AJanuary 01 1978
The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, California, Sunday, January 01, 1978
Chess by R. E. Fauber with Frank Garosi
Chess Players: Biker Doesn't Fit The Stereotype
THE STEREOTYPE of chess as an effete game for the anemic and underweight is slow dying. In fact chess provides pleasure and a creative outlet for all types and sizes of people. There is a sense of completeness about the micro-world of chess.
One of the leading players and organizers in the Bay Area illustrates this perfectly. A stocky, muscular character, Max Burkett travels to tournaments on his bike and swaggers to the registration table swinging his crash helmet. In Oakland they call him Motorcycle Max.
Burkett is not a person to be treated flippantly. He likes his beer and his Scotch in generous quantities and while some people treat chess tournaments as though they had just taken the Crusader's vow, Burkett refuses to stop living at night just because he has another game in the morning. He might be a higher-rated player today were he not vulnerable in morning rounds. By evening he is a tiger, but in the morning he sometimes succumbs as the result of living not wisely but too well.
Burkett's lifestyle, for all its colorful aspects, centers around chess. He publishes bulletins of the games of Bay Area tournaments, directs tournaments, and cooperates with anyone who is trying to give chess a boost. If you want to do a macho number, do not perform the rendition around Burkett — he'll floor you; but if you want to play chess or help promote it, Burkett is a perfect gentleman.
His current project is to organize the master and nearmaster players into an association to encourage quality tournaments and chess in Northern California. To have more time for this, for tournaments and his bulletins, he recently relinquished his job with the post office and now derives his non-chess income from a newspaper delivery route. One pictures him zooming crash-helmet on his bike through the streets of Oakland, hurling papers at high speed and bellowing: “Check, check, and double check!”
Over the board, Burkett is known for his deep opening knowledge and a preference for getting a wrestler's bind on the opponent and crushing him. He is most vulnerable when he sacrifices material, but here he coaxes a risky variation to victory.
