saturday, August 20, 1955
Reshevsky Ties For Chess Title, But Loses Auto
Long Beach, Calif., Aug. 20 (AP)—Samuel Reshevsky of Spring Valley, N. Y., and Nicolas Rossolimo of New York and Paris finished in a tie as the open chess ended early today.
Mr. Reshevsky, who beat the world champion in Moscow last month, and Mr. Rossolimo each had 10 plus or win point and 2 minus points. Neither was defeated however, the minus points coming from four draws each.
There were 156 players in the two-week tournament, each playing 12 rounds. Prize money totaled $5050, offered by local civic groups. First prize was a 1955 automobile and second, $1000. Mr. Rossolimo got the automobile on the basis of 62½ tie-breaking points to Mr. Reshevsky's 61½. The tie-breaking points consist of a median of the sums of their opponents' scores.
Mr. Reshevsky won his final game from James Sherwin, New York City, with a Sicilian defense in 43 moves, although Mr. Sherwin exceeded the time limit.
Mr. Rossolimo in his final game, lasting 7¼ hours, defeated Larry Evans, New York, former U.S. open champion, with a Ruy Lopez opening in 66 moves.
In the standings, Donald Byrne, Ann Arbor, Mich., was third with 9½ points; Abe Turner, Mr. Vernon, N. Y., and Mr. Evans tied at nine each. Five tied at 8½ points; Irving Rivise, Los Angeles; Mr. Sherwin, Herbert Seidman, Brooklyn; Ivan Romanenko, Plainfield, N. J., and Anthony Saidy, Douglaston, N. Y.
Nine tied at 8 points: Herman Steiner, Los Angeles; Larry Remlinger, 14-year-old Long Beach boy; Hans Berliner, Washington; Albert Sandrin, Chicago; Arthur Dake, Portland, Oreg., Robert Steinmeyer, St. Louis, Mo.; Ray Martin, Santa Monica, Calif., Alex Suchobeck, Pacific Grover, Calif., and I. Zalys, Montreal, Que.
January 31 1954
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sunday, January 31, 1954
Chess Experts Stage First Match on Radio
By T. M. Cherington
Chess Editor
If you were to tune in today between 11:00 a. m. and 5:00 p. m. to W3KXU on 3980 kilo cycles you would hear the first transmission of a chess match by short wave from this city.
The Chess Club of Pittsburgh has its eight best men playing the class of the combined clubs of Washington, D. C.
In Washington the Navy transmitter in the Pentagon is carrying the eight games, move by move, to the Pittsburgh players in the home of William S. Potter at 415 Maple Ave., Edgewood.
Potter is a pioneer in radio transmission.
When 14 years old in 1922 he built his first successful spark transmitter powered with an output of seven watts. He was granted a license and frequently was in contact with Dr. Conrad's KDKA from his home in Bellefonte. Those seven watts were heard as far away as Oregon.
NOW 1,000 WATTS
Today the equipment on Maple Ave. has an output of 1,000 watts and spans the world. The Byrd and McMillan expedition of the thirties were in frequent contact with Bill Potter.
It has been a rewarding work, often vital to isolated communities. More than a hundred countries have been in communication with Bill.
Representing Pittsburgh in the match are Fred Sorenson, a club champion; Paul Dietz of Dormont, who has held the club championship three times, intercollegiate chess champion and Pennsylvania state champion; Bill Byland of Dormont, a club champion, state champion and treasurer of the U. S. Chess Federation is playing, as are: Robert Bornholz, who played top board at New York University; Don McClellan, former state champion, Bob Smith, a club champion, David Hamburger and Paul Roth, metropolitan champion.
FAMED PLAYERS
Washington has the New York champion, Hans Berliner, as well as the famed players, Norman Whitaker, Chauvenette, Mugridge, Stark, Tilles, and a choice of a dozen powerful chessers to make up their team.
Glen Hartleb represents the Washington team here. Actual handling of the moves, a problem where time is of the essence and eight boards are involved, is the burden of your chess editor, assisted by Glenn Waltz, Alex Spitzer and Dave Spiro. Rules are for forty moves in two hours and twenty moves per hour thereafter.
A successful experience today means matches with France, Yugoslavia, Holland, South Africa, and Australia. The undertaking is a tremendous challenge to the skill of Bill Potter in maintaining clear contact in a most difficult transmitting situation. Tune in your short wave and join the fun. Set up a board and follow a master game.
September 09 1953
The Post-Standard, Syracuse, New York, Wednesday, September 09, 1953
Berliner Is State Chess Champion
Hans Berliner, 24, Washington, D. C., won the championship of the New York State Chess Association at is annual Labor Day in Cazenovia. Winning eight of nine games, Berliner drew his last game with Burger, giving the new champion a score of 8½ to ½.
James T. Sherwin, New York, winner of the state title at Syracuse University in 1951, won second place this year, defeating John W. Collins, New York, 1952 title holder in the final round. Sherwin's final score was 7 to 2.
Dr. Bruno W. Schmidt, Homer, member of the Syracuse Chess Club and winner of the Syracuse City Chess Championship tournament in 1952 and 1953, captured the Paul Morgan trophy, awarded annually to the upstate player obtaining the highest score in the championship group.
Frederick E. Bartholy, Vestal, won the experts tournament for the second year. Mr. Bartholy had 7 wins and 1 loss.
Dr. Samuel Finkelstein, Endicott, was elected president of the New York State Association; John C. Cummings, Syracuse, vice-president; Willis S. Hull, Binghamton, secretary; Harold M. Phillips of New York, treasurer, and Willard Widney, New York, assistant treasurer.
Mrs. Carl S. Nye, Syracuse, was elected to the board of governors.
August 24 1952
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sunday, August 24, 1952
The United States is being represented in the Team Olympics at Helsinki, Finland, by United States champion Larry Evans, former U. S. champions, Samuel Reshevsky and Herman Steiner, Hans Berliner, Arthur Bisguier and Robert Byrne. This event started Aug. 31.
It is reported that after the team tournament, Evans and Bisguier will play in the interzonal tournament at Stockholm, an event which will qualify the ranking players for participation in the World Championship Candidates Tournament in 1953.
December 02 1951
Evening star, Washington, District of Columbia, Sunday, December 02, 1951
Pvt. Hans Berliner of the Army of the United States, as the former chess champion of the District and of the Washington Chess Divan is now called, reports that he is stationed at Bad Kreuznach in Germany, and well pleased with his situation. “We really live like kings,” he says. He had not, at last accounts, matched wits with the natives, but had demonstrated his kill at the expense of the captain in charge of his section, who is evidently what is called a strong natural player. We can certainly admire Pvt. Berliner's tactics as evidenced in the following brilliant game:
Hans Jack Berliner (white) vs. Capt. E. W. Dodge (black)
King's Gambit Declined
January 17 2017
Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Honolulu, Hawaii, Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Hans Berliner, 87, master chess player and pioneering programmer
Hans Berliner 1929-2017
By Dylan Loeb McClain, New York Times
Hans Berliner, a former world champion of correspondence chess who won one of the greatest games ever played on his way to the title and later became a pioneering developer of game-playing computers, died Friday in Riviera Beach, Fla. He was 87.
His death was confirmed by Carl Ebeling, a former student who retired in 2012 as a computer science professor at the University of Washington, who is handling Berliner's estate.
Berliner was an expert at correspondence chess, in which moves can be sent by postcard or, more recently, the internet. Players have days to think about each move, and games usually last months or even years. When Berliner won the Fifth World Correspondence Chess Championship, the final began on April Fool's Day in 1965 and did not end until three years later.
Berliner's margin of victory in the final was 3 points, the largest in history. But it was his game against Yakov Estrin, a Russian correspondence grandmaster who finished 13th in the field of 17, that followers of chess remember.
Berliner, playing Black, essayed the Two Knights Defense, one of the more complicated openings. For many months the players traded what would be described as haymakers in boxing, with each attacking, only to be met with a counterattack. After an incredible series of moves, the game wound down to a rook-and-pawn ending that Berliner won.
Andy Soltis, a grandmaster of over-the-board (conventional) play, ranked the game No. 1 in his book “The 100 Best Chess Games of the 20th Century” (2000). Over the years the game was often analyzed by people using increasingly powerful chess computers, but only a few small improvements in the moves of both players were ever found.
Berliner was also an accomplished over-the-board player. He was an international master, the rank just below grandmaster.
In the early 1960s, inspired by the work of programming pioneers in artificial intelligence, Berliner, who was working at IBM at the time, began writing a program to play chess.
At 40, just after becoming world correspondence champion, Berliner entered Carnegie Mellon University to pursue a doctorate in computer science. Afterward he joined the university's faculty.
As he worked to create a chess computer, he decided to look for a solution by programming a computer to play what he thought was a simpler game: backgammon.
In July 1979 his program played and won a match, 7-1, against Luigi Villa, the reigning world backgammon champion.
Berliner returned to building a chess computer.
In spring 1985 the new computer, HiTech, made its debut. It quickly ascended to the rank of master and then to senior master, becoming the strongest chess computer. In 1988 it became the first computer to beat a grandmaster in a match, defeating Arnold Denker, 3.5 to 0.5, though Denker was well past his prime.
July 01 1950
The Durham Sun, Durham, North Carolina, Saturday, July 01, 1950
Chess Meet Opens Today
The Southern Chess Association meeting, being held in Durham this week end, got underway this morning with registration of entrants and a preliminary business session at the Washington Duke Hotel.
Basic rules for across-the-board play were discussed and put into effect. There will be two rounds of play each day of the four-day tournament with the first round this afternoon and second this evening.
Arrivals from out of town last night included Paul Barton, president of the Southern Chess Association, from Cordele, Ga., and Major J. B. Holt, secretary-treasurer of the S. C. A., from Long Beach, Fla.
With the Washington, D. C. contingent are Hans Berliner, champion in 1949 of the S. C. A.; Edmund Nash, contributing editor for Chess Life; Don M. Mugridge, former district champion; J. R. Rice, and George Thomas, who will act as tournament director for this tourney.
Ken Smith, Southwestern champion, has probably traveled the farthest to enter this tournament, having come all the way from Dallas, Texas. Also coming from some distance and a hot-bed of chess, New York City, are Eliot Hearst, 1949 winner of the North Carolina Open, Karl Burger and J. Sherwin.
Other states are to be represented by Bill Winston, Geiger, Alabama; Elijah Brown, Atlanta, Ga., Sullivan, both from Knoxville, Tenn.
October 29 1991
The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida, Tuesday, October 29, 1991
Computer unravels chess knot
Newsday
Making 7.7 billion chess moves in five hours, a supercomputer in Los Alamos, N.M., has proved that a bishop a rook and a king can defeat a king and two knights.
The discovery shot down a 300-year-old theory that such a chess matchup perfectly played would always end in a draw, experts said.
Lewis Stiller, a 25-year-old graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, wrote the 10,000-line computer program at night while working by day at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico this summer.
Chess experts and computer scientists said Stiller's program was noteworthy in both fields.
“He is a genius,” said Hans Berliner a chess player and computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Berliner said the longest chess position anyone had been able to “prove” before on a computer was 80 to 90 moves.
Stiller designed a creative approach to programming massively parallel computers supercomputers that rely on thousands of microprocessors to solve problems.
The program farmed out portions of the chess problem to each processor which was programmed to the configuration of three pieces on the board and compute the positions of the other three as a variable.
Berliner said Stiller's approach to programming had applicability to structural dynamics and analytic chemistry among other fields. He likened his creative programming to the discovery of a new element.
October 26 1969
The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sunday, October 26, 1969
Chess Champ Pawn-dering Retirement
By Ralph Miller
Hans Berliner doesn't pan off the game as chess something to kill time.
But he has put a lot of time into winning the world's chess correspondence championship.
And it looks like the 40-year-old native of Germany, here on a three-year fellowship to Carnegie-Mellon University, will retire as champ.
Preferred It To Baseball
The champ started playing chess at a summer camp because “I decided I'd rather play it than baseball.” And, after more than a couple of decades of improving his game, he won the world title in 1968.
He pointed out the next world correspondence championship will be conducted in 1971. “I'm not going to defend my title because I'm so busy on other interests now,” Mr. Berliner said, almost sadly.
“I had to give it up temporarily because of my work and studies in the field of computer science, but I have a computer program that actually can play chess,” he beamed.
It's kind of involved to explain, he continued, but hardly more complicated than the way the world chess correspondence championships are played.
For instance, an average move by one player takes as long as three days to decide … and the average game by correspondence takes “about 1½ years.”
Russians Considered Shoo-In
In the championship won by Mr. Berliner, 17 players from all parts of the world competed. Six of the opponents were Russians and were “expected to win easily.”
Mr. Berliner said the Russians “are the masters of chess by correspondence.”
But Hans won by three points over the field. “That's comparable to winning the baseball pennant by, say, 20 games,” he noted.
He's the first American to win an “open” correspondence chess championship.
The title has capped “all these years (27) of playing the game…and it's worth all the time and effort,” Mr. Berliner said.
But his wife, Araxie, isn't so sure.
“Let's say I'm mildly interested,” she smiled.
“Let's say she's very, VERY tolerant,” Hans laughed.
They both agree it's quite a game, chess the same.
September 04 1957
Rapid City Journal, Rapid City, South Dakota, Wednesday, September 04, 1957
Washington Man Takes Chess Title
Yankton (AP)—Hans Berliner, young chess master from Washington, D. C., attained the country's newest chess title in the finals of a first-time champion of champions tournament held at the Hotel Charles Gurney here over the Labor Day weekend.
As U.S. Champion of Champions, he was awarded a tournament trophy and split the top prize money of $400 with Curt Brasket, chess master from Minneapolis, Minn., who tied with Berliner at a count of 5½ points.
In the final games, Berliner drew with John V. Ragan of St. Louis, Mo., and Brasket's match with Anthony Santasiere of New York City also ended in a draw. Santasiere was top seeded player entering this event.
Only state champions were eligible to play in the champion of champions tournament, and there were 19 contenders.
Santasiere emerged with 4½ points and Didlee McGee of Omaha. Also in the money class were the following with 4 points each:
Ragan, Jack Shaw, Albuquerque, New Mexico;
Gilbert Ramirez, San Francisco, Calif.,
Dan Reynolds, Des Moines, Iowa.
O. W. Manney, Ketchikan, Alaska, and Orman T. Whitaker, Baltimore.
Running concurrently was the Paul Morphy centennial open chess tournament. Winner of this event was H. Hesse of Bethlehem, Pa., with 5½ points. Just half a point behind the leader were Rudolf O'Petters of Dacono, Colo., and Richard McLellan of Omaha, who tied for second place.
Other prize winners in the Morphy centennial with 4 points each were Dale Ruth, Midwest City, Okla.;
Henry King, San Francisco, Calif.;
Dr. Ibela Rozsa, Tulsa, Okla.;
Phillip Rehberger, Denver;
D. G. Maylin, Denver and J. D. Define, Florissant, Mo.
In the final round Hesse defeated Naylin to win the title. Thirty-four players participated in the Morphy event.
Directing the two important tournaments was George Koltanowski, San Francisco, international chess master and blindfold exhibitionist.
July 03 1949
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, Sunday July 03, 1949
Washington's Hans Berliner (left) Tests Southern Chess Champ Gerry Sullivan
Kit Crittenden, North Carolina Champ, Nester Hernandez Watch Tournament Play—Staff Photo
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, Sunday, July 03, 1949
Teen-Age Champs Spotlighted As Chess Tourney Opens Here
By John Wessells
The conception that a double-domed cranium and the patience of Job are essential accessories for a chess player is taking a beating this week end at the Southern Chess Association's annual tournament here.
Thirty-eight average Americans turned up at Hotel John Marshall yesterday to spend the holidays playing the ancient game. The accent was on teen-agers.
Defending his association title was 18-year-old Gerry Sullivan from Knoxville Tenn., who just completed his sophomore year at th University of Tennessee.
Another sport-shirted champ was Kit Crittenden, 15, who licked a college professor for top honors in North Carolina. Leigh Ribble, Jr., Class A champ of the Richmond Chess Club, at 14 is a strong contender.
Youngsters Strongest
“The strongest players are youngsters just like any sport,” according to J. L. Harrington, a retired executive and lifelong chess devotee. “One of our two American grand masters Sam Rescheveski, toured the country as a prodigy before he was 10.
The group paired off in the roof garden competition, most of them under 21, make up the strongest tournament in years in Harrington's judgment, “The only trouble is that the association had us use the 'Swiss System,' with a time limit on the game” he pointed out.
“In Russia chess is a national game like baseball but over here the players can't even get off work for a national tournament,” Harrington sighed.
In order to get through by Tuesday, each player is limited to two and one-half hours for 50 moves, or an average of three minutes per move, win lose or draw. You get to time your opponent by means of a chess clock, two stop watches mounted together. Push a lever and his clock starts ticking while he thinks. He stops his and starts yours when he moves.
At two games per player per day, that comes out 10 hours of chess daily, but nobody appeared to be getting excited about it. There were some knotted brows among the nonrated players, but most of them wandered around kibitzing or huddled around the ice-water pitcher between moves.
Over-the-shoulder chess is standard procedure, as long as you don't offer any advice. One middle-aged couple attend tournaments together regularly but never play. Tournament chess players can concentrate the kibitzer right out of the picture.
“I used to set up my correspondence games right next to the radio” Harrington said “First thing you know I would come to and Bing Crosby would be over without me hearing a note. Made me so darn mad!”
You can get up a good argument in chess circles over where the game originated. Etchings on the pyramids of Egypt attest that the game was played centuries before Christ but the only agreement seems to he that it was thought up in the East somewhere.
Slightly Complex
Six different types of make it a little complicated but nothing that the man in the street can't tackle, according to C. S. Boggess, another Richmond contestant.
“People think you need an oversize brain to figure the whole game out in advance.” Boggess said, “but even the masters seldom think more than two or three moves in advance. They can't, because they know what the other fellow's going to do.”
Chess is a lot more fun the way they play it in a local department store during lunch hour, according to Boggess. They toss out the books on precise chess and have good name-calling time.
“Only one thing wrong with this tournament,” Boggess said. “They ought to give everybody a 20-minute time limit. Then we could get through with this thing and go home.”
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.
July 06 1949
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, Wednesday, July 06, 1949
Washington Youth Wins Chess Tourney of State Champion Is Second in Matches Here
Hans Berliner 20-year-old chess champion of Washington, won the Southern Chess Association championship here yesterday against one of the strongest fields the event has had in its 28 years.
Berliner marked up only one draw against six wins to give him top score of 6½ in the series of seven games which each contestant played.
Russell Chauvenet, Virginia champion and a former Southern Association champion from Charlottesville, managed the draw with the winner to take second place with 5½ points. The Virginia player lost one game to Oscar Shapiro, of Washington, third-place winner, with a score of 5. In tournament chess, one point is given for a win and one-half point for a draw.
Younger contestants, including last year's champion, Gerry Sullivan, of Knoxville, Tenn., were left far behind in the play. Sullivan finished sixteenth in a field of 38, just behind Major J. B. Holt, of Sarasota, Fla., a close rival in last year's race.
Highest-placing Richmond contender was S. Ross Owens, of the Richmond Chess Club, who finished tenth. Leigh Ribble, 14-year-old Richmond Class A champion, was twenty-fourth.
The tournament opened Saturday and was followed yesterday afternoon by a rapid transit tournament, with a time limit on each move.
August 28 1949
Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, Sunday, August 28, 1949
The Champ Shows How
Larry Evans of New York City, left, who is defending his state chess championship, explains move to Dr. Edward Lasker, New York; Hans Berliner, Washington, D. C., champion; Paul Morgan, Rochester champ, in discussion at opening of state tourney here.
State's Chess Masters Battle It Out
It was so quiet in the Kodak Park recreation hall yesterday you could hear a pawn drop.
With dual-controlled clocks beside them, nearly 50 of the world's top notch chess players huddled in deep concentration over the checkered boards, hoping to capture not only their opponents' kings, but the title of New York State chess champion.
The 1949 State Chess Association Congress tournament, which opened yesterday noon, will continue until Sept. 5. Adhering to the Swiss tourney style, the winners of yesterday's matches will vie against each other today, with play continuing on the same basis tomorrow.
According to tournament rules, each player is required to make 40 moves in a two-hour period. After that, 20 moves must be made each hour. A time clock supplied each couple records the time taken for each play, and adds an element of suspense of the game.
One of yesterday's most interesting matches was between 17-year-old Larry Evans, state champion, and Dr. Edward Lasker, international master. Both are of New York City. At another table was Louis Persinger, violin instructor at Julliard School of Music and teacher of several noted concert artists, including Yehudi Menuhin. Other players competing in the tournament are Hans Berliner, young champion of Washington, D. C.; Donald Byrne, Yale University student, and George Kramer, international star, who copped the state championship title when he was only 14.
Four of the six Rochesterians playing in yesterday's tourney won their matches. Dr. Herzberger defeated an internationally-known expert, A. E. Santasiere of New York, while victories were also netted by E. W. Marchand, W. A. Wagner and Paul Morgan, local champ.
August 29 1949
6 Move to Front Rank in Chess Tourney 29 Aug 1949, Mon Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York) Newspapers.com
December 08 1946
Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles California, Sunday, December 08, 1946
Pittsburgh Brilliancy
Hans Berliner, 17-year-old champion of the Federal Chess Club, Washington, D.C., who finished third in the national junior championship in Chicago last July, had the distinction of winning possibly the most brilliant game in the Pittsburgh open championship last summer.
Sven Almgren of New York had placed faith in a French defense, Berliner followed a well-thought-out attack against the position of the black king, to meet which Almgren made elaborate preparations. The Washington lad kept his objective constantly in mind, while Almgren established himself strongly in the center.
Finally the bomb burst, Berliner, after laying the proper foundation, sacrificed his queen for a pawn, gave check by discovery and checkmated on the 35th move.
Hans Berliner vs Sven Elias Almgren
47th US Open (1946), Pittsburgh, PA USA, rd 3, Jul-09
French Defense: Classical. Steinitz Variation (C11) 1-0
After winning the brilliancy above, young Berliner met Manuel Aleman, the Cuban champion, only to find that he was unable to play the black side of a French Defense any more successfully than his opponent of the previous round.
Miguel Aleman Dovo vs Hans Berliner
47th US Open (1946), Pittsburgh, PA USA, rd 4, Jul-10
French Defense: Classical. Burn Variation (C11) 1-0
'til the world understands why Robert J. Fischer criticised the U.S./British and Russian military industry imperial alliance and their own Israeli Apartheid. Sarah Wilkinson explains: Tweets by swilkinsonbc |
 “What a sad story Fischer was,” typed a racist, pro-imperialist colonial troll who supports mega-corporation entities over human rights, police state policies & white supremacy. |
To which I replied: “Really? I think he [Bob Fischer] stood up to the broken system of corruption and raised awareness! Whether on the Palestinian/Israel-British-U.S. Imperial Apartheid scam, the Bush wars of ‘7 countries in 5 years,’ illegally, unconstitutionally which constituted mass xenocide or his run in with police brutality in Pasadena, California-- right here in the U.S., police run rampant over the Constitution of the U.S., on oath they swore to uphold, but when Americans don't know the law, and the cops either don't know or worse, “don't care” -- then I think that's pretty darn “sad”. I think Mr. Fischer held out and fought the good fight, steadfast til the day he died, and may he Rest In Peace. Educate yourself about U.S./State Laws -- https://www.youtube.com/@AuditTheAudit/videos After which the troll posted a string of profanities, confirming there was never any genuine sentiment of “compassion” for Mr. Fischer, rather an intent to inflict further defamatory remarks. |
This ongoing work is a tribute to the life and accomplishments of Robert “Bobby” Fischer who passionately loved and studied chess history. May his life continue to inspire many other future generations of chess enthusiasts and kibitzers, alike.
March 9, 1943 - January 17, 2008The photograph of Bobby Fischer (above) from the March 02, 1956 The Tampa Times was discovered by Sharon Mooney (Bobby Fischer Newspaper Archive editor) on February 01, 2018 while gathering research materials for this ongoing newspaper archive project. Along with lost games now being translated into Algebraic notation and extractions from over two centuries of newspapers, it is but one of the many lost treasures to be found in the pages of old newspapers since our social media presence was first established November 11, 2017.
