Unsubstantiated reports later claimed that Zangara’s real target had been Cermak and hinted at Zangara’s connection to organized crime in Chicago. Zangara was initially tried for attempted murder and sentenced to 80 years in prison, but when Mayor Cermak later died of his wounds, Zangara was retried and sentenced to death. They didn’t waste time on appeals in those days. Zangara, who was born on September 7, 1900 was executed in the electric chair on March 20, 1933.
That and the World's fair in Chicago were probably the big news in the US. One little known fact about the fair that year was that there was an outbreak of amoebic dysentery (an intestinal infection with symptoms including fever, chills, diarrhea, abdominal pain and passing stool containing blood and/or mucus) associated with the fair. There were more than a thousand cases, resulting in 98 deaths. Joel Connolly of the Chicago Bureau of Sanitary Engineering brought the outbreak to an end when he found that defective plumbing permitted sewage to contaminate drinking water in two hotels.
On a more pleasant note, according to Bill Walls’ excellent site, in 1933, Reuben Fine won the Marshall Chess Club championship and Marjorie Luce (Mrs. William Seaman) won the Marshall Chess Club women's championship with a 11-0 score. Robert Willman won the Manhattan Chess Club championship.
Fred Reinfeld was undefeated and won the New York State Championship. Arnold Denker took 2nd place. Fine and Santasiere tied for 3rd place.
Harold W. Snowden won the New Jersey Chess Championship at the age of 17. The Chess Review magazine (published by Isaac Kashdan, edited by Horowitz and Reinfeld and first published in January 1933) described Snowden as a “17 year old East Orange lad” won the New Jersey Championship. He scored five consecutive wins against strong opposition, defeating J. W. Brunnemer. the defending champion. in the first round. And, that’s about all that’s known of Snowden’s career.
Herman Steiner became the chess editor of the Los Angeles Times and helped promote chess in the area. On May 25, 1933, William A. Shinkman (1847-1933) died at the age of 86. He was a problemist and known as the Wizard of Grand Rapids (Michigan). Together with Sam Loyd, he was the most famous chess composer in the US, creating over 3,500 chess problems.
On June 19, 1933, the National Chess Federation organized a chess program for the World's Fair in Chicago and Alekhine played a blindfold simultaneous exhibition against some of Chicago’s strongest players on 32 boards that lasted over 12 hours. He won 19, lost 4, and drew 9 for a new world record for blindfold play. Afterwards, he was able to recall all the moves in all the games.
A month later Alekhine set a new record when he played 32 people blindfold simultaneously at the World's Fair, winning 19, drawing 9, and losing 4 games in 14 hours.
Originally, the 1933 Olympiad was scheduled to be played in Chicago, but plans were canceled due to financial problems and it was held in Folkestone, England in stead. The US team (Kashdan, Marshall, Fine, Dake, Simonson) finished first.
In August 1933, Reuben Fine defeated Arthur Dake in a match in New York by a score of +4 -2 =3. At the end of 1933, Mir Sultan Khan returned with his master to India and his chess career was over.
The 1933 Western Open was originally the championship of the Western Chess Association. In 1934 the WCA became the American Chess Federation and the tournament became the American Chess Federation Congress. In 1939, the ACF merged into the United States Chess Federation and the tournament became the U.S. Open.
There is a story that Samuel Reshevsky was asked before the 1933 tournament, which was being held at the Tuller Hotel in Detroit, if he expected to win it. His reply was, "Who is there to beat me?" If the story it true, he was right. Nobody beat him, but he didn’t win the tournament. It's probably a true story because in an interview Reshevsky was once asked why Fine never won a US Championship his answer was that it was because he (Reshevsky) was playing. In another interview, he did refer to Fine as a "fine player"; Reshevsky snickers.
New York players thought that Reuben Fine had a good chance at finishing first, but it wasn’t a forgone conclusion because Reshevsky was playing and he had seen his crown as Western Open Champion snatched away in Minneapolis the previous year by Fine, then a 17-year-old prodigy. They drew their individual game and Fine was undefeated. Reshevsky lost the championship when he was defeated by the 3rd place finisher Fred Reinfeld. For his part, Reinfeld could have tied for first, but he, too, lost one game, to 4th place finisher Herman Steiner.
At Detroit in '33, Fine and Reshevsky slugged it out every round of the way and it was only in the last (13th) round that the issue was decided. Fine had 11 wins and one loss (to Reshevsky) and no draws! Reshevsky on the other hand was undefeated but only had 10.5 points.
In the last round Fine was paired against Detroit Master Leon Stoltzenberg while Reshevsky was paired with Albert Margolis, a Chicago Master who was a former city champion and who had won the 1927 Western Championship in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
As expected, Fine defeated Stoltzenberg to finish first with an incredible 12 wins and only only one loss and no draws. Reshevsky probably expected to win his last round game against Margolis. Indeed he had to in order to have any hope of tying Fine. But, not only did Fine win, Reshevsky narrowly averted defeat and was lucky he managed a draw.
The tournament was significant because it indicated that Fine and Reshevsky were the top dogs while the young Arthur Dake and Robert Willman were players of promise and the old generation of players that trailed them were beginning to fade.
Concurrent with the Open was a women's tournament resulted In a tie at 3.0-1.0 between Mrs. A. H. Palmi and Mrs. P. H. Sagerdorph, both of Jackson, Michigan. Because an inlaid board was offered as first prize, a match to break the deadlock had to be arranged.
1) Reuben Fine 12.0
2) Samuel Reshevsky 11.0
3) Arthur Dake 9.5
4) Robert Willman 8.5
5) Samuel Factor 7.5
6-8) Leon Stolzenberg, George Eastman and Albert Margolis 7.0
9) Maurice Fox 5.0
10) Einar Michelsen 4.5
11) Egil Opsahl 4.0
12-13) George Barnes and Marvin Palmer 3.5
14) William Streeter 1.0
One of the more interesting games of the tournament was Fine’s 11th round defeat of Dake. It was awarded the special brilliancy prize and there was no hesitation on the part of the committee in singling it out for that distinction.
The reason for awarding the brilliancy prize was because one would hardly suspect that white’s Q which was seemingly quite out of play on its own side of the board, could within a few moves enter forcibly the scene of action on the opposite side with such force that it resulted in the death of black’s King by sacrificing itself. That’s after Fine first gave up a N to pave the way for an Arabian Mate.
As was often the case in the days before engines brilliancy prizes were awarded for games were sometimes anything but brilliant. In fact, when I auto-annotated this game using Stockfish 11 it was handing out question marks for both sides at an alarming rate.
The advent of engines have pretty much made brilliancy prizes a thing of the past. One website poster put it best when he wrote: There was a time when a swashbuckling combination was probably spectacular to see...but now, some heckler is going to squint at his smartphone for just a few seconds and say "Uhh, no. The computer says that move leads to a dead lost game.” That’s sad because while the moves of both players may be flawed, the games are quite entertaining.
A word about the opening. In the book Sabotage the Grunfeld!: A Cutting-edge Repertoire for White based on 3.f3 by Larry Kaufmann he looks at 1.d4 Qf6 2.c4 g6 3.f3 which is sometimes called Alekhine's Anti-Gruenfeld because in the early days of the Gruenfeld, Alekhine playued 3.f3 o avoid a proper Gruenfeld.
Since white’s N usually goes to f3, it’s occupation by a P is unusual. The idea of 3.f3 is to provoke 3...d5 by threatening to play 4.e4. Then the Exchange Variation of the Gruenfled is more effective because black cannot swap off his attacked N on d5.
On the negative side is the fact that white has paid a price in the the P on f3 is not as useful as having a N there. White does, however, have the possibility of castling Q-side and a P rush on the K-side.
Black does not have to play ...d5 though. He can target the dark squares with moves like 3...e5, 3...c5 or 3...Qc6. Black can also play the King's Indian when white is virtually forced to choose the Saemisch Variation which according to Kaufmann may not be his best option.
In his judgment Kaufmann doesn’t think 3.f3 gives white any meaningful advantage.
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