Mona May Karff, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetMona May Karff
American chess player
Date of Birth: 20-Oct-1914
Place of Birth: Bessarabia
Date of Death: 10-Jan-1998
Profession: chess player
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Libra 
About Mona May Karff
- Mona May Karff (née Minna Ratner; 20 October 1908 – 10 January 1998) was an American competitive chess player.
- Karff dominated U.S.
- women's chess in the 1940s and early 1950s and had an extended career.
- She held seven U.S.
- Women's Chess Champion titles and four consecutive U.S.
- Open titles.She was born in Bessarabia, a province in Tsarist Russia.
- Sometime after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, her family moved to Tel-Aviv, in what was then Palestine.
- Her father, Aviv Ratner, a wealthy Jewish land-owner, had taught her to play chess when she was 9 years old.
- Because of her natural ability, she started playing in tournaments in Tel-Aviv and developed into a strong player. In 1930, she moved to Boston and became a U.S.
- citizen, aged 21.
- There she met and married her cousin, an attorney named Abraham S.
- Karff (15 March 1901 – 16 February 1995).
- The marriage was brief and, though she never remarried, her long-time romantic relationship with Edward Lasker (a five-time U.S.
- Chess Open Champion) was never a secret. She played in three Women's World Chess Championships: 1937 Stockholm, playing for Palestine and placing sixth (won by Vera Menchik); 1939 Buenos Aires, playing for the U.S.
- and placing 5th (also won by Menchik); 1949 Moscow, playing for the U.S.
- (won by Lyudmila Rudenko).
- When FIDE established titles in 1950, Mona May Karff was one of four American women to receive the title of Woman International Master.
- Karff, along with Gisela Kahn Gresser and Mary Bain, dominated U.S.
- women's chess in the 1940s and early 1950s.
- Mona May Karff won her first U.S.
- Women's Chess Champion title against Adele Rivero in 1938.
- She competed and won the title six more times, in 1941, 1943, 1946, 1948 (sharing it with Gresser), 1953 and in 1974 (at age 66).
- She also won four consecutive U.S.
- Open titles. Mona May Karff was a private person.
- Besides being a formidable chess player, she was a shrewd stock investor who was worth a small fortune.
- She spoke eight languages fluently and traveled extensively.
- As an art lover, she spent a good portion of her fortune on modern art.
- She died in Manhattan on January 10, 1998.
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