Ten things you didn’t know about Texas Tech
By DREW SCHMENNER
Missourian
October 19, 2007 2:13 a.m. CST
7. In May, Tech checkmated its rivals by hiring the Billie Jean King of chess. Susan Polgar was the first woman to qualify for the World Chess Championship and to earn the title of Grandmaster. She will SPICE up the sport at Tech, running the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence .
6. Lubbock is Roswell, N.M., without the nuts. In 1951, dozens of sane people, including three Tech professors, saw blue lights in the city and around north Texas. One year later, the incident was chronicled in Life magazine.
5. Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holley was born in Lubbock. He dropped the “e,” picked up a guitar and wrote classics like “That’ll be the Day” and “Not Fade Away.”
4. When college student-athletes sign their national letters of intent to secure their scholarships, they should thank Dr. J. William Davis, former chairman of Tech’s Athletic Council. Davis devised the letter, which was adopted in 1964.
3. Tech’s first mascot was slaughtered and eaten by the football team. A black calf was given to the team after its first victory in 1925. Soon after, it was killed and barbecued.
2. A statue of Will Rogers and his horse, Soapsuds, is positioned precisely on Tech’s campus. Situated 23 degrees north from west, Soapsuds’ rear faces toward Texas A&M.
1. Former Tech punter Charlie Calhoun holds one of the most unbreakable records in college football: most punts in a game. In 1939, he punted 36 times for 1,318 yards. Tech tied Centenary (La.) 0-0 in a driving downpour. Calhoun punted 33 times on first down.
Here is the full list.
“In 1978 Gaprindashvili became the first woman to be awarded the Grandmaster title. She was awarded the title as a result of winning Lone Pine 1977 against a field of 45 players, mostly grandmasters. Although she did not meet the technical requirements for the GM Title, this result was so spectacular that FIDE found it sufficient.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nona_Gaprindashvili
I didn’t know about the UFO.
“… she (Gaprindashvili) did not meet the technical requirements for the GM Title”.
FIDE found it sufficient = Yes, FIDE bent rules for its purpose.
Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze didn’t meet the requirements for the GM title. They never did.
Enough said.
Wiki is the last place I look for correct info.
Nona got the International Grandmaster title as a matter of record. What is the point of running her down?
It’s also a matter of record that Nona didn’t meet the requirement no matter how you spin it.
Let’s not get into another 80 posts debate about this issue. Nona was a great player and she should be respected for everything she has accomplished. Rules should be applied equally to everyone, including FIDE rules.
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
http://www.ChessDiscussion.com
>>
Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze didn’t meet the requirements for the GM title. They never did.
Enough said.
>>
They did. Enough said.
Well, not sure about Chiburdanidze, actually. I think she got the title just for being Women’s World Champion. But Nona did.
See Pal Benko’s column in the January 1979 issue of Chess Life & Review for a description of what happened. The regs required certain “norm” results in events totalling 24 games. Nona had the results but was a game or two short in the overall total. FIDE applied a discretionary power which was sometimes given to men in the same situation and awarded her the title.
Schemner is being either very rude or very ignorant in suggesting she didn’t earn her title. You could argue with more (but still not very much) plausibility that Mikhail Tal didn’t earn his.
FIDE determines the requirements for the title. In this instance they set them differently than they did later.
Nona earned the title according to the requirements that FIDE chose to apply. That is not spin, it is history.
As history moves along, they have reset the requirements other times. I am sure they will do it again.
Que sera, sera.
>>
FIDE determines the requirements for the title. In this instance they set them differently than they did later.
>>
The requirements have changed over the years. For example, now there’s a rule requiring a 2500 rating. There didn’t use to be such a rule.
And originally there was no leeway made for borderline cases. This caused unrest with cases like Frank Ross Anderson in 1958, who missed out on a GM title because he fell ill and couldn’t play a game that, even had he lost it, would have given him the title.
Tal, of course, got the title because the Soviets were so impressed with his performance in the 1957 Soviet Championship that his Federation petitioned FIDE to just give him the title outright. FIDE agreed, but in the interest of East/West balance, also gave the title to the US Champion, Bisguier.
The whole idea of trying to distinguish between GM’s who earned the title and GM’s who didn’t, seems to be in extremely bad taste. You know, the [b]entire[/b] group of original GM’s from 1950, Tartakover, Kostic, Botvinnik, Euwe, Bogolubov, et al, had the title awarded to them outright.
Nobody’s mentioned about that thing about punting on first down. What is that all about?
You’d punt on first down to try and get a fumble from the other team closer to the inzone. Wet game = slippery ball.
SqueegeeBob
Nona is one of the greatest. But Zsuzsa did something no other woman has ever done before that. She earned the GM title without any exception.