AAdditional Games
Gerald Kensell Fielding
August 20, 1932 - Unknown
Star-Phoenix, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Tuesday, December 04, 1951
Young Chess Champion
The newest star on Canada's chess firmament is a slim, studious, quiet-spoken youth taking second-year arts at the University of Saskatchewan.
He is 19-year-old Gerald Fielding, Eston, who last week won the Saskatchewan chess championship without the loss of a game.
Comparatively unknown until he won one of two qualifying berths in the northern eliminations, the young history student defeated R. B. Hayes, Regina, tenth-ranking player in Canada, in the final game of the round-robin championship in the Queen City to complete his undefeated tournament record.
In the provincial tourney, the four qualifiers from north and south play a six-game round-robin, i.e., each plays the other twice. Fielding disposed of the favored Hayes easily in their first game, and each captured their other games until their final contest. A win for Hayes would have tied the score, but under the 25-moves-per hour ruling, time ran out on him (“He had to do the thinking”) and the crown went to Fielding.
Gerald's rise to prominence has been lightning-fast, considering he has been playing only four years. “I learned the mechanics of the game on my 15th birthday,” he said in an interview. Thus he missed the “prodigy” period shown by almost all chess masters, since his talent lay hidden during the formative years of childhood.
Now he is a keen student of the game, reading anything on the subject he has access to. Asked whose style he devotes most time to, he said “I read 'em all.” He considers the late Dr. Alexander Alekhine of Paris the greatest master of them all. He has no favorite opening, but employs several methods of attack and defence in the highly-strategic game.
“They kidded me in Regina about not using the 'Sicilian Defence' (a popular system used for some styles of play),” Gerald smiled, “but I used it in the last game against Hayes and beat him.”
Fielding has never played Frank Yerhoff of Regina, a former Canadian champion, but says he'd “like to meet him sometime.” He once played Abe Yanofsky, Winnipeg, one of this country's leading exponents of the game who obtained his master's rating while still in his teens after beating Mikhail Botvinnik of Russia, the present world's champion. However, his match against Yanofsky was one of a series of simultaneous games the Winnipegger played on a visit to Saskatoon's Bishop's Knight Club, and could not be considered a true test. The match was drawn.
Gerald has lived in Saskatoon the past four years, residing with his grandmother at 845 Temperance Street, and took his Grade 11 and 12 at Nutana Collegiate. His other main interest in life is music. He plays clarinet.
