AThe Miami News Miami, Florida Thursday, July 20, 1972 - Page 22
You Don't Have To Be an Intellectual To Play Chess by Jeff Klinkenberg
Bernie Schmidt was trying to explain a chess move used by Bobby Fischer to someone who just could not understand so finally he said he had an idea and ran out the door.
He was back in a moment, carrying a cardboard box under his arm and he said, “I always keep a chess game in the trunk of my car. I'm always equipped.”
He dumped the pieces onto the board and began setting them up. Then he ran to his bedroom and returned with a book and opened it to a section outlining moves used by Bobby Fischer.
Schmidt started moving pieces all around, his hands a blur, like a riverboat gambler playing the shell game. All the time he was talking.
“Look at this,” he said. “This move was invented by Lopez, a great player. It was called the Spanish Torture.”
He took a sip of iced tea from a silver goblet and asked, “You notice how quickly I made these moves? This is how I teach chess. Fast. There is nothing worse than dullness and boredom.”
Bernie is not a boring man but he would not like to be considered eccentric either. It's just that when he is talking chess, he is very enthused. It's his magnificent obsession.
“I hope I don't sound like a raving, fundamentalist preacher,” he said. “I just like the game.”
He also likes the publicity Bobby Fischer has been getting lately in Iceland, where he is contesting the world chess championship with Boris Spassky, a Russian. Fischer made a lot of people angry over the weekend ([when the Soviet-controlled Icelandic Chess Fed and associates released more misleading reports about the details behind Fischer's balk at disruptive men operating large, bulky television cameras, that according to the rules previously laid down, permitted Fischer to demand removal of all cameras if they were creating interference with concentration, of either player… and organizers brazenly broke the rules, and refused]) when he refused to play before a ([disruptive television camera crew]) and walked out. ([Many people are having their opinions shaped by Soviet propaganda, and haven't a clue to know what Soviet propaganda looks like vs. legitimate news.])
But Bernie Schmidt of Hialeah thinks he is okay. “I'd like to see him get ten times the publicity he's getting,” he said. Even bad publicity for chess, Bernie figures, might be good for Bernie Schmidt and what he's trying to do.
Bernie's a teacher. He considers himself a very good one. “The very best chess teacher in the area,” he said. He's got ammunition to prove it. The United States Chess Federation rates him as an expert, which is one category below a master—the very best. One of his pupils, Luis Alfonso Jackson, recently won the high school state championship.
Schmidt teaches at the Coral Gables Youth Center on Mondays and at the Miami Shores Recreation Center on Tuesdays. He'd like to teach enough to make a living wage.
He's got 17 students at Coral Gables, 40 at Miami Shores. He could reach more, he believes, if only people would realize that chess is not a game played only by Greenwich Village types and old men.
“For years,” Bernie was saying, “people who play have had to stand in the shadows because there was a stigma attached to the game. You were made to feel like a Bobby Fischer without a trial, you know?
“We were made out to be fr**ks. It goes along with the anti-intellectualism in this country. I play basketball with kids at Coral Gables and they looked at me with astonishment when they found out I play chess.”
Bernie says, “Chess is a game of the people,” “In the clubs in Miami we've got cabbies, butchers, cops, social workers and body guards playing. We even have an ex-prizefighter.”
Bernie, 32, and his wife Joan, who recently tied for fifth in a national women's tournament, like chess so much they travel all over the South to watch tournaments during their vacation, “Until our money runs out,” Bernie said.
They have a trophy case and two large shelves filled with books about chess. “I think we've got the most complete library in the South,” he said. “I counted them one day. I've got 110 volumes.”
He became interested in the game after he was kicked off the baseball team at Bethany College during his freshman year. “My coach told me to pick up a ball, I asked why, and that was it,” he said.
Instead, he picked up a chess game and found he was very good at it. Now he tries to get his message to his pupils who range in age from nine to 17 and it is a tough job.
You Don't Have To Be an Intellectual To Play Chess 20 Jul 1972, Thu The Miami News (Miami, Florida) Newspapers.com
