Chess champs play to draw in Lindsborg

Lindsborg ? Anatoly Karpov and Susan Polgar played to a draw in the first meeting between men’s and women’s world champions during a weekend match that highlighted a festival of the game in this central Kansas town.

The activities in the town of 3,200 known as “Little Sweden” included a parade and a series of games between students who faced off against each other on tables that filled a downtown street.

The match between Karpov and Polgar concluded Sunday with two blitz games, each lasting about 10 minutes.

The players had five minutes to make their moves in each game, with play continuing until one player ran out of time or was defeated.

“For those of us who love this game, it has been tremendous,” said Ralph Bowman, chairman of the scholastic committee of the U.S. Chess Federation.

Karpov has a chess school in Lindsborg, but the weekend visit was the first to the city for Polgar, who will lead the U.S. women’s team in the chess Olympiad next month in Spain.

Two Lawrence boys placed in the top 15 at the Lindsborg Scholastic Champions Cup Chess Tournament on Saturday.Roy Wedge, a seventh-grader at Central Junior High School, and Douglas Rawlings, a seventh-grader at South Junior High School, placed seventh and 15th, respectively, in the junior high division at the chess tournament.Jessica Newman, a seventh-grader at SJHS, also competed in the junior high division. Darren Rawlings, a third-grader at Wakarusa Valley School, and George Wedge, a second-grader at Cordley School, competed in the elementary division of the tournament.