CHESS PROBLEM WIZARD/SURVIVOR MAESTRO/PAL BENKO “Mr. Benko Gambit” DIES AT AGE 91
This just in from the New York Times and confirmed by chess Grandmaster Susan Polgar … Mr. Benko will forever be remembered for being aside 1972 world chess champion R. J Fischer … indeed almost all epic Fischer career moments by strange circumstance from beginning to end. Chess Grandmaster/world title candidate … Mr. Benko gave up his world chess championship qualifier berth [1970 Palma Spain zonal] … permitting Fischer substitution. “I did not have a ghost of a chance. Even .too late in Curocao,” Mr. Benko whispered softly over coffee [with me and a tremendous Titanic road chess player Milan Momic in Atlanta, Georgia, 1965] … shaking his head wistfully … Indeed a murderous run for his life during the Budapest Russian uprising led to Mr. Benko’s youthful imprisonment … lucky beyond measure just to be alive … years later Mr. Pal Benko rushed from a totally accidental emergency refueling Hungarian chess team plane … screaming at the solitary startled Iceland embassy gate guard. ”Help please … I will die” then Mr. Benko roamed hundreds of American cities/even small chess towns … for decades … often via Greyhound bus … I saw him everywhere … writing his legendary worldwide chess problem/endgame column missive for half a century to boot. He won hundreds of US chess tournaments … almost all Benko chess records were of course lost upon a series of tragic moves by the US Chess Federation. Mere paper of the past. Dust in the wind. ##################
— Jude Acers
Poem in memoriam of Benko by Edward “The Laminator” LANGLA
My Tribute to Pal
Pal made ninety-one son of a gun
Quite truly one great Chessic Run
And along the way he had his Fun
One Benko Baffler you are undone
I wonder is chess played in Heaven
And Up There who* is on Board One
Playin our Lord God seven to eleven
With sudden death at the Rising Sun
*Fischer and Morphy no doubt
If chess players do not go to Heaven
HELL that chessic eternity to the last
Then that Devil’s got one sure Plevin
And one badass new Hungarian cast
The Basic Chess Endings in Algebraic
The magic endgame Laboratory Perks
Pal’s life was quite the Chessic mosaic
No wasted lifetime, just Immortal works
What a guy …
In tribute I send my game last night
Black to move and win … clearly won
Bishop + 5 vs Knight + 4 … Ke7 played
End games!