Tuesday 6 December 2011

A widely travelled player

The USCF website has noted the passing of Robert Feldstein. While he may not be that well known (at least outside the US) he was one of the more widely travelled players, something he himself was quite proud of. Apart from playing tournament games in every state of the United States he also attempted to play rated games in as many countries in the world.
This was how our paths crossed, as he turned up at the offices of the Canberra Times in 2001, explaining to them that he was a travelling chess player trying to set a record for playing chess in the most number of countries. The only problem was that he did not have an opponent, at lest until the Canberra Times rang me up and asked if I could come over to play. We played one USCF rated game and a couple of blitz games. I'm pretty sure the time limit was G/20, which was slow enough to make the chess look sensible, but fast enough to cause both players to miss many far stronger moves than were played. In the end I missed a few absolute crushers, and went down in the ending.

Press,Shaun - Feldstein,Robert [B03]
CT Challenge, 2001


No comments: