1947 Chess

In reading through "Chess Review" 1947, I came across the coverage for the US Open played in Corpus Christi, Texas.  The tournament had 86 participants and was won by Issac Kashdan. But one photo was intriguing:

Jayne Gibson wasn't a prodigy.  In fact she scored 2.0 pts. and placed 76th, winning two games, one from 75th place A.J.Girard and one from 85th place C.A.Williamson. Rather preposterously, in her first game she was pitted against Kashan himself.  She lost.  But what a brave girl!

Five years ago she was mentioned in a "Chess Life" (Nov. 2007) review of that tournament.  At that time she was 73 and was working as a hospice nurse.

Here are some more cropped photos from that tournament:

The man observed by Miss Gibson is none other than Larry Evans

I was surprised too.  I guess it wasn't as big back then.  Maybe because it was so close to WWII or maybe traveling was difficult. I think Miss Gibson lived nearby, she's from Robstown, Texas.

'Who' cares? ...

'Who's' on first?

So how many rounds was it back then?

It's very nice to see some historical info about Chess.

Apparently no one with allergies...

Well, you might find it interesting to know that the Canadian Champion, Abe Yanofski tied for second place with Anthony Santasiere.

Thanks for the info, I believe that Yanofski lived in Winnipeg ( also sometimes called Winterpeg in jest  lol ).

I'm not quite sure.  I do know that despite the seemingly low number of contestants, it was a record number at that time and, because of that, the open introduced using the swiss system for the first time (formerly it had been all round-robins).  Here are the results of the top winners, maybe you can deduce something from that.  I might could, but chess and math have no correlation other than I'm  good at neither.

Looks like thirteen games apiece.

You may be interested in this posting of mine from years ago about the Yanofskis

wow. How did you guess that??

Here's another photo from the article.

It's also interesting to note that Alphonso Ferriz of Mexico (see the top winners above) owed one of his losses to Mary Bain!

well, you just add the winning / losing scores together and you will always get to 13.

I would like to know more about Ms. Gibson. How did she qualify for such a high class event? And scoring 2 points in such a tournament also means something in my book. The tournament was attended by quite a few strong players, such as Edward Lasker (not related to Emanuel Lasker)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lasker

It was a U.S. Open ... open to anyone who paid the entry fee, I magine.  Apparenly being a U.S. citizen or a USCF member (though few states were affiliated with the USCF back then) mattered not at all.  The 10 players who scored lower than Miss Gibson all scored 0 wins. Miss Gibson is now Mrs. Jayne Creasy, still of Texas.

lol

Zounds!  There's that name again (he also played the Najdorf way back in 1926).

I read the 2007 article. Very interesting, batgirl. btw, have you ever researched the first US Women's Championships?