AFort Lauderdale News, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sunday, March 20, 1960
Chess Queen's Gambit
By Neil Hickey
THE DARKLY BEAUTIFUL GIRL you see at the left is neither an aspiring dramatic actress, a cheesecake Hollywood starlet, nor a $100-an-hour high-fashion photographer's model. At 22, she's the reigning Queen of American chess players, the top-ranking woman manipulator of kings, rooks and pawns.
Lisa Lane confounds all customary notions of bookish, brainy females. She has all the equipment, all the lissome beauty of a cover girl; yet in free competition last December, she vanquished all comers and, after a five-hour bout with the defending title-holder, emerged undisputed women's national champ.
Says a chagrined male victim: “It's hard enough to concentrate on the game with her sitting across the chessboard in a floppy sweater. But on top of that, she's a killer. She plays chess like Pancho Gonzales plays tennis: always stalking, always aggressive. No doubt about it—if she continues to study, she can be the best woman player in the world.” And the best looking, we might add.
Next year, she and Bobby Fischer, 17-year-old men's champ, will trek to Yugoslavia and represent the U.S. in an international interzonal tournament. “We'll meet the Russians,” she says. “They're traditionally the best in the world and I'm anxious to see them. Of course, in Russia, chess is the national sport and players are subsidized. No wonder Americans have trouble beating them.”
Lisa, who'll be the first woman chess “master” in U.S. history, has played chess for only two years. Her opponents in the championship were women with experience ranging up to 30 years.
She was a philosophy student in her sophomore year at Temple University (she lives in Philadelphia) when a local master named Attilio DiCamillo interested her in the game. He watched her play a few times and ventured the prediction: “If you work hard you can be national champion in two years.” Lisa copped the crown right on schedule.
“I dropped out of Temple University (I wasn't much of a student anyway), and devoted eight to 12 hours a day to chess. I'd work with Mr. DiCamillo all morning; then in the afternoons and evenings I'd play at a chess club near my home, and write down every move. The next day my teacher and I would go over the previous day's games. I spent all my money on chess books.”.
Nine days after winning the title, the youngest woman ever to do so, Lisa got married. Walter Rich, a boy she had known for three years, convinced her there's more to it all than playing chess. Now she says: “If I don't win in Yugoslavia next year, I never will; the tourney won't be held again for another four years, and by that time I'll be raising a family.”
Insiders say that while Bobby Fischer is an outright prodigy and, Lisa Lane is a normal 22-year-old who simply has developed through hard work. She's demure and a little shy, but in recalling past matches, she'll dramatize every move in a burst of theatrics that leaves a listener breathless.
Is she good enough to beat Fischer? “No, I don't think so,” she says. “I've never played him, but I'm sure he's better than I. But then men are better than women at most things, aren't they? That's the way it should be.”
Chicago-born Fischer, who tied for fifth place in the interzonal finals in Yugoslavia in 1958, may be the greatest natural genius since the age of six, and won the U.S. men's title at 14. Though one of his high school teachers in Brooklyn, where he moved with his divorced mother in 1948, calls him “a sure bet for the world's championship some day, none of the other great players ever accomplished so much so early.” Bobby's fiercely competitive spirit makes it tough on the people around him. He used to go to a corner after a losing match and cry.
Most topflight chess players are hard losers. “I can't even look at my opponent for hours after losing a game,” Lisa confesses. But that problem seldom arises with this curvaceous campaigner. She'll beat you fair and square or rattle your composure with a flutter of eyelids. Either way, it's almost fun to lose.
Chess Queen's Gambit 20 Mar 1960, Sun Fort Lauderdale News (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) Newspapers.com
