2001-04-19 - 11:59 p.m.

Forward Into The Past (Again)

A while back I mentioned, that one of my hobbies used to be inputting games from old chess books and magazines into my chess database. At the time I indicated that it was kind of a dry, boring waste of time, but I think that I didn't exactly do it justice.

Of course compared to hanging out having fun with Lily it IS dry and dull but then again, what isn't?

A few months ago I purchased a collection of old chess magazines, dating from 1920 to about 1960. It really was an incredible find, and I got a good deal on it. However, I bought the magazines about six months ago and haven’t really had a chance to take a good look at them until now.

Right now I'm going through the oldest bunch of them, a magazine called American Chess Bulletin. This magazine ran from about 1903 to 1957, and was edited by one man throughout its lengthy run: Hermann Helms, whose hard work and lifelong dedication earned him the title "Dean of American Chess."

I really only knew about Helms by his reputation, but having gone through a number of his magazines I can certainly appreciate his thoroughness and attention to detail. There are amazingly few errors considering that these magazine were published long before spellcheckers and automatic game input.

Helms also has a rather antique, gentlemanly style of writing that has some flashes of dry humor in it.

I've always been fascinated by history. I love listening to stories almost as much as I like telling them, and that's what history is - everyone's stories. A lot of people can't find the use in looking at the past, but I think the past is very relevant - people have not changed all that much.

What I find fascinating is reading about the stories I know from history as they are happening. There's a certain weird feeling reading about a "promising young player" that I know is going to die young, or reading about the negotiation for a big chess match that I know is never going to happen. The writers seem innocent, almost naïve, but how can they be expected to see the future?

For instance in the magazines of 1926 there is much talk about Carlos Torre, a young master from Mexico visiting the United States. For three years starting in 1925 Torre was on a roll, winning just about every American tournament he played in.

Torre was hoping to marry his Mexican sweetheart and then get a job being a sort of roving chess ambassador for Mexico - such a thing was possible for the very elite players in the world in 1926.

At one tournament - I think it was the New York State Championship of 1927, just before the last round Torre got two pieces of mail from Mexico. One was from the Mexican government - they weren't going to give him any sort of an ambassadorial position. The other was from his sweetheart - she was marrying someone else. Torre lost the tournament and had some sort of nervous breakdown. He went back to Mexico and became a pharmacist, and never played chess professionally again.

There are a lot more stories, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Right now I'm reading magazines from the mid-1930s, which strangely enough was a boom time for U.S. Chess. Until relatively recently trying to make a professional career out of being a chessplayer was a sure way to wind up starving to death. However, during the Depression when work was so hard to find, chess paid about as much as anything else! New York City seemed to be full of strong young masters, constantly butting heads with each other. It wasn't evident how strong these young buck were until a couple of them went to Europe and just flattened the competition.

While putting in all those game is a chore, the database I'm creating is a research tool of incredible power. It's getting to the point now that I can fill in the information on a player just with their last name and a date.

It might be hard to see what relevance all this has for today - 1926 and 1934 happened a lifetime ago. However, in those old magazines, to my surprise, I've found games by people that I've met, talked to and corresponded with. The degrees of separation from then to now don't seem so great, and these magazines are a link to that past, which now doesn't seem so long ago.