A CHESS VISITOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 36

A CHESS VISITOR.

TOO GOOD FOR EXPERTS. \ Chess has had an unwonted popularity in Xew York since the close of the lecent championship tourney, and anion;* its resurrected mementos is the prize anecdote of one of New York's largest and most dignified chess clubs. At this club the members are exclusively male. Their contests run over weeks, and their pursuit of the elusive checkmate over years. Most of the members are grnduates of large Eastern universities, with incomes which permit them to concentrate on the strategies of the checkered board. The dignity of the place compares with that of the Union League Club, and the model there is Michael Angelo's Moses. One evening the members were disturbed by a telephone call. The lady was a vaudeville actress; she was in town for three evenings; she was "crazy" about chess, and though she knew the club's rules, couldn't they please set them aside just this once and give her a game? The president was, after all, n gentleman. The rules were set aside, but chivalry could go no further, and the club expert was promptly dug up for the contest. The sense of the meeting was that after one game, or possibly two, with this gentleman the young lady might become discouraged and leave the club to its austerity. Worse still, when the young person arrived, she was a fluttering, giggling individual, highly varnished and extremely loudly dressed. The club settled itself for the triumph and repulse of the invader. When the actress made her first ten moves, and all the moves nfter that, with the same giggle and the remark, "I wonder what will happen if I move this?" certainty became doubly certain. A few minutes later the lady giggled, said "I wonder what will happen if I move this?" for the twentieth time, and tho club expert acknowledged defeat. In rapid order she mowed down other experts as they drove tip, and after a linal coup against her sponsor, the president, opined that she had had about all the amusement she could stand for that evening, and departed. Legend hath it that the president and the vice-president had hot words in the entry, the president, calling his subordinate a mere pawn, as to which should see the lady to her hotel, but that i? only rumour.