Life and Career
He was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He was Business Manager of the United States Chess Federation from 1952 to 1959. He was also the editor of Chess Review, which merged into Chess Life.
He had lived in Boca Raton, Florida. He became an International Arbiter in 1972. He was a member of the FIDE Permanent Rules Commission.
Harkness was responsible for bringing Swiss system tournaments to the United States, and also introduced the Harkness rating system, which was a precursor to the Elo rating system. One method of tiebreaks in Swiss systems, where players tied on points are ranked by the sum of the opponents scores minus the top score and the bottom score, is named after him. For his services, Harkness is in the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.
Harkness co-authored a book, An Invitation to Chess with Irving Chernev, as well as being responsible for a number of the first American chess rulebooks.
Kenneth Harkness died on a train in Yugoslavia, where he was on his way to Skopje to be an arbiter at the Chess Olympiad.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth Harkness
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