Apr-21-07
 | | Phony Benoni: A living legend in certain quarters of US chess. As a young man, he decided to play a tournament in all 50 states and succeeded in doing so. He has also garnered a measure of fame by never resigning; for example, see R Feldstein vs J Benjamin, 1990, where he makes a GM checkmate him up two queens and a rook.
I am absolutely sure that the two counter examples given here are incomplete scoresheets or losses on time. It can lead to strange results. He played many tournaments in Michigan, and I once saw him reach an ending against a Master with Q+2B+2P vs. Feldstein's bare king. Feldstein didn't resign, so the Master had a bit of fun by promoting both pawns to bishops, including three on the same colored squares. |
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| Apr-21-07 | | KingG: <Phony Benoni> Interesting info. Do you know roughly what this guy's rating is? |
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Apr-21-07
| | Phony Benoni: <KingG> He seems to be stuck at 2000. http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMa... |
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| Apr-21-07 | | Resignation Trap: It's not easy to find a tournament in Wyoming, but he did it here: http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain... . I had the pleasure to defeat him in the last round. |
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| Aug-14-10 | | colonel.moreau: Back in the mid 80's I played in an obscure tournament in New Hampshire, the "Modnadnock Marathon", 12 rounds of chess in 2 days.... or roughly 36 hours of straight chess with possibly a few 15 minute catnaps in between rounds. You were allowed to take byes in any round to sleep but the majority of players stuck it out through all 12 rounds. When Robert Feldstein showed up the tournament director Olin Foreman immediately presented him with a trophy which said "Marathon Man" on it! Apparantly he had traveled over 1000 miles just to play in the tournament. I played in 4 marathons in the next 7 or 8 years and he was there each time. He used to post his snapshots on the wall of the opponents he had played throughout the years. Years later at the US Amateur team championships in New Jersey, Feldstein led a team who played 1.Nf3 and 1...Nf6 on every board. He did in fact announce in advance that everyone on his team would be doing that. He had a few tricks up his sleeve for instance one of his games went (as White) 1.Nf3 c5 2.d4!? cxd4 3.c3 dxc3 4.Nxc3 and with 5.e4 transposing into a Smith-Morra Gambit. Things went along smoothly until an expert played 1.g4!! Nf6 2.g5 Ne4 3.d3 Nd6 4.e4 and went on to win. |
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Dec-05-11
| | Phony Benoni: He recently passed away. An obituary by his wife: http://www.chesstour.com/Feldstein.... |
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| Dec-05-11 | | TheFocus: <A living legend in certain quarters of US chess. As a young man, he decided to play a tournament in all 50 states and succeeded in doing so.> I would like to do this, too.
I have played in 11 states so far.
Do foreign team matches count? I played on five US team matches in ICCF. I think I should get credit for those five countries. |
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| Dec-05-11 | | brankat: Quite a character, Mr.Feldstein! |
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Dec-05-11
 | | WannaBe: Ah, someone who truly enjoyed chess, RIP. |
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| Dec-05-11 | | King Death: I remember this guy from the 80s. He showed up for a tournament I played in San Fransisco. It was surprising to see somebody who wasn't a titled player all the way from the East Coast. R.I.P. You were a trouper. |
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Dec-05-11
| | WannaBe: <TheFocus: ... I would like to do this, too. I have played in 11 states so far....> I have played in these states: Comatosed, drunk, sober, hung-over, and pissed-off. Guess I have 6 more states to go to catch you. Maybe I can add horny to that. |
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| Dec-05-11 | | King Death: <WannaBe> Only 5 to go. You may catch <TheFocus> yet. |
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Dec-06-11
| | Phony Benoni: Well, since it seems to be important, I have 23. Probably not going beyond that, though. After all, if I started playing in tournaments again I'd have to give up some CG time. |
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| Dec-06-11 | | Shams: "'Place the turkey in a preheated oven.' Now how am I to do that exactly? There are only two states an oven can possibly exist in: heated and unheated. 'Preheated' is a meaningless !@#$% word." -- George Carlin |
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| Dec-06-11 | | King Death: <Shams> Carlin was something else. He was an offbeat humorist when this country needed an alternative to the staid, button down mentality of the 1950s. If it hadn't been for Lenny Bruce coming before him and taking a lot of heat, he may have had a harder time gaining acceptance though. |
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| Dec-06-11 | | Robed.Bishop: <Carlin: "'Place the turkey in a preheated oven.' Now how am I to do that exactly? There are only two states an oven can possibly exist in: heated and unheated. 'Preheated' is a meaningless !@#$% word." -- George Carlin> Never thought the man was funny, though mildly clever. |
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Aug-06-12
 | | perfidious: Came to this page to read about my old friend Bob Feldstein and it's only now that I'm seeing the terrible news. We played most of those Monadnock Marathons together and met more times than I can remember. Then there was the time we ran into each other by chance at Boston Garden on New Year's Eve 1988 during the Red Army-Bruins game. RIP, my friend. It won't be the same without you. |
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| Aug-29-18 | | shannie: I played against Robert in the 1980 Canadian Open in Ottawa. We were paired
out of sequence because both of us could not attend the first round. He was rated 1860 American, I was 1540 Canadian. We were the only people playing in the tournament hall. During the game he ate a four course meal....backwards. He started with lime jello, then beef, gravy and French fries, then salad, finally soup.
He opened b4 but the game seemed to transpose in to a Pirc. He had a fully loaded Alekhine gun pressuring a central pawn. But he missed a tactical trick and I managed to scoop up two of his advanced pawns. True to form be played on for an hour until mate even though we both had to play that evening. I scored 6 wins and 4 losses. I beat a 1700 player and another A class player from Quebec. There was a rating adjustment after that event so my rating went up almost 300 points.
My sympathy to Robert's family. He was a character. One that you meet only over a chess board. |
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Aug-25-21
 | | GrahamClayton: How many countries outside of the US did Feldstein manage to play a game in? Is anyone else close to matching his record of playing a game in all 50 US states? |
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Feb-05-22
 | | louispaulsen88888888: I believe Larry Tamarkin played in all 50 states as well.
I could be wrong.
The year his team announced they would play 1 N-KB3 every board every game, he asked me between rounds what I would play. I said I would consider 1.g4 Then he asked me where the knight should go on 2.g5. I said I wasn’t sure but I might just retreat it to knight one.
One other Feldstein story. Also in a US Amateur Team Championship. I had an overwhelming position. He wouldn’t resign. I didn’t know he always plays until mate. I marched my king around the entire perimeter of the board. This attracted a few spectators. Finally I mated him. To say he was not very amused would be a gross understatement. I wanted to smooth things over and talked with him the following day and he acted as though the incident never happened. We never discussed it. He had put it behind him. In some ways, he was of good character. |
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| Feb-06-22 | | Granny O Doul: I'd be extremely surprised if Tamarkin played in 50 states. He really wasn't much of a traveler.
I had a bit of a dispute with Feldstein in our only tournament meeting. With a pawn on the seventh rank, I picked up my captured queen from off the board, then noticed that if I queened at once I'd lose it to a knight fork. So either I made a knight instead, or maybe I played some other move to avert the fork, and he claimed that since I'd touched the queen off the board, I was required to promote to it. I knew he wouldn't resign, and I made no attempt to prolong the game any farther. |
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Feb-06-22
| | louispaulsen88888888: As long as you do not touch the square on the board with the queen you do not have to promote to it.
I think. |
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Kibitzing
