Our new season officially started October 1st. We continue to meet in the same room at the Helm/Bridge Room. Our meeting time remains the same: Tuesdays 10 a.m. to noon.
There isn’t much news to report about club summer meetings. We did have at least two to three players come each week. Our club champion, Tom Poulos, is playing in a chess tournament in Estero, Florida. More information next month after Tom returns with details.
Halloween comes up at the end of October. There are spooky stories about ghosts playing chess. One story was featured recently on The History Channel. It involved two friends who frequently played chess together. One of the two claimed to have played chess with his friend after his friend died. The deceased friend was Maurice Tillet, a famous wrestler. He was known as “The French Angel”. At one time, he was the world heavy weight wrestling champion.
Mr. Tillet suffered from Acromegaly which made his head and limbs large. His face was grotesque. It was rumored that his appearance inspired the character Shrek. He died in 1955. After his death, a death mask was made of his face. Several plaster casts were made of his head.
Patrick Kelly was the chess player who claimed to have played chess with Tillet after he died. Patrick was a businessman in Massachusetts. He owned a plaster cast of his wrestler friend which overlooked his computerized chess unplugged! And it did not play on batteries…it needed power to function. He couldn’t figure out how the computer continued to play when unplugged. Also, it was playing moves his friend would often play when he was alive. Mr. Kelly hired an engineer from M.I.T. to investigate what was going on. They could not find an answer to this mystery. Was his friend’s ghost actually playing chess with him? It was disappointing this problem was left unresolved on the television documentary.
If you have more information on this piece of chess history, please let me know.
Remember to protect your king (and queen)!
