Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a serious chess player. He was still playing chess in 1910 at the age of 82, and was photographed playing chess just before he died. In 1855, as a young army artillery officer in the Caucasus, he was supposed to receive a medal for bravery. However, he was caught playing chess when he should have been on duty. On the day they handed out the medals, Tolstoy was under arrest for playing chess and missed getting a medal.

In 1838, the word ‘grandmaster’ was used for the first time in reference to a chess player. George Walker, writing for Bell’s Life, had a chess column, and he referred to William Lewis as ‘our past grandmaster.’ Lewis himself later referred to Philidor as a grandmaster. The term was used more commonly at the end of the 19th century. The origin of grandmaster comes from Freemasonry. In 1907, the Ostend tournament had two sections. The stronger section players were described as grandmasters, as all of them had previously won an international tournament.

In 1886, Joseph Henry Blackburne (1841-1924) walked all the way from London to Nottingham (120 miles) to play in a Counties Chess Association tournament. When he got there, he did not like the conditions and withdrew (along with Mason and Mackenzie). Blackburne then walked back home to London.

In 1968, Bill Clinton won a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford. While he was at Oxford he played chess with some of the other students. Steve Mooring was a friend of Clinton while at Oxford. They played chess regularly, but Steve said that Clinton was a poor chess player, with an estimated playing strength of 60 (British rating), or under 1100 in USCF rating. (source: CHESS, May 1994)

In 1970, Claude Frizzel Bloodgood (1937-2001) was sentenced to death for the murder of his stepmother by strangulation in 1969. While on death row, Bloodgood spent most of his time playing postal chess. The state of Virginia paid all the postage. At one point, Bloodgood had more than 2,000 postal chess games going at once. He was scheduled for execution 6 times. In 1972, his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment (the Supreme Court suspended capital punishment in the USA), which meant that his postage was no longer paid. Bloodgood had to give up most of his postal play. In 1996, his USCF rating was once 2702, the second highest player in the country (behind Gata Kamsky), due to a flaw in the rating system. While in prison, he was able to play 3,174 rated chess games, in which he won over 91% of the time. I had corresponded him about the Grob (1.g4) , but never played him.

In 1982, Florencio Campomanes (1927-2010) was elected president of the world chess federation (FIDE), with over 150 member nations. Campomanes was the first FIDE president to take a salary. In November 1995, he was ousted in midterm after it was learned that he paid $150,000 in “pensions” to himself and some friends from the FIDE treasury. In 2003, he was convicted of fraud for failure to account for funds that was entrusted to FIDE for the chess Olympiad in Manila in 1992. He was later cleared of these charges, based upon a technicality.

In 1991, Jack Collins (1912-2001) was inducted in the USCF Hall of Fame. In 1994, he was voted Chess Teacher of the Century. He has taught or coached Bobby Fischer, Bill Lombardy, Robert Byrne, Donald Byrne, Max Dlugy, Lisa Lane, Rachel Crotto, Sal Matera, Raymond Weinstein, and John Litvinchuk.

Dustin Diamond (born in 1977), who played Screech in Saved By the Bell from 1988 to 2000, was once rated 1369. His last rated tournament was in 1999. He has a collection of over 3,000 chess books. He was once in a band called Salty the Pocketknife, whose dummer, Evan Stone, is also a good chessplayer. In 2001, he directed and starred in an instructional chess video called “Dustin Diamond Teaches Chess.

In 1996, WGM Irina Levitina (born in 1954), playing for the USA, won the World Women’s Team championship in bridge. She has won the contract bridge world championship five times. She is ranked number 3 in the world among women bridge players. In 1984, she was the World Women’s Chess Championship Challenger, but lost to Maia Chiburdanidze in their title match. She was Soviet Women’s champion 4 times.

In 1994, an all-blind team participated for the first time a chess Olympiad, the 31st chess Olympiad held in Moscow. The team represented the International Blind Chess Association (IBCA). The IBCA has had a blind team in every chess Olympiad since 1994. Their best year was in 1998, when they took 52nd place out of 110 countries.

– Bill Wall

Tags: chess trivia

Tags: chess trivia
Posted by bill AT Monday, September 17th, 2012