Spin...spin...spin

No, this post is not about the Democratic Convention.

Today was one of those curious days that go by in a flash, leaving no substantive residue. It seems I ran around work all day like a crazy person, but for the life of me, I have no idea what the heck I accomplished. That sound you hear is the grinding of the gears that are spinning...spinning...spinning.

I started as I usually do Mondays, reviewing the status reports from the folks who report to me. Then I compile my own report, and sent it to my boss. Last week, if truth be known, was pretty ambitious, work-wise, but I fell short in a couple of places.

At any rate, I have a new set of goals for this week, and today didn't get me too far along on any of them, with the exception of the discussion this afternoon on various export control issues.

That kind of discussion though, on a subject that makes nailing jelly to a tree seem easy simply by comparison, gives me a headache. The area of export control seems to be a black swamp, and the rules and regs don't really point out any clear way through the bogland.

On the home front, I went for a walk around the neighborhood this evening after dinner. This was the longest such walk I've done since winter, and I need to do this kind of thing more often if I am to lose some of that `extra' weight that's been dogging me.

Cheers...

A story with a Sicilian ending...(as in Sicilian Defense)

I suppose this really doesn't fit in as a journal entry, as it's more of a memoir, but on the other hand, it does happen to be what I'm thinking about on this day...

In cleaning out some of the junk that's accumulated in the corners of my life, I ran across an article by Jerry Kantor in the August 25, 1975 issue of the village VOICE noting the passing of Nicholas Rossolimo, who had died on July 24 of that year as a result of massive head injuries that occurred when he fell down a flight of stairs in his apartment building on West 10th Street.

Rossolimo was a chess grandmaster of the old school. He picked up many "best played game" awards in his lifetime, and his embrace of an ethic of beauty in chessplay made him somewhat of an anachronism even during the time that I knew him, briefly.

He'd left Russia way back when, and had lived in France between 1929 and 1952, when he emigrated to the United States. Given how popular chess has always been in this country, he had no difficulty finding a job as a taxi driver in New York - a job he worked at for 15 years while he ran a chess studio on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village. There, he'd play you for a couple of bucks an hour, as well as anyone else who'd care to sit down and sharpen their chess skill...at the same time...as in `simultaneously'. Rossolimo raised no more of a sweat dealing with ten people than he did with one. Then again, if you liked, you could play against another customer for about fifty cents per hour.

I don't remember the first time I went to Rossolimo's studio on Sullivan Street; it seems it was about 2-3 years before it moved over a block to Thompson. All I remember for certain was that I thought it was pretty incongruous that a chess grandmaster - one of maybe 100 people in the world at the time - had actually hung out a shingle and, in effect, was offering to teach all comers the niceties of the incredibly violent game of chess. Prior to visiting the studio, I'd never actually met a chess grandmaster (nor master) in the flesh, though I'd seen a couple at tournaments.

The shop was small and crowded with playing tables, arranged in a circle so that Rossolimo could roll around from board to board on a special chair. There were various sets on display for sale, sets that only a collector could love (real players stick with the Staunton pattern). There was a bookshelf with a variety of offerings, most published by Dover at a time before the comparative explosion of chess publication. English Descriptive notation ruled, though I, apparently, even then was falling under the influence of the now nearly universal algebraic notation. As far as Rossolimo himself was concerned, I remember a thin, quiet man, generally dressed in a suit, who seemed to be everywhere at once inside the confines of his studio.

I seem to remember that one of my early visits occurred just after the New Year, at the time that Orthodox believers - such as the Rossolimos - celebrated Christmas (January 6th, if memory serves). His wife, a jolly, short, plump lady, was cooking on an electric hot plate and I was the only customer in the shop, so they invited me to sit down with them and break bread.

I was interviewing for my job in the Soviet Union at about the time that Rossolimo began play in the 1975 World Open, which had become one of the premier tournaments of the time. Over 800 players had entered, and when the dust had cleared, 65-year-old Nicholas Rossolimo walked away with 3rd prize and $1000. The Kantor article notes that his play during that tournament displayed the romantic verve and eloquent, clean combinational play that had characterized games played earlier in his career. I might add that, though chess has a reputation as an "old man's game," it is nothing of the sort, and Rossolimo's performance was nothing short of, well, marvelous.

Chess, at a high level, requires a great deal of stamina. That's because, as I mentioned before, it's a violent game where each side tries to destroy the other. Since chess is not an ostensibly physical sport, such as hockey or boxing, where limitations must be put on players lest they literally kill one another, players are free to devote all of their mental energy toward the merciless destruction of their enemy. The result can be seen in the form of quickened pulse, heightened blood pressure, and overclocking of half a dozen other biological systems. Recall how drained you felt after a major exam such as the SAT, and that should give you an idea of how one feels after a hard-fought chess game. Now imagine doing that two or three times a day over a three-day weekend, and you'll quickly understand why chess - for blood - is a young person's sport.

As I sit here, it's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since he died. A bit more rummaging brought to light an old score book of mine. Stuck in there, on the kind of brown paper that's used for grocery bags and autographed by Rossolimo himself, I found the score of one of the Grandmaster's "lessons" with me, played in January 1974.
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Here is that game (in quasi-PGN format):

[Date "1974.01.?"]
[White "Nicholas Rossolimo"]
[Black "AlexPGP"]
[Result "1-0"]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 c:d4 4.N:d4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 e5? 7.Nb3 Be6 8.O-O Be7 9.Be3 O-O 10.a4 Qc7 11.Nd5 N:d5 12.e:d5 Bf5 13.c4 Nd7 14.Qd2 Rac8 15.Na5 Nc5 16.b4 Ne4 17.Qe1 Bg5 18.B:g5 N:g5 19.Rc1 Qe7 20.Qc3 h5?! {This is deliberate. I want to open up the h-file and start attacking down toward the White King.} 21.B:h5 g6 22.Be2 Kg7 23.f4 Ne4 24.Qb2 Rh8 25.f:e5 d:e5 {White now has a passed pawn.} 26.Bf3 R:h2! {Here I go, trying a Rook sacrifice against a GM!} 27.B:e4 B:e4 28.K:h2 Qh4+ 29.Kg1 Rh8 30.Q:e5+ Kg8? {Suicidal. This allows...} 31.Qe8+ Kg7 32.R:f7+ (1-0)

Cheers...