The Record Hackensack, New Jersey Sunday, April 23, 1972 - Page 65
How To Quiet a Roomful of Teen-Agers: Let 'em Play Chess
KENNY REGAN of Paramus missed the National High School Chess Championship tourney the other day. He was home, sick. He had the chicken pox.
Kenny at 12 is a seventh-grader at Eastbrook Junior High School. That doesn't disqualify him from competing in a high school tournament.
“We have,” said Bill Goichberg, director of the championships, “no bottom age limit. Last year a sixth-grader almost ran off with the national title.”
Kenny Regan is recovering nicely from the chicken pox. He says he'll be well enough to play in the New York City High School championships. He's no novice.
“I have a rating of 1,829,” Kenny says, without a touch of false modesty in his voice.
Chess ratings depend on a complicated formula (worked out, it seems, by some gnomes in the Black Forest) that takes into account the rating of the opponents you play and the score you accumulate in a tournament. A master's rating is 2,200. Bobby Fischer, the challenger for the world championship, has a rating of 2,800, theoretically the tops.
TENDER AGE is hardly a handicap in chess play. At the high school championships April 8 in the Hotel McAlpin in New York the absence of cheek fuzz was the rule rather than the exception.
The 1971 winner was a ninth-grader, Larry Christiansen of Riverside, Calif. This year Christiansen finished in a three-way tie for first with Craig Barnes, a fellow Californian, and Danny Shapiro of Great Neck, N.Y. Barnes took top prize on points.
On the McAlpin mezzanine about 700 youngsters were competing for the crown in a series of rooms normally used by the hotel for traveling drummers eager to display the latest fashions in brassieres or plastic toys. The hotel has a faded elegance that once passed for chic.
In this, one of New York's older, more staid commercial hostelries, there were kids wall to wall, all hunched over tables on which were chessboards, chessmen, and funny clocks with two faces.
A game can last only 80 minutes. If it hasn't been completed by that time, points determine who wins or whether it's a draw.
There isn't much physical action going on in a room in which perhaps 200 high school kids are penned. The strain of concentration is almost palpable. Stand beside a couple of players en-grossed in their game. You sense they wouldn't look up if you were Raquel Welch in a skidding bikini.
ALL COLORS, all economic classes, and almost every nationality are in evidence.
Clothing styles range from army and navy store mod to Brooks Brothers 347 herringbone.
In this latest tournament there were 10 girls. No one looked at them as girls. All that mattered was their rating as chess players. There were young people in wheelchairs, young people wearing hearing aids, young people on crutches, young people wiping runny noses with the back of grimy fingers. The camaraderie was in the concentration.
“This chess is a serious business,” said Larry King, a bright young man with an infectious grin. Larry directs the novice section of the tournament.
“It's almost like being married. Once you take it up seriously there isn't much room for anything else in your life.”
Three young men from Blauvelt in Rockland County know what he means. Ben Goldstein, Bill Bauer, and Bill Worzel arrived at the McAlpin for the first game Friday at 2 p.m. They got back home at 1 a.m.
Saturday morning they were chauffeured to the hotel to be on time for a game at 10 a.m. Another match followed at 2 p.m., a third at 8 p.m.
“The boys.” said Mrs. Jeanne Goldstein. Ben's mother, “got home at about a quarter of one in the morning. Next time I think they should rent a room at the hotel for the three days. That's what some of the high schools do for their youngsters.”
BEN GOLDSTEIN and the two Bills, Worzel and Bauer, have been at the game seriously for about a year. In the car carrying them down to New York City they behaved much like other high school freshmen, horsing around, cutting each other up, pitting each other down just a little more skillfully than the usual 14-year-old.
Once at the tournament tables, the attitude changes. They are all business. Their chauffeur walked by Ben's table four times. The young man never even looked up. The Bauer boy, red hair flying in all directions, twice whizzed past his volunteer chauffeur without a sign of recognition.
The championship attracts youngsters from all over the country. Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Oregon, and Washington are represented. California has one of the largest contingents and most of the ranking players.
Running a chess tournament is a full-time job for Bill Goichberg.
“There's a lot of work organizing these matches,” said Goichberg. His eyes never looked at the questioner; he was constantly casing the main room, where two persons were selling books and magazines on chess. “I have six people on my staff, and they keep running all the time.”
How do the young players find out about the tournament? “We notify the schools. Most have chess clubs. Then there are notices in chess magazines. Serious players are bugs on reading chess publications.”
As for rating systems in the tourney, they're as puzzling as the theory of relativity for a non-player.
What's your rating, tousle-haired Ben Goldstein was asked?
“It's about 1,400, I figure,” was the answer. “I beat the guys with 1,300 and I lose to the guys with 1,500.” It figures.
