What Ever Happened to Peter Winston?
VanUpp
by Sam Sloan
At the 1995 U. S. Open in Concord, California, a well known schizophrenic
chess player named Bruce Kopet was walking around the tournament hall
declaring that Peter Winston was still alive and was in prison in South
Carolina, doing a ten year sentence for computer fraud.
For those too young to remember, Peter Winston was one of the most
talented and promising young players in America back in the early 1970's.
However, in 1977, at the age of 17, after a tournament in which he lost
all of his games, Peter Winston left the tournament hall and never
returned home, according to one version of the story that was circulated
at that time. This subject was discussed off and on for the next several
years. It was said that his parents had no idea of what ever happened to
him. It was presumed that Winston had killed himself in some creative way
to insure that his body would never be found.
In view of this background, the story circulated by Bruce Kopet at the
U.S. Open that Winston is alive and in South Carolina is very good news,
even though he may be in prison.
Unfortunately, Kopet also said that Roy Ervin, a very talented US Senior
Master believed to have killed himself, was alive as well and living on
his parents farm in a remote area of upper Northern California.
Kopet did not try to bring back to life Jim Schmidt and David Forthauffer,
two other strong chess players known or believed to have killed
themselves, but Kopet perhaps did not know them. Kopet knew Winston well
and they were close buddies back in the early 1970s.
I always felt that Peter Winston would become a grandmaster. Back in 1968
or 1969, when I first met him, there were two promising young players in
New York, Louis Cohen and Peter Winston. Winston was slightly older and a
little bit stronger than Cohen. Most players believed that Cohen had the
greater talent. I, however, believed that Winston would become a
grandmaster and that Cohen would not. (Cohen, by the way, is mentioned in
"My Six Chess Prodigies" by John W. Collins.) One of the main reasons why
I felt that Winston would go further in chess than Cohen was that Cohen
was always brought to the games by his parents, who never left his side
and who watched his every move. This practice continued until Cohen was
around 16 or 17 years old. Winston, however, at the age of ten, just
started showing up at the Manhattan Chess Club by himself. To the extent
that Winston ever had any parents, I never saw any evidence of them.
If I recall correctly, I was the first rated expert ever to lose a rated
tournament game to Peter Winston. Here is the game. This was not one of my
better efforts. I attacked too aggressively, which was a characteristic of
my play until I took up the more solid opening of 1. g4. However,
Winston's performance was impressive for a kid of age 10 or 11. Winston
was rated 1779 by the USCF at the time of this game
Within a few years, Winston had a master's rating. Unfortunately, after
that, Winston just stopped improving. He stayed stuck at around 2200 and
never got much better.
I played Winston again in 1977 in the last round of a Goichberg
international tournament, organized with the help of Jerome Bibuld. I
needed to win my last round game against Peter Winston to get a FIDE
rating. I played some secret opening analysis shown to me by Anatoly Lein,
and Winston crushed Lein's analysis over the board. I later showed the
game to Lein and he agreed that his analysis had been refuted by Winston.
As a result, Lein never played that line himself.
Unfortunately, that was perhaps the last chess game which Peter Winston
ever won. Shortly thereafter, he played in a master's tournament at Hunter
College, as I recall, and lost all of his games. I remember Sunil
Weeremantry as one of the players who defeated Winston in that tournament.
Winston was acting weird and eccentric during the tournament, talking to
himself and saying strange things.
I certainly hope that Peter Winston is still alive. If anybody has any
further information about him, please contact me.
Sam Sloan
[Event "Manhattan Chess Club Preliminaries"]
[Site "New York (USA)"]
[Date "1970.04.12"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Sloan Sam"]
[Black "Winston Peter"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B90"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. h3 Nc6 7. g4 e6
8. Bg2 Be7 9. O-O Qc7 10. Be3 Na5 11. g5 Nd7 12. Qh5 Nb6 13. g6 Nac4
14. gxf7+ Kf8 15. Nce2 e5 16. Nf5 Bxf5 17. Qxf5 Nxe3 18. fxe3 Qxc2
19. Rf2 Qc8 20. Qh5 Qe6 21. Raf1 Nc4 22. Qf3 Nd2 23. Qg3 Nxf1 24. Bxf1
Qg6 25. Kh2 Qxg3+ 26. Kxg3 h5 27. Nc3 Rh6 28. Nd5 Rg6+ 29. Kh2 Bh4
30. Rf5 Rc8 31. Rxh5 Rc2+ 32. Kh1 Bf2 33. Bg2 Rc1+ 34. Kh2 Bg3# {
Checkmate! Black was about 10-11 years old at the time of this game and
clearly showed the potential to become a top grandmaster. However, in
about 1977, he disappeared. It is presumed that he killed himself but his
body was never found} 0-1
Steve Mayer
: At the 1995 U. S. Open in Concord, California, a well known schizophrenic
: chess player named Bruce Kopet was walking around the tournament hall
: declaring that Peter Winston was still alive and was in prison in South
: Carolina, doing a ten year sentence for computer fraud.
Very interesting. At the 1995 North Bay International Open, i.e., a few
days before the U.S. Open started, I headrd the same story from a
well-connected, non-schizophrenic midwestern book dealer. This story id
definitely making the rounds and may have more substance than it apears
to have at first blush. In the version I heard, however, I thought that
Arizona was the state in question.
<snip>
: Unfortunately, Kopet also said that Roy Ervin, a very talented US Senior
: Master believed to have killed himself, was alive as well and living on
: his parents farm in a remote area of upper Northern California.
Of course, the idea that Ervin may have committed suicide has a bit of
basis in reality, as he made a name for himself at an early Lone Pine by
slashing his wrists after losing a game to Gligoric.
-Steve
VanUpp
by Sam Sloan
In a posting I sent out yesterday entitled "What ever happened to Peter
Winston?" I gave the names of several chess players who are believed to
have killed themselves.
It has since been confirmed to me by a person whom I consider to be a
reliable source that Roy Ervin is indeed alive and living near Chico,
California. This should come as a great surprise to the organizers of the
"Roy Ervin Memorial Chess Tournament" which was held in Southern
California several years ago.
Almost everybody else believes that Roy Ervin is dead. Somebody remarked
that a letter from a person named Roy Ervin was published in Chess Life
two years ago, but that the letter was obviously fake, because Roy Ervin
is dead.
Several sources have said that Roy Ervin was easily over 2400 in strength
and could beat Walter Browne at 5-minute chess. Ervin played in Lone Pine
1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978. According to my database, Ervin defeated Saidy
and Biayasis in Lone Pine 1976 and Grandmasters Browne, Sahovic and
Biayasis in Lone Pine 1977. Ervin won the Charles Bagby Memorial Chess
Tournament in 1976, among many others. However, when his mental health
started to decline, he became a street person and slept under the chess
tables on Santa Monica Beach. The common belief is that Roy Ervin killed
himself by drowning.
According to several sources, David Forthoffer is alive and has never been
dead. I have confused him with another chess player with a similar name
who killed himself by hanging himself in Central Park in New York City in
about 1970. That chess player left a suicide note which stated, "My
parents had nothing to do with this". His obituary was published in the
New York Times. The obituary said that he was a promising chess player who
had won many trophies. I found this ironic, because the only trophies he
had ever won were Class B trophies. At that time, Bill Goichberg used to
give out huge trophies as prizes, a practice which he has discontinued.
That chess player was no better than Class A. He was never a master.
That chess player, whose correct name I still can not recall, told me at a
tournament in 1969 or 1970 that he was going to kill himself in six months
if he did not get out of the draft. I was a big anti-war activist at the
time and I told him that I knew of several ways to get out of the draft.
However, six months later, almost exactly to the day, his body was found
hanging in Central Park.
The person who would remember his name would be Bill Goichberg. Goichberg
has an encyclopedic memory for the names of chess players. However,
Goichberg has not yet joined the electronic revolution and apparently does
not have an e-mail address.
Nobody as yet has offered any further information on the actual subject of
my inquiry, which was Peter Winston. There have been reminiscences of
people remembering how they or their friends played chess against Peter
Winston around 20 years ago, but nobody has reported a live sighting of
Peter Winston since he disappeared in late1977.
I remember the date because I recall that it happened about one month
after he defeated me in an international chess tournament which was won my
Mednis. I believe that was the tournament which had Grandmasters Soltis,
Helgi Olafsson, Sigurjonsson and others. I got into the tournament only
because there were an odd number of players. I also lost to Bonin in that
tournament. My loss to Bonin is analyzed in the Myers Opening Bulletin,
Vol. 1, No. 3, page 10, with the date of 7/1977.
I found the last published USCF rating of Peter Winston in the February,
1978 Chess Life, which reflects tournaments through December 21, 1977.
Winston's rating was 2146 and he was ranked number 46 among U.S. chess
players under 21. This exceptionally low rating of 2146 was no doubt due
to the fact that he lost all of his games in the last tournament in which
he played, which was an event of at least 6 or 7 rounds. Winston's rating
undoubtedly must have been more than 2200 before than tournament.
I also looked up Peter J. Winston in Chess Personalia by Jeremy Gaige. He
is listed on page 466 and his birthdate is given as 18 March 1958. This
means that he was 19 and not 17 when he disappeared in 1977. This also
means that he had just turned 12 when he defeated me on April 12, 1970 and
was not 10 or 11 as I said. This also means that Timothy Hanke is probably
correct when he said that Winston was older than him, but the difference
between them is just a matter of months, and not years as Hanke apparently
believed.
Richard Reich reports that Winston's last published FIDE rating was 2260.
This rating obviously does not reflect the poor results which Winston had
just before he disappeared. Perhaps those events did not get rated,
although I recall that Goichberg said that he was going to send them in
for rating.
Returning to the case of David Forthoffer, I am sincerely sorry for
mistakenly saying that he is believed to be dead. One source informs me
that Forthoffer got a Ph.D. in something and has not played chess in at
least 10 or 15 years. Another source says that Forthoffer became a
religious fanatic, devotes himself to his church and no longer plays much
chess. However, a member of this discussion group reports Forthoffer as
playing chess as recently as two years ago.
Remember that this is not The New York Times. This is just a discussion
group. Nothing on this group can be absolutely guaranteed to be accurate.
I could have guaranteed the accuracy of my report by simply substituting
the name of Charles Henin for Forthoffer. Henin was a solid master who had
the distinction of having a plus score against Fischer. Henin defeated
Fischer in the 1956 U.S. Junior Championship. Fischer won the tournament
and Henin finished second. Henin killed himself some time in the early
1970s with a combination of a massive overdose of sleeping pills and
alcohol. However, I have heard that there is some disagreement as to
whether his death was accidental or a suicide.
Jim Schmidt was a solid master who killed himself in around 1970 by
hanging himself in the closet of his parent's house, or so I am told.
Again, this information is not guaranteed to be accurate, except that I
can guarantee that Schmidt will not be coming back. Schmidt was a serious
alcoholic. He was always drunk. A chess player recently told me that he
thought that Schmidt had killed himself because he lost a game to that
player. I told him that I was sure that that had nothing to do with it and
that Schmidt's death was related to alcohol.
I was always told that Grandmaster Nicholas Rossolimo died after the World
Open which he won. Rossolimo had a victory celebration in his Rossolimo's
Chess Studio in Greenwich Village that night, got drunk and fell down the
stairs into the basement, and broke his neck, is the story I was told.
However, somebody told me recently that that was not how Rossolimo died at
all. This source said that Rossolimo got into a fight or an argument in a
building across the street from the Marshall Chess Club in New York City,
that the other person hit him, and Rossolimo died. The police
investigated, but no charges were ever brought.
I make no apology about saying that Roy Ervin is believed to be dead. I
have asked a dozen chess players in the last few days, and all of them
have said that Ervin is dead. However, I have received one e-mail saying
that Ervin is alive and living near Chico, California.
If anybody wants to find out whether Winston and Ervin are dead or alive,
the Mormon Church Library maintains a database on CD-ROM with the social
security number of every deceased person in America (except, of course, of
persons who died so long ago that they did not have a social security
number). However, the social security number is only available for those
persons who are dead. The numbers for people who are still alive are
protected by the Privacy Act. There is a branch of the Mormon Church
Library in every major city of the United States and is open to the
public, so anybody can go there and look in that database to see whether
Winston and Ervin are dead or alive.
I imagine that this database is also available on the Internet somewhere,
but I do not know where it is.
If anybody wants to know whether Peter J. Winston is in prison in South
Carolina, as Bruce Kopet claims, they can call the South Carolina
Department of Corrections and inquire there. In addition, armed with his
birth date of March 18, 1958, any police station should be able to find
out his NCIC number, which is a number assigned by the FBI to convicted
criminals and fugitives. (However, the police are not supposed to give
this information to the general public.)
Again, my apologies for saying that David Forthoffer is believed to be
dead, when he is actually alive.
Sam Sloan
Jonathan Berry
and 1975, and in every one I met Roy Ervin. If he slashed
his wrists after losing a game to Gligoric, I hate to think
how he felt after getting just half a point in three games
against me. 400 points worse? I'm glad to hear he's still
alive. I may be able to dig up (some of) the game scores if
anyone's interested.
Jonathan Berry