Who is the Greatest FAT chess player of all time ?

Serious question.

Recently I was tournament director for a "fat bald blokes" event on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/tournament/tournament-for-fat-bald-blokes

The idea for this question arose after reading and posting on a thread about performance. I'm reading a good book at the moment called "Grain Brain" about the effects of gluten on the body and especially the brain. To cut a long story short, the author states that big bellies are correlated with smaller(shrinking) brains. Chess being the art of analysis and our brains being our chess engines, so to speak.

I do notice that the best players are often quite thin and gangly but not always ! Hence the thread title....

Richard Verber ranks up there.    He was very obese.

"Richard William Verber was born on June 3, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio. After moving to Chicago, he became a National Master in 1961, and a Senior Master in 1971. He won the 1962 Chicago Open and 1966 North Central Open, and tied for first in the 1970 Illinois Open. He represented the United States at the World Student Team Championships in 1967, 1969, and 1970. In the 1970 event in Haifa, Israel, his 5½-1½ score won the gold medal on fourth board, and helped the U.S. win the Championship. In 1974 and 1975, he declined invitations to play in the U.S. Closed Championship.

Verber was also a National Tournament Director, and organized many important events in Chicago, including multiple U.S. Opens, U.S. Championships, international title tournaments, and simultaneous exhibitions by the world's leading players. He died on December 10, 2001 from complications associated with obesity."

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=101268

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-12-16/news/0112160004_1_chess-master-chess-federation-chess-scholars

Until his recent untimely death, probably Rob Ford.

I lived in Illinois while going to grad school in the late 1970s and remember seeing Verber at 2 tournaments.   I thought he had health issues then, as he did not compete in 1 of them for the Chicago Open Title.

For Verber to get to Sr Master, over 2400, in 1971 is very impressive considering  few strong people to compete against  and  chess tournaments were  few compared to recent times.   Back then, for most decent tournaments you had to commit at least a weekend to play -- as time limits were much slower than today,  and typically tournaments scheduled only 2 or 3 games a day.   

Bogolyubov, of course.

Yes, good one.

Does darts count? If so, then this guy -

Are there checkmates in darts?  Then no.

Pretty sure Blackburne put his head through a window.  I think Steinitz can be trifled with.

Verber is show here with the US Student team, circa 1970

From left to right: Richard Verber, Mike Seinkawicz, Andy Soltis, and Ken Rogoff.  Old guy unknown

Raymond Keene. Not a strong British GM, but second to Korcnoi in the World championship match.

I met Ken Smith in the 70s, when I lived in Dallas.  He was very much larger than life.

Richard Teichmann.

I thought of him as well but was put off by the spelling !

No, darts players like sumo wrestlers are fat. It's the thin ones that stand out and are worthy of comment !

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/violence.html

Interesting read....

Some entertaining "old time" speak: "...this brave Blackburne, whose blackguardly fisticuff performances you want to glorify at my expense..."

"Blackguardly fisticuff performances...." Surely an expression to come out when watching football hooliganism etc on TV

I would like to know so much more about the late Ken Smith. I only wish I could learn about him.

Ken Smith was very encouraging to the vast majority of chess players as his stated philosophy was if you would learn / memorize the best opening moves for your favorite openings, you are dangerous to anyone !     

Because he did a lot of groundwork on the Morra Gambit versus the Sicilian, the literature started giving him credit for that opening, naming it the Smith-Morra Gambit.    He played it against grandmasters in San Antonio 1972  ( 3 games ? ) losing all of them -- one of the more famous against GM Larry Evans who took the pawn, consolidated, and made it count.

He published opening pamphlets for Chess Digest.     you should google him and read more !   http://kenilworthian.blogspot.com/2010/04/smith-morra-gambit-bibliography.html