Chess Tales

I often don't know from day to day what I'm going to write here. Today I was all set to post some interesting information about possible buried treasure and a "mysterious" Dead Sea Scroll (cue spooky music, wooohooowoooh....) but then it occurred to me - duh - that I should write instead about the two interesting conversations I had today about chess! The first one was over lunch with a friend, Karryn. As often happens in a conversation, I don't recall how exactly how the topic of chess came up. I found myself talking to Karryn, who is nearly 20 years younger than I, about Alina Markowski, who began playing tournament chess back in the 1950's, and the incident at the unnamed chess tournament that took place in Milwaukee (our home town) in 1973, where a male player objected to playing against a woman. When told he would be disqualified from the event if he did not play Ms. Markowski, he showed up for the game, played one move, and then left, ceding the point to Ms. Markowski. Karryn was shocked by the blatantly sexist behavior that Ms. Markowski experienced, and wanted to know more about women chessplayers. I gave her some background on the history of the dominance of the Soviet chessplayers, and that led to the history about the Cold War confrotation between Fischer and Spassky, and that led into the Polgar sisters and their eventual "connection" with Fischer after Fischer became a "persona non grata" in his own country. She hadn't heard about any of this and, amazingly enough, I could tell she was fascinated and very interested in what I was telling her (guess I'm a good storyteller). She was particularly interested in the Polgar sisters. At the time the Polgars were making headlines in New York in the 1980's, Karryn (who is the same age as Susan Polgar) was in high school and caught up in all the social life and activities of the typical teenager of that era with the advantages of an upper middle-class upbringing. New York and its news coverage of chess events, and even the Polgar sisters on the covers of nationally distributed news magazines may as well have been on the other side of the moon as far as Milwaukee was concerned! I gave Karryn a little background on the sisters and the problems and issues that Susan Polgar faced as she grew up and wanted to play in "men's" tournaments under the closed Communist system that ruled in Hungary that wanted her to be the next great women's champion, and about Judit Polgar; I told her about Gata Kamsky and about watching Judit's last Candidates' Match game on the computer a week ago Saturday morning, the one she lost, the one that sent her back home to Hungary $40,000 richer (we had a laugh about that). Karryn was surprised to learn that Judit Polgar is the only woman player among the top players in the world - why aren't there more, she wanted to know. She was also surprised to learn that the Polgar sisters are all mothers of young children! As we rode up in the elevator and walked to our respective offices, she mentioned that her oldest daughter, who is 11 and a soccer nut (and very good player), learned how to play chess recently when she accompanied a friend to the local YMCA where a chess club meets, and was taught the game. She liked it, but as her daughter's friend has moved away and Karryn's family does not have a membership at the Y, her daughter probably won't play chess again. As I ducked into my office, I said that many schools now offer after-school scholastic programs. I could tell by the look on Karryn's face that she was thinking "oh yeah, great, just what I need, one MORE activity to shuttle the kids around to..." Later in the afternoon, Judith dropped by to rummage in the dish of snack-size chocolate bars and "Nips" I keep available for anyone in need of a chocolate and/or sugar fix, and we chatted. Judith is an elegant woman about 11 years older than I. She dresses "just so," is perfectly coiffed and speaks with a precise mid-eastern seaboard accent that has not quite disappeared even after all these years. When we aren't discussing the bain of conservative politics, or laughing over the latest silliness of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, we talk about museums, art, opera, and the latest best-sellers on The New York Times list. My goddess, I sound like a horrid snob, don't I. Again, I don't recall precisely how the subject came up, but seemingly all of a sudden I was talking about the Goddesschess website, and Chess Femme News, and this blog, the research we do, the online chess I play, the chess that Don and I have played and how I've been teaching my grand-nephews to play chess, - I half-jokingly called it "My Secret Life." For just for a nano-second, Judith looked taken aback. And then her eyes lit up and she said "oh my" and waved her hand "just so" and laughed. She asked me if I had ever seen the movie "Searching for - oh, what's his name" and I said "Bobby Fischer," and she said "yes!," and that unleashed a torrent of discussion about the charming movie, about the back-drop of the entire Cold War "confrontation" in the Fischer-Spassky match (something with which Judith was perfectly familiar, having been an adult at the time); then I mentioned the book, and that led to another 10 minutes of discussion, and then to a whole set of remembrances on her part - things we'd never discussed before in our five years of working together. Judith's father taught her (and all her siblings) to play chess when she was 4 or 5 so, as she put it, "he would have someone to play with." He used the same method to teach them that I'm using to teach my grand-nephews how to play (probably the wrong way to teach chess) - teaching how the pieces move and then allowing generous "take back" of moves until they reach a certain level of what passes for "chess competency" in patzers like us. She knew exactly what I meant when I explained that I am not a good player because, in order to become good at chess, one must devote time to studying, unrelenting study... Judith attended college at the University of Minnesota, majoring in musical studies. As part of this major, she spent two months every summer at New York's Julliard School of Music. One semester, as part of an "inter-cultural" exchange with the Russians in 1958, while I remember standing in the yard with my daddy, who was pointing up into the night sky trying to show me what "Sputnik" was, Judith and a small group of her fellow students were freezing their butts off at a "dormatory" at the University of Moscow. In the evenings, she and her fellow exchange students would play chess with the locals at a small chess club close by. We had a good laugh about that because of course the Russians were so much better players than the bourgeoise capitalist Americans (Pigs). Judith said she played and played in that unrelenting cold, and didn't win a single game. Until one night. She didn't remember his name, and she barely remembers what he looked like, and she thinks he was about 20. She pulled a checkmate out of "nowhere" and in her last move triumphantly called out at the club "MATE!" The player gave her such a look. A split-second later, she realized she had made a terrible mistake in calling out her triumph so. Judith said that afterward, she was so unnerved by the experience that she didn't win another game and shortly thereafter, she didn't play another chess game. Shocked, I said "Judith, you've never played another game of chess since Moscow?" She said "oh, I got over it eventually," and she waved her hand "just so." Judith took another piece of chocolate out of the candy dish and headed down the hall and I turned back to my computer screen. It was time to get back to work. I have to laugh now, recalling the expression on Karryn's face when I was recounting the Markowski story, and my own internal reaction to hers - the truth is I was shocked by her shock! Has she experienced so much less sexism and discrimination than her contemporary, Susan Polgar? I graduated from high school the year SP and Karryn were born (1969). Could the 17 year gap in our ages account for such a difference in Karryn's and my perceptions - in our experiences? We didn't get into that (we'd already talked an hour and 15 minutes and had to get back to the office), but after thinking about it on the ride home tonight, I believe I found at least a partial answer to what seems to be such a gap between Karryn's and my generations, and why I knew that Judith understood exactly what I was talking about, almost without the words coming out of my mouth, and why I understand exactly what it was Judith was conveying, without she ever saying it.