Author: Ron Norris
Date: 00:03:07 02/10/00
Chess grandmaster, newspaper
columnist dead at 96
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO — Chess grandmaster George
Koltanowski, who wrote more than 19,000 columns on
the game for the San Francisco Chronicle, is dead. He
was 96.
Koltanowski died Saturday in a San Francisco hospital
after a brief illness.
Koltanowski's column ran every day without a break
for 52 years, a feat the newspaper said makes it the
longest-running daily chess column in newspaper
history.
"Chess is an international language," he once said.
"Everyone in the world can understand it, appreciate it
and enjoy it."
In a career that spanned 10 decades, Koltanowski was
an international grandmaster, one of only 200 in the
world, and the former chess champion of his native
Belgium.
He was also world champion of blindfold chess, which
requires the player to memorize the game, then not look
at the board again while the opponent plays in a normal
fashion.
In 1937, Koltanowski, a native of Antwerp, played 34
opponents simultaneously while blindfolded without
losing a game. He wrote books on chess, ran
tournaments, coached players, wore chess neckties and
told endless chess stories.
Koltanowski learned the game while watching his
father play his older brother, taking up the game in
earnest at the age of 14. Three years later, he was
Belgium's champion.
At that point, he gave quit being a diamond cutter to
devote his life to chess.
He served a short stint in the Belgian army. He always
said his primary duty was peeling potatoes; he used the
time spent in that mindless task to work out chess
problems in his head.
"Soldiers were going hungry," he said, "because I was
peeling the potatoes into smaller and smaller cubes."
Koltanowski said the game saved his life. When the
Nazis invaded Belgium, he was on a chess tour in
Central America. He immigrated to the United States
after a chess-playing consul in Cuba enjoyed one of his
demonstrations.
He met his wife, Leah, in New York City in 1944. The
couple moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1947.
"George Koltanowski was a legendary member of the
Chronicle family," said Managing Editor Jerry Roberts.
"He was a great chess player, an outstanding journalist,
a true gentleman, and he could beat any other
newspaper's chess columnist with his eyes closed."
Koltanowski was former president of the U.S. Chess
Federation. He served during the years after the Bobby
Fischer boom of 1972, when interest in chess soared to
record highs.
In 1960, in an exhibition sponsored by the Chronicle, he
set a world's record by playing 56 opponents
consecutively while blindfolded. He didn't lose a single
game.
"I don't know how he does it," Leah Koltanowski once
said. "He can't even remember to bring home a loaf of
bread from the supermarket."
Koltanowski is survived by his wife, four nieces and
two nephews.
Plans for a memorial service in San Francisco are
pending.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.