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Encounter with a Grandmaster

I forget the exact venue, except to say it was a room somewhere in one of the ancient dormitories at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. G Quad, or maybe H. Junior year. It's Wednesday night, and don't ask me how, but I end up playing one of (I think) 40 boards against Edmar Mednis.

At the time this game was played, it had been less than a year since Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky in Reykjavic, Iceland, and the country was in the midst of the so-called "Fischer boom." Lots of people had started playing chess, just the same way as a lot of kids will start skating on ice in 1998 in the wake of Tara Lipinski's gold-medal winning performance at the Nagano Olympics.

I remember that during the simul, there was concern that Mednis might have to cut short his exhibition in order to catch the last LIRR train out of the Stony Brook station headed back toward New York. I approached the organizers and volunteered to drive Mednis back to Queens, if that would help. It did. The exhibition proceeded to its inevitable conclusion (Mednis victorious against nearly everyone in the room, except for me and one other), and as a pleasant punctuation to my draw, I got to spend a little over an hour driving the bespectacled Grandmaster home to his apartment in Elmhurst.

I met GM Mednis again almost exactly 13 years later, on April 9, 1986, when he visited the Jacksonville Chess Club. I recall deliberately not playing in the simul the club had arranged, but I don't recall why. Perhaps I did not want to risk my even score?

If your browser supports Java, you'll be able to play over the moves using an applet made available by the Internet Chess Club. If your browser doesn't support Java, you'll simply see the game score (in PGN format).

[Event "Simul"]
[Site "SUNY at Stony Brook"]
[Date "1973.04.04"]
[Round "-"]
[White "Mednis, Edmar"]
[Black "Lane, Alex"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.d4 Bf5 
6.Bd3 d5 7.O-O Be7 8.Re1 O-O 9.c4 c6 
{Perhaps 9...Bb4 would be better here.}
10.Qb3 Qb6 
{Maybe 10...Nbd7.}
11.Qxb6 axb6 12.a3 
{A possibility is 12.cd5 cd5 13.Nc3 Bb4 14.Ng5 Nc6 15.Nge4}
12...Bf6 
{Perhaps 12...Bb4 is a possibility. 
(12. axb4 is out of the question because of 12...Rxa1. 
White would move the Rook, allowing the Rook on f8 time to 
move to e8.}
13.Nc3 Nd6 14.Bxf5 
{An interesting idea here is 14.Bf4 and if 14...Bxd3 15.Bxd6}
14...Nxf5 15.cxd5 cxd5 
{I vaguely remember considering 15...Nxd4 with 16.Nxd4 Bxd4 
17.d6 Nd7 18.Re7 Re8 to follow, and that pawn-on-the-sixth 
and rook-on-the-seventh just stuck in my craw. The text loses 
a pawn with no compensation.}
16.Nxd5 Nd7 17.Nxf6+ Nxf6 18.Bd2 Rad8 19.Bc3 Rfe8 20.g3 Nd5 
{Blockade that pawn!}
21.Bd2 f6 22.Kf1 Nc7 23.Rxe8+ Rxe8 24.Rc1 Nb5 25.Bc3 
{Maybe 25.Rc4 would've been better.}
25...Rc8 
{Pins the Bishop, nullifying its defense of the pawn 
on d4.}
26.a4 Nbxd4 
{I get my pawn back.}
27.Nxd4 Nxd4 28.Rd1 Ne6 29.Rd7 Nc5 30.Rd4 Ne6 1/2-1/2

(If the above date is a hundred years or so off, your browser's Java interpreter isn't current.)

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