Apr-29-09
 | | Tabanus: Robert Merton Jacobs (1928 - )
Bob Jacobs was born in Pittsburgh in 1928. He began learning chess at the age of six. Following his university studies as an English major at the University of Michigan and UCLA, he began playing tournament chess in the Los Angeles area. One-time U.S. Champion Hermann Steiner took a liking to Bob and gave him free membership in the Steiner Chess Club. In 1955 Bob qualified for the California state championship; after five rounds Bob was tied with Steiner for the lead, but the tournament was abruptly cancelled due to Steiner's sudden death. Several months later Bob was one of twelve strong California masters invited to play in the Steiner Memorial Tournament, which he won by a full point. In 1970 Bob moved to St. Louis, working at the McDonnell Douglas headquarters and playing chess at the old Capablanca Club. Bob retired in 1988 and has devoted much of his time to travel and correspondence chess. Bob is a Life Master and has won the Missouri state championship many times, most recently in 1996. Bob was Missouri's first Correspondence Chess IM, and he tied for first in the 1972 USCF Golden Knights championship and won the 1976 USCF Absolute Correspondence Championship outright. In September of 2005 Bob was named a USCF Correspondence Chess Senior Master. http://www.mochess.org/halloffame.htm
http://main.uschess.org/assets/msa_... http://www.mochess.org/Bulletin/spr... |
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| Oct-18-13 | | Kikoman: <Player of the Day> Happy 85th Birthday Sir Robert Merton Jacobs! :D |
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Oct-18-13
 | | Penguincw: Happy Birthday to the <POTD>: Robert Merton Jacobs. |
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| Dec-08-14 | | zanzibar: Good job <Tabanus>, this is one player from <2nd PanAm Open, Hollywood (1956)> I won't have to do all the legwork on! A photo of the older Jacobs can be found here:
http://www.mochess.org/halloffame.htm
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Here's one of his 1976 games, which I found here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=F7... <
[Event "Absolute Corr Ch"]
[Site "cr."]
[Date "1976.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Woolsey, K"]
[Black "Jacobs, Robert Merton"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C67t"]
[EventDate "1976.??.??"]
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5 Nf5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 <This ancient variation, played often in the 19th century by Lasker, Pillsbury, Tarrasch and others, has always been a favorite of mine, in part because of my penchant for the two bishops. In 1976, it was viewed as unfavorable for Black. I disagreed (and still do). Black's two bishops compensate for White's healthier kingside pawns. And Black enjoys a psychological plus in that he has clear goals to work towards: safeguarding his king, developing and preserving his bishops, restricting White's knights, and developing his rooks. On the other hand, White's position, though secure and superficially attractive, is sterile. From this position, once Black equalizes, he's on the road to winning!> 9.Nc3 h6 10.Bd2 Be6 11.Rad1 Ke8 12.Ne4 Rd8 13.Rfe1 b6 14.b3 Be7 15.c4 Kf8 <Black proceeds to castle the hard way. Without anything resembling a weak move White's edge or illusion thereof is vanishing.> 16.h3 Kg8 17.Bc3 Kh7 18.Kh2 c5 19.g4 $2 $201
<This error has been in preparation for several moves. The idea -- to get White's kingside pawns rolling -- is sound, but implemention has been too slow. <ed- engine thinks 19.g4 best>> 19...Nh4 20.Ng1
<<ed !? engine prefers 20.Kg3 here>> 20...Ng6 21.Ne2 Bc8 $1 22.f4 Bb7
<<ed ?, 23.f5 instead>> 23.N4g3
<<ed - ?, >23...Nh4 24.Ng1 Ng2 25.Rxd8 Rxd8 26.Rf1 Rd3 27.Be1
<<ed ? - 27.Nf5 or 27.N3e2 better>> 27...Nxe1 28.Rxe1 Bh4 29.N1e2 Rd2 30.f5 Bf3 31.Kg1
<The knights are no match for the bishops.> 31...Rxa2
<<ed !? - 32...Bxg3 is better>> 32.e6 fxe6 33.fxe6 Bxg3 34.e7
( <or> 34.Nxg3 Rg2+ 35.Kf1 Rxg3 36.Kf2 Rxh3 37.Re3 Bxg4 ) 34...Bxe1 35.e8=Q Rxe2 36.Qf7 Be4
<And White resigned -- the queen is overmatched: After Black positions his bishops on h4 or g3, the rook will attack e1 and mate on h1.> 0-1
> |
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| Dec-08-14 | | zanzibar: From a bio written by the player himself:
<The next decade went quickly: chess competed with the discovery of girls and the stress of college [English major, Univ. of Michigan & UCLA]. In the '50's, I began playing tournament chess in the Los Angeles area. One-time U.S. champion Herman Steiner took a liking to me and gave me a free membership in his Steiner Chess Club, which became the Hollywood Chess Club.> http://www.uschess.org/cc/absolute/... |
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| Dec-09-14 | | zanzibar: Oh, I can't resist one more passage:
[Jacobs grew up during the Great Depression]
<Buying a chess set was out of the question, so we made one, gluing shaped pieces of cardboard to empty spools of thread my Mother provided. One evening a visiting Hungarian friend of our father's saw us playing with our home-made pieces and on his next visit he brought us a chess set. For years that was our set -- Hungarian pieces are similar to Staunton design except for the bishops which are completely different.> http://d1lalstwiwz2br.cloudfront.ne... (Hungarian set in action) http://d1lalstwiwz2br.cloudfront.ne... http://www.chess.com/forum/view/che... |
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Jan-01-23
 | | monopole2313: Playing in the Hastings Masters at age 94. Are you kidding? |
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Oct-18-24
 | | FSR: He has a 6-6-6 name, like politicians Ronald Wilson Reagan and Andrew Demese Gillum; actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Robert Hudson Walker, and Hannah Taylor-Gordon (and another such actress, whose name escapes me); and chessplayers Kaarle Ojanen (middle name Sakari), Joseph Morgan (middle name Palmer, Adrian Hollis (middle name Swayne), Daniel Parmet (middle name Edward), Joseph Norman Cotter, and Robert Edward Durkin (less known than 1.Na3 eponym Robert Durkin ; both were born in Milwaukee c. 1923). |
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| Oct-18-24 | | Granny O Doul: <and another such actress, whose name escapes me> Helena Bonham Carter?
I actually couldn't pull her name just now but I remembered there was the anagram "no real charm beneath" and noticed it was of the right length. |
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Oct-18-24
| | FSR: <Granny O Doul> Yes! Thank you! |
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| Oct-18-24 | | Zenchess: I've seen him in real life. Luckily, I haven't been the victim of his play, but there were a bunch of times where he would vanquish people with the Berlin Defense well before Kramnik adopted it and made it mainstream theory. And then he would lecture his victim afterwards about how people think they owned the world after the check on d1 in the main line, only to find out the hard way that the bishop pair was superior. He always held that the capture on c6 was ?! for White. By his own count, he's played 1,000+ games with the opening, well before Internet chess. He held that Black was already ⩱. And then, at the end, he would say, "But Black can always make a mistake." I'll bet he was tickled to death when Kramnik adopted it against Kasparov. Everybody had a lot of affection for the old man. |
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| Oct-18-24 | | stone free or die: <<FSR> He has a 6-6-6 name> Just wondering how you come up with this stuff?
Is that how your mind works, or are you a member of MENSA and see this sorta stuff in your weekly newsletter. Or both?! |
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Oct-18-24
| | FSR: <stone free or die> I joined the Triple Nine Society (20 times as exclusive as Mensa) just because I could, but let my membership lapse, so I no longer get its newsletter. That's how my mind works. I like words, letters, and numbers, so I immediately notice things like this, anagrams, properties of numbers (e.g. if I see 5005, I'll immediately recognize that it's 5 x 7 x 11 x 13, or if I see 153 I'll think that it's equal to the sum of the cubes of its digits) and so forth. But unlike <Granny O Doul>, I didn't know that the anagram of <Helena Bonham Carter> is <no real charm beneath>. Now that's impressive. I do know that the anagram of <Ronald Wilson Reagan> is <insane Anglo warlord> and that the anagram of <eleven plus two> is <twelve plus one>. |
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Oct-18-24
 | | perfidious: Numbers are my bag; at lower levels, I can perform various arithmetical functions mentally. Throughout life, I have had virtually no need of a calculator. Give me a fifty for a charge of $8.33? 'That's $41.67 change, ma'am'. Still ridiculously easy for me at 64. I had a management job in which the 130 employees all had eight-digit IDs. Knew every one. Colleagues and subordinates used to freak when they realised it, then got used to it. |
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Oct-18-24
| | FSR: When I was in college, there was a counter in the student union building where they sold candy. They had a scale that weighed it in thousandths of a pound. I once asked for 5/7 of a pound, which confused the girl behind the counter. I wasn't trying to be a smartass. I honestly hadn't realized that most people didn't know sevenths off the top of their heads (5/7 is the repeating decimal .714285714285...). 142857 is one of my favorite numbers. One seventh is .142857142857..., two sevenths is .285714285714..., etc. 142857 times seven is 999999. |
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Oct-18-24
| | FSR: I also like extracting the prime factors of numbers in my head. If I see a number on a license plate or in a movie, I'll start figuring out its divisors. |
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| Oct-19-24 | | stone free or die: Just curious, <FSR>, did you ever study number theory, or any math beyond calculus? |
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| Oct-19-24 | | stone free or die: (And yes, I noted with some interest your foray into accounting, which is math too. Wonder what prompted that?) |
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Oct-19-24
| | FSR: <stone free or die: Just curious, <FSR>, did you ever study number theory, or any math beyond calculus?> No. |
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Oct-19-24
| | perfidious: No maths beyond first-year algebra here, though I went to college briefly and studied accounting. Was not self-disciplined enough and had never got into good study habits during schoolboy days, so that went nowhere. |
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Oct-20-24
 | | fredthebear: It's not what you know...
Q: How does an undisciplined college flunky who cannot remember the sixth move of the Sicilian Najdorf get a managerial job supervising 130 empties? A: His resume uses the same misleading method as when posting on the internet. |
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Oct-20-24
| | perfidious: Ah, what <would> we do without the typical insightful deposit of detritus from <fredremf>: <It's not what you know...Q: How does an undisciplined college flunky who cannot remember the sixth move of the Sicilian Najdorf get a managerial job supervising 130 empties? A: His resume uses the same misleading method as when posting on the internet.> How does <fredmaggot> get a life? The <keypusher> method is his for the taking, which would leave one less failure for him to remember as he grows old. #heartlandscumowned
#pissonmidwesternslime |
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Oct-20-24
| | fredthebear: You brought it upon yourself, cretin. I simply posed the obvious question using the "facts" you gave to readers. You responded with your typical manufactured mudslinging as you've done for decades being the ugly narcissist that you proudly are.
You probably even tip destitute people your pocket change and think you've done them a blessed favor, patting yourself on the back like your gift is important. The least you could have done is look up the main line of the Najdorf variation, but no. That would require too much honest effort on your part. So, let me be of some assistance to those readers who expect editors to actually do something useful for members instead of attacking us continuously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyf... How about the beginners Four Knights Italian that you've misevaluated for years? The Berlin?? And frankly, we're quite surprised that you have not braggadociosly reported how you defeated Mr. Jacobs three straight and drew one down a piece, how you recall every move from four decades ago. You've slipped a far stretch orange face. Maybe you should take a break from chess through November 6 (or perhaps even January 6) and continue voting early each and every day like you did back in 2020. Such civic diligence would be a big improvement over your current self-absorbed contributions to society. Or, you could simply join AA for Dishonest Jerks should you desire to continue focusing on yourself: https://www.psychologytoday.com/int... “Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.”
― Alcoholics Anonymous, Jerks Anonymous |
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Feb-05-25
 | | Stonehenge: He passed away a week ago. Hope this link will continue to work for a while: https://shipentine4.rssing.com/chan... |
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Feb-05-25
| | monopole2313: Try https://shipentine4.rssing.com/chan... |
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Kibitzing
