The invitees were: US Champion Larry Evans, former champions Samuel Reshevsky and Herman Steiner, former U.S Open Champion I.A. Horowitz and Dr. Edward Lasker.
Other noted players invitees were: Najdorf, Eliskases, Prins, Rossolimo, Gligoric, Pomar, Roman Toran and Braslav Rabar. It was rumored that Dr. Petar Trifunovic of Yugoslavia might also be invited. Rossolimo was doubtful and Dr. Max Euwe had to decline because of business.
Technically Rossolimo represented France, but he planned to make his home together with his wife and young son in the United States after the tournament. A Chess Life article observed that his inability to converse in English may hinder him for awhile in his search for an occupation outside of chess here, but added a man of his talents should have little trouble attaining eventual success. As for his English, when I met him at his chess studio in the mid-1960s, it was excellent. A little-known skill of Rossolimo's was that he was an expert in jiu-jitsu.
Cuba was to be represented by: Dr. Juan Gonzales and Dr. Romano with four other, as of the time of the announcement, unnamed Cuban players. In the end, there were 21 players in the final standing. Originally there were 23, but early in the tournament, General Manuel Soto Larrea (who played 6 games) and Captain Jose Joaquin Araiza Munoz (who played 5 games) were recalled by the Mexican government and had to withdraw. No reason was given and Mexican history for the year 1952 does not turn up anything of significance except perhaps the presidential elections which were held in July. Or, it may have had something to do with Cuban, not Mexican, politics. The tournament took place in February.
In what had to be the most shocking turn of events during the tournament was when Roberto Quesada, Sr. suffered a heart attack at some point prior to his 17th round game against Steiner and did not recover. All the players attended his funeral. The loss of three players along with the regularly scheduled bye, coupled with many adjourned games, made daily coverage of the race for first between Najdorf and Reshevsky somewhat confused at times.
When the coupe took place Rossolimo was in first place, but he then mysteriously lost three games in a row to spoil his chances for a really high prize. First place was $2500.00 and as Chess Life observed, “...even with the price of meat these days, you can buy a lot of bacon with ($2,500.00).”
On the political scene, the Cuban President, Carlos Prio Socarras, who sponsored the tournament, was deposed when Fulgencio Batista preempted the presidential election during the tournament by staging a coup.
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar (born Ruben Zaldivar, January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1945, and the US-backed authoritarian ruler from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown by Castro.
Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 revolt which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes y Quesada. He then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel, and controlled the five-member "pentarchy" that functioned as head of state. He maintained this control through a string of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was himself elected President of Cuba. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba and served until 1944.
After finishing his term he lived in Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain defeat, he led a military coup that preempted the election. Back in power, he received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States even though he suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties.
He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over an economy that widened the gap between rich and poor. Eventually it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in US hands and foreigners owned 70 percent of the arable land. Batista profited by negotiating lucrative relationships with both the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana and with large US companies who were awarded lucrative contracts.
To quell the growing discontent Batista established tighter censorship of the media and used the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence. He was overthrown by Castro in 1959.
Batista's coup which took part during the tournament seems to have had no effect on the tournament and was never mentioned in the daily newspaper reports of the event. It was originally envisioned as a Capablanca memorial tournament, in honor of the ten year anniversary of Capablanca's death, but it's not considered part of the Capablanca Memorial series.
After Batista was deposed by Castro, Che Guevara was instrumental in establishing the Capablanca Memorial tournaments. The 1952 event was "pre-revolution," so became something of a non-event in Castro's Cuba.
Also in Chess Life was an article by Kenneth Harkness, the inventor of the rating system adopted by the USCF, in which he made predictions on the results of the Havana tournament based on the rating system which had been in operation for two years.
Harkness rightfully boasted his system worked like “one of those mechanical brains you read about in the papers. Tournament results are fed in at one end and ratings come out at the other. The machine has no feelings or emotions. When presented with the results of a tournament, it pays no attention to fancy titles. The sponsors may call it a Masters’ Tournament to Decide the Championship of Fifteen Counties; but the system adds up the ratings of the players, strikes an average, and calls the contest an 1843-point Class B event, if that is how it turns out.” His predictions were, as he put it, “about as near as you can come without the use of a crystal ball.”
In order to measure the performances of American players in foreign tournaments, 163 tournaments held in Europe and Pan-America since 1945 had been rated. Having thus built up a list of foreign players, an attempt was made to keep it up-to-date by rating the results of all important events in the future. Harkness rated the players as follows:
1. Miguel Najdorf 2714
2. Samuel Reshevsky 2704
He predicted a photo-finish between these two although he gave Reshevsky the edge because he had made higher ratings than Najdorf in the past and because he was out to avenge the loss of the US Championship to Larry Evans the previous year. This would lead to Reshevsky's playing “harder than ever to recover his prestige.” Harkness pointed out that a difference of 10 points in ratings means practically nothing.
3. Evans 2660
4. Gligorich 2654
5. Eliskases 2648
Any one of these three could take third prize, and there is about a 5 to 1 chance that one of them would win the tournament. Larry Evans was on the way up and this event was, according to Harkness, was a chance for him to show whether he is headed for the (then) Grandmaster Class (at that time 2700), or whether he was going to level off below that. Gligorich and Eliskases had averaged around 2650 points for the past four years. For either to finish ahead of both Najdorf and Reshevsky would be unlikely but not impossible.
6. Rossolimo 2507
7. Horowitz 2473
8. Guimard 2484
9. Prins 2478
There was little to choose between these four players. A spread of only 37 points between the highest and lowest of their current ratings meant that any one of them could take sixth prize. He gave Rossolimo a very slight edge because he had been the most consistent for the past three years. Horowitz was also a steady player, having been rated as a Senior Master since 1934. He was capable of finishing higher than sixth, but it had nine years since Horowitz scored more than 2600 and there were indications that he as on the down-grade. In the last US Championship Horowitz made only an even score, earning a 2400 performance rating. Guimard and Prins usually been lower performances in the past and Prins' rating was the highest he had ever achieved.
10. Herman Steiner 2427
There was no telling what Steiner would do in any one tournament. Being highly emotional and somewhat erratic, he could do well or badly.
11. Araiza 2344
12. Gonzales 2343
13. Lasker 2342
With such a small rating difference difference between these three players, it was a toss-up for 11th place. Edward Lasker surprised everybody when he took third prize in the six-man Masters Tournament at the Marshall Chess Club in 1951, but the schedule at Havana was a tough one for a player in his sixties. The Mexican veteran J.J. Araiza had been out of international competition since 1945 and it was likely he had slipped below his 2346 rating.
14. Toran 2283
15. Pomar 2211
A 100 to 1 long shot was the young Spanish champion Roman Toran. Harkness predicted he didn't have a chance of finishing in the money, but he could do better than 14th. Pomar had been a disappointment. After being ballyhooed as another Capablanca or Rcshevsky, the boy wonder fizzled out. He was, of course, a strong player but never lived up to initial expectations.
Miguel Aleman (2147) and Francisco Planas (2120) may or may not have been under-rated and Harkness had no record of their performance since 1947. He had no record on the performance of the remaining players.
The biggest surprise was Dr. Juan Gonzales was under-rated! Prior to Havana, the Cuban master had played in only four rated tournaments, so the system had not had a chance to produce an accurate average. Either Gonzales had not reached his peak or Harkness may have lacked sufficient data.
Horowitz finished about where predicted. He was leading the field for a while and his friends were figuring out what his income tax would be on the first prize. Later, Horowitz got bumped around and sank to his normal level causing Harkness to write, “The system knows!”
FINAL STANDINGS
1-2) Miguel Najdorf and Samuel Reshevsky 16.5
3) Svetozar Gligoric 15.0
4-5) Larry Evans and Erich Eliskases 14.0
6) Nicolas Rossolimo 12.5
7) Juan Carlos Gonzalez 11.5
8-10) Roman Toran, Arturo Pomar and I.A. Horowitz 10.5
11) Lodewijk Prins 10.0
12-13) Eldis Cobo Arteaga and Carlos Guimard 9.5
14) Eleazar Jimenez 9.0
15-16) Edward Lasker and Herman Steiner 8.5
17) Ricardo Romero 6.5
18) Roberto Quesada, Sr. 6.0
19) Francisco Planas 5.0
20) Migule Aleman 3.5
21) Rogelio Ortega 2.0
Chess Drum has a nice article on Ortega.
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