AAugust 02 1942
The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida, Sunday, August 02, 1942
Does Bit In Chess!
Champion Mrs. Bain, International Expert, Now Teaches Soldiers
DO YOU shudder when someone mentions chess, quickly change the conversation to a subject on which you are a surer authority—for instance, bridge or baking?
If you are such a shudderer, let's hope that the person who introduces the topic of chess is not Mrs. Mary B. Bain, 1711 S. W. 35th st., international expert.
With deprecating shrug of her slim shoulders, a lifting of dark eyebrows, she'll tell you in her faintly Slavic accent “ANYONE can play chess. Too many people, especially women, look at a chess setup and decide in a flash it's too complicated for them. They never even TRY to play.”
This former student of the Hungarian chess master, Maroczy (whom she later tied in an exhibition match here), believes that “Once you learn the moves—that takes only about an hour—once you learn to concentrate—chess is easy!”
Practices Her Preaching
Mrs. Bain practices what she preaches, for sometimes she bests her opponent or opponents (she has played against 19, winning from 12, drawing with two and losing to five) after one hour, two hours or 10 of concentration.
How does she feel after 10-hour sessions? Just as she did in Stockholm, Sweden, where in 1937 after days of competition she placed fifth in the international tournament for women. After that contest, in which she and 26 other women participated, she was “a little tired.”
Was she disappointed at being beaten in Stockholm? “Yes, but I placed about Miss N. May Karff of Boston, present national champion.” Mrs. Bain and Miss Karff now have reversed honors since the former has placed second in the last three national matches. Mrs. Bain still dreams of placing first, however.
“I don't know why I lost in closing hours—I get so excited, so nervous—I guess you could call it stage fright.”
Wins In England
Stage fright or no stage fright, she took first prize at the centenary tournament at Worcester, England, where she was invited to play following the Swedish event. And she finished up an exhibition match at Helsinki, Finland, that same year winning eight, drawing one and losing one in a match against 10 men.
Consistent champion of the New York Women's Chess club, Mrs. Bain also was organizer and champion of the Hollywood, Cal., Chess club.
Miami, latest “home” city for Mrs. Bain since her arrival in America from her native Hungary in 1921, she considers uncultivated chess ground. Although she finds the number of chess players here “disappointingly small,” she is determined to make Miami chess-conscious.
Teaching Soldiers Now
Currently she is teaching chess, which is to her not only a game but an art and a science, to soldiers who frequent Miami Beach Recreation Pier.
Do the boys like it? “Yes, indeed, once they catch on. And it is exciting for them, too. You know chess is something like a miniature battlefield—you are your own general and you can use your own strategy.”
Everyone asks Mrs. Bain how she happened to start her career. Her answer: “Long, long ago my mother taught me. European women think of chess as Americans think of bridge. We never considered it too difficult.
Like her mother before her, she taught her two children, Mitchell, 15, and Eva, 13.
Did she teach her husband (Leslie Bain) chess? “Not exactly, but he knows more about it now than he did before he married me!” she laughs.
The Miami News, Miami, Florida, Sunday, September 20, 1942
Woman Chess Expert Does Bit Teaching War Game To Soldiers
Miamian Fills Unusual Niche At Pier; Plans Exhibit Match
By Elinor Cecil Smith (Daily News Staff Writer)
IT LOOKS LIKE A STILL-LIFE, but take it from Mrs. Mary Bain, top-ranking chess player, there's “more than meets the eye” of complicated activity, fascinating excitement, aesthetic creation in a game of chess. All this is not discernible to the naked eye but readily agreed to by those who have felt their hearts pound at a tense moment at the board. But it is because chess employs the strategy and tactics in war that Mrs. Bain is teaching the game to men at the Recreation pier. Left to right are Pvt. Martin L. Stein, Baltimore, Mrs. Bain, Pvt. Americo Neri, Trenton, N. J. and Pvt. (1st class) Thomas Powell, Jr., Cambridge, Mass. —Daily News photo by Hamilton.
“Chess, like love, like art, has the power to make men happy.” So said the great chess master, Dr. Tarrasch.
That's not stretching things one bit. But it is for other reasons as well that Mary Bain, woman chess master of high international ranking, teaches chess and acts as hostess to chess players among the service men at the Miami Beach recreation pier every Monday and Thursday evening.
Chess, when thought of as a game, is the “war-game.” It is a required course at West Point, even in peace times. All officers in the armed forces of Ireland must be chess players. In all the countries of Europe, particularly the militaristic ones, the game is held in high regard, not only as training in the tactics and strategy used on the battlefield, but as a pleasure-giving fine art and a builder of character and mental acumen.
When Mrs. Bain, 1711 S. W. 35th ave., offered her services as a chess instructor to the special services division of the army air force on the Beach, this unique way of “doing one's bit” was immediately accepted and the army requested the Pier association to include the activity at the recreation pier.
Chess Speaks Soldiers' Language
That the boys, themselves, whether beginners or old hands, look upon the chess board as a field of military operations is amusingly indicated by their incidental remarks while playing about bringing the cavalry (the knights) into action,” a pawn standing bravely “under fire” and one that “This reminds me of infantry tactics in R. O. T. C. in college.”
That they enjoy the game in all the various aspects of its appeal is proven by the fact that the number of devotees, whether stationed on the beach for a few weeks only or longer, has so increased that Mrs. Bain is hoping to move into larger quarters on the pier. She is also planning to give shortly a simultaneous exhibition match, in which she would play all comers, each at a board of his own, at the same time.
She even gets fan mail from some of “her boys” who have been moved on. One from a lad now in Goldsboro, N. C, said “This being Thursday night I suppose you are teaching some of the buddies in arms the finer points of chess. I wish I were there. I think it is very kind of you to spend that time down there trying to make the stay pleasant for the soldiers and giving them the benefit of your knowledge.”
Began In Other War
Mrs. Bain's chess career harks back to the earlier world war. Her native land was Czechoslovakia. One of her brothers was killed in the service. Her step-father had been taken as a hostage by the enemy and never heard of thereafter. Her mother died of a broken heart. At the close of the war, Mary, though only 18 and without one word of English, thought to put the scene of so much sorrow and tragedy behind her and turn her face toward America. She had a sister in New York whom she could join.
The boat she came across on was a British boat and “everyone aboard played chess.” Her mother had taught the game to her and her brothers when she was 15. “Chess is an international language,” Mrs. Bain says and her experience on that voyage bears her out.
Without benefit of conversation, man's most usual way of communicating, she made friends with everyone on the boat and enjoyed the society of each—by the mental interplay that goes on over the chess board. Highlight of the trip and definite impetus to the career that was to follow was her special game with the captain of the ship, set up in the ballroom, with the other passengers as audience. This small, dark-haired, young European girl played and won through a siege of stage-fright that endured even when, after a roomful of applause, the orchestra leader offered to play her favorite number in celebration. She couldn't remember any musical number and had to choose from a list of suggestions written down for her.
Drawn Came Launches Career
Shortly after her arrival in New York she entered a simultaneous match played by a Hungarian master whom she admired. In this exhibition match she drew her game and being a woman received a great deal of publicity for this feat and was launched on her career.
She was the first woman to represent the United States in an international woman's world championship tournament. This was in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1937. Twenty-seven nations were represented and Mary placed fifth. Placing first in her section of a woman's tournament in England and giving a simultaneous exhibition match in Helsinki, Finland, were two other highlights of her playing abroad. She has played several of these simultaneous chess matches in this country, playing as many opponents as 24 at one time and being the only woman to put on these exhibitions. She organized the Hollywood Chess club, with 60 of the movie stars, writers, directors and producers as members.
But one doesn't have to be a master at the art of chess to have as much fun “and more” as Mary Bain, herself, points out. Before the beginner the whole field of chess patterns to be neatly and cleverly woven to some originally divined purpose is unexplored and anything seems possible. To the expert this is also true, the limits of the game being fixed only by the imaginative powers of the player, but the master's game is restricted somewhat by the principles he has learned by his own and others' experience.
A Woman's Game, Too
“Women should not be afraid to try the game,” Mrs. Bain says. “Being on the borderline between a game, a science and an art, the appeal of chess may be in any of these fields. Playing chess is likened to painting a fine picture, composing a piece of music with underlying theme and interwoven melodies.
“Those who do not play chess say it is dull. Certainly a non-player watching two at the board does not see the exciting, vital activity that transpires in the minds of the two players. That it can be so absorbing is proof that the initiate find it anything but dull.
“That it has survived so many centuries nobody actually knows when it did originate proves that it is of lasting, deep-rooted value. The boys at the pier in learning chess are not only learning to think along tactical lines that pertain to warfare. They are training their own minds to proceed cautiously and with foresight, considering all angles of a problem, to concentrate voluntarily and to employ logical patterns of thought it by Instinct.”
