Chess Limericks

Chess Limericks

There once was a man from Maine,

Who played chess on a fast train.

He took a move back

And was thrown off the track,

And he never played chess again.

There once was a lady named Flo,

Who liked to mate, you know;

When someone castled long,

She helped along,

and would say, “O – O – O.”

There once was a man named Maloney,

Who always played the Benoni.

But his counterattack,

failed to a sac;

And his Benoni was just baloney.

There once was a lady in the nude,

Who played chess with some dude;

She announced to her date,

She was ready to mate,

But her meaning was quite misconstrued.

There was a young fellow named Fyfe,

Whose marriage was ruined for life,

For he played chess all day

and was always away,

and avoided mating his wife.

There was a young lady named Mable

Who played chess on a very big table,

When she played against a man,

she always began,

“Try to mate me if you are able.”

There once was a chess player named Nate,

Was anything but sedate;

When moving to win,

He broadly would grin,

And bellow: “That’s check – and mate!”

There once was a lady with one ambition,

To win chess under any condition.

But to this date

She has yet to mate

She just can’t find the right position.

There once was a Grandmaster named Browne,

Who always wore a perpetual frown;

As he played blitz against Dzindzi,

The crowd got all cringy,

He said just one word, that was, “DOWN!”

There’s something chess computers lack;

It’s not that they know how to attack;

They can fork and pin;

They may lose, more often win.

But they just will never talk back.

Postal chess is still being played today,

And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t play.

It is nice and slow,

And I can use my ECO,

It’s the postage I can’t afford to pay.

This has happened to you, I bet.

You bring your chess set and didn’t forget.

Then you notice with shock

You have a broken chess clock,

And a piece is missing from the set.

The USCF rating system is inflated,

But the lower rated players are elated.

They can lose every game,

But their rating stays the same,

Or even become higher elevated.

A chess board of a new design

that prevents an early resign.

With a different king

On either wing

The board must be 9 by 9.

There once was a strong chess master

Who moved faster and faster,

But he couldn’t wait

To find a mate

So his games were always a disaster.

There once was a lady with big tits

Who played a match with Deep Fritz;

She tried to distract

By showing her rack

But got mated instead in blitz.

There once was a famous chess café

Where famous players came to play.

They paid a franc;

Played chess and drank.

And got checkmated all day.

There once was a blind man in jail,

Who beat everyone at chess without fail.

He recorded his moves,

With little grooves,

By writing everything in Braille.

There once was a player named Bob

Who was fired from his job.

He played chess at work

With some known jerk

Who always beat Bob with the Grob.

Jose Capablanca

Jose Capablanca

Jose Raul Capablanca y Graupera was born on November 19, 1888 in Havana, Cuba. His father was a Spanish army officer and Jose was his second son. Jose learned chess at age 4 by watching his father play. He defeated his father the first time they played. At the age of 8, his father took him to the Havana Chess Club to meet stronger players. Capablanca did not take any chess lessons.

In 1901, when Jose was 12, he began an informal match with Cuban national champion Juan Corzo (age 28) and won, scoring 4 wins, 6 draws, and 3 losses. Capablanca’s only preparation was reading a chess book on chess endings that someone had given him.

In early 1902 at the age of 13, Jose played in the first Cuban national championship (won by Enrico Corzo) and took 4th place.

In 1904 Jose went to a private school in New York to learn English. In 1905, he passed with ease the entrance examinations and entered Columbia University in 1906 to study chemical engineering (and perhaps play professional baseball). He was selected as shortstop on the freshman team. Capablanca spent much of his time at the Manhattan Chess Club and played many games with the current world champion, Emanuel Lasker. Fifteen years later, Capablanca would defeat Lasker for the world championship.

In 1908 Capablanca’s patron withdrew his financial support because Capa was giving too much time to chess and not enough time to studies. Capablanca then attempted to live by means of chess.

In December, 1908 through February, 1909, Capablanca made a tour of the United States. In 10 exhibitions he won 168 games in a row before losing a game in Minneapolis. He played 602 games in 27 cities, scoring 96.4%.

In 1909 U.S. Champion Frank Marshall agreed to a match with Capablanca. Capa won with 8 wins, 14 draws, and 1 loss. Capa then went on a simultaneous tour and played 720 games, 686 wins, 20 draws, and 14 losses.

In 1910 Capablanca won the 32nd New York State championship with 6 wins and 1 draw.

In December 1910 through January 1911, he made another tour of the US. He then rode on a train for 23 hours straight to get back to New York to play in the New York State championship.

In 1911 he took 2nd place (behind Frank Marshall) in the 33rd New York State championship, with 8 wins, 3 draws, and 1 loss.

In March and April, 1911 Capablanca made his first European tour. He gave exhibitions in France and Germany.

In 1911 Capablanca was invited to San Sebastian, Spain and won a major tournament at his first attempt (the last person to do that was Pillsbury when he won Hastings 1895). He won 6, drew 7, and lost 1 ahead of Rubinstein and Schlechter. Before the tournament, Nimzovich protested that such an unknown player should play in this event. Capablanca then proceeded to beat Nimzovich in the first round. At age 23, Capablanca was now the 2nd strongest player in the world, after Emanuel Lasker.

Capablanca next challenged Lasker for the world championship. Lasker wanted the match limited to 30 games, first person winning 6 games would be world champion. Capablanca objected to the limits of 30 games and other conditions, so Lasker broke off the negotiations. It would be 10 more years before the two of them agreed to the conditions of a match.

In 1912 Capablanca published a chess magazine in Havana. It lasted until 1915.

In 1913 Capablanca took second (after Marshall) in a Havana tournament. Capablanca had the mayor of Havana clear the tournament room so that Capablanca could resign his game to Marshall without anyone seeing him resign.

Capablanca returned to New York and in July, 1913 went 11-0 in a New York tournament (Rice Tournament).

In September, 1913 Capablanca obtained a post in the Cuban Foreign Office. He was expected to be an ambassador-at-large for Cuba. His official title was “Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipoteniary General from the Government of Cuba to the World at Large.”

In October 1913 to March 1914 Capablanca traveled to Europe on his way to the Consulate at St Petersburg to play matches or exhibition games against their leading masters. In serious games, he scored 19 wins, 4 draws, and 1 loss during that period.

In 1914 Capablanca won a New York event with 11 straight wins.

In 1914 Capablanca took 2nd in the St Petersburg tournament behind Lasker, losing their individual game. Czar Nicholas II conferred the title “Grandmaster of Chess” on Capablanca and four others for the top five finishers. He was negotiating for a shot at the world championship title with Lasker when World War I broke out.

During World War I Capablanca stayed in New York, winning events there in 1915, 1916, and 1918.

In the New York 1916 event, Capablanca lost one game, to Chajes. He would not lose another chess game for 8 years.

The New York 1918 event saw the introduction of the famous Marshall Attack of the Ruy Lopez that Frank Marshall prepared against Capablanca. Capablanca won that game.

In 1919 Capablanca beat Boris Kostic of Hungary 5-0 in a match held in Havana. At Hastings 1919 he won with 10 wins and 1 draw.

In 1920 Capablanca wrote MY CHESS CAREER.

In June, 1920 Lasker resigned the title to Capablanca, but the public wanted a match. The record prize fund was $25,000. Even if he lost, Lasker would get $13,000 of the prize fund.

The world championship match began on March 15, 1921 in Havana. Capablanca won the match against Lasker with 4 wins and 10 draws. The match was scheduled for 30 games. Lasker resigned the match on the grounds of ill-health. Capablanca became the official 3rd world champion (1921-1927) in the history of chess.

In 1921 Capablanca wrote CHESS FUNDAMENTALS and a book on the world championship match.

Capablanca got married in Havana in December, 1921. He married Gloria Simoni Beautucourt. They had a son, Jose Raul in 1923 and a daughter, Gloria in 1925.

In 1922 Capablanca conducted some simultaneous exhibitions in the United States. His best performance was when he played 103 opponents in Cleveland, winning 102 games and drawing 1 game.

In 1922 Capablanca took 1st place in the 15th British Chess Federation championship in London with 11 wins and 4 draws, 1 1/2 points ahead of Alekhine (London, 1922).

In New York 1924 Capablanca took second (won by Lasker) with 10 wins, 9 draws, and 1 loss. The loss was to Richard Reti. It was his first loss of a game in 8 years.

In 1925 Capablanca gave a simultaneous exhibition in Moscow and won every game but one. He drew against a 12 year old and told the boy after the game, “One day you will be champion.” The boy was Mikhail Botvinnik.

In Moscow 1925 Capablanca took 3rd place behind Bogoljubov and Lasker, with 9 wins, 9 draws, and 2 losses. While in Moscow, Capablanca took part in a movie film called CHESS FEVER.

Capablanca won Lake Hopatcong, New York 1926 with 4 wins, 4 draws.

In 1927 Capablanca was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary at Large of the Cuban Republic.

In March, 1927 Capablanca won the New York International, 2 1/2 points ahead of Alekhine. Up to this time, Capablanca had only lost 4 games of the 158 match and tournament games he had played since 1914.

In September, 1927 Capablanca faced Alexander Alekhine for the world championship match in Buenos Aires. The stake money was $10,000 in gold. When it was over in November, Capablanca lost, winning 3 games, drawing 25 games, and losing 6 games. The entire match took place behind closed doors and lasted 73 days. There were no spectators or photographs. The opening of 32 of the 34 games were Queen’s Gambit Declined.

Capablanca settled in Paris after the match, trying to get a return match. Capablanca won Berlin 1928, 2nd at Bad Kissingen 1928 (behind Bogoljubov), 1st at Budapest 1928, 2nd at Carlsbad 1929 (behind Nimzovich), 1st at Barcelona 1929, 1st at Ramsgate 1929, and 2nd at Hastings 1930-1 (behind Euwe).

Alekhine avoided Capablanca’s challenge of a re-match and played the much weaker Efim Bogoljubov in 1929. Alekhine further avoided Capablanca by insisting that Capablanca had to put up $10,000 in gold. After the stock market crash, there were no backers for Capablanca.

In 1930-31 Capablanca took 2nd at Hastings. His only loss was to an illiterate player named Sultan Khan.

In 1931 Capablanca played Max Euwe in a match and won with 2 wins and 8 draws.

Capablanca won the New York 1931 tournament with 9 wins and 2 draws.

Capablanca took 4th place at Hastings 1934-5, and 4th place at Moscow 1935.

In 1935 he took 2nd at Margate (behind Reshevsky).

In 1936 he took 2nd at Margate (behind Flohr).

In 1936 Capablanca won at Moscow 1936 with 8 wins and 10 draws, one point ahead of Botvinnik. In August, 1936 he tied for first place at Nottingham with Botvinnik.

In 1937 he obtained a divorce from his first wife, whose family succeeded in having Capablanca demoted to the post of commercial attache.

In 1937 Capablanca tied for 3rd-4th at Semmering (won by Paul Keres).

In 1938 Capablanca married Olga Chagodayev, a Russian princess.

In 1938 Capablanca took 7th out of 8 places at AVRO in Amsterdam. He won 2 games, drew 8, and lost 4. He had suffered a slight stroke halfway through the event and was suffering from high blood pressure.

In Margate 1939 Capablanca tied for 2nd-3rd (won by Keres).

His last serious games were at the Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1939, where he played first board for the Cuban team. He had the best score for board one, with 7 wins and 9 draws.

On March 7, 1942 Jose Capablanca suffered a stroke at the Manhattan Chess Club while watching a skittles game. He died on March 8, 1942 at Mount Sinai hospital, the same hospital that Emanuel Lasker died in a year earlier. He was the shortest lived world champion, dieing at age 53 years, 109 days. He was buried with full honors in Havana. General Batista, President of Cuba, took personal charge of the funeral arrangements.

Capablanca won 7, drew 35, and lost 6 world championship games, for a total score of 24 1/2 points out of 48 games played. He was world champion for 6 years and was never given a chance for a re-match. His historical Elo rating has been calculated to be 2725.

Capablanca played over 700 tournament games winning over 71 percent of the time. He only lost 36 games in his entire life. Capablanca played over 1,200 games that have been recorded.

In 1951 Cuba issued a 25 cent stamp with a portrait of Capablanca on it. It was the first stamp issued which portrayed a chess master.

Capablanca proposed a new chess variant, played on a 10×10 board or a 10×8 board. He introduced two new pieces. The chancellor had the combined moves of a rook and knight (the piece could move like a rook or a knight). The other piece was the archbishop that had the combined moves of a bishop and knight.

– Bill Wall

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Analyzing Your Chess Games

Analyzing Your Chess Games

You can always improve your game if you analyze your own games. Learn from your mistakes. Recognize some pattern that got you in trouble and try to avoid that pattern in the future. I’ve been going over my 36,000 plus games for years, analyzing my openings, middlegames, endings, and losses. I look for trends as to where and why I lost. And with today’s computers, it is easy to see missed opportunities from tactical shots and combinations that you normally wouldn’t see.

I would start with a database of your games. I have put all my games in Chessbase 11, but there are a few free databases, such as SCID, that you can use. The advantage of the database is the sorting ability, the ease of replaying games, and the ease in annotating your games. I usually look at my losses and try to find out where the losing move is. I also look at theoretical novelties, but that takes a second database, or at least a large file, of previously played games. I use the Mega Database 2013 with over 5 million games in addition to my own 36,000 games to look for new moves. There are many sites that have an Opening Explorer that you could also use for alternative moves that have been played in the past.

Once I play an important games, either over-the-board in a tournament or online, I try to analyze the game as soon as possible. If I lost, I try to find the losing move. If I won, I look for where a novelty occurred and run a chess engine against the game to look for blunders for both sides. When I just finish a game, I try to put my thoughts I had about the game and what alternative moves I thought about. I try to list the serious candidate moves and try to pinpoint where the game was winning or losing for me. If I have a scoresheet, I sometimes write the times it took with each move for Black and White. I usually see a trend that if I did not spend the proper amount of time on a difficult position, I would make less that best moves.

Chess software now have blunder checks, so I do look at major blunders and find the alternative better moves for me and my opponent. I usually start backward, and look for blunders at the end of the game first, then move forward to the beginning of the game.

Most chess engines can evaluate the position with a plus or minus factor. A minus factor of 1 is like a pawn down. A plus factor of 3 usually means a winning position equivalent to a minor piece up. I try to find where these evaluation factors swing to high numbers during the game. The point is to find the critical moments of the game where you are winning or losing. Then I look to see if I can increase the winning percentage or minimize the losing percentage with candidate moves.

I try to analyze the opening very carefully, since that is the most important stage in the games that I play. I look at traps and see if I can force a trap and make sure I avoid a trap. I’ve written dozens of chess books on traps (the 500 Miniature Series) and I look at chess traps first in any opening that I plan to play. I usually have two openings prepared for White and two openings prepared for Black when I play in a tournament. I also have one opening for White and one opening for Black that I play when it is not a serious game (final round with nothing at stake) and these are usually my fun, gambit or very irregular opening that I experiment. Also, with databases, I can compare my openings with my past experience of that opening and see how well I am doing. If I have serious problems with a certain opening, I analyze that opening carefully with the latest master games and try not to get in a bad opening position again with whatever variation I played.

I try to verbally state, “what’s the threat” after each move and try to justify why my position is better or what I missed to get in a bad position.

I try to keep a record of how the game was decided. Was it in the opening, or middlegame, or endgame? Most of my games are really decided in the opening. I play few endgames, but the ones I do play, I study and try to categorize the endgame. Was it just pawn endgame, or rook and pawn endgame, or minor piece endgame with pawns, or queen endgame, etc. Every chess game I play that ends up with 6 pieces or less (counting the kings), I put in an endgame database that has solved all 6-piece endgames. I then look at all the possible moves and see which one win, lose, or draw. With practical endgames that I do play, I try to refresh my memory on that particular endgame, such as rook and 2 pawns vs rook and pawn, or bishops of the same or opposite color.

With a little bit of vanity, I try to publish my games, win or lose. I have published hundreds of my games over the 40 plus years and always look forward to any feedback. My games have been in Chess Informant, Chess Life, several databases, several books not written by me, and opening analysis in Encyclopedia of Chess Openings.

I also try to show my games to stronger players and let them analyze my game for me. I’ve approached International Masters and Grandmasters when they are not too busy and asked them whether they would look over one of my games. You would be surprised that if they are not too busy, they will look over your games. I have had Paul Keres, Viktor Korchnoi, Eugenio Torre, Eduard Gufeld, John Donaldson, Walter Browne, Bill Lombardy, Emory Tate, Arnold Denker, Igor Ivanov, Peter Biyiases, Yasser Seirawan, George Koltanowski, and Doug Root all look at one of my games at one time or another and analyzed some of the moves.

Finally, I analyze some of my older games again with the same opening or some theme that was common with my more recent games. I find it fun to see what I know now vs. what I knew when I was a 1600 player in the 1960s and 1970s. I missed a lot more in my earlier games than I do now, so that must mean some kind of improvement over the years.

– Bill Wall

TAGS: ANALYZE CHESS GAMES

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Chess Players Who Quit

Chess Players Who Quit

Garry Kasparov retired from competitive chess in March, 2005. He gave up competitive chess after playing chess and being the best in the world for 20 years (1985 to 2005). He gave up chess to devote more time to politics. He is now thinking of running for the presidency of the world chess federation (FIDE).

Other prominent chess players gave up chess while in their prime, such as Paul Morphy at age 22, and Robert Fischer. Here are a few more players who gave up the game.

Kim Steven Commons (1951- ) was an international master who had won the California championship once and the American Open twice. He was a member of the victorious USA team at the Haifa Chess Olympiad in 1976, having the best score of the event. He gave up chess to become a real estate agent.

In the 1950s, Jim Cross (1930- ) was a rising chess master. At 18 he won the California State Championship and tied in the U.S. Junior Championship. But when his chess mentor, International Master Herman Steiner died of a heart attack at the age of 50 while playing chess, Jim decided to give up chess.

Max Dlugy (1966- ) became a Grandmaster in 1986. By the 1990s, he gave up chess to become a Wall Street securities trader. He had answered an ad by Bankers Trust and was hired and became involved in hedge funds. . Eventually, he became a principal of the Russian Growth Fund. In 2005, he was arrested in Moscow on securities fraud charges and was facing 10 years in a Russian prison. In December 2005, all the charges against him were dropped. He did play in the 2006 US Chess Championship and had a plus score.

Oldrich Duras (1882-1957) was one of the top players in the world from 1906 to 1914. He then met and married a wealthy woman and withdrew from chess, becoming a civil servant and, occasionally, a chess journalist. Duras requested ½ year off to prepare and play in chess tournaments, but his employer refused his request. During his retirement, he became involved in chess problem composition and was ranked one of the finest problemists of his day.

Reuben Fine (1914-1993) was one of the best chess players in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. He gave up chess to become a psychoanalyst, earning a doctorate in psychology. He devoted himself to a New York psychiatric practices and book writing.

Andrija Fuderer (1931-2011) was one of the strongest Yugoslav players in the mid 1950s. He then turned to chemical research, earned a PhD in chemistry from the University of Zagreb, and retired from serious chess play. He became a famous inventor and patented a compression process for refrigeration.

Albert Beauregard Hodges (1861-1944) was a former U.S. chess champion. He won it in 1894. After accomplishing his life’s goal of becoming the U.S. chess champion, he announced he was retiring from chess. He then became an accountant and businessman and gave up chess.

Ignaz Kolish (1837-1889) was one of the strongest chess players in the world in 1867. In 1867, he won the strongest chess tournament of the year, in Paris, ahead of Steinitz. He them met Baron Albert Rothschild and became involved in banking. He gave up chess and became a millionaire in the Viennese banking world and became a baron himself.

Lisa Lane (1938- ) was U.S. women’s champion in 1959-62 and 1966. She withdrew from the Hastings Reserves tournament stating she was in love. She gave up chess in 1966, got married, and started a natural food business in New York.

Srecko (1923-2011) and Vera Nedeljkovic (1924- ) were one of the strongest husband and wife chess playing partners. He was an international master and she was one of the strongest women players in the world. In the 1950s, he gave up chess to become a medical doctor (working with Dr. Michael DeBakey, a world-renowned cardiac surgeon), and she gave up chess to be a physicist. Their son became President of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Belgrade University.

Ken Rogoff (1953- ), pictured above, became a Grandmaster in 1978. He then retired from chess, earned a PhD in Economics from M.I.T. in 1980, and became the chief economist at the World Bank. He is currently a professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Gersh Rotlewi (1889-1920) was one of the strongest Polish players from 1909 to 1911. He took 2nd in the 1909 Russian championship, behind Alekhine. In 1911, he took 4th place, ahead of Alekhine, Marshall, Nimzovich, Vidmar, Tartakower, and others. The next year, at the age of 23, he dropped out of chess and never played again.

Carlos Torre (1905-1978) was one of the strongest players in the world from 124 to 1926. He defeated Emanuel Lasker and drew with Capablanca and Alekhine. He then had a nervous breakdown from the stress of chess and the social gathering invitations. His fiancée left him and married another man, and his teaching offer at the University of Mexico was turned down because Torre did not have any academic credentials. He gave up chess in 1926, never to play again.

Josh Waitzkin (1976- ) was one of the most promising juniors in the United States. He won the National Scholastic Chess Championship 8 times. In 1994, he won the U.S. Junior Championship. He was the subject in the book and the movie called Searching for Bobby Fischer. He then gave up chess and became involved in martial arts. He won the World Championship Tai Chi Chuan twice and won 13 National Championships.

– Bill Wall

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Who was Fischer's Father

Who was Fischer’s Father?

Who was Bobby Fischer’s real father? Was it Dr. Paul Nemenyi or Hans-Gerhardt Fischer? Robert James Fischer’s surname could just as easily have been Nemenyi or Wender.

Paul Felix Nemenyi (ne-MEN-yi) was born on June 5, 1895 in Fiume/Rijeka, Croatia (Austria-Hungary). He was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician and physicist specializing in fluid dynamics and continuum mechanics. From 1912 to 1918 he studied at the Polytechnical school in Budapest. He had to leave Hungary where anti-Semitic laws had been enacted. In 1922, he obtained his doctorate in mathematics in Berlin and lectured on engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1927, his son Peter (1927-2002), was born in Berlin. In the early 1930s, he published a textbook on mechanics that would be required reading in German universities. In 1933, he was sacked from his university duties because he was a Jew when the Nazis came to power. He was arrested on April 1, 1933 by SS troops for making “calumnious statements” against Hitler’s government. He was jailed for one day, then released because of the lack of evidence. Nemenyi belonged to a small Socialist party called the ITSK.

In 1934, he found work in Copenhagen, settling in a farm village on redistributed noble landholdings in Denmark. His wife fled to Paris and died some time later. He then went to Britain. He resettled in a collective of unemployed coal miners in an abandoned factory and manor in Wales. In the fall of 1938, he arrived in the USA to find a job. He left his son, Peter, behind in various Quakers’ homes and young refugee hostels in the United Kingdom. He visited Princeton to consult with Albert Einstein and gave his resume to the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. The committee wrote in its files that Dr. Paul Nemenyi was an unstable and undesirable person. Dr. Theodore von Karman, a fellow Hungarian and leading aeronautical scientist, also proclaimed Nemenyi a misfit.

After being recommended by Albert Einstein, he took part in hydraulic research at the State University of Iowa, working for Albert Einstein’s son, Hans-Albert. In late 1941, he was appointed instructor at the University of Colorado and taught college freshman mathematics for $165 a month. He was an animal-rights support and refused to wear wool. In the winter, he wore pajamas underneath his clothes to stay warm and refused to wear a suit and tie.

Dr von Karman wrote about Nemenyi, “When he came to this country, he went to scientific meetings in an open shirt without a tie and was very much disappointed as I advised him to dress as anyone else. He told me that he thought this was a country of freedom, and the man is only judged according to his internal values and not his external appearance.”

In 1942, Dr. Paul Nemenyi, age 47, met Regina Wender Fischer (1913-1997), age 29, in Denver, according to FBI files. Regina was born in Zurich, Switzerland and the family moved to the United States in 1914. Regina was taking classes at the University of Denver while working at a company that made chicken incubators. She was a mother of a 5-year-old girl, Joan Fischer. Her husband, Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, was in Santiago, Chile. He was barred by immigration authorities from entering the United States. Paul met Regina at the University of Denver.

In 1942, Nemenyi told colleagues that he preferred communism to capitalism. Regina may have had the same preference. The FBI suspected Regina of communist sympathies after a babysitter found what she believed to be pro-communist letters from Chile belonging to her, then turned them over to the FBI after calling them. In the summer of 1942, Dr. Paul Nemenyi and Regina Fischer were romantically linked, probably had an affair, and he may have fathered Bobby Fischer. He did provide some financial support for Regina and the baby.

In 1942, the Encyclopedia Britannica commissioned Dr. Nemenyi to write an article on theoretical mechanics. The article was later rejected.

By 1943, Regina moved to Chicago and Paul Nemenyi moved to Rhode Island to teach.

Bobby Fischer was born on March 9, 1943, but Paul Nemenyi’s name was not on the birth certificate. Regina gave birth to her son alone, in a clinic for poor single mothers (Michael Reese Hospital). On the birth certificate, she listed Hans-Gerhard Fischer as the father. She briefly considered putting Bobby Fischer up for adoption, but decided not to after talking to a social worker. Regina then moved into a Chicago home for fatherless families. At one time, she was arrested at this home and charged with disturbing the peace (she encouraged other mothers to question the institution’s rules), but was acquitted. A court-ordered psychological exam found here to be paranoid.

From 1944 to 1947, Paul Nemenyi was an instructor at the State College of Washington (now Washington State University in Pullman, Washington). He also worked at Hanford, Washington on the Manhattan Project working on a mechanism which triggered the atomic bomb. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer may have helped Paul get work at Hanford. Peter Nemenyi joined his father, but was later drafted and served in Northern Italy, outside Trieste.

In 1947, he was appointed physicist with the Naval Ordinance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland. He was head of the theoretical mechanics section of the laboratory. He was one of the world’s leading authorities on elasticity and fluid dynamics.

Dr. Nemenyi took a deep interest in Bobby Fischer and even paid child support to Regina. At one time, in 1947, when Bobby was 3, he complained to a social worker about the way Regina was raising Bobby. He told the caseworker that Regina was mentally upset and Bobby was an upset child.

In 1947, an informant told the FBI that Paul Nemenyi remarked that the Soviet system was superior to that of the United States.

In 1949, Dr. Paul Nemenyi went to a social worker again, complaining that his son was not being brought up in desirable circumstances, due to the instability of Regina.

In 1951, he wrote a review of the Encyclopedia Britannica for The New Republic and declared it out of date. He suggested improvements in a variety of topics, including psychology and psychoanalysis.

Dr. Paul Nemenyi died of a heart attack on March 1, 1952, at the age of 56. He had just stopped at a dance at the International Student House in Washington, DC. There, he dropped dead of a heart attack. He was living in Washington, DC, and working at the U.S. Naval Research Lab. He was survived by his son, Peter, a civil-rights activist and a mathematics student at Princeton. Peter wrote that his father, Paul, was the father of Bobby Fischer.

At the time of his death, Paul was paying for 8-year-old Bobby’s education and sending $20 a week to Regina.

When Nemenyi died, he had an envelope full of letters. The police turned these letters over to the FBI. In one of the letters, a female friend wrote that he (Paul) should not spend too much time worrying about Peter and Bobby. She wrote, “I am sorry that you have so many sorrows with your children.”

At the time of Nemenyi’s death, Regina was in nursing school in Brooklyn, broke, and facing eviction.

Photos of Paul Nemenyi bear a striking physical resemblance to Bobby Fischer. The FBI file described Dr. Nenemyi “as having a large nose, large knobby fingers, and an awkward, slovenly walk and dress.”

When Dr. Paul Nemenyi died, Regina Fischer wrote to Peter Nemenyi, who was attending Black Mountain College in Asheville, NC. “Bobby has not had a decent meal at home this past month and was sick for two days with fever and sore throat and, of course, a doctor or medicine was out of the question. I don’t think Paul would have wanted to leave Bobby this way and would ask you most urgently to let me know if Paul left anything for Bobby. Bobby is still expecting Paul.” She also wrote that she could not afford to patch his torn shoes.

Regina did not want to tell Bobby of Paul Nemenyi’s death and was hoping that Peter Nemenyi would do it. He was not comfortable with that, so he consulted a family doctor for advice. He wrote to his family doctor, “I take it you know that Paul was Bobby Fischer’s father. The matter is further complicated by the false pretenses about Bobby’s identity and the parents’ difference of opinion over the question.” Peter felt he was not qualified to tell Bobby about Paul’s death since Peter had met Bobby only a few times.

In 1963, Peter Nemenyi received his Doctorate in mathematics from Princeton.

In the 1960s, Bobby’s half-brother, Peter Nemenyi, was beaten and arrested while trying to help black voters in Mississippi and trying to integrate coffee shops. In 2002, Peter killed himself in Durham, NC, at the age of 75, after suffering from prostrate cancer.

In 2002, an article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer suggests that Nemenyi may be the biological father of Bobby Fischer. Through the Freedom of Information Act, they were able to obtain a 750-page file (file 100-102290) that the FBI had on Regina Fischer.

An FBI report claimed that both Hans-Gerhardt Fischer and Dr, Paul Nemenyi harbored Soviet sympathies.

Hans-Gerhardt (sometimes written as Gerard or Gerhard) Fischer was born on September 28, 1908 in Berlin, Germany. He was a Jew and worked in Berlin in the early 1930s, where he met Regina Wender, whose father, Jacob (Jack) Wender, was a Polish dress cutter. Hans and Regina moved to Moscow in 1933 and were married in Moscow on November 4, 1933. She was 20, he was 25. He was a biophysicist and may have fought the Fascists in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. She was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute and he was studying biophysics. Regina stayed for a year in medical school but never graduated. Quitting school, she worked as a riveter in a defense plant in the Soviet Union.

Their first born child, Joan Fischer, was born in Moscow in 1938. She died in 1998.

In 1939, Regina and Hans left Moscow together and traveled first to Austria.

In 1939, Regina Fischer returned to the United States with her daughter, Joan. She was born in Switzerland but raised in St. Louis, Missouri and was a naturalized American citizen. She caught one of the last ships leaving France for America. It is not clear if Hans-Gerhardt was on this ship. The FBI does say that Hans-Gerhardt Fischer never entered the United States from any ship (was he a suspected Soviet spy?). The FBI file says that Hans Gerhardt Fischer (Gerardo Liebscher) lived for a time in Port San Antonio, Chile where he sold fluorescent lights and worked as a photographer.

The FBI suspected that Hans might be a Soviet spy targeting Nazis in South America. In one letter to Regina, he made what the FBI called a cryptic reference to photographing fisherman (Nazis?) at a Chilean port. During that time, several German agents had been arrested there, posing as fisherman.

Regina later divorced Hans-Gerhardt in 1945. He never lived with her in the United States. He remained a lifelong German citizen. Hans later married Renata Sternaux in Algarrobo, Chile.

Bobby Fischer’s only public statement about his father appeared in Start, a Zagreb newspaper. “My father left my mother when I was two. I have never seen him. My mother has only told me that his name was Gerhardt and that he was of German descent.” Fischer once said, “Children who miss a parent become wolves.”

Later, Bobby Fischer told a friend that he and Joan did not have the same father. Joan Fischer Targ always insisted that her father’s name was Hans-Gerhardt Fischer.

Hans-Gerhardt Fischer died on February 25, 1993 in Berlin, Germany.

Regina Wender was born on March 31, 1913 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Regina Wender Fischer Pustin died of cancer on July 27, 1997 at the age of 84 in the Stanford University Hospital. Bobby Fischer died on January 17, 2008 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

–Bill Wall

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