Patrick Hart: Our Golden Knight
By Henry J. White
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Pat Hart v. Paul Tinkler
Patrick Dale Hart died on June 19, 2000. He was 44. Pat was a pillar
of South Carolina’s chess community: playing, organizing and directing.
He served as SCCA Treasurer continuously from October 1985 until his
death. For many years he was President and Treasurer of his beloved
Charleston Chess Club. He also organized and directed countless
tournaments in Charleston. No one in South Carolina knew more about the
financial aspects of organizing a chess tournament. A frequent
contributor to Palmetto Chess, he wrote extensively about playing chess
on computer networks long before most of us ever heard of the internet.
Pat was a magnificent chess player. He won the South Carolina Chess
Championship twice, in 1979 and 1995. He won the Charleston Chess Club
Championship nine times. In 1992 the United States Chess Federation
awarded him a Victory Certificate for winning over 300 rated tournament
games. Over the course of his career he averaged a 7-2-1 ratio for every
ten rated games he played. He was perennially one of the ten best chess
players in South Carolina. He played over the board and in postal
tournaments, achieving an expert rating in these very different forms of
competitive chess.
Pat was born at St. Francis Hospital in Charleston on August 15, 1955, a
son of Margaret Craig Hart and Culbert M. Hart. At age six he was
diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy. By his senior year at Moultrie High
School, he was confined to a wheelchair. He completed high school
utilizing a telecommunications link to his home. He graduated with
honors.
Pat had a beautiful mind. It was agile, razor sharp and profoundly
logical. Not much got by him. He scrutinized every expenditure request.
When I did the first version of the SCCA website, he reviewed every line
of html code and emailed me several pages of changes that needed to be
made. His website for the Charleston Chess Club was one of the earliest
chess club sites on the internet. It was crisply organized and loaded
with information.
Pat loved chess. When I first started going to the Charleston Chess Club
in the early 1980s, he always took the time to play and analyze games
with me, even though I was a novice. I played him in tournaments several
times over the years. He was a fierce competitor who played every move
with lethal precision, always probing and searching for the most
efficient way to win. He was often in obvious pain as he sat in his
wheelchair at the board, but through his iron will and determination he
was consistently able to play games of the highest quality.
In addition to his parents, he is survived by his twin brother, Michael
Joseph Hart of Washington, D.C., his sister-in-law, Cindy L. Hart, niece
and nephew Christina W. and Christopher T. Hart, of Mt. Pleasant, South
Carolina.
In closing, I reprint a game Pat annotated for Palmetto Chess in 1981. I
could have selected one of his many victories, but such a game would not
tell you much about his character. The following game is Pat’s fourth
round battle against Paul Tinkler for the 1981 Charleston Chess Club
Championship. Both players were undefeated. With a win, Pat would have
the championship outright; with a draw, he would have to share it. He
hated draws. He always played to win. Pat, we miss you and your great
fighting spirit.
Originally published in Palmetto Chess, October 2000, Vol. 35, No. 3.