Robert (Bob) Wade was born in New Zealand in 1921. He taught
himself to play chess by reading books from his local library. After winning
the New Zealand Chess Championship in 1944, 1945 and 1948, Bob traveled to
Europe to improve his game. International chess was starting up again after a hiatus
during WWII. Bob earned the title of International Master in 1950. The
following year, Bob decided to play chess against thirty Russian schoolboys –
all of them fourteen and under – in a simultaneous play exhibition. Maybe he
didn’t realize Russians have been obsessed with chess for ages, or that the
Russian government had been funding chess training for decades. After seven
hours of play, Bob drew ten games and lost twenty. He ended up setting a record
for the worst simultaneous exhibition given by a master. The moral of this story: you may only be a big fish until you leave your little pond.
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