Pestaño: Occupations of famous chess players

Frank 'Boy' Pestaño
Chessmoso

CONTRARY to what you know, most chess players have a regular occupation aside from playing chess. Almost everybody knows that very few people can make a living out of the game. Here are the selected professions of some players, all of them are grandmasters.

Edmar Mednis was a chemical engineer, a profession closest to my heart. He who played a simul tournament with Cepca members here in Cebu in the late 90s.

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Mikhael Botvinnik was a three-time world champion who was an electrical engineer. His famous pupils include world champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik.

Max Euwe was not only a world champion but was also a past president of Fide. He was a professor and had a doctorate in mathematics.

Paul Morphy was considered by Bobby Fischer to have been the greatest player of all time and an unofficial world champion. He was a lawyer by profession and was known to have memorized the complete Louisiana book of code and laws.

William Lombardy gained fame by being the second of Bobby Fischer in the match of the century against Boris Spassky in 1972. He was a former Roman Catholic priest.

Miguel Najdorf was a Polish-born Argentine chess grandmaster of Jewish origin, famous for his Najdorf Variation. He was an insurance underwriter and once played communist revolutionary Che Guevara to a draw.

John Nunn is one of England’s strongest players and once belonged to the world’s top 10. He is also a college instructor in mathematics.

Reuben Fine was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the mid- 1930s through the 1940s and is a psychoanalyst.

Samuel Reshevsky, considered by many to have been the best player after Bobby Fischer and Paul Morphy, was an accountant. He was a contender for the World Chess Championship from 1935 to the mid-1960s.

Mark Taimanov has the distinction for being one of the top 100 players of all time in chess and piano.

Siegbert Tarrasch was one of the strongest players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th century and early 20th century. He was a doctor.

Andrew Solis is considered one of the most prolific chess writers, having authored or co-authored around 30 books. Soltis is a journalist and a weekly columnist for the New York Post. He was named “Chess journalist of the year” by the Chess Journalists of America in 1988.

Alex Yermolinsky won the US championship in 1993 and 1996 and is a chemist.

MILLION POT. Poker has grown tremendously over the last three or four years, including here in Cebu. It’s a game that largely attracts the same people as chess. Poker is a lot similar to chess in that beneath its seemingly simple surface lurks a deep sea of advanced theoretical concepts that give skilled players a great advantage over occasional ones

Chess is a game like golf, tennis or boxing, it has plenty of followers, yet no one will watch it on TV. The invention of the pocket camera has made poker the fastest
growing game in the world today.

The action is at its highest at the All-in poker club at the Waterfront Hotel where there is a guaranteed P50,000 tournament everyday and cash games all the time.

A lot of chess players including Cepca members play here.

Tomorrow at 2:30 p.m., there will be a P1-million guaranteed tournament with a freezeout format. The buy-in is only P10,000 plus P500 registration.

The club manager is Bryan Lo, and the assistant is Cathy Dagiso. Antonio “Mario” Lo Jr. is the Chairman-CEO of the Vanskaps Management Group that operates the poker club.

If you think you are good ,this is your chance to play this once in a lifetime competition .Contact Bryan at 3181101 or 0917-7256756.

(frankpestano@yahoo.co,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com)


Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on October 9, 2009.