There’s a chess set that sits in the corner of our family room. It’s really there a lot more for decoration than anything else. My grade school daughters play a game or two on it every now and then but I’m not sure they’re really playing chess. They kind of make up their own rules and take each others pieces according to fluidly changing criteria.
I played a little bit of chess when I was about twelve immediately following the summer of the great challenge match between Bobby Fisher and Boris Spassky in 1972. My lasting legacy from this is that close to forty years later I can still tell you what directions the pieces move.
When I was in college I once saw Rodney Dangerfield perform live. He was heckled by a guy in a black and white plaid blazer and said “Nice looking jacket there pal, pawn to king-four.” I guess that’s still my favorite chess joke.
It was with all of this in mind that I found myself impressed and proud to read in yesterday’s New York Times that the University of Maryland Baltimore County won the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championships and in even greater accomplishment had done so for the ninth time in fourteen years. I was impressed for obvious reasons but also proud because I grew up in Maryland and had no idea that UMBC was such an international chess dynasty. All I knew about this school growing up was that it’s campus hosted the now defunct Baltimore Colts training camp.
When it comes to College sports we track who’s ranked number one in football from August to January and of course the month of March is officially dedicated to the great institution of college basketball. But where’s the love for the chess champions, especially when they hail from a lesser known satellite campus of a mid atlantic state best known for hardshell crabs?
Perhaps that might be explained by reading through the rest of the Times article which went on to detail much of the action in a key match between UMBC’s Sergey Erinburg and runner up University of Texas at Dallas competitor Daniel Ludwig as follows:
"Erenburg struck with 30 Rd5 because it allowed him to advance his b pawn after 30 ... Rd5 31 b7. Ludwig could not play 30 ... Bb1 because 31 Qe5 leads to mate. Ludwig eventually had to give up his bishop to stop the pawn. The rest was easy, and Ludwig, facing a hopeless endgame, resigned"
You thinking what I’m thinking? Of course, but I’ll say it anyway - that final sentence by the Times was completely unnecessary. Everybody knows that 30 Rd5 when advancing your b pawn after 30 . . . Rd5 31 b7 puts your opponent in a helpless situation. Who does the Times think we are, a bunch of chess idiots?
I’ll never really understand chess. The set in the corner of our family room will likely always stay a decoration. Rodney’s goof on the guy with the checkered jacket will always be my favorite quote about the game. That having been said congrats big time to the kids and their coaches at UMBC, they’ve made anyone whoever lived in Maryland proud.
