Link: http://www.chesscafe.com/urcan/urca... (no pdf-link available yet)

<Van Winsen accompanies Mason's first moments with the game with details of New York's chess life in 1866-67, a low-intensity scene with the New York Chess Club as the city's only chess club and Otis Fields' Rooms as the most active chess resort. When in 1868 the Europa Chess Rooms opened its doors and the Brooklyn Chess Club was resurrected, New York's chess life soared. Mason's earliest chess play was registered in a number of handicap tournaments played at the Europa Chess Rooms between the end of 1868 and early 1870. It was there that he must have understood that once he was allowed to sit at a board across from an accomplished gentleman, he was at least his equal if not more; quite a significant psychological change for an immigrant teenager who used to earn his living by shining such gentlemen's boots or attempted, often quite desperately, to sell them a newspaper. In one of these handicap tournaments, Mason played well enough to come very close to challenging Mackenzie's status, then the nation's leading player. As van Winsen shows, this contest between an accomplished master and a youthful up-and-comer who was able to hold his own without receiving odds excited the chess public, as expressed in contemporary newspapers (pages 16-17). Despite Mason's eventual match loss against Mackenzie in September 1869, the nineteen-year old's newly found fame reached even the shores of England.>

Mason moved to the U.S. when he was either 11 or 12 years old and lived there for the next 17 years. I find it hard to believe that he did not become a U.S. citizen in all that time. Ireland was not an independent country until the 20th century after Mason was already dead.

He was also in Age Of Consent (1969) as an artist painting a very young and very nekkid Helen Mirren.

Some guys have all the luck.

As a high-schooler in 1982, in fact, I thought I'd invented the opening myself. Not having any opening books at the time, I took to trying to develop a safe way to open the game that was "mathematically correct" and avoided lines that my opponents knew.

My criteria in that process were harmonic development, central control, spatial aggressiveness and solidity. Without any particular, specific ambitions, I sought to get my pieces out fast with the general scheme (d4, Bf4, Nf3, e3, c3, Bd3, o-o) now known as the London System.

Then I *did* study openings, and found 1. e4 more to my liking — now that I knew enough to avoid the traps and tactics for which double king-pawn games are notorious.

-- William Napier

"About Mason it has recently been written that in a sober state he doesn't have to lose a game to anyone. This may be true, but as this state is increasingly rare, it must be feared that his result here will be as mediocre as in his previous tournament."

According to <The Even More Complete Chess Addict>:

http://www.online-literature.com/ja...

Continuing the riff...

<Zak spent the entire war at the front, and there he joined the Party, which at the time was quite natural. Chess was always the main thing in his life. Before the war he studied with Romanovsky. At the house of the maestro a group of young Leningrad players gathered, including Zak. Under the guidance of Romanovsky they analysed games, developed openings, and played theme tournaments. Often he would talk about the leading players from the past. Zak tried to carry over the aroma of these lessons to the children in the Pioneers' Palace.

'Who, do you think, was the strongest player of all at the end of the last century?' he would ask, copying Romanovsky.

The children had absolutely no idea what to answer, and were totally at a loss : 'Steinitz? Chigorin?'

'That is what we too replied', said Vladimir Grigoryevich.

<After all the conceivable names had been given, Romanovsky, raising his index finger, would say: 'Mason, you should look at Mason's games. Mason played stronger than anyone...'>

Only on becoming more grown up, were the children to learn the conclusion of this sentence, which was not said to them for pedagogical reasons. It was : '... if he was sober, of course, and this did not happen often...'

It is noteworthy that Zak himself did not in fact become a master.>

<Russian Silhouette's> by <Genna Sosokonko> (2009)

http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Silho...