...And BTW, the only book I ever read about it was Yasser's splash called No Regrets. I laffed all the way thru it....except when Duncan annotated. Duncan's stuff is pretty serious. Yasser's totally hilarious !
I'd heard it's a great book, but I didn't know it was also funny. I'll have to give it a read one of these days.
I'd ship it to u if I still had it, but I'm almost positive I already gave it away.
Alotta ppl don't know this, but YS actually made a major sports magazine write-up many years ago when he was dancing nites away across this slingshot stone. I have come to the conclusion that he's 1a the best things to ever come along for chess.
Here's the magazine cover:
And the article titled, "Yasser, That's My Baby !"
Seirawan was rated a senior master when he left Garfield, and he had already made a small impression in chess circles. In the 1975 U.S. Open at Lincoln, Neb., he had beaten his first grandmaster, Arthur Bisguier, to applause. "I almost fell off the stage," he says. When he got home, all excited, and told his mother how well he had done, she said, "How much did you win?" "Ah, thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents," he said. "Are you sure you're not going to college?" Margaret asked. Of course not. He had become a chess master. He was learning the wrinkles as he went, the ways of the psych, of chess. In an early round at Lincoln he sat down to play a fellow who displayed a disconcertingly toothy smile. "In the middle game, his game goes sour, and the smile becomes a grin," Seirawan says. "Then he gets into time trouble, and he begins to gnash his teeth. Then we're both in time trouble. Finally, at a really critical moment in the game, he reaches up and takes out his teeth and sticks them in a glass of water. I'd never seen teeth like that in my life!" There they were, sitting in the glass and smiling. "My clock is ticking, time is running out and I can't get those teeth out of my sight. Oh, man.... But I got him!"
The former pinball hustler of Virginia Beach was hardly a newcomer to the con himself. Right out of high school, he traveled to New York to make a killing. Dressed in safari shorts with 12 pockets and a tank top decorated with spider webs, he swooped down on Times Square—the Seattle Kid disguised as a surfer. Seirawan was by then a very good blitz, or speed, chess player—a game in which the time allowed for moves is minuscule and the competitor who thinks the best and quickest wins.
Between the street hustlers he took for $5 a pop and the sharks he took for $10 a game in the now-defunct New York Chess and Checkers Club, he left Times Square that first day with his 12 pockets bulging—$800 in all, counting side bets. Playing blitz chess for money may appear a prostitution of the chess player's skills, like a pianist's performing Bach in ragtime, but many great players pride themselves on their blitzing skills. "It sharpens your knowledge of tactics," Seirawan says. "Combinations, pins, mating attacks and traps." Blitz games quicken a player's powers of perception and his ability to quickly analyze the fields of force and positions on the board.
In 1979, Seirawan won the World Junior Championship in Norway, beating the best under-21 players from 56 countries, and automatically became an international master, which gave him an entree to grandmaster tournaments. It was the most important victory in his career to that point. "From there on, everything else was gravy," Seirawan says. "Now I was invited to premier tournaments because I had this title and it's prestigious for organizers to say that they had the world junior champ in their tournament."
It helped get him to Wijk aan Zee, Holland the following January, where he gained his greatest triumph to that date. The place crawled with grandmasters. Seirawan won his first game, and in his second faced none other than Korchnoi. Less than two years before, Korchnoi had failed by a single point, 6-5, to beat Karpov for the world title, in Baguio City, the Philippines. It had been less than three years since Seirawan had been playing first board for Garfield High.
Seirawan often begins telling a story by saying, "Dig this scenario...." So dig this one. Korchnoi shows up late for the game. Sitting down, he says to Seirawan, "Excuse me, I'm late, I'm sorry." Seirawan says it's O.K., but he's a bit awed. "This was like the rookie coming into the NFL," he recalls. "People were licking their chops when they saw me coming. I was 19." Then they begin play.
"Luck, luck, luck," Seirawan now says of that match. "You can be lucky. I'm unknown to the guy. So he decides to play a second-rate defense to improve his offensive chances. Heh! This defense is the one and only thing I know like the back of my hand. He falls right into it. Like into all my preparation, all my traps! I knew it from a lot of blitz games. I spring an opening novelty; I sacrifice two pawns; I whip out a kingside attack and make a space." Voilà!
Korchnoi resigned on the 39th move. A bit stunned, he offered his hand. "Congratulations," he said. "Good game." No doubt the last thing Korchnoi wanted to do was sit and gab with this child from Seattle. Seirawan suspected that Korchnoi really wanted to go back to his room and chew up his sofa. But Seirawan offered him some popcorn anyway. "Gee, Viktor, you want to go over the game?" How could Korchnoi refuse? They repaired to an analysis room and went over it, move by move.
Korchnoi grew curious. "What would you have done if I'd taken your knight here?" he asked.
"You know, Viktor, I expected that," said Seirawan. They played variations, and each time Seirawan exposed the weakness in Korchnoi's idea. Seirawan was lucky. However Korchnoi figured it, Seirawan knew the moves. The grandmaster had fallen into Seirawan's pet line.
The tournament at Wijk aan Zee became Seirawan's advertisement for himself. He beat not only Korchnoi, but also the grandmasters Jan Timman and Lev Alburt. Throughout the competition, Seirawan found Korchnoi approaching him and asking him about the positions in other games. "What do you think of the Timman game?" Korchnoi asked him once. Seirawan looked at the board. "Boy, it sure looks like he could move his knight to king-bishop six." To which Korchnoi replied, "Hmm, that's what I was thinking."
Seirawan's finest moment came in his efficiently designed victory over Gudmunder Jonsson, yet another grandmaster. Talk about knight-leaps. Playing white, Seirawan brought his queen's knight across the board in three leaps to join in a kingside attack on Jonsson's position. While Jonsson was moving about like Custer at Little Bighorn, Seirawan brought out his queen on the 21st move, ready to join the attack. She looked innocent enough then, but by the 26th move, when Seirawan pushed her into the fray, she had Bette Davis eyes. Seirawan made another knight-leap, slipped Bette inside, sacrificed the knight and then rushed a rook to its doom. Bette takes pawn, check, mate! Or as Fischer was wont to say, "Crunch! Splat! Pow!"
Jonsson resigned on the next move, his 30th. They brought out a bottle of champagne to celebrate the moment, for Seirawan had risen from an international master to a grandmaster with that victory. The mate Jonsson faced was forced. The applause that came from the crowd was not. "I felt like Reggie Jackson hitting his third home run against the Dodgers in the '77 World Series," Seirawan says, but winning the tournament was the least of the honors that came to him. Not only had he also made himself a grandmaster, but he had landed a job to boot. Korchnoi seemed as charmed as Garcia had been. He approached Seirawan after the tournament. "Would you like to work with me?" he asked. Seirawan was stunned. "I would have paid for that experience," he says. Korchnoi asked him if he could come to Switzerland to help him prepare for another drive to win the world title.
"I'll pay your air fare," Korchnoi said to Seirawan. "And would five thousand Swiss francs [about $2,750 then] a month be acceptable?"
"Huh?" Seirawan said. He was thinking: You're gonna pay me?
"Yeah," he finally thought to say. "I think I'll be available for you." Two months later he flew to Switzerland and joined two other seconds, Michael Stean and Lev Gutman, as they began the job of assisting Korchnoi in analyzing moves and mapping strategy for what would be 18 months of chess—from Korchnoi's string of victories in the candidates' matches through the final struggle against Karpov in Merano.
For the first time in his life, Seirawan was required to immerse himself in a study of chess theory. In Merano, on days when no game was scheduled, Seirawan and the other seconds met with Korchnoi for five or more hours at the challenger's villa, working over two large chess sets, setting up positions and playing the pieces through the endless variations to which this opening or that defense might lead. They analyzed adjourned positions and all completed games—whether won, lost or drawn.
Aside from the occasional day of skiing in the Tyrolean Alps or a game of tennis or dancing with a date at a Merano dance hall, nothing could distract Seirawan from his job or relieve him of his sense of frustration and helplessness as he watched Korchnoi slip into poor positions and squirm while he tried to extricate himself. Korchnoi's generally lackluster play, from the day he lost the opening game, became the unsolved mystery of Merano. Seirawan's frustration hit a peak on the night following the adjournment of the second game, after Korchnoi had played a solid opening and gradually self-destructed. By the adjournment, he was coming down in flames. While the Russians toasted the night away in the hotel next door, Seirawan plopped down on a couch in the Palace Hotel—his coat off, his tie askew, his shirt open down the front. "Why can't he play?" he said. "He can't play!"
"It's like the trainer of a boxer having prepared his man to jab a lot in a fight, and suddenly the guy refuses to jab," Seirawan said. "I mean, the frustration! It's heartbreaking. You can't reach in there and say, 'Come on, do like we showed you!' It's hard to sit on the sidelines and have to watch. The job is no fun."
The job came to an end after Korchnoi sealed his 41st move at adjournment time in the 18th game, knowing he was doomed. Karpov was ahead 5-2 in games and needed only one more win to retain the title. Korchnoi left the playing hall, and as he climbed into his waiting car, said without rancor, "Unfortunately, the match is over." It was perhaps Korchnoi's last chance. Now Seirawan wants his first.
Margaret sees it coming. The others in this tale have found their destinies. Max is living in Saudi Arabia now, married to the Syrian woman to whom he had been originally betrothed, the firstborn daughter of his father's best friend. Lord knows where Vallance is. "He has no residence," Margaret says. "He could be in the desert now. He could be in Virginia Beach. He could be on the moon."
But she knows where Yasser has been of late and what he was doing there. "It's not strange that Yasser's with Korchnoi," she said while the match was still on. "He's being groomed to do this. He's looking them in the eye right now. Richard taught Yasser to learn the human language—how a man puts his hands, how he fidgets in a chair, how he tilts his head. He taught Yasser to watch every gesture, every detail. At 21, Yasser's right under Karpov's nose. You don't think he's learning? He's watching, you know. That's what chess is all about, going deeper and deeper, at all levels."
...And BTW, the only book I ever read about it was Yasser's splash called No Regrets. I laffed all the way thru it....except when Duncan annotated. Duncan's stuff is pretty serious. Yasser's totally hilarious !
I'd heard it's a great book, but I didn't know it was also funny. I'll have to give it a read one of these days.
I'd ship it to u if I still had it, but I'm almost positive I already gave it away.
Thanks for the thought, but I think I already have access to a copy. (No, nothing illegal...The real deal! :) )
Thanks Ghostess for providing the write-up on Yasser Seirawan. What a character! What a story!
SP, I was looking thru old articles & I thought it was kinda interesting that a chessplayer would actually make a national sports weekly....that's all.
Here's some photos in the article:
I guess the magazine won't let me....oh well.
SP, I was looking thru old articles & I thought it was kinda interesting that a chessplayer would actually make a national sports weekly....that's all.
10 Reasons Why Chess is a Sport:
Excerpted from: http://londonchessconference.com/a-question-of-sport/
I live in San Jose - close (1-1.5 hrs) to the Mechanic's Institute in San Francisco. Guna register for a tournament there in two weeks.
San Jose has its own very active chess club which plays weekly year round!
APG817, take full advantage of it! I don't want your cost of living, but you are in a chess mecca, so to speak.
We have long weekends on Ascension Day, Corpus Christi (the thursdays are national holidays, you have to spend one of your personal holidays for the friday) and Pentecost (the monday is also national). I can play 7 round FIDE rated Tournaments on that three weekends. In Summer in the school holidays there is a nine round Open in Dortmund (where you can also watch the world class guys, only FIDE rated if you are above 1900 DWZ / FIDE), there is a FIDE rated nine round somewhere in the rural area 50 kilometeers north of Dortmund in the autumn school holidays, some tournaments in the school holidays between christmas and silvester. Plus there are at least two five round weekenders in the times between holidays. Everything within one and a half hour drive by car.
The main problem is to get enough free days in the school holidays (i should become teacher 
) and for me and also i have to arrange the tournaments with my wife. She would be home alone without any transport if i drive to a chess tournament.
...And BTW, the only book I ever read about it was Yasser's splash called No Regrets. I laffed all the way thru it....except when Duncan annotated. Duncan's stuff is pretty serious. Yasser's totally hilarious !
I'd heard it's a great book, but I didn't know it was also funny. I'll have to give it a read one of these days.