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St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 149

Location:
St. Louis, Missouri
Issue Date:
Page:
149
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

CHESS WHIZ continued 1 tj Thinnest cracklfest brittle you ever ate! (Just try it and see) Sophie FeanutW always fresh never sficky ALONE in rectangle, Bobby takes on more than 20 good rise fo fame, Bobby still dresses casually. Note his dungarees chess players at one time. He defeated them all. Despite his and shirt in contrast to opponents' business suits and ties. Bobby has taken on as many as 30 challengers at once at $1 apiece crammed wirn peanuts Costs so little at supermarket, drug and variety stores Al HaMoweea te nice nova on band far Trick ar Traatl Sophie Mae Candy Atlanta, and Uvtngslon, N.J.

Watch daily editions of this newspaper for prices and local news about products and services advertised in Parade standing inside a rectangle and playing as many as 20 matches at once. The curious Bobby sat down at a board and made a move. A few minutes later Pavey had forgotten about the other players and was concentrating hard on beating Bobby. He did, but it took him 1 5 minutes a long time for an international master against an 8-year-old who'd played only a few games in his life. A teacher of chess, Carmen Nigro, witnessed the game.

Impressed, he offered to teach Bobby. Within a few years Bobby was beating Nigro regularly. By 1956, now a member of the Manhattan Chess Club, he had tied for fourth in the U.S. Open and won the National Junior Championship the youngest titleholder in history. This glittering record earned him a bid to the Lessing J.

Rosenwald tournament, the top test of U.S. chess to which only six to 12 of the top players are invited. He was beaten several times but, playing against the only man in the tournament to defeat Reshevsky, Bobby won. "I never saw any game played better," says referee Hans Kmoch. "It was the game of the century." Bobby finished eighth in the tournament, but won the coveted prize for bril- liancy.

Among those finishing behind him was Max Pavey, his library opponent of seven years earlier. Last summer Bobby scored his greatest triumph, winning the U.S. Open Chess championship at Cleveland. He defeated the best American players with the exception of Reshevsky and Larry Evans, neither of whom competed. In the next few months, some experts believe, Bobby may prove himself the equal of them both.

Money for His Mother Right now, though, he must start doing better in his school work and try to help out his hard-working mother. To make money, he has taken on as many as 30 challengers simultaneously at $1 a challenger. But such games, he says, "don't produce good chess. They're just hard on your feet." Recently his chess playing has started to produce bigger dividends. He won $750 for winning the Open, $125 in another tournament.

This, he says, will help him toward his goal: the chess championship of the world. How long will it take him? Says the cocksure Bobby about a crown that some men have spent a lifetime chasing: "I guess maybe 10 years." board always near his bed to practice on. Blond and on the thin side, Bobby away from chess is much like any teenager. He's wild about blueberry pie, the Dodgers, baseball, basketball and plaid shirts. He listens to rock 'n' roll records for hours on end.

So far, he has shied away from girls and dancing. (1 and a Rainy Afternoon He's cocky about his chess. Once he played Samuel Reshevsky, the balding little accountant who's been the king of U.S. chess since 1936. The experienced Reshevsky, 46, polished off Bobby, then 13, with Little trouble.

But afterwards he told a bystander: "The boy is brilliant; hell go far." Bobby, meanwhile, was pointing out to anyone who would listen how Reshevsky had missed moves that would have ended the game sooner. What amazes old chess hands is that Bobby has been playing the complex game less than eight years. His sister Joan had bought a $1 set to while away a rainy afternoon; she and her 6-year-old brother played a few games, but he was only mildly interested. Two years later he walked into the Brooklyn Public Library he's a voracious reader and saw Max Pavey, an international chess master, Brighter Shines ih Covers up scropes and scuff narks like mogicl Gives shoes deeper shine, richer color! Keeps leather "alive," new-look longerl 10 Caters ussi Neutral Mm Uejoid WWte KIWI IKII-WIII 88 Poroee Oct. 27, 1957.

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About St. Louis Post-Dispatch Archive

Pages Available:
4,206,223
Years Available:
1849-2024