The Fabulous 80’s – The Big Picture

The 80s were an eventful chess decade. I am going to introduce a ‘replay’ feature so you can play over the games and see the annotations in a Java applet. This feature is in test-mode, we are still ironing out the bugs involved with seeing all the sidelines.

Having gotten the technical sidenote out of the way, let’s start with some amusing photos.

At the very start of the decade, I played in a couple of IM- and GM-norm events at the Marshall CC and the Heraldica Imports (Jose Cuchi, Organizer). Eric Schiller managed to take a picture of me “in action” at the venerable Marshall CC in 1981. Any New York player knows this club as a stately brownstone on 23 W 10th Street in Greenwich Village close to NYU and the Washington Square Park blitz hustling scene. Here it is.

I am not sure if pink-tinted glasses accelerate the learning process when it comes to chess, but they probably do not hurt.

And here is a classic from the 1981 Pan-Am Intercollegiate.

Standing, l. to r.: Jon Schroer, me, Steve Odendahl, and a hirsute Eric Tall. Sitting: Michael Wilder. This was no squad, we were just posing near the first-place team trophy in mid-event for giggles. Photo taken by: unknown.  Did you know Michael Wilder would go on to win the US Championship in 1988 with the lowest winning score ever, +2?  And he won it alone?  Weird.

Moving on to mid-decade, here are two classic World Open 1985 poses.

Here are a group of party-goers between rounds at the now-defunct Adam’s Mark Hotel in Philadelphia. The lady is Andrea Sisniega, sister of Mexican GM Marcel Sisniega. She has good taste, holding up a bottle of Mouton Cadet (click on the photo to enlarge this fabulous wine label). Also you might recognize Joel Benjamin, me, and Michael Wilder (left to right).

Here are some more party-goers. The stoic Russians in the rear are IM Leonid Bass (left) and Sergey Kudrin. The Americans are (l. to r.) Michael Wilder, me, and Joel Benjamin. Amusingly, I don’t think Michael Wilder was playing in this event. The real question is, where did Leonid get his stylish hat?

Now let’s go across the Atlantic to see some pictures from Belgium and Holland.

First we have Christine Syben and me in Delft, Holland 1989. Delft is the town with the nice porcelain. We proceeded to lose some money at the Scheveningen casino. Eric Tall took this photo.

Here is Ben Finegold trying to decide where to move in Eeklo ECI FIDE Invitational, 1989-90. I think GM David Bronstein was also famous for tanking before move 1. In the meantime I seem to be fumbling with my scoresheet. I managed to draw and win first place. Ben was second. Click on the picture to enlarge. This photo was also taken by Eric Tall.

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