Claude Bloodgood. What a crazy, wild story! They should make a movie about that.
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At one point he was playing 2,000 correspondence games at a time. It reminds me of that Snickers commercial where it asks: "Gonna be a while? Grab a Snickers". But in this case: Gonna be a while? Play 2,000 postal games at a time! But hey, he qualified and played in the u.s. postal championship. He made it that far.
The book King's Gambit by Hoffman (a story, not opening book) goes into depth about Bloodgood and his tale. The author talks to his sister to try and sort fact from fiction. All the hollywood and Nazi stuff is bogus, but still a fascinating character in the chess world.
I should mention that the book isn't about Bloodgood, but has a couple chapters about him.
It kind of did: lung cancer.
paulgottlieb wrote:
The problem with a movie about Bloodgood is that he seems to have been a thoroughly repulsive character in every way. The audience will spend the entire movie hoping that a building falls on him.
+1
They'd have to loosely base it on him... throw in some international intrigue... a model love interest... genius villain with disfigured face... etc.
I guess he'd be the ugly villain.
Dr. Evil.
paulgottlieb wrote:
The problem with a movie about Bloodgood is that he seems to have been a thoroughly repulsive character in every way. The audience will spend the entire movie hoping that a building falls on him.
Sounds like a great cinema noir move!
People don't have to smoke or even be around it to get lung cancer.
there was a great new article on criminal chess players today on chess.com. bloodgood was mentioned and there are a few of his games on there as well.. what a unique style of play. im very intrigued by this guy
i learned about bloodgood from this blog
What blog?
I just heard his name this morning when I was reading a thread about comparing different rating systems and I decided to read about him. WOW! What a story. Its hard to tell if its all factual. I mean with the whole doubt about his real birth year, the Nazi spy business and playing chess with Hemmler, Clark Gable and other famous people. Being married to a Hollywood actress, etc. Its hard to believe all of it. I certainly believe the part about killing his mom and getting the death sentence. Then the state changed it to life in prison. He becomes this supposedly amazing GM level player in prison with a uscf rating of 2702 (cough BS cough) by playing a bunch of non masters, beginners, and otherwise weak players. His being allowed a one day furlough to go play in a real otb rated tournament AND ESCAPING!! He was like: to hell with the chess tournament, screw that, Im outta here! OMG what a bunch of morons the VA state prison system was. Checkmate, Claude wins. Kind of, until they caught him. Amazing story. That would make a heck of a movie.