Big-League Chess Makes an Opening Move on Kitsap
By Steven Gardner
Sunday, October 11, 2009
SILVERDALE —
Fairness may be tough to find in life.
It was easy to find, however, on 15 chess boards in Silverdale this weekend.
“It’s fairer than life. It’s a perfect value system,” said Viktors Pupols Petzal as he awaited the final of four chess matches in a tournament that was a first of a kind on the peninsula.
The Silverdale Beach Hotel was home to a United States Chess Federation tournament for the first time ever on Saturday and Sunday, attracting 30
participants. One of those was Pupols, a Poulsbo resident who carries the distinction of being one of two to ever defeat chess legend Bobby Fischer on time.
He did it as a 20-year-old in 1955 in a tournament in Lincoln, Neb. Fischer was 12.
A few would-be Fischers, at least in chess terms, tested their skills at the Silverdale Beach Hotel Classic Chess Championships tournament.
Richard Golden of Bainbridge Island and H.G. Pitre of Seatttle organized the Kitsap event, saying they wanted to bring a sanctioned tournament to the peninsula.
Here is the full article.
Wow—Viktors is using the name Petzals now. That is new.
He claims that the writing was misread when he and his parents came over after WWII. This sounds dubious to me. His father was a judge in Latvia during the German occupation in WWII; in addition, Viktors has a bit of a fixation on Nazis—not positive, but weird. He used to call one of his scrabble opponents a Nazi when he lost.
You do the math about the name change and his father’s profession.
Too bad Viktors never got a decent repertoire as black, because he could have been an IM.
P.S., Viktors was actually born in 1934. I’ve seen his driver’s license. He was too old in 1955 for the US junior.
Vik’s last name should have been in the article Pupols-Petzal. Appears he added the surname of his current wife.
Russell Miller, Camas WA