Woman Chess Champion Could Not Concentrate

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29717, 10 January 1962, Page 2

Woman Chess Champion Could Not Concentrate

[By SUSAN VAUGHAN] The decision of Lisa Lane, America’s woman chess champion, to leave the International Chess Congress at Hastings, England, because she could not concentrate is not really surprising. There have been plenty of “nerves” Incidents in championship chess. One grandmaster threw a piece at an opponent when he lost. A player on a winning tack died of a heart attack.

What is surprising is that there are not more such incidents; chess calls for a degree of concentration unsurpassed by any other activity. And for Miss Lane, who was evidently worrying about her boy friend, it must have been quite unbearable. Even when things are relatively normal, she smokes 30 cigarettes a game. Penalty of Beauty This complication is. no doubt, one of the penalties of being pretty. Miss Lane has been called the prettiest chess player in the world, and no-one has disputed it. But her beauty has had compensations as well. Chess skill plus comeliness have meant that Miss Lane is much in demand in America for exhibition games. At a fee of £lOO for a two-hour match, she has been well able to

make her living as a chess player. She has been to congresses all over the world. Before coming to Britain she was in Jugoslavia. “Tve travelled the world on a chess board, you might say," she comments. Started Late For a champion. Lisa—a 24-year-old Philadelphian—started late in life. She had not moved a paw-n when one day in her teens she walked into a coffee shop, saw people playing chess and got a boy to teach her. "I couldn’t tear myself away from the game,” she recalls. It is curious that there are not more women chess players; only 12 ■women were among the 226 players at Hastings. After all, one would think that a game in which

the queen was the most powerful piece would have some appeal to women.” But Miss Lane assured me that it was only a matter of time before women moved in. in strength. “No woman has been a grandmaster yet," she said. "But I don’t see why one shouldn't some day." Miss Lane has been winner of the American women’s chess championship six times. At Hastings she was unable to finish four out of five games. She had been away from her home in New York since October last and should have gone on to Holland this month. Now she has cancelled the trip to Holland to go home. Defaulting from the Hastings congress may mean the end of international championship competition for her.