John Saunders: From CHESS, May 1950, page 165
"P.C.C. PERSONALITIES (No. 13)
H. P. LIESKE
To become Champion of the Postal Chess Club is no mean feat. To score eleven wins out of twelve games in doing so, is truly remarkable. Who is this new star in British postal chess ?
Mr. Lieske was born in 1915, learnt chess at 8 and has never really had the time to spare for it since! Studied at Berlin University and the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts; missed the championship of the first chess club he joined by half-a-point—twice!
Nearly became a professional footballer; at school held records in running, high and long jump and revelled in boxing, swimming and rowing ; believes it was the physical fitness developed by sport which enabled him to survive the constant tension of six years’ underground work in Nazi Germany.
Mr. Lieske wishes he were good enough to give simultaneous displays, for “I should enjoy it as a more intense form of mental exercise and as a concentrated, purified form of chess, in that it eliminates the expense, often wasteful, of energy between my move and my opponent’s reply: it would be my move all the time.”
In postal chess, says Mr. Lieske, he forgets all about the game as soon as he has decided on his move—in fact he has to forget it, for there are always a thousand and one jobs awaiting his immediate attention.
He is a painter and lectures on commercial art at the Regional College of Art in Bradford. Married; three little boys ("Who threw my king out of the window?”)
Whilst engaged in Youth Club work in London in 1942-3, he engaged in just one little tournament BUT tied for first place with W. Winter and J. D. Solomon. Helped found a club at Gainsborough, Lincs.; gave three simultaneous displays conceding only one loss and two draws out of 33 games. Won the Lincolnshire County Championship in 1946. ”I hate nothing so much as a drawish position” he confesses—“ which should explain a lot.”
Kibitzing
