Constable: Chess bonds players, 83 and 19

Devoid of any hint of a smile or a grimace that could reveal too much, teenager Jonathan Moore calmly clasps his hands together and rests his arms on the table's edge in this private dining area at Beacon Hill senior living residences in Lombard. He stares at the action, or rather, the complete lack of action, in the center of the table for a minute or two before his eyes quickly dart up to see if the 83-year-old face of Helen Warren offers any clues.

It does not. Warren, her arms folded on the opposite edge of the table, knows exactly where she and Moore are headed.

“Draw?” says the 19-year-old Moore, offering an outstretched hand to Warren, who nods and completes the handshake. Only now do they share a smile.

“This is kind of interesting,” Warren says, moving her hand toward Moore's black bishop in the middle of the chess board.

“My idea was this,” Moore says, pantomiming a couple of moves, “and check.”

Warren chuckles.

“Oh, I saw that combo right away,” she says. “Your bishop here is really strong.”

With today's competition finished, Moore, who lives in Woodridge, and Warren rehash the game as friends who share the language of chess. They discuss the strategies of opening moves from the “Sicilian Dragon” to the “Ruy Lopez.”

In the six decades since she learned to play the game as a young woman, Warren also has acquired a treasure trove of stories about the history and personalities of the game, from Bobby Fischer, the troubled, enigmatic American World Chess Champion, to Lopez, the 16th Century Spanish priest whose opening move still carries his name.

“Instead of doing his clerical duties, Lopez would just play chess,” Warren says, explaining how she appreciates the priest's explanation of why he didn't quit the game. “He said, 'It's not that I will not take leave of chess. Chess will not take leave of me.'”

Now she dismisses her one-time ranking as the top female player in Illinois, but Warren made a career out of organizing chess tournaments for some of the world's best players. Her husband, Jim Warren, who died in 2014 at age 81, “was the player,” Warren says. The first member of the Chicago Industrial Chess League to rise to the level of “Expert,” Jim Warren also was one of only two players to play Bobby Fischer more than once without losing. He accomplished two draws during tours in which Fischer would play multiple games simultaneously.

As a co-founder and inspirational leader of the Illinois Chess Association, Helen Warren organized dozens of major tournaments. She and Moore play on her portable plastic board from the 1989 U.S. Open in Chicago.

Unable to find willing chess players at Beacon Hill after her husband stopped playing, Warren took leave of chess. Sometimes she'd simply re-enact classic games by herself.

“I hadn't played a game of chess in six years,” she says, “until Johnathan came along.”

A member of the chess team when he was a student at Downers Grove North High School, Moore was working as a server in the Beacon Hill dining room when he met the woman he calls “Miss Warren.”

“It was Dec. 12 last year,” Moore says. He heard the word “chess” coming from the table where Warren was eating with other residents.

“They were talking about the movie, 'Pawn Sacrifice,'” says Moore, who was familiar with the film about the Cold War chess match in which Fischer eventually defeated defending World Champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union.

Generational stereotypes of shiftless teens and doddering old ladies never had a chance when Moore and Warren began their weekly

games.

“The first six games we played were sweeps,” Moore says. “I got crushed.”

That admission coaxes a smile from Warren, who was a fierce competitor in her day, sometimes toppling her chess clock in frustration after a defeat or celebrating a victory with a cold beer.

“I would have to admit to that, yes,” Warren says, adding that she still enjoys a celebratory beer these days.

Playing two games some weeks, the current tally is 22 wins for Moore, 21 for Warren, with 17 draws. “But I'm going to equalize that next time we play,” Warren predicts.

“It's always exciting,” Moore says.

“Chess is like a river,” Warrensays. “A fly can go down the river and get his fill. A hippopotamus can go down the river and get his fill. Chess has brought me a great deal of joy and a great deal of frustration.”

But her games with Moore are special now.

“By the time you are in your 30s, that's as good as you're going to get. Chess is a young person's game,” Warren says. “Jonathan still has the ability to improve. But I'm not going to improve. I'm 83 going on 96.”

They hold vastly different political and religious beliefs, and, even in chess, Moore likes speed games and attacks while Warren milks the clock and makes good use of her positional strategy. Both say they like and care about each other, and are humbled and grateful that the other generously makes the time to play.

Their weekly games will come to an end this fall when Moore moves to Dallas with his parents and takes classes at a community college with the possibility of studying mechanical engineering.

Warren once ran a successful “chess by mail” operation, so maybe they can do that.

For the rest of the summer, the games will focus on strategy and friendship. At this moment in their lives, both are B-Level players, the fifth-highest of 13 levels of skill ratings by the U.S. Chess Federation.

“We generally have very close games,” Moore says.

“We play an equitable game. And once in a while,” Warren says, “we play a beautiful game.”