AOctober 24 1943
The Miami News, Miami, Florida, Sunday, October 24, 1943
Champion Sacrifices Her Own Game To Teach Greenhorns
Beach Chess Players Have Noted Tutor
Mrs. Mary Bain Was U.S. Entry In Stockholm Games
Don't look now, fellows, but there's a lady over in Miami Beach teaching Air Corps personnel the intricacies of military strategy.
The lady is Mary Bain, wife of Leslie Balogh Bain, columnist of The Miami Daily News and WIOD commentator, one of the world's ranking women chess players. For many months she has been spending two nights a week teaching the art of her distinguished game to service men here, sacrificing her own game, incidentally, in so doing.
Teaching anything — constantly playing with inferior opponents — can, in time, have its effect on almost any talent. But in chess, that is particularly true. For chess, besides being a game of enjoyment played by very definite rules and regulations, is first and foremost a game of precision and strategy, of matching wits. And only constant matches with equal, or superior, wit can improve or even keep up to par a good player's excellence.
So that Mary Bain is not merely donating so much time out of a busy week toward the amusement—and even more important, the instruction — of fighting men for whom chess has been made a suggested subject in military schools. She has actually given of her talent, of her own excellence at the game.
Pioneer in Game Here
Every Monday and Thursday night, Mrs. Bain, who pioneered in introducing chess in American women, and who was the first woman to represent the United States in an international chess tournament (Stockholm, 1937), goes to the Miami Beach recreation pier for service men, and teaches chess to soldiers and sailors who gather under her tutelage. Some of course, have played before and are familiar with the game. These Mrs. Bain herself, sometimes plays against, to sharpen the future warriors' wits in tactical and strategic thinking. Some know nothing about chess at all and merely wander in because they've been told that chess is an excellent game for military men to play. These, Mary Bain teaches “from scratch”. She sometimes has to teach some of these rock-bottom starters how to place the pieces on the board, and even at times, the names of the pieces!
Rates High in Tourneys
She won't talk much about herself, this calm-faced, quiet-voiced woman wizard of the chess board. It you didn't know a little something of chess, and didn't happen to know that she is president of the Women's Chess club of New York, and that in England she placed first in the 1937 Centenary Chess Congress in Worcestershire, you might not have obtained the information from her. She also gave exhibitions at Helsinki, Finland, and Oslo, Norway, after placing fifth out of 38 players in the World Championship bout for women in Stockholm, where, by a fluke, she narrowly missed placing second.
None of these things come out readily when you talk to this generous chess enthusiast who may be seriously impairing her own claims to future chess glories by sharing her art with beginners in khaki and blue. For she prefers to talk about chess rather than herself, to tell you why she considers the game important enough to teach it to every service man who wishes to learn.
Favorite Russian Game
“It teaches a person to think, to act strategically and to develop a tactical acumen,” she explains. “The Russians, for instance, have long since made chess a required subject in schools. All the Russians play chess. And who knows but that this training for generations has not had more than a small part in the splendid Russian battle success?”
Another surprising fact that Mrs. Bain emphasizes is that the Japanese, too, have long had a chess game of their own and that is even more complicated and more “militarized” in its playing than the brand of chess that European or United States players have ever known.
