CHESS THERE used to be two ways to make a name in chess: play well or pay well. Patrons were almost as well known as grandmasters.

To the rest of the world, Jacqueline Piatigorsky was the wife of a famous cellist. In chess she is remembered as the sponsor of two of the strongest tournaments ever held, the Piatigorsky Cups of the 1960s.

But today there are so many world-class tournaments – and so many sponsors – that it’s hard to recall, for example, the name of the cigar company that sponsored a world championship match in 2004.

If someone with deep pockets wanted to establish a legacy that would last, there’s a simple path: Finance a series of big-bucks tournaments of Fischerandom chess.

Bobby Fischer’s reformed version of chess, in which first-rank pieces begin each game on different squares, is coming to big-time chess. It’s just a matter of finding sponsors. Today there are only a few Fischerandom events, like one in Mainz, Germany, last year but this is bound to change.

Teimor Radjabov, the world’s 12th-ranked chess player, was only 5 when Bobby resurfaced to play his last games in 1992. “Everyone expected that he would appear again, perhaps at a tournament in Mainz,” he said last week. “But alas it didn’t happen.”

BRIDGE MOST of us would rather spend an idle day fishing than digging a tunnel in the hard ground. But you may need to approach a problem in declarer play like a lowly worm: To him, digging in the dirt is relaxing and productive; going fishing is stressful and often fatal.

In today’s deal, South’s jump to three spades was invitational to game. If South had held a slightly stronger hand – suppose his eight of clubs were the queen – he’d have bid game himself.

North accepted the invitation: He had a “working” queen of spades and prime values on the side. But he’d have done better to try 3NT since at four spades South won the first club with the ace, drew trumps, and went fishing for his 10th trick by leading a heart to the ace and a heart to his queen. West took the king and led another club, and the defense got a club, a diamond and another heart. Down one.

Many a poor worm doesn’t know which way to turn. South must be willing to dig harder. At Trick Two he leads a diamond from dummy. East wins and leads another club, and South takes the king, ruffs a diamond, leads a trump to the nine and ruffs a diamond. When the diamonds break 4-3, South leads a trump to the queen and ruffs a diamond. He can then draw the last trump and reach dummy with the ace of hearts to cash the good fifth diamond.

South surely succeeds with normal breaks in trumps and diamonds and has a chance (by leading toward the queen of hearts) even if one or both suits break badly.