Championship Chessmate

 

I'm always on the lookout for slightly offbeat chess products, and was fortunate to find one at todays Lifeline Bookfair (well it was Miles Patterson who found it first, but left it for me). "Championship Chessmate" was a 1972 product made by Hoi Polloi, and was a early version of  'Choose the move'. Inside the carboard sleeve was a card containing the moves of a chess game (in this case, the games from the 1972 Fischer v Spassky match).  You revealed the moves by sliding the card down, so they showed up in the cut-out slots at the bottom of the sleeve. In this way you could try and predict the next move of the game, without clumsily covering up the pages of the book.

While the original had 20 games from the match (Game 2 was not included), the copy I have only has games 4+5 (double sided printing on a single card). A bit of searching reveals that copies can still be purchased online, with the entire set of cards. Of course the other option is to simply make my own cards, not just of the original games, but of other matches and players. 

Apart from this item, I did pick up a few other books at the bookfair, and will return tomorrow to see what else is on offer.