Franklin K. Young Memorial

As Stephen Dann in the Worcester Telegram put it:

Pick of the week for open tourneys may well be Saturday’s Franklin K. Young Memorial at the Boylston Chess Club, 240B Elm St., in Somerville’s Davis Square. Young (1857-1931) authored a number of books on the military aspects of chess, some that were reprinted well after his death in Winthrop.

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Who was Franklin K Young?

From our club point of view, he was an early player. Starting in the 1850s the Boston Young Men's Christian Union (YMCU) maintained a small room for chess; John F. Barry, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, C.F. Burille, Franklin K. Young and Walcott frequented it in the 1890s.

Young was a strong player, with wins against Steinitz, Zukertort, Pillsbury, and MacKenzie (see games at the site below.)
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http://www.didymus7.com/nost/franklin_knowles_young.htm

Stan Vaughan
Young is an interesting example. He had wins over World Champions Steinitz and Zukertort (twice), US Champion Pillsbury, and US Champion MacKenzie (twice). Here are three examples I have found of great games by Franklin Knowles Young. ...............................
He was also a member of the Order of the Mandarins of the Yellow Button.
The Order of the Mandarins of the Yellow Button In the second half of the 18th century, a group of chess players in the Boston area formed a somewhat informal, yet exclusive coterie called the Order of the Mandarins of the Yellow Button. What made this group exclusive was that in order to join, a prospective member must be an amateur chess player and must have beaten a recognized master, i.e. a professional international champion, in an even game of chess. Indeed, it wasn't an easy group to join. It was their custom to meet every Saturday afternoon for chess and spend Saturday evenings dining together, discussng chess. Supposedly, Mandarin points toward China where the Yellow Button was an insignia denoting rank in the Chinese civil service.The core members of this group included: Franklin Knowles Young, Constant Ferdinand Burille, F. H. Harlow, Dr. E.M. Harris, C. F. Howard, Major Otho.E. Michaelis, Gen. W. C. Paine, Dr. Horace Richardson, Charles B. Snow, Henry Nathan Stone, G.Preston Ware, jr. http://blog.chess.com/batgirl/the-order-of-the-mandarins-of-the-yellow-button

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He was also an inventor:

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YOUNG, Franklin Knowles, author, inventor; b. Boston, Oct. 21, 1857; ed. there;
inventor automatic breech-action for small arms and field artillery. Author: The Minor
Tactics of Chess; The Major Tactics of Chess; The Grand Tactics of Chess; Chess Strategetics, Illustrated; Napoleon's Campaigns. Address: Press Club, Boston.
from WHO'S WHO? IN AMERICA , 1.2 ¿ A BiOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF NOTABLE LIVING MEN AND WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES 1903-1905 ESTABLISHED, 1899, BY ALBERT NELSON MARQUIS EDITED BY JOHN W. LEONARD CHICAGO A. N. MARQUIS & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

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He published the Chess Item a magazine about the Boston Chess scene at the turn of the century (and mentioned the Boylston Club) , though he was primarily a member of the Boston Chess Club.

He is also infamous for several early chess books on strategy and tactics from a curiously abstractly military point of view. We have several of his books in our BCF library, but you can download an ebook if you dare - Richard Shorman (below) says it could cost you hundreds of rating points.

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Hayward Daily Review, Sunday, April 2, 1972 Chess by richard shorman WAR AND CHESS Franklin K. Young occupies a unique niche in the chess world because of his serious effort to reduce the royal game to a mathematically exact system formulated on the principles of military science. And though he received some recognition around the turn of the century from world champion Emanuel Lasker, who referred to one of his books as "replete with logic and common sense," today Young's work is invariable treated with ridicule and scorn. Indeed, taken out of context, his many abstract theorems do seem comically incomprehensible, e.g.: "Whenever a point of junction is the vertex of a mathematical figure formed by the union of the ligistic symbol of a pawn with an oblique, diagonal, horizontal, or vertical from the logistic symbol of any kindred piece; then the given combination of two kindred pieces wins any given adverse piece" ("The Major Tactics of Chess," Boston, 1898, pg. 147). Irrespective of his merits as an instructor, however, Franklin K. Young did possess deep insight into the nature of chess, as this abridged except from his "Chess Strategics" (Boston, 1900, pp. 3-6) illustrates:
He also wrote this endgame rule: "Whenever a pawn altitude is intersected by the periphery of an adverse Knight's octagon, then, if the pawn has not crossed the point intersection, the adverse Knight wins the given pawn."

A download of one of his books, The Grand Tactics of Chess, can be obtained here.
Chessville - Free Downloadable eBooks - electronic chess books

Read at your own risk…reading it could cost you several hundred rating points. As for what he meant by it. Who knows? I’m hoping somebody can tell me...

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Another quote:

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Always deploy so that the right oblique can be readily established in case the objective plane remains open or becomes permanently located on the centre or on the King's wing, or that the crochet aligned may readily be established if the objective plane becomes permanently located otherwise than at the extremity of the strategic front.- Franklin K. Young
http://www.chessville.com/downloads/ebooks.htm
The Major Tactics of Chess by Franklin Knowles Young