CHESSFLASH WORLD NEWS/Oct 14, 2017 


courtesy Michael Ciamarra

LOMBARDY DIES IN MARTINEZ CAIFORNIA AT AGE 79

San Francisco , California  — This just in from John Donaldson/ US world chess championship team Olympiad captain:  American chess immortal WILLIAM LOMBARDY (1957 WORLD JUNIOR CHESS CHAMPION WITH AN ASTOUNDING NEVER EQUALED 11-0 SCORE) … world  chess historical chess grandmaster figure (1972 Fischer world title match  official second) featured in haunting caricature in  the hugely  controversial  film “PAWN SACRIFICE” … died in Martinez, Califfornia today amidst worldwide promotion of his fiery no holds barred sixth chess book, “UNDERSTANDING CHESS,”  Mr. Lombardy, facing years of  the typical world class chess grandmaster eviction notices and chess poverty well documented by great New York Times coverage that indirectly permitted Mr. Lombardy to move with final dignity across the nation on his last, deeply moving book tour… Mr. Lombardy could have pocketed a reported 20,000 dollars if he had cooperated with film producers … who still did a fabulous job in admittedly deeply flawed piecemeal fashion, capturing in stunning fashion Fischer demons in games 1-6, the real nitty gritty (1972 Iceland ), versus world champion Boris Spassky. Fischer never won a single official game in his entire career against a reigning world chess champion, excluding that unbelievable month so magnificently sketched with cinema  scratches … beyond words in the film … Actual on scene minute by minute events were known only to Lombardy of course … now los t…  including mystery walks in the middle of the night. Mr. Lombardy baffled the entire chess world in his final years … denying in his last epic tome the massive Bobby Fischer tutorial/friendship/crash pad role of  lifetime wheelchair-bound New York chess master Jack Collins and his sister Ethel. EYEWITNESS William Addison, 1970  US world championship  candidates grandmaster from San Francisco,  was there folks … interview 1970 … “Fischer was the only great American master who was actually tutored as a child … and believe me, Jack Collins did it … had all the literature the Fischer chess furnace could use. Collins knew how to get the train going all right … I was there … I saw it”(Jude Acers remembers for Chesslab …  ”My experiences with Lombardy were few but moving. In Atlanta, Georgia [1965] he strangely, suddenly walked up to me. ”If I felt about chess like you do, almost like a religion, I would be afraid to play a move.”  A giant. Brilliant. Well mannered. A gentleman. US top ten in world chess history”). ##############

Jude Acers

courtesy Michael Ciamarra

courtesy Michael Ciamarra

 

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