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My game against a future U.S. Champion

By Steve | May 15, 2008

I was getting rid of some junk yesterday, and I was about to toss an old score book that I’ve had since I first started playing tournament chess in high school. But I decided first to look up some of the names of my opponents, and that’s when I made an interesting discovery.

In the fourth round of the 1979 Atlanta Scholastic Congress, I was defeated by unrated player named Stuart Rachels. My rating at the time was 930 (provisional, based on 6 rated games). I was 14, and Stuart was 9.

Well, Stuart went on to become a somewhat better chess player than I ever did. About two years after this game was played, Stuart set the record for becoming the youngest National Master in U.S. history. Later he became an International Master, and he was the 1989-1990 U.S. co-champion. He retired from chess in 1993 and is now Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama.

2 Responses to “My game against a future U.S. Champion”

  1. ZwaartePaard Says:
    May 27th, 2008 at 6:11 am

    Superb revelation !

    I came across the scoresheets where I first played League OTB chess in the mid 80’s.

    I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at a few of them.

    I ended my season at 50%, so still feel good about it.

    They fared better than my chess computer that I bought at the time (after trialling it at the club ). My Fidelity Excelsior ( I think ) lost its lights and ended up on dumped in Amsterdam two years ago ( I hoard :).

    My Morphy still works !

  2. Steve Says:
    May 27th, 2008 at 7:54 am

    Zwarte—I had a Saitek chess computer from the 80s that I recently tossed. It still worked! But it played a lousy game of chess. :-)

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