I often criticize the policies and customs of my own country—yet still I get defensive when I travel to tournaments and Europeans gleefully rip on America. It’s like the difference between criticizing your family and hearing a stranger do so. Sometimes, I encounter foreigners who think that to be an American is to be stupid: “I’m so surprised to have such an intelligent conversation with an American,” “I’m sure I know more about American history than you do,” or “I’m impressed you’re doing so well! I heard it is very difficult for American girls to learn chess.”
Women’s chess in America has, in fact, had a very rich history. True, there have not yet been any homegrown American women’s world champions, or even contenders, but there have been many women who are deeply passionate about chess, just like their counterparts around the world.
The history of women’s chess in America had fortuitous beginnings. In 1934, Caroline Marshall was inspired to organize a women’s event. Caroline had recently been widowed from Frank Marshall, the world championship candidate and founder of New York’s still-active Marshall Chess Club. For the next two years successful open women’s tournaments were held at the West Village brownstone. In 1937, the tournament got an official boost from the National Chess Federation, which announced that the first official U.S. women’s title was at stake.
The tournaments began in a progressive spirit, through the impassioned efforts of Edith L. Weart (1897-1977), an energetic feminist born in Jersey City. She graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in chemistry. She learned to play chess late, at twenty-seven, and played in many U.S. Women’s Championships, though she was among the weaker players. A free-lance writer, Weart penned many articles on the rise of female chessplayers in the world and in the United States.
To Ms. Weart, the entry of women into the chess arena symbolized their acceptance into other fields. In one article she wonders why “women have left undisputed men’s claims to mastery of the royal pastime.” She responds, “The answer lies, I think, in lack of opportunity.”1 In another article she points out: “As in practically every other sphere, woman is astir in the chessplaying world and bent upon emulating the activities and achievements of the male portion of the population. The doors…are beckoning our sisters to enter the portals behind which have been kept from them opportunities for delightful mental recreation and possible distinction at home and abroad.”2 She organized a scrapbook of clippings on early women’s chess in America, which is now part of the John G. White Collection at the Cleveland Public Library.3
There were ten players in the 1937 event, which was won by Belgian-born Adele Rivero. Rivero learned chess to disprove her Spaniard husband’s assertion that women didn’t have the brains for the game. Riviero won the 1941 championship also, but she faded as two women—Mona Karff and Gisela Gresser—established a nearly exclusive rivalry for the national title.
Refined, rich, and redheaded, Gisela Gresser and Mona Karff were uncannily similar on the surface. Each won many national women’s championship titles: Gisela won nine; Mona, seven. Both were multi-lingual, interested in the arts, and loved to travel. Mona had a degree in international affairs and in 1948 traveled through Europe in support of the One World movement. Gresser painted, sculpted, and wrote. American player Dorothy Teasley, who knew both women, said, “It was hard to mention Gisela Gresser without mentioning Mona Karff. The two went together…two very brainy, very savvy, very well-traveled, very sophisticated, and very cosmopolitan women of another era.”
Mona Karff was born in Central Europe and lived in Palestine as a teenager. She learned chess from her father, Aviv Ratner, who was a Zionist and rich landowner in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Karff was described as “a refined, elegant woman who loved opera, collected art, spoke eight languages fluently, traveled the world with confident ease, and made millions in the stock market.”
Mona Karff won the second U.S. Women’s Championship in 1938. She collected six more titles, the final one in 1974, thirty-six years after her first victory.
Karff was mysterious. Even good friends of hers were left in the dark as to the most basic matters concerning her life—her birthplace is to this day uncertain. The USCF listed her place of origin as simply Europe, while relatives attest that she was born in a Russian province, Bessaberia. It was not easy to ask her. Ms. Teasley “once inquired, innocently enough, where she had been born” and was disappointed: “I got some kind of reply but it was definitely not a direct answer.”
Mona Karff. (Left photo courtesy Cleveland Public Library.)
Soon after settling in Boston in the 1930s, Mona had a brief marriage with a cousin, Abe Karff, a lawyer. She kept even this a secret, and one good friend only found out about the marriage when she called Abe’s house and Mona picked up the phone. Mona had a longer-lasting relationship with International Master Dr. Edward Lasker, who was twenty-nine years older than she. When one female chessplayer innocently asked Karff’s main rival and friend, Gresser, if Lasker and Karff were engaged, she responded: “Miss Karff is much, much too sophisticated to be engaged.”
Lasker and Karff lived separately but were always together at tournaments and parties. Allen Kaufman, who was a rising young chessplayer at the time and was often a guest at their home in the 1960s, says, “Lasker lived in a magnificent penthouse apartment overlooking the Hudson River, where he would host lovely soirées. He threw German lieder on the phonograph, and chessplayers would play and analyze for hours. Karff was always there—and she was a great conversationalist.”
Lasker died in 1981, leaving Mona single. Allen observed that “she seemed heartbroken,” but was still able to get on with her life. “I saw her at restaurants dating guys when she was in her eighties—she was a go-getter, not the type to mope around for too long.”
Mona and Gisela were of approximately the same strength, but their styles were in direct opposition to one another. Karff was aggressive and “never missed an opportunity to throw materialistic caution to the winds,” while Gresser had a patient style, preferring closed games.
Gisela Gresser was born in Detroit in 1906, with a silver pawn in her mouth. Her father, Julius Kahn, was the president of a steel company and an engineer who earned a fortune by inventing reinforced concrete. Though she had learned chess from her father as a child, her youthful passion was for Greek, of which she said in an interview in 1945, “When the other children were out playing, I used to study Greek. I loved it just the way I love chess now.”
Gresser followed her love for ancient languages, earning an A.B. in classics at Radcliffe and a post-college scholarship in Athens. In 1927 Gisela found herself in New York City, where she married William Gresser, a lawyer and accomplished musician. They settled in a Park Avenue apartment, and her luxurious lifestyle allowed her to pursue many hobbies—horseback riding, sculpting, painting, and voracious reading in ten different languages.
Gisela and her husband went on a cruise to Europe in 1938, the same year the first U.S. Women’s Chess Championship was held. On the boat she met a man with a pocket chess set and a chess book and became hooked on the game. Thereafter, chess was her primary addiction. Gresser was quickly successful, winning her first U.S. Women’s Chess Championship just six years after her chance encounter on the boat. She developed a strategic style, preferring closed games. Gresser was a record-breaker on the U.S. circuit: besides winning more U.S. women’s titles than any woman in history, Gresser was the first woman to achieve the national master title.
Gisela Gresser. (Photos courtesy Cleveland Public Library.)
In 1948, Gresser and Karff tied for first place in the U.S. Women’s Championship and were selected as the official U.S. representatives to the first Women’s World Championship held since the war. The event (which ran from December 19, 1949, through January 18, 1950), in Moscow, had the Soviet Federation hosting the players and absorbing the many expenses that such a large undertaking incurs.
Both Karff and Gresser had dismal showings, scoring five points each from fiftee
n games, and finishing in a three-way tie for twelfth to fourteenth. One bright spot of Gisela’s event was her victory over the tournament winner, Ludmilla Rudenko. Gisela was frustrated by her inability to communicate or navigate Moscow, and upon returning to New York, she began to study Russian. By the time Gresser won the 1955 U.S. championship, and was again selected to play in Moscow, she had a basic grasp of the language.
Gisela Gresser (left) playing Adele Raettig in the final round of the 1944 Women’s Chapionship. Gresser won the game and clinched the title.
Gresser plays a skittles game with U.S. Champion Arnold Denker. Standing (r to l) Albert S. Pinkus, Frank J. Marshall, I.A. Horowitz, Herman Steiner, Reuben Fine, Edward Lasker. (Photo courtesy Chess Review, 1944.)
After her second journey, Gresser wrote “Chess Queens in Moscow,” a twenty-page, candid account of her thoughts on the tournament and the city. She seemed more concerned with the state of the Soviet Union than her mediocre result. Gresser, a well-heeled Upper East Side socialite, was struck by the uncomely appearance of Russian women: “There is no attempt at elegance or charm in the ordinary street dress,” Gisela observed coolly. “The women appear resigned to their corrugated hair and crude cosmetics, their colorless knitted headgear and shapeless suits.” Her opponents did not escape her scrutiny either:
“The Russian ladies have all gotten very fat since I last saw them.”
According to Gresser, her hosts were gracious and intent upon showing her the best Moscow had to offer. “In what other country would female chessplayers be fêted like traveling ambassadors and followed as though they were movie stars?” Upon her arrival at the airport, she was greeted with bouquets of flowers. The opening ceremony included ballerinas, marionettes, even “a magician who extracted a bowl of live goldfish from a vest pocket.” The best seats at the opera and the ballet were arranged for her, and she was assigned a private translator and assistant, Tamara.
Despite such generosity, Gresser was unable to get more basic things in Moscow. “Toilet paper,” she noted, commenting on one terrifying trip to the restroom, “must be a bourgeois luxury.” She was disappointed by the unavailability of jarred caviar to bring back to friends or glue to reinforce the soles of her shoes. In one particularly absurd episode, Gisela, overwhelmed by the jumbo pillow on her bed, asked for a smaller one, but Tamara deemed it impossible. “We have some things, at other times, other things…This year we have only large pillows. A few years ago the pillows came small. But now it has been decided that Moscow people all like large pillows, so we have only large pillows.”
When Gresser left Moscow, Tamara was the last person she saw.
“I shall always think of her as a child, gentle and eager and obedient, never complaining and never questioning the authority of her guardians.” Gisela was clearly unsympathetic with communism. She concluded that Tamara was symbolic of an intellectual immaturity pervading the country. “There must be many Tamaras in the Soviet Union.”
Women’s chess never got the financial backing or support in the United States that it had in the Soviet Union. American women went to prestigious events without trainers, unthinkable for Soviet and European representatives. A trainer’s role,s or “second,” in a serious event was multiple. Up until the 1980s, adjournments occurred in major tournaments. The game would stop, and both players would have all night to analyze the position, resuming play on the next day. To analyze an adjourned position without a strong player to bounce ideas off is an unenviable situation. With the advent of computer analysis, the adjournment tradition is nearly extinct, though there are a handful of Luddite organizers who persist with having them. An equally valuable role of a second is the psychological support and companionship the person offers. To play in a foreign country can be a lonely, taxing experience, and a trainer psyches a player up before the game, then consoles or celebrates with her afterward. Gresser, who had a strong personality, seemed content to tackle the tournament solo.
In some ways, Gresser was happy to be without a trainer. She was unimpressed with the attitudes of the Soviet and Eastern European coaches, many of whom were married to their students. Gresser overheard one trainer proclaiming loudly, in earshot of other players, “Today my wife played like a dog.” Another said scathingly, “Women can memorize mountains of opening theory, but can’t win the simplest positions.”
Nearly ten years later, in the Georgian coastal town, Sukhimi, Gresser got a more positive impression of Soviet chess training. Gresser played in the 1964 Candidates’ Championship, which would determine a challenger to World Champion Nona Gaprindashvili. This time it appeared that a Yugoslav player, Lazarevic, would upset the Soviets. Lazarevic had only one game left—against Gresser. Gresser recounts, with amusement, that a group of Russians bemoaned her chances of beating Lazarevic. “I heard a group of Russians discussing my gloomy chances…and was sorry that I had taken two years of Russian.” If Gresser won, it would pave the way for the victory of the Russian player, Alla Kushnir. Gresser was accosted on her way to the dining hall and asked where her trainer was. When Gresser responded that she had no trainer, the Soviet coach arranged an emergency lesson with her for the next morning. Gresser was blown away: “In that hour I learned more about chess theory and chess psychology than I could have ever have thought possible. Next day, when I walked on the beach after winning the best game of my life, the bathers (all Russians, of course) were screaming malodiez (meaning bravo).” Gresser was ecstatic. “One of life’s great moments!”4
Gisela’s dilettantish approach may have prevented her from cracking into the world chess elite. She was not so successful internationally as she was in the United States. She simply had too many other interests. Gresser never felt guilty for not spending more time studying chess. If anything, she seemed proud of it. She considered chess a dangerous addiction, and was sometimes wistful for the hours she had whiled away on the game. “To spend so much time on something that’s not really constructive hurts my conscience. I don’t spend all my time on it, but I could.”5
In her writings and speeches, Gresser may have underplayed her devotion to the game. Allen Kaufman describes Gresser as being competitive and sometimes paranoid. At one U.S. championship, Allen says that Gresser was convinced that Karff’s common-law husband, Edward Lasker, was cheating by observing Mona’s games and then passing her paper notes, on which he would presumably write what move she should play. Allen commented, “She was very childlike in this way. She even thought I was probably passing moves to my wife, who was also a contender in the U.S. Women’s Chess Championship, and tried to get me kicked out of the playing hall.”
Gresser had a vain streak. In one instance, she played in a senior championship, for players over sixty-five. She requested that the tournament director make a special announcement that she was playing under special consideration of her gender, and not because she was over sixty-five, which in fact she was.
Gisela played with verve till her last days. Ivona Jesierska, a young immigrant from Poland, was invited to Gisela Gresser’s apartment to play blitz soon after she arrived in America. Under ordinary circumstances, a young immigrant with no knowledge of English would not find herself as a guest in a Park Avenue home. But in chess, such things are normal. Ivona was stunned by the comfort in which Gisela lived: “I had never seen anything like it. We went up to her place in an elevator, where she had an entire floor to herself—the apartment was filled with antiques.” Even more surprising to Ivona was Gisela’s blitz strength: “I took one look at this old lady (Gisela was in her late seventies at the time) and thought, ‘No problem!’ But I don’t think
I won a single game.”
In 1951, Mary Bain, who was born in Hungary, interrupted the domination of the U.S. women’s title by Karff and Gresser. Her stepfather had been captured in World War I and never reappeared: her mother died of a broken heart. Bain, seventeen years old at the time, was on her way to join her sister in New York City. Mary, who spoke no English at the time, spent mo
st of the weeklong trip to America playing chess with passengers. She showed remarkable talent for the game, and an audience of onlookers was delighted when she beat the captain of the ship.
A highlight in Bain’s career came in 1933, when, at twenty-three years old, she defeated Jose Capablanca in a simultaneous game. The Cuban world champion missed a simple tactic, allowing Bain to grab his loose Bishop, after which he resigned—an ignominious eleven-move loss. Bain’s talent was recognized after this game by Hungarian Grandmaster Geza Maroczy, who hoped Bain would one day challenge his star student, Vera Menchik.
In 1937 Mary Bain sailed to Stockholm to play in the World Championship there. She was the first American woman to represent the U.S. in an organized chess competition. Menchik won the tournament, but Bain came in a respectable fifth out of twenty-six players.
Mary Bain. (Photo courtesy Cleveland Public Library.)
According to Allen Kaufman, Bain was “strong, with a husky, peasant look about her.” Bain would spend hours at the Marshall Chess Club, playing in tournaments or just hanging out. Frank Brady, author of Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy, called Mary a “classic Village type…very liberal.” When a man addressed her as Mrs. Mary Bain, she sharply corrected him: “Just Mary Bain!” Another time, she waved her hand dismissively at the suggestion that women ought to wait till marriage to have sex—a brave declaration in the 1950s.
It was not until 1951 that Bain managed to capture a single title from the Gresser and Karff duo. This enabled her to take another stab at the world crown. She was thrilled to travel to Moscow, along with second-place Karff, to participate in the 1952 World Championship Candidates.
Bain was impressed by the generosity of her hosts, who invited her to the circus, the ballet, and fancy banquets. Distraught at being under-prepared, she did her best to relax: “I am going to enjoy my stay, at least until the tournament starts. After, I’ll be worried about my games.” Once the tournament began, she was overwhelmed, writing: “The excitement is too much for me. The large crowd, the cameras, the large wall board…the importance of the scene is killing me.”
Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport Page 22
