I am overdue in updating this (mainly because almost 6 years ago ( May 2019 ) we moved from South Salem, NY where I commuted into New York City for my investment banking/consulting work and was active at the Marshall Chess Club and Fairfield, CT club in many ways to Sienna, TX south of Houston. Consequently, other than playing BOTS on chess.com my chess activities are not what they were when I was in NY. My age of 82 is not the issue, rather I am much more active in my role as Vice Commander and Honor Guard member of my American Legion Post, other charitable activities, as well as still actively managing family financial matters. There is some chess activity here, but not like NY, and an active club in north Houston is over an hour drive, so still not practical for me playing rated games. I can beat 1800 and occasionally even over 2000 rated BOTS on chess.com ( but those ratings seem questionable in my view ) and even have achieved over 94% accuracy and game rating over 1900.I have not totally rewritten the 10 year old part below except to say I have now been playing over 70 years. Right before we left NY I did have the pleasure of spending some time with former World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov at the Marshall and have some nice pictures with him ( obviously way before the Russia/Ukraine war ). Of course not being in NY and not having visited the Saint Louis, Chess Club, I no longer have the opportunity to meet the top players as I did in the past.
The other chess activity I have not been able to continue here in Texas is being a Boy Scout Chess Merit Badge Counselor.
My wife is 84 and keeps asking me when I am planning to really retire, so I cannot do everything and I even have learned to say "no" when asked to take on additional duties.
The remaining part was written in 2015 ( only change being that I have played chess now for 70 years ) :
**I am a serious player ( playing for about 70 years ) but better known as a chess patron: Trustee of the American Chess Foundation in NY ( now called Chess-in-the Schools) for 27 years until 2003. I am best known for providing the Paul M. Albert, Jr. Brilliancy Prizes for U.S. Chess Championship, both men's and women's ( when championships were separate ) from 1983 to 2003. All the 64 prize winning games are the basis for a book ( for which I wrote the Foreword ) by IM Danny Kopec ( whose summer chess camps I still attend ) and GM Lubomir Ftacnik titled "Winning the Won Game: Lessons from the Albert Brilliancy Prizes", published by Batsford in 2004. I also have been a financial supporter of military chess, especially in the past the U.S. Army Championship, reflecting my strong support of the U. S. military and status as a veteran U.S. Army Artillery Officer. Being an Eagle Scout and long time supporter of the Boy Scouts, I became a Chess Merit Badge Counselor when the badge was instituted a few years ago with the advocacy particularly of Jeanne Sinquefield. More recently I have been sponsoring events at the Marshall Chess Club and at the Chess Cub of Fairfield County, CT (see below) as well as continuing general financial support of chess.**
** My rating is a modest 1400+ reflecting that business [investment banker, capital market consultant, family hedge fund manager, and corporate board director for 50 years and not yet fully retired], family, and military obligations prevented me from playing rated games at all for 40 years. Even now, with family investment work and an intensely anti-chess spouse, playing in a rated tournament in August in 2010,2011, and 2012 is the best I have been able to do. Although some with whom I play feel my official rating does not reflect my knowledge and ability, and I do beat 1600 and 1700 players in rated tournaments, the fatigue and inconsistency of being in my seventies, losing to highly talented ( but surprisingly low rated ) youngsters, and seldom being able to play rated games, makes rating progress difficult. I was encouraged by my last 2012 tournament results; playing all higher rated players I added 60 rating points and was approaching 1500, so perhaps not all hope of further progress is lost. My draw, but long ago, against GM Roman Dzindzhichashvili in a simul reflects that I was not a complete patzer ( Dzindzhi thought I was a 2000 player ). However, playing in the bigger tournaments at July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter is off limits from a family perspective, and even I have reservations about playing chess on Christmas, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, even if I could.**
** As my posts frequently reflect,I have had the honor and pleasure over the past 60 years of meeting many of the world's great and near great players including on May 17th, 2010 for the first time Magnus Carlsen ( and his father ) and again Karpov and Kasparov at the fundraiser in New York City for the Karpov run for FIDE President. A couple years later I also got to play Magnus in a simul at the Marshall Chess Club. Others I have met include:
Adams,Agdestein,Anand,Averbakh,Fischer,Huebner, Ivanchuk,Kamsky,Karpov,Kasparov,Korchnoi,
Kramnik,Larsen,Lautier,Lombardy,Reshevsky,Seiraw-
an, Short,Smyslov,Spassky,Speelman,Tal,Van Wely,and Yusupov and virtually all the other top U.S. men and women players, many of whom have been the winners of my brilliancy prize. I especially treasure the opportunity I had to meet the late GM Lothar Schmid, Arbiter of the 1972 Fischer-Spassky Match and the owner of the world's greatest chess book collection ( although I never got to accept his invitation to see the collection at his home in Bamberg, Germany ) ; the late Edward Lasker whose book Chess Secrets I Learned From the Masters he autographed for me at the Marshall about a year before his death ( a treasured part of my chess book and memorabilia collection ) ; and Susan,Sophia, and Judith Polgar as well as their parents. As a result of my access to the top of the chess world, included in my collection of chess books are many autographed by some of the all time great players. I greatly admire the great past GMs such as Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch, Schlechter, Nimzowitsch, etc. as well as many of the GMs who followed, particularly those who were or are both outstanding,creative chessplayers as well as highly learned men and women.[ I regret that I never had the opportunity to meet the late Mikhail Botvinnik, David Bronstein ,Yefim Geller, Svetozar Gligoric Paul Keres, Andor Lilienthal, Miguel Najdorf, Tigran Petrosian, ( or the still living legends such as Mark Taimanov and Alexander Beliavsky ) certainly all on my list of great chess artists, or Leko, Shirov, Topalov, and the new, younger geniuses except Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura whom I first met at a young age, knowing his father Sunil Weeramantry for many years. Unfortunately, because I no longer serve in any official position related to chess and also because to some extent the chess center of the U.S. has moved from New York to Saint Louis benefitting from Rex Sinquefield's outstanding generosity and support, frequent future opportunities for my meeting more of the world's elite players seems less likely. I particularly admire strong women players, all three Polgars whom I know to some extent ( and I still see Susan from time to time at her Foundation events in NY ), GM Irina Krush whom I see frequently at the Marshall , as well as others such as GMs Alexandra Kosteniuk, Zhu Chen, and Pia Cramling all of whom I've met previously in NY.**
** My interest is in both chess history and players as well as playing and understanding the game itself and supporting it to the extent I can. In all ways I am a chess fan and supporter of chess and am a member of the Marshall Chess Club in NY as well as the Chess Club of Fairfield County CT closer to my home. However, I live 50 miles from NY City so getting to the Marshall is infrequent, but I was able to speak for example at the Fischer symposium on March 6 and 7, 2009, recounting my contacts with Bobby in 1957 and 1965; also I have been sponsoring the Bobby Fischer Memorial Blitz Tournament at the Marshall since 2010 around Bobby's March 9th birthday and plan to continue. Bobby and I were both born in 1943, I a couple months earlier on January 15th. At the Chess Club of Fairfield County CT in 2013, 2014, and 2015, I was the financial sponsor of the Connecticut Dreadnoughts team in the U.S. Chess League.**
**I enjoy this site, but too frequently it can be overloaded with invective,inane comments,and disputes over trivia, which in my opinion reflects a disrespect for our royal game, rather than a love of it, and the non chess discussions belong elsewhere. Since I continue to study, play, and financially support chess ( even though constrained from playing regularly in rated tournaments ) I am a regular, almost daily, visitor to the site because of the predominance of thoughtful and interesting posts and the high quality chess content provided by chessgames.com., and I do comment occasionally.**
Paul M. Albert, Jr. (Revised , May 2025 )
Kibitzing
