Bill Hook

Bill Hook at the 2008 Chess Olympiad
Surname	William Edward Hook
Association	US Virgin Islands (until 1973) British Virgin Islands (from 1974)
Born	May 28, 1925 New Rochelle , United States
Died	May 10, 2010 Silver Spring
Best Elo rating	2275 (January to July 1981)

William Edward "Bill" Hook (born May 28, 1925 in New Rochelle , † May 10, 2010 in Silver Spring ) was a chess player in the British Virgin Islands . He celebrated his greatest success in 1980 at the Chess Olympiad in Malta by winning the gold medal for the best points scoring on the first board. Overall, Hook represented his country in the national team at 17 Olympiads and was the oldest participant in the 2008 Olympics in Dresden at the age of 83.

Life

Bill Hook grew up as the only son of Finnish parents in the United States in the state of New York, where his parents worked as house servants in New Rochelle. He learned the game of chess from a friend when he was 15, and his deeper interest in chess emerged three years later, in 1943, when he was hospitalized in Westchester County for fifteen months for tuberculosis . The disease was discovered during a medical examination on the occasion of his draft and saved him, at the age of 18, from being used in the Second World War. While in the hospital, he played correspondence chess and read from the New York Academy of Chess and Checkers (New York Academy of Chess and Checkers ). The club was based in Manhattan on 42nd Street and has been known as Fisher’s since the 1920s . In addition to the name of the owner Harold Fisher, it was also nicknamed The Flea House in the 1960s because of its proximity to a flea circus and the shabby interior . After his recovery, Hook went in and out of there for over 25 years, playing chess for money, meeting famous players like Miguel Najdorf and Arturo Pomar, and playing games with celebrities like Marcel Duchamp and Stanley Kubrick , who was still a photographer in the 1950s.

At this time, Hook also met the young Bobby Fischer several times at rapid tournaments in New York, whose talent was already announced at that time. Hook beat the little fisherman four times in a row until he lost one day at a tournament at the Manhattan Chess Club , literally felt the boy's energy and then never won a game against Fischer.

Bill Hook was unable to work due to the aftereffects of his tuberculosis and enrolled at an art school. He made a living from painting for a time, and his working wife Mimi contributed another part. The couple shared a passion - travel. One of her expeditions to the Caribbean in 1960 was the starting point for her future second home on Cooper Island , an island in the British Virgin Islands , for whose national team he played chess on the first and second board at numerous Olympics. The Hooks acquired a piece of land on Cooper Island in 1962 and built a house there over the years, which they used for over 40 years next to their residence in the USA - since 1969 just outside Washington, DC - regularly for weeks or months. In 2005, Bill Hook sold this property, but with the option to live in it for a month for 5 years.

Bill Hook passed away in Silver Spring in 2010, a few weeks before his 85th birthday .

Chess Olympiads

Hook made his first Olympic appearance at the comparatively old age of 43 at the 18th Chess Olympiad in Lugano in 1968 with the US Virgin Islands team . With the exception of 1972 and 1996 to 2000, he played at all other Olympics, a total of 16 times. In 1970, at the Olympics in Siegen, he unexpectedly met Bobby Fischer again, who was to become world champion two years later, about 15 years after they first met . Hook came out of the opening well with the black pieces, had an advantage of about 30 minutes, but lost after 28 moves (see diagram below).

Because of a conflict with the head of the chess federation of the US Virgins Islands, Hook was not considered for the subsequent Olympiad, 1972 in Skopje, and was removed from the team. In January 1974 he suggested the founding of the British Virgin Islands chess federation , which received the confirmation of participation from the world chess federation FIDE in time for the Nice Olympics . From then on, Bill Hook played for the British Virgin Islands, with the exception of the 1992 Olympics in the Philippines , where due to the high financial travel expenses, a combined team from both island groups competed under the flag of the US Virgins Islands.

At the 1980 Chess Olympiad in Valletta , Malta , Hook scored 11.5 points from 14 games on the first board, also benefiting from weaker opponents who were drawn due to the poor performance of his teammates and thus due to the Swiss system . In the first round he defeated the Finnish grandmaster Heikki Westerinen and only lost one game in three draws . Finally, he won the gold medal for the best performance on the top board, he achieved an Elo performance of 2501. Anatoly Karpov , the then world chess champion and Olympic champion with the Soviet team, had to be content with fourth place. Two years after this success, the British Virgin Islands issued four chess- themed postage stamps , one showing the front and back of Hook's gold medal, and another showing the key position after the winning move in Hook's game in the last round against the Kenyan Kanani.

Hook's last Elo rating was 1996, its highest rating of 2275 he reached 1981. His highest historical rating before the introduction of the Elo rating was 2441 in May 1969.

Off the chessboard

In addition to painting, Hook developed a passion for photography from 1957 onwards, and on his travels he primarily chose cemeteries with their graves and statues as motifs. At the Chess Olympiads, portraits of chess players were in the foreground, which he also sold to chess magazines , newspapers and news magazines. In the spring of 2008, Bill Hook published his memoir: Hooked on Chess ( Addicted to Chess ).

The game of Fischer - Hook

Fischer - Hook
Siegen 1970

	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

Position after 26.… Kd8 – e7

At the 1970 Chess Olympiad in Siegen there was a fifth round match between the Virgin Islands and the USA. At that time, games were still played in preliminary round groups in which you had to qualify for the final rounds. Bill Hook played on the first board against Bobby Fischer, who was then in his strongest performance phase and at the end of the year convincingly won the interzonal tournament to qualify for the world championship.

After a French defense by Hook, the position in the diagram was finally reached, after the rook chess on d1, Hook evaded his king on e7 and made a small combination possible for Fischer:

27. Be3xc5 + b6xc5

28. Rf6xe6 +!

and Hook gave up the game, the rook cannot be captured because of Qf6 mate, on Kf8 Black loses the queen on e8 with a hopeless position.

literature

• Bill Hook: Hooked on Chess: A Memoir . In: New In Chess , 2008, ISBN 978-90-5691-220-8
• Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam: Hooked on Chess . In: New In Chess , 2/2006, pp. 60-63.
• Hans Ree : A Gambler's Zest for Life . In: New In Chess , 2/2008, pp. 107-111.

Web links

• Replayable chess games by Bill Hook on chessgames.com
• Lubomir Kavalek : Bill Hook (1925–2010) on chessbase.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Based on the stories by Hook, reproduced from Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam: Hooked on Chess . In: New In Chess, 5/2006, p. 63.
2. ↑ Hook's Olympic statistics at olimpbase.org
3. ^ Image of the chess stamps of the British Virgin Islands on the occasion of the success at the 1980 Chess Olympiad
4. ↑ Bill Hook's Elo development up to 2001 on olimpbase.org (English)
5. ↑ Calculations on Hook's historic Elo rating