Maurice Ashley interview
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Originally posted by Hans Jung View Post
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You are welcome. In November of 2016 I spent the whole month at the St. Louis club. After one of his commentary sessions I caught Maurice by surprise but we ended up having a ten minute chat. The thing is it wasnt just any old conversation, he wanted to know who I was, where I was from and what strength player I was. When I told him I was Fide master but not strong - just 2200, he said hold on thats quite an achievement - 2300 is a darn strong player. He made an effort to get to know me. I'll always cherish that.
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Originally posted by Hans Jung View PostYou are welcome. In November of 2016 I spent the whole month at the St. Louis club. After one of his commentary sessions I caught Maurice by surprise but we ended up having a ten minute chat. The thing is it wasnt just any old conversation, he wanted to know who I was, where I was from and what strength player I was. When I told him I was Fide master but not strong - just 2200, he said hold on thats quite an achievement - 2300 is a darn strong player. He made an effort to get to know me. I'll always cherish that.
Also, the man is quite accomplished, but he's more interested in others than in speaking about himself, cool!
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I first met Maurice at Columbus 1987, PanAmerican Intercollegiate Team Championship, hosted by Ohio State University. He was playing board one for City College of New York, where he drew with Queen's University's board one Maher Saleh. I was board four for Queen's. Maurice was then a National Master, very well spoken, polite, and clearly highly intelligent and ambitious. Maher was then rated 2016, but had a strong event, and was over 2300 within a couple of years. CCNY narrowly won our match; incidentally, that school may have produced more GMs than any other American college, such as GM Isaac Kashdan (1905-85) and GM Reuben Fine (1914-93), both world-class players in their peak days. And now Maurice, the first Black GM in the U.S.
I encountered Maurice again at Minneapolis 2005, where he was the key organizer for the HB Global Challenge, and I was an Arbiter on the tournament staff, one of two for the U2200 section. His time was very much in demand then, but we spoke for a few minutes. He remembered me, but was unsure from precisely where! I reminded him, and then he remembered, with a big smile! He thanked me for travelling from Canada to support his event. And I congratulated him on his wonderful success!! At the time the HB had the largest guaranteed prize fund in chess history, at $500k U.S., with about 1,500 players, on its first hosting. It wound up being the only time it was held. Las Vegas has since broken the prize fund record. A very well run event!!
Frank Dixon
NTD, Kingston
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