This site is being replaced with my new site:
This site has not been updated in several years now as it has been replaced with my new sites:
To see my new rural living site:
For information related to stonework:
Well I finally got fed up with MS Office Live which I used to build my web site. I started to use Office Live when it was in beta development and I had hoped it would improve in time. Instead of improving it kept getting worse. I would contact MS ( in India ) and relate my problems and would receive profuse apologies with a boiler plate answers to unasked questions. If MS is going to transfer their programming work to India they are in trouble as a company.
Google has recently created a new service similar to Office Live which allows anyone to create their own website. I have only been a member for two days and I am saying syanora MS. The editing and functionality of GooglePages is so good I have completely transferred all of my Office Live site to this new site in less than 16hrs of work. I will retain my old site for a while and use it to redirect people to my new site as the old site has considerable prominence on the web.
To see my new site:
Chess Remembrances
My first exposure to chess was when I was about 10 years old my friends Roger Tauss and Will Wendle taught me the moves of the game. I am not sure if that was a blessing or a curse as much of my life has been consumed by this activity. I had a rivalry with my brother, which encouraged me to study the game some, but I never got really exposed to the game until later. For a period of time I lived in Schenectady WMCA and they had the strongest chess club in upstate NY. Mike Volvo and his father Frank both held master status. In fact I think Mike was l a senior master. I played both of them many times and it was like a cat playing with a mouse. I never won a game. Joe Weinenger was one of the nicest men I have ever known he had an experts rating I believe. Dr. Leber was one of the toughest opponents I played many times winning some and losing some. He had a number tattooed on his arm and was noted for pulling a win out of a lost situation. When losing he was dangerous. I’m not sure when but maybe around 1960 I met my life long friend K Dean who is also a very strong player as he was high school classmate of Mike Volvo mentioned above. Their high school chess team had won several championships.
Going to the Schenectady Chess Club Thursday and Friday night was a ritual. I saw Ken Dean and Mike Orphanidius (spelling?) play 5 minute chess for 25 cents per game and after 26 straight hours of play they quit with one side being satisfied he was 25 cents ahead.
John Pamilgiens (spelling?) suffered an astounding defeat at my hands where in I allowed him to trap my queen and recovered a rook, a minor piece, and a pawn. Yielding a won endgame. He sat going over the game for an hour afterwards shaking his head. I had won the tournament brilliancy prize for that game. In reality the man left me no choice as he was dominating the position and he had forced me into a corner. That case being so I adopt the “please don’t throw me in that briar patch” and “given lemons make lemonade“ approach. Sometimes it works.
I watched some epic endgame battles between Dr Eric Marchand and my friend Ken Dean. Dr. Marchand is an endgame specialist of note from Rochester NY. Ken Dean is also an endgame specialist. For those that are unaware endgame thechnique is a science unto itself. For example you will never understand rook pawn endings until you study Levenfish's book.
We often played the Albany and Woodstock chess each of those clubs being blessed with their own celebrity status chess players. Mathew Katrein of Albany had Master status and the Meyer brothers of Woodstock both had master status. I believe that Eugene was the youngest person ever to achieve master status.
I taught two people some of the finer points of the game during the 1960’s. I speak of Don York and Dan Gutermuth both of which gained master status in the years after.
In 1972 I was one of the production staff for the PBS television network presentation of the Fischer – Spassky World Chess Championship. (See Below)
I have played in many tournaments through the years with mixed results my rating at one time after suffering a string of losses was as low as 1600’s but I feel that I probably play about 1800 now. I have no humans to play with where I live. I play “C# chess” program mostly because I have the source code for it. I’m more interested in the code than the game at this point in my life.
An open letter about 1972 Fisher - Spassky chess match
PBS NET Presentation
This letter is an attempt to document an insiders view of a historic event.
To: Ken Dean
From: George Steeves
I’ll never forget the first day I went to the twelfth floor of the Alfred E. Smith building to find out if the moves from the tournament would be available there. People were scurrying around moving props and no one seemed to know anything about the moves. I finally cornered someone who said the moves were coming over the Teletype in Russian. They showed me a test transmittal and yes the piece names were in the Russian alphabet but it was simply algebraic notation. I told them that this was standard algebraic notation and they said in surprise “ you can read this”. I said yes. I was immediately escorted in to meet Mike Chase for the first time. We talked briefly and he offered me a job working on the broadcast for which I would be compensated $50 a week in “expenses”.
At this point Bobby was still hanging out at Kennedy airport refusing to go to Iceland. I went to the AESOB (Alfred E. Smith Office Building) each day hoping the tournament would start. It had become front-page news even on the New York Times. Even when Bobby got to Iceland we were not sure if we had a TV program as he was wrangling over the lights, cameras, lack of bowling alleys and so on. This period turned out to be a real bonus for the production staff as we had time to get to know each other and work out a myriad of details. During that time I was disabled and had taken up residence at Hamilton Street just a few blocks from the AESOB. It was a pleasure to have some new friends like Mike, Sam, and Shelby and to be at the center of such a historic event was a real honor. I was relieved when the games actually started, as we wouldn’t have to figure out how to fill a lot of dead air time.
I sat next to Mike Chase during all the games that he was present (Mike missed a couple of the games and his engineer Norm sat in his place) it was interesting to read other peoples views of the events. Mike was not a very good chess player and it was the incorporation of people from the outside, that he realized were more talented than himself, that was his great contribution. You being one of them.
He had asked me who might be available and in the beginning we drew from my friends in the Albany, Schenectady and Woodstock Chess Clubs. I recollect John Dragonetti, Joe Weinenger, Mathew Katrein, John and Gene Meyer, and you as being the first guest kibitzers. As the show gained momentum we received and accepted many offers from the NY chess community. Bruce Pandelfini, the Byrne brothers, Pal Benko, Dr Anthony Saidy, made the trek from NYC to be on the show and Bruce stayed at my house on one occasions. I am amused when I see the portrayal of Bruce in the movie “In Search Of Bobby Fisher” as an up tight disciplinarian while the Bruce I knew was a longhaired, good-humored hippie. In the end even Micheal Najdorf flew in, from Argentina, to be on the show. You even had the nerve to play 5 minute chess with him and defend with the Najdorf Variation.
The show had a totally different format in the end than was intended in the beginning. For one thing the moves were supposed to come in from Iceland by telegraph. This later changed so that the moves were transmitted to NYC at the Manhattan Chess Club. Edmar Mednis would transmit the moves to me, by telephone, in algebraic and I would translate to English notation and give the move to Mike. He in turn would ring the Teletype bell and give the move to Shelby in his earphone. Shelby would walk over to the Teletype tear off a blank sheet of paper with bravado and feign reading the move. Mistakes were frequent many of them I am sure were mine. Whenever a mistake was made in transmission, analysis would be side tracked into some non-existent fantasy. It just seemed to add to the show.
Also in the beginning it was to be Shelby that would do all the analyses. I remember Sam Hallman one of the shows hosts, the other being Chris Chase, saying no man alive could do four to six hours of standup live TV. This turned out to be prophetic as Shelby would really begin to show signs of wear after a couple of hours and he would come off at the end of the day drenched and light burned. I had to admire Shelby’s tenacity as the tournament progressed because the amount of effort and work he expended was monumental and I often thought he was coming undone and would not last to the end. The introduction of the kibitzers was largely a mechanism to aid Shelby in his task allowing him to not have to talk all the time as sometimes he would lose his voice. Fortuitously this mechanism added measurable to the popularity of the show. People loved to watch the kibitzers get into heated arguments over what might be possible.
I remember a Benoni defense where Bobby was playing black. You had suggested that Bobby would play Nh5. Gene Meyer protested vociferously “What are you crazy. That would break up his king side pawn structure etc.” it really took the wind out of his adolescent sails when the move came in Nh5. Not only had you predicted the move but the ensuing sequence that led to Bobby gaining the winning advantage. I thanked Gene for his wonderful performance on the show, which was greeted by him with disdain. I think he thought I was gloating over his error. In fact it was this sort of conflict that made the show great and I really didn’t care who was right.
We video taped the show each day. NET had just purchased two state of the art Ampex video recorders. Each one was the size of a Volkswagen and recording the tape at the speed of a tape rewinding today. The tape reels were over 3’ in diameter and the tape was 3-4” wide. Norm had told me that this was only the second time these units had been used. The first time was to record the Chuck Mangione “Friends and Love Concert”. Unfortunately the audio feed to the recorder had not been connected properly. The crew at NET had spent weeks using these two recorders to re-synchronize the music to the video. I often wonder if any of this footage is in storage at NET. It was this experience that opened my eyes to the possibilities of this new media revolution that we now take for granted.
For me the high light of the tournament was towards the end when the game had started but PBS had made plans to preempt the game with the opening of the Republican National Convention. I felt fortunate that I would be able to ignore the convention and continue with the game. Only about a half-hour after PBS switched to the convention the phone lines at NET were jammed with protest calls. The same had happened at PBS and every PBS affiliate in the country. Yes Chess was more important than politics and convention was removed and Chess won. This is the only time that I know of that live programming in progress was changed by popular request.
It was an amateur production with whole sequences improvised out of necessity. Many of the crew and participants were volunteers with no TV experience. There were daily errors and foul-ups. Often Shelby would request help on his earpiece. Something no polished TV personality would do. All this lent an air of reality to the production that more professional shows would have tried to hide. We knew no better and got nominated for an Emmy in the process.
Remembrances By
George Steeves