Samantha browne

The chess world is suddenly without one of its most illustrious and longtime stars. GM Walter Shawn Browne, a six-time U.S. champion, died in his sleep Wednesday at the age of 66.He was perhaps the most dominant U.S. player after the Fischer era, having won his first national championship in 1974 and five more by 1983. He won three consecutive titles twice. Internationally, Browne represented both Australia, the country of his birth, and the U.S., where he moved early in life.For five decades Browne managed to balance twin careers in chess and as a professional poker player. Recently, he returned more to the chess world, sometimes even playing poker and chess in the same weekend (including his last). He died at the home of lifelong friend and fellow chess player NM Ron Gross.GM Walter Browne at the 2014 Reykjavik OpenHe was active in both careers until his final week. At the Las Vegas International Chess Festival this past weekend, he tied for ninth in the 50th edition of the National Open. He also gave lectures there and played a 25-board simul. The tournament site was the first to report the news and has more details about Browne's final days. He won the tournament 11 times.A moment of silence was held for him before today's final round of Norway Chess 2015.He passes as the reigning U.S. senior champion.Here's some other impressive stats from his career:He played in 24 U.S. championships from 1973-2007, going +85 -68 =114.Only Bobby Fischer and Sammy Reshevsky have won more American titles.Browne also won the U.S. Junior Championship in 1971.He won most of the presitigious Swiss events, including two U.S. Opens, seven American Opens, and three World Opens.According to the USCF, he won more Swiss chess tournaments than any other player.Among his many international successes was winning Wijk aan Zee in 1974 and 1980 (see below for an anecdote on that event).He won his first U.S. championship game, versus GM Edmar Mednis, and his final game, against NM Michael Aigner. Here is that first win: -->His accomplishments earned him an induction to the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2003.Browne has an opening system named for him, the Browne System in the Najdorf Sicilian. An early ...h6 signifies his namesake. His knowledge of the opening was apparently still feared in last year's Reykjavik Open. Tournament-leading GM Robin van Kampen said after his game against Browne, "I decided not to play the Najdorf, because I heard you're an expert!" The Dutchman won the game, so Browne replied, "Well not anymore!"Generational chess masters: (Left to right) GM Walter Browne, FM Ingvar Johannesson and GM Robin van Kampen. Browne won the Reykjavik Open 16 years before van Kampen was born!You

Of memorabilia from the 1972 Chess Olympiad. It was in that year that Browne, playing for Australia for the second time, amassed an astounding 17.5 points in 22 games on board one. He played every round, whereas every other team member took at least seven games off.Browne took an individual bronze (even though he had 2.5 more points than the gold medalist; calculations back then were based on percentage), much like the one on display in the museum:The grandmaster also played on the American squad four times from 1974-1984, winning four team bronzes in becoming one of the most decorated national team members of all time.For more on his poker career, you can read this interview from Card Player, where we learn that he never finished high school and didn't go to college (he "found" poker as a teenager). Even the writer admits that his exploits at the card table will never come close to his status as a chess legend.Here are some remembrances by other friends and top players. We will add to this as more come in.Three-time U.S. champion GM Larry Christiansen:"I first encountered Walter Browne at the Riverside Open in 1968. He was quite a character then. He drove his Yamaha (or was it a Triumph?) 500 motorcycle to the tournament from L.A. and his intensity amazed me. He won the tournament over a drizzly cold weekend."Christiansen said Browne loved sports, especially soccer, softball and tennis: "Walter's tennis game improved over the years and resembled his chess style. Active and forceful."Browne and GM Leonid Shamkovich on the cover of the December, 1977 issue of "Chess Life and Review" (image courtesy U.S. Chess Federation).At a tournament in Buenos Aires in 1981, Christiansen remembered Browne saving the day. "After a wine-drenched steak feast hosted by Miguel Najdorf, Walter Browne and Yasser Seirawan walked (stumbled rather) back to our hotel without carrying IDs and encountered heavily armed soldiers demanding ID in Spanish. Walter's pigeon Spanish somehow got us through the checkpoint without too much trouble."He also contributed this story from Lone Pine, 1980: "In the kibitzer's room, a young Seirawan was playing blitz with Tigran Petrosian. Running commentary by Viktors Pupols and many others. Pupols recited a 'Chess Life' article by Pal Benko about Yasser that featured the line 'He [Yasser] looked like a girl, and not a very good looking girl at that!' Walter did not skip a beat and chimed in, 'Yeah, but he was still interested!' which just about broke down the house."Interview courtesy World Chess Hall of Fame.American GM Jesse Kraai:"One of the many things that amazed me about Walter Browne was that even after his stroke, even after he was losing to experts, he still

Songfacts®:Jackson Browne started writing "Take It Easy" for his first album, but he didn't know how to finish it. At the time, he was living in an apartment in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, and his upstairs neighbor was Glenn Frey, who needed songs for his new band - the Eagles. Frey heard Browne working on the song (he says that he learned a lot about songwriting by listening to his downstairs neighbor work), and told Jackson he thought it was great. Browne said he was having trouble completing the track, and played what he had of it. When he got to the second verse, Frey came up with a key lyric: "It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me."Browne turned the song over to Frey, who finished writing it and recorded it with the Eagles, who used it as the first song on their first album, and also their first single. Frey says Browne did most of the work on the song and was very generous in sharing the writing credit. He described the unfinished version of the song as a "package without the ribbon."Glenn Frey's changes to this song included stretching out the "E" in "Easy." He considered the song one of the most important Eagles tracks, and a great introduction to the group on their first album. In an interview with Bob Costas, he said the song represented "America's first image of our band with the vistas of the Southwest and the beginnings of what became country-rock."The Eagles played this live long before they recorded it. It was one of the songs they played when they were doing four sets a night at a club in Aspen, Colorado. By the time they recorded it, the song had more of a country feel.Thanks to the line, "Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona," music lovers have made this Southwest town a popular stop on their road trips. Winslow is on Route 40 in northern Arizona, making it a great place to stop if you're traveling from California to New Mexico.While it might not be the actual corner where Jackson Browne was standing, the city designated the corner of West 2nd Street and North Kinsley Avenue in downtown Winslow as "Standin' On The Corner Park." Officially opened in 1999, the park has become a popular tourist destination and hosts a festival every year. A mural with the name of the town, and with a statue of a guy standing on the corner have filled many Flickr feeds. When the mural was damaged by fire in 2004, the Eagles donated a signed guitar that was raffled off to help