Club Championship Starts Tonight! - And the Amazing Harry Nelson Pillsbury

 

Harry Nelson Pillsbury

The Livingston County Chess Club meets every Monday night between

4pm thru 10pm

at the Buffalo Wild Wings in the Green Oak Mall in Brighton, MI. 

Stop in for some friendly chess, good food and 'refreshments'.

Everyone of all ages and playing strength are welcome to attend. And free lessons to all beginners!

Our last tournament for 2025 on the schedule is the 2025 Club Championship. But our illustrious Tournament Director is scheduling it to start after the holidays. So it will start tonight on January 12, 2026.

It is totally free of cost so come by for a tournament feel without any cost. The time limit is 60 minutes / game with a 5 second delay. We normally plan on starting around 6:30 pm. The tournament will go 3 or 4 rounds, depending on entries, but we play only one tournament round a week. So, this tournament will go on for 3 to 4 weeks, FYI.

It is semi-serious chess in a fun location and fun people. Stop on in!

Now a little history of one of the first great American blindfold chess players. These are players who specialize in playing multiple opponents and games at once, without looking at the boards!

Harry Nelson Pillsbury was born in 1872 in Massachusetts and moved to New York in 1894 and then Philadelphia in 1898. What was Pillsbury like? By all accounts he was a modest, unassuming, good natured young man. In serious games he would play with machine like concentration. A strong grandmaster in his own right. 

But at his spectacular exhibitions of blindfold skill, it was a different story! One time he was playing sixteen boards sight unseen, while taking part in a card game of Whist to keep himself busy during moves!

In between puffs on cigar and calling out moves to his unseen opponents he stated, “As I was saying, if I could, I would almost give up chess to play Whist full time. If I ever succeed in winning twenty simultaneous games of chess I shall probably quit and play no more.”

Pillsbury did play twenty-one games simultaneously during the Hanover Tournament of 1902. His opponents were all budding masters playing in the second division. He even allowed his opponents to consult one another on each other’s games and move pieces around if they liked.

After twelve hours of play, Pillsbury’s results were 3 wins, 11 losses and 7 draws. Still an amazing feat given the strength of his opponents and the consultant and piece moving advantage he let them enjoy!

On another occasion, he played twelve games of chess and six games of checkers blindfolded while playing Whist. He was able to recall and replay every move of all eighteen games of the match but also recite a list of 30 words he was given to read once before the event! Crazy stuff.

Pillsbury’s last chess tournament was in Cambridge Springs in 1904, where he had a bad result, except for a brilliant game against Lasker.

A myth developed that Pillsbury became mentally unbalanced because of the strain of his blindfold play. In 1905, he tried to commit suicide by jumping from the fourth floor of a mental hospital where he was being treated.

Unfortunately, he spent the last years of his life in mental hospitals or at home with his wife, whom he had married in 1901.

He died at the young age of thirty-three due to a stroke. Was his mind’s tremendous memory due to something that also the reason for his death? We will never know.

Lasker hailed Pillsbury in his magazine’s eulogy as “the pathfinder in the thicket of chess theory, gifted with pleasant and loveable traits. A source of pleasure and joy and a teacher for thousands.”