Arthur Bisguier

Arthur Bisguier, Las Vegas, 2009 National Open

Arthur "Art" Bernard Bisguier (* 8. October 1929 in the Bronx , New York City ; † 5. April 2017 in Framingham ., Mass) was an American grandmaster in chess .

Life

Bisguier vs. Matanovic (Utrecht, 1961)

Arthur Bisguier learned to play chess at the age of five. He achieved his first successes while in junior high school when he won the New York Student Championship. In 1945 one of his games was printed for the first time in Chess Review magazine, and in February 1947 he made it to the front page. In 1948 he won the USA Youth Championship and defended that title a year later. Also in 1949 he won the championship of the prestigious Manhattan Chess Club . In 1950 he won the US Open Championship in Detroit and shared first place with Savielly Tartakower at a tournament in Southsea, England . For this success he was awarded the title of International Master . From 1951 to 1953 he served in the United States Army and was stationed in Germany during this time, where he frequented the Bürstädter Chess Club. Bisguier was only a private , but was fortunate enough to have a chess-loving superior, Colonel Eugene P. Ely. This enabled Bisguier to take part in an international tournament in Vienna in 1952/53 , which he won with nine points from eleven games.

After returning to the USA, he won a tournament in Hollywood in 1954 , in which he prevailed against players such as Larry Evans , Isaac Kashdan and Nicolas Rossolimo , as well as the national championship of the USA , in which he reached ten points from 13 games and remained undefeated. Second-placed Evans later described Bisguier as the greatest natural talent in the USA. Bisguier decided against a professional career, completed a college education and achieved a degree in economics (Bachelor of Business Administration) in 1955. During this time he was the chess advisor to Alex Bernstein, who programmed one of the first chess computers for IBM , the IBM 704 . Bisguier then got a job at IBM himself, working as a programmer and technical writer. About a match against Samuel Reshevsky in New York in 1957, which he lost 4-6, he wrote: After a full day's work, I bought some take-away fast food, took a taxi to the Manhattan Chess Club and ate my meal while we played .

Despite professional stress, he continued to achieve numerous successes in chess. At national level, he won the US Open in 1956 and 1959, and in 1957 he shared first place with Bobby Fischer .

At the international level, he qualified twice for an interzonal tournament . There he could not place in the front field: In Gothenburg 1955 he was 17th out of 21 participants, in Stockholm 1962 16th out of 23 participants. In Gothenburg, however, he managed a victory against Boris Spasski . At the Candidates Tournament in Curacao in 1962 , he was the second fisherman.

Between 1952 and 1972 Bisguier played at five Chess Olympiads for the USA and scored 46.5 points from 82 games. He achieved his best result at the Olympics in Leipzig in 1960 when he made 11.5 points from 16 games. He also represented the USA in international matches, for example in a radio match in 1950 against Yugoslavia, in which he won 1.5: 0.5 against Borislav Ivkov , and against the USSR in New York in 1954 (2: 2 against Tigran Petrosyan ) and in 1955 in Moscow (0: 4 against Vasily Smyslow ).

Even in later years he achieved individual successes. In 1973 he won the Open in Lone Pine , in 1979 he was the overall winner of the Chess Grand Prix, a series of open tournaments in the USA. In 1989, 1997 and 1998 he won the US Senior Open. With that he managed to become national champion in all age groups. He took part in chess tournaments until old age.

His best historical Elo number is 2634, so he was 32nd in December 1956 in the subsequently calculated world rankings.

Since 1959 he was married to a lawyer with whom he had two daughters.

Journalist and functionary

He worked for Chess Review magazine in the 1960s and as a chess columnist for Christian Science Monitor in the 1980s . Together with Andrew Soltis he published the book American chess masters from Morphy to Fischer ISBN 0-02-511050-0 in 1974 . In the United States Chess Federation , he was active speaker for 20 years. As a delegate he took part in congresses of the world chess federation FIDE and was a member of the planning committee for world championship fights.

Titles and honors

• In 1957 he became a grandmaster.
• In 1994 he was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame .
• In 2005 the United States Chess Federation awarded him the honorary title Dean of American Chess . In doing so, she paid tribute to his contribution to popularizing chess in the USA. Bisguier toured the country numerous times over the course of his career, claiming that no one had played more chess games than he.

Game example

Bisguier played one of his most famous games in 1956 against the eventual world champion Fischer. It was played in the Rosenwald memorial tournament in New York, in which Fischer also succeeded in what Hans Kmoch called the Game of the Century . However, the up-and-coming talent had to admit defeat against the then reigning national champion. However, this was Bisguier's only win against Fischer, who returned the favor with 13 wins in the following years. Bisguier has the worst record of all players against Fischer.

Bisguier fishermen

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

End position after 33.Qxe8 +

Bisguier fishermen

New York, October 7, 1956

King's Indian Defense , E78

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. f4 0–0 6. Nf3 c5 7. Be2 cxd4 8. Nxd4 Nc6 9. Nc2 Bd7 10. 0–0 Rc8 11. Be3 Na5 12. b3 a6 13.e5 dxe5 14.fxe5 Ne8 15.Nd5 Rc6 16.Nd4 Rc8 17.Nc2 Rc6 18.Ncb4 Re6 19.Bg4 Rxe5 20.Bb6 Qc8 21. Bxd7 Qxd7 22.Bxa5 e6 23.Nd3 Rh5 24N3f4 Rf5 25. Bb4 exd5 26. Bxf8 Bxa1 27. Qxa1 Kxf8 28. Qh8 + Ke7 29. Re1 + Kd8 30. Nxd5 Qc6 31. Qf8 Qd7 32. Rd1 Rf6 33. Qxe8 + 1: 0

literature

The first volume of an autobiography co-authored with Newton Berry appeared in 2003 under the title The Art of Bisguier ISBN 0-9740156-0-1 . It contains 82 games from the period 1945 to 1960, which Bisguier comments on with humor. A victory against Hans Berliner is introduced with an allusion to the Kennedy quote Ich bin ein Berliner with Ich beat eine Berliner . Volume 2, which covers the period 1961 to 2003 and contains 100 games, was published in 2008, ISBN 978-1-888690-36-1 .

For the United States Chess Federation he wrote Ten tips for better chess , a guide for beginners that is distributed free of charge in large numbers and is also available online.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dylan Loeb McClain: Arthur Bisguier, Brash, Self-Taught Bronx Chess Champion, Dies at 87 . The New York Times , April 5, 2017, accessed April 7, 2017.
2. ↑ Bisquier in Germany. Deutsche Schachrundschau Caissa 13/1952, p. 255.
3. ↑ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002 . Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 74.
4. ↑ Ten Tips To Winning Chess , United States Chess Federation, February 4, 2009.

Web links

• Entry into the US Chess Hall of Fame (English)
• Mike Klein: GM Arthur Bisguier, 1929–2017 , Chess.com, April 6, 2017 (English)
• 20 combinations of Bisguier's games (English)
• Replayable chess games by Arthur Bisguier on chessgames.com (English)