MEMORIES OF A CHESS CAREER By Elan Rabinowitz ( from Cape Town Chess Club Commerative Booklet)b

 From Cape Town Chess Club Commerative Booklet http://www.chessa.co.za/articles/files/Cape_Town_Heritage_Chess_Festival-Commemorative_Booklet_2017.pdf

It seems appropriate to include in this booklet this address by the late Elan Rabinowitz from when he was awarded a Legend of Western Cape Sports Award in 2014. Elan Rabinowitz 1957-2015 

Neither of my parents played chess at all but my 2 older brothers played very much on a casual/social level. When I was approximately 10 years old, my oldest brother decided he wanted some variation in his opponents and taught me the moves. I learnt the moves fairly quickly but none of us took it particularly seriously. We played on a fairly basic level but quite enjoyed the game.

 I continued to play on this basis until 1972 when I was 15 years old and in Standard 8 (Grade 10). This was the year that the eccentric and reclusive Bobby Fischer caught the imagination of the entire chess world. It was the days of the cold war when Russia totally dominated world chess. The top 8 out of 10 players in the world were Russian and they completely dominated before Fischer, completely on his own and with virtually no meaningful assistance from anyone, rose to become probably the greatest chess player who ever lived at the time. He was challenging Russian world champion Boris Spassky for the world championship and amazingly was the favourite to win the world title. The dynamics of the situation caught the imagination of the chess world. Fischer was determined to make chess a highly respected sport and used all sorts of tactics to do so. At the time, he not only caught the imagination of top chess players worldwide but also hundreds of thousands of young players who took to the game. Even the Russians respected him greatly. I was one of them and soon devoted more time to studying chess than I did to my schoolwork. 

My chess improved from a fairly poor social player to a rated player playing at top schools level as well as joining the Cape Town Chess Club through the encouragement of the then Chairman of the club, Simmy Lewis (who incidentally passed away a few weeks ago). The game soon became an obsession for me and many of my contemporaries. I featured fairly well at school level as well as senior level. My playing career was not remarkable but I did win the Cape Town Chess Club Championship, Interschools League (twice) and came second in the WP Open Junior Championships. 

Chess really enriched my life at a young age and taught me many things including the value of sustained concentration, how to win and lose graciously, and how to work in a team environment. The Cape Town Chess Club was the only club in the vicinity of my home and met twice a week at that stage. I went to the club at least one of the evenings every week and sometime two. 8 In 1973 to 1974, I captained the Herzlia High School team which won the Western Province’s school league both of these years. 

In about 1977 I came to the realization that despite Bobby Fischer’s efforts, chess was not going to be a great way to earn a living and I gave the game up and concentrated on my studies for about 8 years until about 1985. One unfortunate but somewhat amusing incident occurred at the club premises in the mid 70’s. Simmy Lewis was still fairly active at the club and he was a strong opponent of the apartheid government at the time. For some reason the government of the day’s obsession with not allowing inter-racial sport did not really extend to chess. Probably because it was not a sport that was very much in the limelight. Simmy had long stated that we had some members of colour playing at the club and that we would never allow the government to destroy that. The club received a letter of warning from government telling us that we were acting illegally by playing with people of other races and allowing them to be members of the club. Simmy not only ignored the letter but also arranged a friendly challenge match against the Athlone club. A day or two before the match, he received a tip off that the police intended raiding the club during the match. Simmy was undeterred and insisted we continue with the match. He was however acquainted with my parents and did contact me personally and told me not to come to the club because there might be trouble and felt that I, as a schoolboy, should not get involved and I should stay at home. This was all I needed to hear to encourage me to be at the club and play. When Simmy saw me, he suggested I go home. I informed him respectfully that I had been selected for the team and I intended to play. The match started quite peacefully without any hint of any problems to come but halfway through the match, a crowd of burly policemen entered the club and ordered us to stop playing immediately. Simmy tried to reason with them and told them we were not doing anything illegal at all. All we were doing was playing a game of chess with one player on each side of the table and we continued playing somewhat nervously. The head of the police delegation advised us that we would all be arrested and started to take down the names of all the people participating. The policemen themselves were trying to intimidate us by taking down our names and warning us and telling us that there would be severe consequences to our breaking the law. Simmy was quite upset and got even more upset when one of the policemen was badgering me and warning me to stop. He went up to the policeman and told him that I was merely a young schoolboy and he must please leave me out of it. The policeman responded by saying that my age did not matter as I was acting against the law and in the same manner as all the other players and was liable to be arrested. Simmy very politely and quietly said to the policeman – “Please sir do not do that. Do you know what it is like to have to tell a Jewish mother that her son has been arrested?” Needless to say, the humour was lost on the policeman. However, we did have something of a moral victory in that they took down the names (strangely only of the Athlone players and nobody else) and told them that they would not make a scene at the club but would be pressing charges. No-one ever heard of the charges or the incident again and the club continued to play non-racial chess with anybody who wished to participate. 9 

In 1985 after I finished my studies, I decided to rejoin the Cape Town Chess Club and once again became a very active member. After a year or two of this, Geoff Taylor, who had been Chairman of the club for a number of years and had run it singlehandedly, took very ill. One of the senior members of the club, Len Reitstein, who had more or less retired from the game, called a few of the more loyal and active members of the club in Stephen Tooke, Charles de Villiers, Nick Barnett and myself and told us that Geoff Taylor was not in a position to continue running the club and that it was now time for us to take over the reins. I assumed the position of Secretary and Treasurer whilst Stephen Tooke, Charles de Villiers and Nick Barnett took turns at being Chairman. The club itself is the oldest club in South Africa by far having being formed in 1885. It has had many ups and downs caused firstly by us constantly losing our premises and having to find alternative premises, and also through declining membership which is something I think most of the clubs in the Western Cape suffer from. But of late, the situation has stabilised and improved tremendously. It is my firm belief that to have a successful club, one has to have 2 main features: 1. One has to have a decent and regular premises. 2. One has to have a designated club night and for each week the club must ensure that it is open without fail so that members in the vicinity could decide that they want to play casual chess at the last minute without notice to anybody and they would get a game. This I believe has been the success of the Cape Town Chess Club and numerous other clubs and it is especially pleasing that in the last year or two, Cape Town Chess Club membership participation has increased substantially. This has also been greatly enhanced by IM David Gluckman’s introduction of 5 top juniors to the club all of whom have been featuring at the top senior level despite them having joined the club at the age of 9 / 10 years old.

 I have no doubt that they will take the club well into the future in good health. Another milestone of the club and Chess Western Province, was the successful unification of the various chess bodies at the time of South Africa’s transformation. In 1991 / 1992 with most sporting codes either unifying or working towards unification, two strong committees were formed, one representing previously disadvantaged communities and one representing the previously advantaged community. Myself, Nick Barnett and Charles de Villiers were asked to represent the now defunct South African Chess Federation in unity talks with the two other bodies making up the previously disadvantaged community. Our job was not without unnecessary opposition and hindrances but fortunately despite some senior administrators being somewhat obstructive, the unification process was successful. In no time, South Africa was accepted back into the fold and had representative teams at the Olympiad and African Championship. Despite on numerous occasions trying to find somebody to take over from me as Chairman of the club, I have remained Chairman and chief bottle washer for 20 years. I am hoping to find a successor soon but it really does not make a difference. All these years of being part of keeping the club going, surviving ups and downs and living through successes and failures has been a wonderful journey and I am really delighted not only at the Cape Town Chess Club but also at Western Province chess in general. When I say success, I do not only mean success in provincial tournaments etc. , I mean we have grown as a chess playing community with tremendous participation in tournaments and league by so many enthusiastic players in the true spirit of how chess should be played.