Word: chess
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There are really only two types of chessplayers. There are the masters, grand, international and otherwise, and then there are the patzers. The patzers are the people who fill out the minor leagues of chess--people like your kindly old uncle who taught you the moves when you were eight years old. People who claim to play for fun, not blood...
...spent part of my childhood expecting to be a master, but I turned out a patzer all the same. At first, I thought chess was some strange ritual, played only by my father and the close relatives who visited us on special occasions. But once my father saw fit to teach me the moves, I began to progress rapidly. My book learning was limited to a book by Fred Reinfield, which outlined the moves, and a few of Reinfields's favorite mates...
...pawn opening, undertaken on Reinfields's advice, I would launch into an attack trying to win a few pieces. By third grade, I had mastered the rudiments of the knight fork. By fourth grade, I was pondering the implications of the pin. For a while, I met with success--chess became a way for a runt to get back at the world...
...stinks!" every time they made a move) I began to drop behind the other prodigies on the block. While they were plumbing the mystical depths of Reti's opening, I still thought the Sicilian Defense exotic. And my parents were no help--never providing a proper home environment for chess study...
...only when I reached junior high that I became aware of my ignorance. I made captain of the Simon Baruch Junior High School 104 chess team with ease, but when we began to participate in city-wide tournaments my bubble burst. In eleventh grade our team--me on first board and my friend Harry Chun on second--met down at the roomy old McAlpin Hotel on 34th St. and 8th Ave. in New York...