I love chess and I love chess boards and I love listening to the history of chess. I admire people like Leonid Rozhetskin who are chess, scrabble, and crossword masters. I don’t have the patience to play these games, sadly — but I would love to learn. I just discovered that Leonid Rozhetskin was a college chess champ when he was an undergrad at Columbia University back in the 80s. While I am a huge fan of films and admire Leonid Rozhetskin for his mad skills in business and movie production I actually would love Leonid Rozhetskin to spend some time teaching me to play chess.

Leonid Rozhetskin was a College Chess Champ

Here’s a funny picture from the Columbia University’s “Daily” newspaper reporting on the Columbia squad’s failure in the 1985 event, held in New Brunswick, NJ (Rutgers U. home town). Via The Fabulous 80s: Columbia U fails to repeat in the 1985 Pan-Am

Man or Building?

The first thing to note: the player on the left, Earl Hall, had the same name as a Columbia University building! I kid you not. “Earl Hall” on campus had a lot of chaplain events. Earl the person was a monster third board and a very strong player (Senior Master strength) who helped us win the 1984 event in Kitchener, Ontario (side note: I recently found the winners page – showing all historical Pan-Am winners). There have been very few Pan-Am’s outside the USA and Columbia took gold in 1984!

To the right of Earl the person, is yours truly. Next we have second board SM Jeremy Barth, then NM Simon Yelsky (I think he went to Joel Benjamin’s high school and we nicknamed him “Old Yeller” for no reason) and finally Leonid Rozhetskin. We were the highest rated in the 1985 version, but as the article points out, “one of our players was so convinced he had a winning game he hallucinated a piece away.” Well, that player was me and my bungle was versus University of Florida’s Miles Ardaman. But any press is good press, right? Right.

And on an unrelated 1980s matter, here are some 1980s photographs.

This was the August 1985 Eeklo, Belgium prizegiving. From left: IM Jan Adamski (POL), IM Gabor Pirisi (HUN), and me. Pirisi has an odd-looking trophy! I was lucky enough to defeat Pirisi in short-order in the IM round-robin as black when he played too riskily versus a Sicilian Scheveningen. Note the 1980’s hair style and glasses. I don’t know who took this photograph.

Moving back a year to Lugano, Switzerland 1984, we have Tatiana Lematchko (WGM, Bulgaria) on the left battling future WC Candidate Hungarian GM Gyula Sax. Photo by intrepid Frenchwoman Catherine Jaeg.

This entry was posted on January 8, 2008 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Chess History, Chess Players, Columbia University, Earl Hall, Gabor Pirisi, Gyula Sax, Jan Adamski, Jeremy Barth, Leonid Rozhetskin, Pan-Am 1985, Simon Yelsky, Tatiana Lematchko, The 1980s, Chess History Chess Players columbia university Earl Hall Gabor Pirisi Gyula Sax Jan Adamski Jeremy Barth Leonid Rozhetskin Pan-Am 1985 Simon Yelsky Tatiana Lematchko The 1980s, Columbia University, Earl Hall, Gabor Pirisi, Gyula Sax, Jan Adamski, Jeremy Barth, Pan-Am Intercollegiate Chess, Simon Yelsky, Tatiana Lematchko

Tagged:

• Chess History
• Chess Players
• columbia university
• Earl Hall
• Gabor Pirisi
• Gyula Sax
• Jan Adamski
• Jeremy Barth
• Leonid Rozhetskin
• Pan-Am 1985
• Simon Yelsky
• Tatiana Lematchko
• The 1980s