Albert and Angelo Sandrin remembered

Angelina, Albert, and Angelo Sandrin, 1968

For those of you who didn't know Albert, here's a nice introduction.

The 1949 U.S. Open was won by the legally blind Albert Sandrin.  His brother Angelo (a longtime expert who finally made it to 2300 after his retirement) also played in that event. On the rare occasions that Albert played (the 1989 U.S. Open in Rosemont comes to mind), Angelo would attentively monitor Albert's game and keep score for him.

Most Chicago players over age 45 or so will remember Angelo from many events at Jules Stein's Chicago Chess Center. Sometime in the mid-1980s, I was rummaging through a used bookstore in Rogers Park and came across the tournament book of the 1949 U.S. Open.  I bought it and gave it to Angelo.  The next time I saw him at Jules's, he surprised me with a bottle of Courvoisier. (Which my then brother-in-law drank in one sitting, but that's another story.)

I really didn't know Albert as well as Angelo. A couple years earlier (circa 1980-81?), I had played Albert once or twice at the ten-minute Tuesday night tournaments organized by Richard Verber at the old No Exit on Lunt. He was completely blind by this time, but could play blitz "by touch" on a standard set and clock, and beat me handily.  And in the aforementioned 1989 U.S. Open, I played on a board adjacent to Albert in an early round.  My opponent (a strong master) and I didn't pay much attention to our middlegame: we sat slack-jawed for half an hour or so as Albert dismantled his opponent's defenses in the style of Alekhine, and even exchanged a "Don't you wish you could play like this?" glance.

NM Frederick Rhine presented games of both Angelo and Albert in this 2011 post.  And Tartajubow (from whom I cribbed a good deal of this post) points us to this nice collection of Albert's games.

Similar Sandrin slugfests

Irving Chernev, who wrote "Wonders and Curiosities of Chess," would have loved this. The following two games were both played at the U.S. Open, five years apart. The White players were brothers from Chicago named Albert and Angelo Sandrin, who both became Life Masters. In both games, White played exf7+, to which Black responded with ...Kh8. A few moves later, White captured Black's rook on f8 for free and with check, checked again with the capturing piece in order to vacate the f8 square, and then underpromoted his f-pawn to knight, checkmating Black. Commenter "Phony Benoni" (David Moody) at chessgames.com calls the games "definitely a case of sibling rivalry."

Albert's game is from the 1949 U.S. Open, which he won ahead of such luminaries as Larry Evans, Arthur Bisguier, and Anthony Santasiere.