Marshall Chess Club Championship 1937

     The Great Depression in the United States began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession that culminated with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. It was the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth as well as for personal advancement. The economy hit bottom in the winter of 1932–33, but things picked up a little with four years of growth until the Recession of 1937 brought back high levels of unemployment. 
     May 6 saw the Hindenburg disaster when the German airship Hindenburg bursts into flame when mooring to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey. On May 27 the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco opened to pedestrian traffic. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, D.C. and opened the bridge up for vehicle traffic. Then, as bad as things were, there was a labor strike at US Steel in Chicago. 
     May was also the month the Marshall Chess Club held its championship which was won, fittingly, by Marshall himself. Theodore A. Dunst and Milton Hanauer, like Marshall, lost only one game and tied for 2nd and 3rd. Additionally, the Marshall club's women's champion was Adele Rivero followed by Mary Bain while Mrs. B.W. McCready and Mrs. William Slater tied for 3rd and 4th. 
     The Marshall, in Greenwich Village in New York City, is one of the oldest chess clubs in the United States. It was formed in 1915 by a group of players led by Frank Marshall. Over the years the club has had as members many of the country's best known players: Arthur Dake, Larry Evans, Reuben Fine, Bobby Fischer, Edmar Mednis, Fred Reinfeld, Anthony Santasiere, Herbert Seidman, James Sherwin, Albert Simonson, Andy Soltis. And, more recently Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura. 
     It has also had artist Marcel Duchamp, film director, screenwriter and producer Stanley Kubrick as members. In more recent times "shock jock" Howard Stern, a radio and television personality, producer, author, actor and photographer has been a member. 

1) F. Marshall 10.0-2.0 
2-3) T. Dunst and M. Hanauer 8.5-3.5 
4-5) F. Reinfield and A. Santasiere 8.0-4.0 
6-7) H. Sussman and K.O. Mott-Smith 5.5-6.5 
8) R. Smirka 5.0-7.0 
9-11) K. Darby, M. Green and D. Polland 4.5-7.5 
12) E. Martinson 3.5-8.5 
13) Hoffman 2.0-10.0 

     Several players in this event are well known and I have posted on Hanauer and Polland. Dr. Harold Sussman (September 15, 1911 - October 9 2004)) was from Brooklyn and had the distinction of being Bobby Fischer's dentist. Sussman said Fischer had a great set of teeth, but in the early 1980s they were full of fillings which he had removed because the KGB could bug them or use the metal to send damaging rays into his brain. 
    Can you really hear radio broadcasts in your fillings? If you can, then I suppose the Russians could have broadcast some kind of damaging rays or bugged Fischer through his fillings. Some people say you can receive radio broadcast through your teeth. Read David Guy's claim HERE and Lucille Ball once claimed she heard music in her mouth...HERE...or did she? HERE 
     K.O. Mott-Smith (1902 – 1960) was a writer and cryptographer and the Mott-Smith trophy is awarded to the player who wins the most masterpoints at the American Contract Bridge League North American Bridge Championship. Mott-Smith was on the ACBL Laws Commission, editor of their Bulletin and a contributor to The Bridge World. During World War II he was chief instructor for the OSS in the training of cryptographers and analysts. He wrote or co-wrote more than 29 books on games and served as games consultant for the Association of American Playing Card Manufacturers. 
     Rudolph Smirka was the 1927 New York State Champion. Matthew Green (December 28, 1915 – December 16, 2006) was born in Cleveland, Ohio and played in the U.S. Championship in 1940 and 1942. He won the state of New Jersey championship in 1957. 
    In the tournament Marshall defeated Mott-Smith in the game that decided the championship when he obtained a bind after winning a Pawn on the 23rd move after which Mott-Smith fought a losing battle. 
     Another important result in determining the standings was when Fred Reinfeld went down in defeat to Milton Hanauer. Reinfeld was one of the strongest chess players in the United States from the early 1930s to the early 1940s, after which he withdrew from competition. 
     When the USCF published its first rating list in 1950 there were nine classes and 2,306 rated players. The highest rated players were Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky, Alexander Kevitz, Arthur Dake, Albert Simonson and Fred Reinfeld. However, as Reinfeld was no longer playing he was dropped from the next rating list. 
     Arnold Denker described Reinfeld's play as precise, positional and poisonous. Denker also reminded his readers that in the 1930s Reinfeld was the single American player who posted a plus score against Reshevsky with a score of +2 -0 =3. Denker describer him as "an expert squeezer, seldom losing a game and seldom winning one" adding that on days when he felt primed for a fight, he played some of the most exciting chess of the late 1930s and early 1940s.
     Playing over some of the games from the championship didn't turn up anything exciting. Marshall outclassed everybody and a couple of Reinfeld's games that I played over were boring; he scored a quick win over Dunst that looked like it might be interesting, but Dunst blundered away the game on move 18 and resigned in a few moves. Likewise, in his game against Martinson, who was white and played the Bird Opening, was equal (in another boring game) until a gross blunder at move 21 forced him to resign a few moves later. 
     In the following game Anthony Santasiere administers a smooth defeat to the unknown E. Martinson. Writing about Santasiere, Denker observed that Santasiere, who despised the play of Reshevsky, "had the chutzpah to say that the Queen's Gambit stank like a dead mackerel while himself playing the soporific Reti Opening.....Do as I say, not as I do was often his motto." And, Larry Evans asked where were the games that qualified Santasiere as the spokesman for Romanticism?