Subject: Chessdon goes Zero for Zero for Ten!

On 24 October 2004 (Sam Sloan) wrote in
Message-id:

On 24 Oct 2004 15:26:53 GMT, OTHERE (Fifiela) wrote:

The only grandmasters there were Rossolimo and
later Spassky, both transplanted Russians.

Rossolimo was Russian? With the name, I would assume Italian.

Yes. Rossolimo was from Kiev. Rossolimo was not his original name. His
original name was something like Verukov. He changed it to Rossolimo
in order to become a citizen of France.

Good question, though. Can somebody tell us what was the original name
at birth of Nicholas Rossolimo?

Sam Sloan


Rossolimo's father was Greek and his mother was Russian. He grew up in Kiev,
where he was born in 1910. He immigrated to Paris with his mother in 1929, with
his father immigrating to the United States several years before that. He
became a French citizen. In 1953 he joined his father in the U.S. and did odd
jobs, such as driving a taxi cab - a la Sam Sloan - giving chess lessons and
making money from the sales of a record of Russian folk songs. He became a
naturalized U.S. citizen. When he won the 1955 U.S. Open in Long Beach, Calif.,
on tiebreak points, his prize was a Buick automobile. Within 24 hours of
winning the tournament, he had sold the car to pay his fare back to France,
which he considered his only hope of continuing his professional chess career.
However, when the possibilty existed that that his son might be drafted into
the French army and could be sent to the Algerian front, Nick changed his mind
and decided to stay in the United States. He did, however, live later at
various times in France - only to return to the United States. He eventually
opened up Rossolimo's Chess Studio at 191 Sullivan St. in Greenwich Village in
New York.[I might be wrong but I think that the studio later moved to Thompson
Street in NYC.] Rossolimo was a colorful character - both on and off the board.
He held a brown belt in judo and was for a time a chess reporter for Radio
Liberty. He died in late July 1975 after someone found him with head injuries
at the bottom of a flight of stairs. It is unlikely that his original name was
"something like Verukov" since his father was Greek. Chances are that his real
name was Rossolimopoulos or some Hellenic name like that.

George Mirijanian