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Under the Shadow of the Golden Gate
This is an essay by Jacob Zusmanovich in chess-news.ru for July 11, 2014
http://www.chess-news.ru/node/16021
It deals with chess in the Bay Area of San Francisco and, though in Russian, is quite readable if you use google translate.
There are almost three dozen photos of players, locales and chess books.
It starts with the Mechanic’s Institute and mentions in passing John Donaldson, Walter Browne and the 18-year-old Daniel Naroditsky.
In the photo given Daniel looks ridiculously youthful. And yet he has two big books to his credit – Mastering Positional Chess (2010) and Mastering Complex Endgames (2012), both New in Chess, and is writing a third. Having graduated from high school, he enters Stanford next year!
Then there is a description of the San Francisco GM Invitational Tournament that ran June 5 - June 11, 2014. All grandmasters were born in the Soviet Union and now live in other countries:
Lev Alburt (USA)
Arshak Petrosyan (Armenia)
Adrian Mikhalchishin (Slovenia)
Mikhail Gurevich (Turkey)
Gennady Zaitchik (USA)
Irina Krush (USA)
Masha Klinova (Israel)
Evgeny Sveshnikov (Latvia)
There is a discussion of Bogatyrchuk, Lev Alburt and Soviet censorship.
Lev Alburt (1945- ) was born in Orenburg, Russia. He won the Ukrainian Chess Championship in 1972, 1973, and 1974. He became a Grandmaster in 1977. He taught in Odessa until 1979, when he defected to the United States. In 1979, while playing for Russia in a tournament in West Germany, Alburt drove to the police station and announced he wanted to defect to the United States. In 1979, a Russian chess book was published of a tournament in Kiev in which Alburt was 5th of 16 players. Because of his defection, the book was published with all of Alburt’s games omitted. There was also no cross table or index. The players who played Alburt were given a bye in the book, either a win or a loss or a draw according to what their score was against Alburt.
The tournament book is Kiev International by the journalist Marusenko and master Peresypkina, published by Zdorov in 1980. If you are a tournament book collector, it is an oddity to have one with a “ghost” as one of the participants to show to friends. I appear to have a copy in my collection, which cost me $8 in 2013. If I could ever find it I would give you further details.
Gennady Sosonko drops by, Platonov’s Chess Academy is discussed…
What started off as an essay on chess in the Bay Area ends up as a discussion of chess in the old Soviet Union. Still it’s worth a look.
This is an essay by Jacob Zusmanovich in chess-news.ru for July 11, 2014
http://www.chess-news.ru/node/16021
It deals with chess in the Bay Area of San Francisco and, though in Russian, is quite readable if you use google translate.
There are almost three dozen photos of players, locales and chess books.
It starts with the Mechanic’s Institute and mentions in passing John Donaldson, Walter Browne and the 18-year-old Daniel Naroditsky.
In the photo given Daniel looks ridiculously youthful. And yet he has two big books to his credit – Mastering Positional Chess (2010) and Mastering Complex Endgames (2012), both New in Chess, and is writing a third. Having graduated from high school, he enters Stanford next year!
Then there is a description of the San Francisco GM Invitational Tournament that ran June 5 - June 11, 2014. All grandmasters were born in the Soviet Union and now live in other countries:
Lev Alburt (USA)
Arshak Petrosyan (Armenia)
Adrian Mikhalchishin (Slovenia)
Mikhail Gurevich (Turkey)
Gennady Zaitchik (USA)
Irina Krush (USA)
Masha Klinova (Israel)
Evgeny Sveshnikov (Latvia)
There is a discussion of Bogatyrchuk, Lev Alburt and Soviet censorship.
Lev Alburt (1945- ) was born in Orenburg, Russia. He won the Ukrainian Chess Championship in 1972, 1973, and 1974. He became a Grandmaster in 1977. He taught in Odessa until 1979, when he defected to the United States. In 1979, while playing for Russia in a tournament in West Germany, Alburt drove to the police station and announced he wanted to defect to the United States. In 1979, a Russian chess book was published of a tournament in Kiev in which Alburt was 5th of 16 players. Because of his defection, the book was published with all of Alburt’s games omitted. There was also no cross table or index. The players who played Alburt were given a bye in the book, either a win or a loss or a draw according to what their score was against Alburt.
The tournament book is Kiev International by the journalist Marusenko and master Peresypkina, published by Zdorov in 1980. If you are a tournament book collector, it is an oddity to have one with a “ghost” as one of the participants to show to friends. I appear to have a copy in my collection, which cost me $8 in 2013. If I could ever find it I would give you further details.
Gennady Sosonko drops by, Platonov’s Chess Academy is discussed…
What started off as an essay on chess in the Bay Area ends up as a discussion of chess in the old Soviet Union. Still it’s worth a look.