honorary Grandmaster
Which title was conferred to George Koltanowski in 1988?
George Koltanowski George Koltanowski ( also Georges ; 17 September 1903 – 5 February 2000 ) was a Belgian-born American chess player , promoter , and writer . He was informally known as Kolty . Koltanowski set the worlds blindfold record on 20 September 1937 , in Edinburgh , by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded , making headline news around the world . He also set a record in 1960 for playing 56 consecutive blindfold games at ten seconds per move . Early life . Born into a Polish Jewish family in Antwerp , Belgium , Koltanowski learned chess by watching his father and brother play . He took up the game seriously at the age of 14 , and became the top Belgian player when Edgard Colle died in 1932 . Chess career . He got his first big break in chess at age 21 , when he visited an international tournament in Meran , planning to play in one of the reserve sections . The organizers were apparently confused or mixed up about his identity and asked him to play in the grandmaster section , to replace an invited player who had not shown up . Koltanowski gladly accepted and finished near the bottom , but drew with Grandmaster Tarrasch and gained valuable experience . He thereafter played in at least 25 international tournaments . He was Belgian Chess Champion in 1923 , 1927 , 1930 , and 1936 . However , Koltanowski became better known for touring and giving simultaneous exhibitions and blindfold displays . Based upon his results during the period 1932–37 , Professor Arpad Elo gave Koltanowski a rating of 2450 in The Rating of Chess Players . Koltanowski was awarded the International Master title in 1950 when the title was first officially established by FIDE , and he was awarded an honorary Grandmaster title in 1988 . However , Koltanowskis record as a tournament player was not especially distinguished . He showed up for the 1946 U.S . Open in Pittsburgh , but was eliminated in the preliminary section and did not qualify for the finals . In those years , the U.S . Open was played in round-robin preliminary and final sections . However , the next year , Koltanowski returned , not as a player but as the director , introducing the Swiss system to the U.S . Open . He directed the 1947 U.S . Open in Corpus Christi , Texas , using the Swiss system for the first time ever in a U.S . Open chess event . After that , he traversed the country , holding Swiss system tournaments everywhere . Before long , the Swiss system was adopted as the standard for most chess tournaments in America . Koltanowski thereafter toured the United States tirelessly for years , running chess tournaments and giving simultaneous exhibitions everywhere . After his failure in the 1946 U.S . Open in Pittsburgh , he never played tournament chess again , except for two games as a member of the U.S . team in the 10th Chess Olympiad ( Helsinki 1952 ) , getting a draw with Soviet Grandmaster Alexander Kotov , one of the strongest players in the world , and a draw with Hungarian International Master Tibor Florian , in a game which Koltanowski appeared to be winning . Blindfold chess . On 4 December 1960 , in San Francisco , California , Koltanowski played 56 consecutive games blindfolded , with only ten seconds per move . He won fifty and drew six games . Koltanowski still holds the record in the Guinness Book of Records . Simultaneous blindfold chess . Possessed of an incredibly powerful memory , Koltanowski would give blindfold exhibitions , playing several games simultaneously . In Edinburgh in 1937 Koltanowski set a record by simultaneously playing 34 games of blindfold chess . Later , Miguel Najdorf broke that record , but Koltanowski claimed his efforts were not properly monitored . Najdorf played 40 games at Rosario , Argentina in 1943 and 45 games in São Paulo in 1947 . Later years . Many of Koltanowskis relatives were murdered in the Holocaust . Koltanowski survived because he happened to be on a chess tour of South America and was in Guatemala when the war broke out . In 1940 , the United States Consul in Cuba saw Koltanowski giving a chess exhibition in Havana and decided to grant him a U.S . visa . Koltanowski met his wife Leah on a blind date in New York in 1944 . They settled in San Francisco in 1947 . Koltanowski became the chess columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle , which carried his chess column every day for the next 52 years until his death , publishing an estimated 19,000 columns . The FIDE named him International Arbiter in 1960 . Later on in the 1960s , he played a newspaper game against grandmaster Paul Keres . Following a system similar to that adopted in the Kasparov versus The World match , readers would vote on moves and send them into the Chronicle . Koltanowski would select the move actually played , and would award points and prizes to his readers for their selections . However , after about only 25 moves , Keres abruptly stopped the game and declared himself the winner by adjudication . Koltanowski disagreed and showed analysis which seemed to give him at least an even game . Keres , an Estonian , may have been ordered by his Soviet handlers to stop playing . Koltanowski had his own organization , the Chess Friends of Northern California , which resisted the USCF rating system and dominated Northern California Chess through the mid-1960s . Koltanowski later decided if you cant beat em , join em . He won election as President of the United States Chess Federation in 1974 . He also directed every US Open from 1947 until the late 1970s . He was sometimes referred to as the Dean of American Chess . Perhaps Koltanowskis most remarkable accomplishment was that he made his living entirely from chess . He wrote many books ; his best-known work is Adventures of a Chess Master , published by David McKay Co . in 1955 . In it , he recounts primarily his tours giving blindfolded simultaneous exhibitions . He also wrote books on the Colle System which he sold by mail order . He taught a system which would enable even rank beginners to get out of the opening with a playable game . This saved his students the trouble of memorizing vast amounts of chess opening theory . However , he never played this opening himself against strong opponents . Koltanowskis books contained many statements and anecdotes which were factually incorrect . They were also lax in terms of spelling and editorial standards . Koltanowski died of congestive heart failure in San Francisco in 2000 at the age of 96 . Blindfold Knights Tour . Koltanowskis most sensational chess entertainment was the ancient exercise known as the Knights tour , in which a lone knight traverses an otherwise empty board visiting each square once only . Of the countless patterns for achieving this feat , there are trillions of sequences for performing the more restricted version known as the re-entrant tour , wherein the knight on its 64th move lands on its original starting square . For Koltanowski , who claimed to have a phonographic memory ( a keen memory for sequences ) , the trick relied on mastering just one re-entrant pattern . He could begin on any square in the sequence and complete the tour by rote . However , it was his original twist that gave Koltanowskis performance dramatic value well beyond the mechanical moving of the knight through the memorized sequence . Koltanowski began his tour with a large chalkboard divided by lines into a grid eight squares by eight . As he solved problems on a large demonstration board , audience members were encouraged to come onstage to enter words and numbers into the squares . By the time all 64 squares were filled , it was common to see street and city names , names of months or days of the week , names of famous chess players , names of audience members , names of movie stars or TV personalities , telephone numbers and addresses , birth dates , serial numbers from bank notes , etc . After concluding his problem solving challenges on the demonstration board , Koltanowski would turn his back on the audience and examine the chalk board for three or four minutes . Then he would seat himself with his back to the board and ask for any audience member to call out a square ; for example , e4 . He would recite from memory the entry in that square as an assistant crossed it off with a chalk mark . Making imaginary knight-moves through his re-entry sequence , Koltanowski would recite the contents of each square as the knight landed on it . As amazing as this performance was , if time permitted afterward , Koltanowski would occasionally demonstrate his mental grasp of the board by reciting the information contained in the squares by rank or file , or even the two long diagonals . He occasionally performed the tour on two boards simultaneously . In Palo Alto , California , he conducted his performance on three chalk boards , jumping the knight back and forth between boards mid-move , until all 192 squares were completed . He made two errors and immediately corrected himself both times . At the time of this performance , Koltanowski was 80 years old . External links . - Chess Space obituary - Grandmaster Of Chess , George Koltanowski , 2 July 2000 - Edward Winter , Koltanowski