Taking it one move at a time

Speed and Robert Boles are like water and oil.

The Hanford resident doesn't do instant messaging, rarely turns on his cell phone and spends hours every day volunteering at a local rest home.

But perhaps the ultimate expression of his rejection of rapidity is his love of correspondence chess.

It's normal chess, but slowed down. Way down. Individual moves take days, not counting the mail time. Games last up to two-and-a-half years. Tournaments go on even longer.

Boles is currently in the finals of a tournament that started in 2003.

"If somebody passes away, experts determine who was ahead at the time or they call it a draw," he said.

It may be the perfect pastime for a 74-year-old divorced retiree with three cats, oodles of time on his hands and a love for puzzles.

Boles' fascination with the game dates back to 60 years ago, when he walked into the Hanford library and picked up a book called "Chess in an Hour."

Now he's a candidate master with several face-to-face tournaments and a lot of correspondence chess under his belt.

Boles loves the leisure of sending moves via snail mail. He can't stand "blitz" chess, where face-to-face players lose if they take more than five minutes to make a move.

Sometimes, Boles will take two or three days. During that time, he'll consult his library of over 100 books on chess. He'll consider carefully his opponent's possible responses.

Then he'll fire off a postcard with his next move to whoever he's playing on the other end.

"I don't know anybody in Hanford who plays chess," he said.

There is a chess club in Visalia, but Boles isn't too keen on it.

"They sit there at Borders and they play blitz chess. That's really not my style," Boles said.

But don't think Boles is some kind of chess Hamlet unable to make up his mind.

A year ago he started 25 games more or less at the same time.

Now, he's down to only six or seven, with a solid winning record.

"That's the beauty of it," he said, referring to the amount of time a correspondence player has to consider moves.

The other beauty of it is that it takes Boles far beyond Hanford.

He's played people from all over the world, some of them prison inmates. Boles once marched into San Quentin State Prison for a tournament. He sat on the balcony of a gym, with armed guards standing watch, trying to block out the yelling and screaming wafting up from basketball games as he played a match against an inmate.

"It doesn't make any difference to me. They seem to be decent people," he said.

For obvious reasons, the format appeals to prisoners.

But correspondence chess, though less popular since e-mail, still has a loyal core of fans on the outside, according to Joan Dubois, spokeswoman for the U.S. Chess Federation.

Dubois said the time factor attracts both experts and beginners who want to ponder their moves more carefully. It also attracts women who may feel intimidated competing face-to-face against men, she said.

And correspondence tournaments may be the only way for players unable to attend live tournaments to achieve official rankings, Dubois added.

Correspondence chess has done that for Boles, but it's accomplished something more for the biology major who ended up going into office work.

It's allowed him to pursue a passion for problem solving.

"It's just an immensely complicated game. And that's why I like it," said Boles, who admits to a great admiration for mathematics.

Boles made it clear that chess has little in common with checkers.

Computers have completely figured out the game of checkers, Boles said, but chess is "nowhere near to being solved."

An IBM computer dubbed Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, but according to Boles, the result was bogus.

"Kasparov played a terrible game," he said.

Observers of the contest said that Kasparov, sweating it out with Deep Blue under an intense media spotlight, was clearly flustered.

Boles plays in the peace and quiet of his suburban four-bedroom home, where chess and books reign supreme.

In place of a living room TV, Boles has the equivalent of an entertainment center crowded with several chess sets.

In one bedroom, a custom chess table sits in the middle of the carpet with a chair on each side. Surrounding it are walls of books on dozens of different topics.

Boles' sister, Betty Womack, lives next door. She is his only relative in Hanford, since his mother, Pauline Boles, died in 2001.

Boles could easily descend into a self-contained world of chess, reading and housecleaning.

To give "balance," he said, as well as a social life, he volunteers 10 to 15 hours a week helping with bookkeeping and planning activities at Kings Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

As far as chess goes, Boles wants to reach full master level and go to more over-the-board tournaments before he ends up in a rest home himself.

"I tell them over there, 'Save me a bed, because I'm not feeling too well,'" he said.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432.

(Jan. 5, 2008)