The Fabulous 1970s – Some Photos

I found some more 1970s photos!  If you can’t get enough of this, there are more here. 

First, from May 1973!  (I only started playing in tournaments in September 1972). Click several times to get it enlarged enough to read.

This amusing clipping from the May 1973 Washington Post mentions a very young NM Mark Diesen (and his father Carl) as well as me (JHS winner of a Metro Area HS Champ). Of course they misspelled my name and my school (Pyle not Pile). But still, it’s funny to see these old things. For example, it talks about the 2nd place US Amateur Team local (local to DC/Md./Va.) squad (in those days, there was only the East Team, not the other regions) consisting of Richard Delaune (he came an IM before sadly passing away at age 47), bridge- and backgammon-player Kent Goulding (Kent wrote a famous treatise on backgammon), bridge player David Hoffner and future World Junior Chesss Champ Mark Diesen.

Jumping ahead to 1975, here is a promising hopeful’s senior high school picture.

Thankfully leaving 1975 behind, in 1977 there was some norm activity in the USA and some really nostalgic photographs.

Here are Andy Soltis (left) and Ken Regan; photo by Nigel Eddis. Click to enlarge.

Trivia fact: only Michael Rohde and Larry Christiansen won the National High School while still in Junior High School, according to this report. Is that still true today? I think so…

The only thing I knew about Andy Soltis was that he liked to keep score in descriptive notation. Although I was quite active in New York City in the 1980s, I never saw him play there (he was a journalist for the NY Post). Two ships passing in the night. The only time I did notice him playing, he had a horrible reverse losing a piece in the opening , trying a Dragon against Joe Gallagher in Lloyds Bank London 1990. London was the same city where GM Larry Evans miserably failed in a comeback bid. There might be a moral here.

Here is the famous April 1977 Chess Life cover excerpt with Michael Rohde; photograph also by Nigel Eddis who deserved some kind of journalism prize for this uncompromising candid shot. It is hard to believe, but only a year and a quarter later I was playing Michael in the US Junior ‘Closed’ [Invitational] in Memphis, TN with my own rating being 2339, although at this stage in my development 4/1977, according to my Chess Life magazine label, I was only rated 2157.

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