Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

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  • Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

    Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

    February 17, 2018

    Eliot Hearst passed away on January 30 in Tucson, Arizona.

    Hearst, who had the distinction of beating a young Bobby Fischer in the 1956 Rosenwald tournament, was one of the top American players in the 1950s and played in the 1954 and 1961 U.S. Championships. He was a member of the 1960 U.S. Student Olympiad team that won gold in Leningrad and captained the 1962 US Olympiad team in Varna.

    Hearst was an excellent writer. In the early 1960s he wrote a popular column ("Chess Kaleidoscope") for Chess Life, and later co-wrote with John Knott Blindfold Chess: History, Psychology, Techniques, Champions, World Records, and Important Games, which won the Fred Cramer Award for the Best Chess Book of 2009.

    Hearst received a PhD in psychology in 1956 from Columbia University and was a professor at Indiana University and the University of Arizona.

    https://www.chessclub.org/news.php

    http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/i...rst_1932-2018_

    (See Chess Note No. 10740)

    ________

    From:

    http://tartajubow.blogspot.ca/2017/0...-s-hearst.html

    Hearst's first appearance in the US Championship was is 1954. The USCF planned a "candidates tournament" for Philadelphia that was open to anyone with an Expert (2000 Elo) rating and who was willing to part with the entry fee of $25. That's the equivalent of about $225 these days. The whole idea was unpopular, but that meant little to the USCF.

    Because there were 23 players the event had to be a Swiss and worst of all according to the players, the first prize was only $250. That was offset by the fact that for those who did play in Philadelphia there were six places in the 1954 championship up for grabs. The main player showing up was Arthur Bisguier who was 23 years old and just out of the Army. Bisguier had been an up-and-comer a few years before when he won the 1950 U.S. Open and his first international tournament, at Southsea, England.

    As things turned out, USCF didn't have the money to hold the championship tournament! As a last resort the Marshall Chess Club offered its rooms to the 14 players. Bisguier, who attended college classes during the day, ended up sleeping at night in one of the Marshall's upstairs apartments

    Rating-wise the tournament wasn't particularly strong. Bisguier was eighth on latest rating list and Evans, the defending champion, was only tenth. The top five top rated players, Reshevsky, Robert Byrne, Kramer, Donald Byrne and Denker declined their invitations. Still, recent French emigre GM Nicolas Rossolimo, Manhattan Chess Club champion Max Pavey and the Marshall Chess Club junior star, 20-year-old James T. Sherwin, ranked only 24th in the country, plus members of the old guard, Sidney Bernstein and Herbert Seidman, could hardly be considered weak. Bisguier won undefeated. Evans finished a point back, losing only one game...to Hearst who scored +5 -6 =2 to finish in tenth place.

    Hearst's next US Championship was in 1961 and even without Fischer and Reshevsky it was a strong one. The favorites were Evans and the most recent US Open winners, Robert Byrne (winner in 1960) and Pal Benko (1961). The remaining field had a few players who had been largely inactive. For example, Hearst, who hadn't played since 1954 because of school work, George Kramer and Donald Byrne, whose recent absences from the championship were no doubt due to his declining health. By this time Evans was approaching 30 and claimed he was playing chess "for the spirit of competition" and sometimes because I run short of cash." When it was all over Evens finished an undefeated first and Robert Byrne, also undefeated, was a half point back. Hearst finished in 7th place with a score of +2 -2 =7.

    Although Hearst is a Life Member of the USCF their web site lists him as a National Master, but he is listed as unrated with the comment, "This member is not present in the Rating Supplements since January 1, 1991,"

    _______

    Chess Life was a most interesting magazine to read in the 60s. It had these as columnists and contributors:

    Samuel Reshevsky, Claude Bloodgood, George Koltanowski, William Lombardy, Larry Evans, Frank Brady, John Collins, Fred Wren and Anthony Santasiere.

    And it was the most reliable source for news of Bobby Fischer's successes.

    Eliot Hearst's column Chess Kaleidoscope debuted March 20, 1960. It was a lively, chatty column, which I enjoyed reading as a young man. I wrote him and told him that and asked if he was related to William Randolph Hearst, the great publisher. He did answer me but I forget what he said and the letter lies in one of a hundred boxes of chess material in storage.

    From his columns:

    Chess Kaleidoscope, CL March, 1962:

    Odds and Ends from the Bled Tourney

    Fischer's comment when he read somewhere that an Englishman holds the world's record in number of suits (240) possessed: "It's only temporary. I've got eighteen already"... Tal keeps a pair of his shoes (although fully polished outside the door of his hotel room while he goes for walks around the lake. The motive: his opponents should think he's home preparing variations for them all the time.."Bobby is going to be world champion" (S. Gligoric)...Fischer was the only player who didn't lose a game. However, after he had drawn with Parma, Fischer was asked, "It seems you were lost a one stage." Fischer replied, "You should never ask me whether I was lost or not. I just can't bear thinking about defeat!"

    Your Chess Kaleidoscope reporter remembers the days 6 or 7 years ago when each of Bobby's defeats would inevitably be followed by a burst of tears from the pre-teenager. The story (likely not true) is told that, just after Bobby had administered the coup de grace to Don Byrne (at the 1956 Rosenwald tourney) in one of Bobby's first great games, a well-meaning spectator remarked to the victorious 12-year old: "See, Bobby, Donnie didn't cry!") ..At Bled Ivkov became a most serious candidate for the time consumption record. He took 1:35 for his eleventh move against Tal.. "Look at me," said Najdorf, after his defeat at Petrosian's hands, " I am laughing, I'm making pleasantries and probably I am not going to be able to sleep tonight."..Dr. Vidmar, the venerable tournament director, who had been waging a strong battle against the legality of quick draws in chess, was shocked when Najdorf and Trifunovich agreed to a draw in 11 moves. Vidmar interrupted all the games and made a speech to the audience about the fiasco. When everything had calmed down, someone recalled that Vidmar himself had once accepted a draw in 8 moves. It was also discovered that it was not Najdorf who held the world's record for draw offers in the same game (six times, vs. Petrosian in Zurich, 1953), but Vidmar himself, who had proposed a draw no less than 15 times to his major rival in the last pre-war championship of Yugoslavia. To all this, the old fox Vidmar had a ready response: "Every saint was a sinner in his youth."

    (to be continued)
    Last edited by Wayne Komer; Saturday, 17th February, 2018, 06:30 PM.

  • #2
    Re: Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

    Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

    February 17, 2018

    Chess Kaleidoscope, CL Sept. 1962

    Petrosian Turns Back the Clock

    V. Vassiliev, in "Chess Silhouettes", relates the following details about the childhood of Botvinnik's 1963 challenger.

    Tigran, the youngest son in the Petrosian family, pleased his father and mother not only with his talent in board games but also by his fine grades in school. Tigran differed from his classmates by treating his days in school as if they were a vacation. Sometimes he would get up late at night, tiptoe to the clock, and advance the hands by one hour, in order to get to school earlier. As he left the house, he would surreptitiously move the hands back. His elders noticed this innocent trick, but merely chuckled at it - all the more so since the boy received straight A's at school.

    Chess Kaleidoscope, CL Oct. 1962

    Addenda to the Gentle Chess Glossary

    Marshall Counterattack - An aggressive defense to the Ruy Lopez, devised by Frank J. Counterattack

    Sammy Reshevsky - A fifty-year old chess prodigy

    Ruy Lopez - A Spanish bishop, usually placed on QN5

    King's Indian Reversed - naidni sgnik

    Analysis - Irrefutable proof that you could have won a game you lost

    Blunder - A move most likely to be found in a winning position

    Weekend Tourney - A tournament for which a player travels 300-500 miles in order to be paired with players from his hometown

    Chess Kaleidoscope, CL Nov. 1962

    On Tour Behind the Iron Curtain

    The 37-day "invasion" of Communist territory by the U.S. Olympic Chess Team could be described in one sentence - "the team won an exhibition match in Warsaw 3-2, finished a rather disappointing fourth in the Olympiad at Varna and successfully competed in a rapid tournament at Belgrade" - or in a well-reasoned, solemn manuscript perhaps titled "Psychology, Government, Chess, and Life in Communist Society Today." Neither of these approached is likely to satisfy the editor and readers of Chess Life. They want to know the answers to such questions as "What happened to Bobby Fischer?", or "Is Botvinnik a nice guy?" or "Is the Red Riviera at Varna as exotic as the beach at Asbury Park, new Jersey?" Therefore, this article is partly a personal view of the countries we visited and the people we met, partly a glorified gossip column, and partly a discussion of how the selection, preparation and competitive play of future American teams might possibly be improved.

    En route - Considering all the different routes (planned and unplanned) that the U.S. team members used to reach the Olympiad, it was quite an achievement that everyone arrived at Varna in time for the first round. Larry Evans and Bobby Fischer left by separate boats a week before the departure of the main group. Evans wanted to buy a car in Paris and drive to Bulgaria, whereas Fischer arranged his own first-class boat passage so that he could enjoy the advantages of deluxe shipboard living, which included tuxedos at dinner, gourmet meals, and movies every day. The Byrne brothers, Mednis, and Hearst took KLM jets to Amsterdam and Warsaw about a week later, while Benko was scheduled for a New York-Amsterdam-Sofia flight a few days afterwards. Even at the last minute Benko remained undecided about playing; being a former Hungarian freedom fighter, he was justifiably uneasy about returning to Communist territory. By the time everyone else had left he was still the target of pleas from his relatives in America who insisted that he would be crazy to travel to a place as fiercely communistic as Bulgaria. Benko was to telegraph his final decision to the team captain in Warsaw. More about this later.

    The Byrnes, Mednis, and Hearst arrived in Amsterdam after a swift but uneventful flight. WE spent our first hour in the Amsterdam Terminal wondering just how soon Bobby Fischer, who was to catch our Amsterdam-Warsaw flight four hours later, would arrive. Bobby hadn't been heard from in over a week and we weren't sure how high living aboard the New Amsterdam would affect his punctuality. But Bobby arrived at the airport a few hours early, eager to relate his views of the differences between deluxe and tourist class aboard ship (The tourists even wear sneakers and slacks to dinner). We told him of the new FIDE decision regarding challengers for the world title; now individual matches are to be played rather than the single tournament system of the past in which Russians greatly outnumbered participants from other countries and to which Bobby had objected so strenuously. Fischer's first response on hearing the details of the new system was a comment that the individual matches are too short (How can you decide anything in ten or twelve games?), but he decided to reserve further opinion until he had spoken to his lawyer.

    Our plans were to play two exhibition matches in Warsaw, then hop a scheduled flight to Sofia and arrive in Varna two or three days early so that we could rest and prepare for the more important Olympiad. Before leaving Amsterdam we were still naive enough to believe that no problems (an expression we would later come to abhor) would arise to disrupt this well-planned schedule. Weeks later, after a little experience with communist efficiency, we came to realize that one should become apprehensive, rather than calm, when the phrases "it's no problem!" or "of course!" are used.

    Warsaw - At least ten chess officials and players were waiting for us in Warsaw with the traditional bouquet of flowers. A brief welcome, and then we were taken in several taxis through the streets of this entirely rebuilt city - 80-90% of it was destroyed in World War II - to the Grand Hotel Orbis. This city impressed us as much livelier and more colorful than, for example, the towns in Russia we had visited in the past. The store windows were attractively designed and well-stocked, the women quite fashionably dressed (many of them had dyed their hair, something we never noticed in the USSR), and there seemed to be a large number of automobiles roaming the streets.

    With several of the Polish team's younger members and international Master Casimir Plater, our official guide for the next few days, we had dinner in the hotel's Grand Ballroom, said to be the most luxurious in Warsaw. The atmosphere was that of a Western European hotel, with uniformed waiters, an orchestra that played American foxtrots as well as "Midnight in Moscow," and a wide selection of main courses on the menu. WE spent twenty minutes or so deciding what to eat; some of us chose steak, others pork and lamb, and some of us a particularly tempting fish dish. WE could have saved ourselves these twenty minutes, for after carefully copying down our order the waiters brought everybody shishkebab! The whole dinner was really very good, but some of us never recovered from this blow to our freedom of choice. WE might have protested more vigorously if we had not already waited two hours for the main course and it the meal had not looked as good as it did. WE finished dinner within four hours - not an unusual occurrence incidentally - and most of us went to sleep early to overcome the effects of travelling over 4000 miles in one day.

    As we toured the newer parts of Warsaw by car, we frequently noticed red and blue posters which announced the USA-Poland match with Arc-master Bobby Fischer to play.

    Back at the hotel we had the first report that our travel plans to Varna might not be so definite as expected. Our reservations for the Warsaw-Sofia flight that we had been scheduled to take two days later had been mishandled somehow and we were told it would be impossible to board that flight since it was completely booked up. This was the only flight to Bulgaria for a week. Would we like to accompany the Polish team by train to Varna, a 48-hour trip which brought us to Varna only hours before the opening ceremonies? WE did not relish this sort of exhausting preliminary to the Olympiad and we urged the Polish officials to continue searching for an air route to Varna. WE had the news from Benko that he had decided to go to Varna and would arrive on time.

    (The match with the Poles is described here)

    We were sure that we would have to go to Varna by train but Mr. Alpern and Mr. Plucinski at the American Embassy lent a hand and discovered that by first flying back to Zurich and then to Belgrade, we could board a flight to Sofia and arrive in Varna at least a day before the opening ceremonies at the Olympiad. Even though this rerouting would be quite expensive it seemed preferable to taking the two-day train trip and arriving completely exhausted in Varna, just in time for the opening. So, we scheduled our departure for Zurich and waited for confirmation of our Belgrade to Sofia flight. It came.

    (more complications, but then..)

    Bulgaria at Last - We finally arrived in Sofia around 1 a.m. Accompanied by a juke box playing Nat King Cole records, we ate salami and cheese sandwiches in a small restaurant and then spent the night at the Balkan Hotel. The next morning a flight was arranged for all the chess teams stranded in Sofia (the teams of Iceland, Denmark, AUSA, and Iran). After a rocky flight the Checkmate Express arrived in Varna. Through the window of our plane we saw Tal and Keres waiting at the airport. For whom, we wondered; certainly not Bobby! It wasn't for Bobby since the greetings of the Russian and American grandmasters were perfunctory. We never discovered why those Soviet starts were waiting there on that rather dreary afternoon.

    (Several more pages describing the Olympiad. The final scores of the top five were USSR 31.5, Yugoslavia 28, Argentina 26, USA 25, Hungary 23. This was the smallest margin of victory the Russians had ever enjoyed.

    A fascinating look back at the world 56 years ago, aptly described by Eliot Hearst).

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    • #3
      Re: Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

      Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

      February 18, 2018

      This appears to be the last column. Hearst did not come back in print in CL in 1966.

      Chess Kaleidoscope, CL Nov. 1964

      Kaleidoscope Seals Its Move

      Chess Kaleidoscope has been in existence for almost five years and is now forced to adjourn for at least a year. I've accepted an offer to spend a year working in London on a U.S. Government grant and sufficient time will not be available for me to continue this column. Since none of the substitutes I tried to finger were willing to take over the column during my absence, there was no alternative but to discontinue it on a regular basis. I would like to thank Chess Life readers for their many useful suggestions, constructive criticisms, and encouraging letters over the past five years. See you in 1966.
      Last edited by Wayne Komer; Sunday, 18th February, 2018, 11:37 AM.

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      • #4
        Re: Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

        Eliot's wit was one of the best and he was down to earth. I had lovely email exchanges with him over the Blindfold Chess book and over the years. I had made plans to visit him in Arizona but unfortunately they did not work out. As a life's work his Blindfold Chess History, Techniques will live on. Rest in peace Eliot.

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        • #5
          Re: Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

          Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

          May 12, 2018

          The Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club News #828 of May 11, 2018 has this:

          Eliot Hearst annotates his two games with Bobby Fischer


          The late Eliot Hearst (1932–2018) played two tournament games with Bobby Fischer, but had never annotated them until asked to do so by noted chess historian Nikolai Brunni of Honolulu in 2010, for a book he is writing on Fischer.

          We are grateful to Mr. Brunni for allowing us to present these two games with Hearst’s annotations.

          “I had been playing Bobby for two or three years before the following game took place. This was our first tournament game, as our prior games at the Marshall Chess Club and Columbia University Chess Club were all contested at very fast speeds. I believe I was able to give him rook odds in our initial games, but it soon became apparent that he was a chess genius and that someday in the near future I would no longer be able to hold my own against him. It is not well known that he used to appear occasionally at the Columbia Club after his high school classes were over for the day (or he might have failed to attend school that day at all!); Columbia’s was the only club in New York where some strong players were usually available to play on weekday afternoons….”

          See the games and annotations at:

          https://www.chessclub.org/news.php

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Eliot Hearst (1932-2018)

            If you like pawn play try to solve the diagram in section 6 (at the end) of the link above. Warning: mental gymnastics are required! but very enjoyable. (as are the Fischer - Hearst games) Great lesson on accurate promotion of pawns.

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