37 Facts About George Koltanowski

George Koltanowski was a Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer.

George Koltanowski set a record in 1960 for playing 56 consecutive blindfold games at ten seconds per move.

George Koltanowski took up the game seriously at the age of 14, and became the top Belgian player when Edgard Colle died in 1932.

George Koltanowski got his first big break in chess at age 21, when he visited an international tournament in Meran, planning to play in one of the reserve sections.

George Koltanowski gladly accepted and finished near the bottom, but he drew with Grandmaster Tarrasch and gained valuable experience.

George Koltanowski thereafter played in at least 25 international tournaments.

George Koltanowski was Belgian Chess Champion in 1923,1927,1930, and 1936.

George Koltanowski became better known for touring and giving simultaneous exhibitions and blindfold displays.

George Koltanowski was awarded the International Master title in 1950 when the title was first officially established by FIDE, and he was awarded an honorary Grandmaster title in 1988.

George Koltanowski showed up for the 1946 US Open in Pittsburgh, but was eliminated in the preliminary section and did not qualify for the finals.

The next year, George Koltanowski returned, not as a player but as the director, introducing the Swiss system to the US Open.

George Koltanowski directed the 1947 US Open in Corpus Christi, Texas, using the Swiss system for the first time ever in a US Open chess event.

George Koltanowski thereafter toured the United States tirelessly for years, running chess tournaments and giving simultaneous exhibitions everywhere.

On 4 December 1960, in San Francisco, California, George Koltanowski played 56 consecutive games blindfolded, with only ten seconds per move.

In Edinburgh in 1937 George Koltanowski set a record by simultaneously playing 34 games of blindfold chess.

Later, Miguel Najdorf broke that record, but George Koltanowski claimed his efforts were not properly monitored.

George Koltanowski survived because he happened to be on a chess tour of South America and was in Guatemala when the war broke out.

In 1940, the United States Consul in Cuba saw George Koltanowski giving a chess exhibition in Havana and decided to grant him a US visa.

George Koltanowski met his wife Leah on a blind date in New York in 1944.

George Koltanowski became the chess columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, which carried his chess column every day for the next 52 years until his death, publishing an estimated 19,000 columns.

George Koltanowski disagreed and showed analysis which seemed to give him at least an even game.

George Koltanowski had his own organization, the Chess Friends of Northern California, which resisted the USCF rating system and dominated Northern California Chess through the mid-1960s.

George Koltanowski later decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

George Koltanowski won election as President of the United States Chess Federation in 1974.

George Koltanowski directed every US Open from 1947 until the late 1970s.

George Koltanowski wrote many books; his best-known work is Adventures of a Chess Master, published by David McKay Co.

George Koltanowski wrote books on the Colle System which he sold by mail order.

George Koltanowski taught a system which would enable even rank beginners to get out of the opening with a playable game.

George Koltanowski's books contained many statements and anecdotes which were factually incorrect.

George Koltanowski died of congestive heart failure in San Francisco in 2000 at the age of 96.

For George Koltanowski, who claimed to have a "phonographic memory", the trick relied on mastering just one re-entrant pattern.

George Koltanowski could begin on any square in the sequence and complete the tour by rote.

George Koltanowski began his tour with a large chalkboard divided by lines into a grid eight squares by eight.

George Koltanowski would recite from memory the entry in that square as an assistant crossed it off with a chalk mark.

George Koltanowski occasionally performed the tour on two boards simultaneously.

George Koltanowski made two errors and immediately corrected himself both times.

At the time of this performance, George Koltanowski was 80 years old.