Some things were hard to get because of the war. New cars for example, but 8-10 year old used cars could be had for $50-150. Men’s Nunn-Bush shoes cost, $10.00-13.50 a pair and Van Heusen shirts cost $2.50 each.
Kellog’s Corn Flakes cost 8 cents for an 11 ounce box and hot dogs were 37 cents a pound. Coke was a nickle a bottle. A 9 gallon metal garbage can cost $0.98 and Ex Lax, the laxative, cost 19 cents for a package of 18.
A year’s subscription to Chess Review cost $3.00 per year. Lest one think that the subscription price was cheap, the median civilian wages and salaries of primary families was about $2,697 a year and the minimum wage was $0.30 an hour, or about the equivalent to $4.45 in 2020 dollars. So, to get a subscription you’d have to work about 10 hours.
There was a big debate going on in the Letters to the Editor column in which players were voicing their opinion on whether Kt (preferred by most readers!) or N should be used for Knight. You’d be surprised how passionate some people were about the issue!
One fellow wrote, “I view the proposed change with distinct horror. It is not only a change which contradicts the actual spelling...but is quite useless because of the established state on the Kt abbreviation.” Another wrote, “I would like to say N is for Nuts to this idea.”
Robert Willman and Arnold Denker tied with a score of 8-1 for the Manhattan Chess Club Championship. Reuben Fine announced that he would be playing in the upcoming US championship to be held in April. Isaac Kashdan announced he would not be playing and it remained to be seen if Samuel Reshevsky, who also claimed he wouldn’t be playing, could be coaxed into playing or if he really meant it.
As it turned out Reshevsky really meant it and Denker played the tournament of his life when he went undefeated and beat Fine in their individual game. It was Fine’s only loss and he finished second.
A few players mentioned were in the military. Private First Class Herbert Seidman, an Army Military Policeman, was leading the Marshall Chess Club Championship with a 7.5-0.5 score. Tied for second were Anthony Santasiere and Albert Pinkus.
Private Olaf Ulvestad was stationed in North Africa. While there he gave a couple of simultaneous exhibitions that had over a hundred spectators against 25 opponents each. Spectators were quite impressed that he was able to play a blindfold game at 5 seconds per move.
Corporal Roger Johnson of Pennsylvania scored an impressive 9.5-0.5 to win the championship of the Washington D.C. Chess Divan ahead of Martin Stark and Oscar Shapiro. Also in the military was Lieutenant Nat Halper who was, or eventually became, a Master.
One of the features of the magazine was that it published readers’ games “with annotations by Chessmaster I.A. Horowitz.” Any subscriber was welcome to submit games for consideration to Chess Review at 250 West 57th Street, New York 19, New York. Today both Horowitz and Chess Review are gone and all you’ll find at that address is a Starbucks.
In my day the games were annotated by John W. Collins and when I once sent in a postal game involving a positional Queens sacrifice and it got published it was pretty exciting. That is until I got to the chess club and nobody saw the game. OK, so they were not “postalites.” But, out of the dozen or so postal opponents I had at the time only one saw it and all he said was, “Nice game.” What I learned from that was nobody really cares about games played by mail...they want OTB games.
This game is an object lesson that illustrates the evils of neglecting development by moving the same piece twice in the opening without a very good reason. W. Wagner’s rating was 1180 (Class B) and William Nyman’s was 950 (Class C).
Chess Review had its own rating system and the ratings did not compare to the current Elo system. Looking through the rating list I spied some familiar names in the highest class, Class A: master and a member of the Canadian chess Hall of Fame Frank Yerhoff (1280), New York masters, Lieutenant Harold Sussman (1202), Lieutenant Nat Halper (1216) and California master Irving Revise (1208). Also in Class A was Edna Horowitz, Al Horowitz’ wife
In Class B with a rating of 1100 was a 15-year old Arthur Bisguier, master Dr. Erich Marchand (1100), the 1946 Ohio Champion John Hoy (1174) and 16-year old future master John A. Hudson.
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