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Chess Archive...
Encounter with a World Champion
Back in the early 80s, the Jacksonville Chess Club was an active organization,
under the genial hand of Edwin Butler, a retired real estate wheeler-dealer
who turned to chess as an outlet for his seemingly inexhaustible energy.
Among the events organized by the club was a visit by former World Champion
Boris Spassky to play a 30-board simultaneous exhibition on September 27, 1984. This was his second stop
across the United States during a two-week tour that year. The picture to the right was taken by Florida
Times-Union staff photographer Scott Robinson and appeared in the October 1 edition of the paper.
In the photograph, I am about as far away from the camera as you can get!
Along with 29 other players ranging in age from 17 to 73, I forked over
$50 for the right to sit down and play against Grandmaster Spassky,
and the following game was the result. Of the souls who participated in the
event, only I and one other escaped with draws; Spassky swept the
rest of the boards, finishing the exhibition at about one in the morning.
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 with annotations (in PGN format).
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