"Charles L. Harness-The Chessplayers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

anniversary, but never, never, never will he exchange a bishop for a knight.
Nottingham suspected this fixation to be ill-founded; he had the idea that the knight was just as strong
as the bishop, and to prove his point he held numerous intramural tournaments in the K Street Club, in
which one player used six pawns and a bishop against the six pawns and a knight of his opponent.
Jones never did make up his mind as to whether the bishop was stronger than the knight, but at the
end of a couple of years he did know that the K Street Club had more bishop-knight experts than any
other club in the United States.
And it then occurred to him that American chess had a beautiful means of redeeming itself from its
resounding defeat at the hands of the Russian cable team.
He sent his challenge to Stalin himself-- the K Street chess Club versus All the Russians-- a dozen
boards of bishop-knight games, to be played by cable.
The Soviet Recreation Bureau sent the customary six curt rejections and then promptly accepted.
And this leads us back to one afternoon at 5 o'clock when Nottingham Jones looked up from his desk
and seemed startled to find me standing there.
"Don't get up yet," I said. "This is something you ought to take sitting down."
He stared at me owlishly. "Is the year's rent due again so soon?"
"Next week. This is something else."
"Oh?"
"A professor friend of mine," I said, "who lives in the garret over my apartment, wants to play the
whole club at one sitting-- a simultaneous exhibition."
"A simul, eh? Pretty good, is he?"
"It isn't exactly the professor who wants to play. It's really a friend of his."
"Is he good?"
"The professor says so. But that isn't exactly the point. To make it short, this professor, Dr. Schmidt,
owns a pet rat. He wants the rat to play." I added: "And for the usual simul fee. The professor needs
money. In fact, if he doesn't get a steady job pretty soon he may be deported."
Nottingham looked dubious. "I don't see how we can help him. Did you say rat?"
"I did."
"A chessplaying rat? A four-legged one?"
"Right. quite a drawing card for the club, eh?"
Nottingham shrugged his shoulders. "We learn something every day. Will you believe it, I never heard
they cared for the game. Women don't. However, I once read about an educated horse... I suppose he's
well known in Europe?"
"Very likely," I said. "The professor specializes in comparative psychology."
Nottingham shook his head impatiently. "I don't mean the professor. I'm talking about the rat. What's
his name, anyway?"
"Zeno."
"Never heard of him. What's his tournament score?"
"I don't think he ever played in any tournaments. The professor taught him the game in a concentration
camp. How good he is I don't know, except that he can give the professor rook odds."
Nottingham smiled pityingly. "I can give you rook odds, but I'm not good enough to throw a simul."
A great light burst over me. "Hey, wait a minute. You're completely overlooking the fantastic fact that
Zeno is a-- "
"The only pertinent question," interrupted Nottingham, "is whether he's really in the master class.
We've got half a dozen players in the club who can throw an 'inside' simul for free, but when we hire an
outsider and charge the members a dollar each to play him, he's got to be good enough to tackle our
best. And when the whole club's in training for the bishop-knight cable match with the Russians next
month, I can't have them relaxing over a mediocre simul."
"But you're missing the whole point-- "
"-- which is, this Zeno needs money and you want me to throw a simul to help him. But I just can't do