Word: chess
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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...
During flights, passengers wander up and down the aisles talking, drinking and listening to piped-in rock music; Pong machines, backgammon and chess boards, and a giant denim pillow are strewn about the plane, which has no class sections. Stewardesses and stewards, who walk and talk like real people, wear ultra-violet Flash Gordon-type outfits and berets with the black and white Freelandia insignia of an open hand. What's more, they remain in their original clothes throughout the flight, thus eliminating those strange airborne fashion shows...
...players who filed into Chess City's smoke-filled second-floor loft on Manhattan's Upper West Side last week ranged in age from six to 50. With the persistent chutzpah of the true chess buff, each one figured he was the equal of a grand master; and each one plunked down $25 for the right to trade gambits with Boris Spassky, the former world champion. The simultaneous matches quickly turned into a boisterous chess happening. Six-year-old Robert le Donne bounced in toting his schoolbag; another player brought along a sustaining bottle of borsch; a third...