After Reuben Fine returned from the AVRO tournament in Holland in late 1938 he was full of enthusiasm over his father -in-law's idea for Keesing's International Chess Archives.
The Archives would appear approximately twice a month and each issue would contain about 60 games of which 10-12 would be annotated; that's about 1,500 game a year.
The games would be selected by the participants at AVRO (Keres, Fine, Botvinnik, Euwe, Reshevsky, Alekhine, Capablanca and Flohr) and in addition to the games the magazine would contain theoretical articles by those players. The pages would be divided into four columns so that the articles could appear in four different languages using a combination of figurine and long algebraic notations. The games would be indexed by openings, middlegame type, endings and players.
The cost was proposed to be $7.00 per year and postpaid to any address in the world. The subscription also included a loose leaf binder suitable for storing five years' worth of material. Before being too impressed with the subscription price of $7.00 per year, according to the US Inflation Calculator that's the equivalent of $130 today. The project does not appear to ever have gotten off the ground.
The September 1939 issue of Chess Review had a disturbing report from the tournament at Bournemouth, England which was won by Euwe half a point ahead of Flohr and Klein (12 players).
According to the report: Dr. Max Euwe...(clinched)...first place in the lastround without risking a solitary move! Scheduled to play his townsman, S. Landau, of Amsterdam, in the final round a loss would have enabled both Flohr and Klein to share first place...a draw was agreed upon without even the formality or a gesture of conflict.
Having read over the years of Euwe's impeccable conduct and honesty that doesn't sound right. It's unlikely that they agreed to a draw without playing the game, because you can find the game in databases. However, it was a GM draw typical of what you would expect when that's all a GM needs to clinch first place. It is possible that the moves were prearranged, but again, that doesn't sound like Euwe. You can play over the game in 20 seconds HERE and see what you think.
When the 1939 North American Open was finished, at the closing dinner it was announced that there was to be a merger between the American Chess Federation and National Chess Federation and beginning in 1940, the new USCF would organize the US Open.
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| Tournament winner Reuben Fine |
There is some confusion about the official name of the tournament. Usually, it's called the 40th American Chess Federation Congress which was the name used in daily reports in the New York Times while Chess Review magazine called it the 1939 North American Championship. Originally, there were to be three eight-player sections each qualifying four players for the Championship Final, though late entries changed this to four seven-player sections, each with three qualifiers. Results with Championship qualifiers in bold:
Preliminary Section 1
1) Samuel Reshevsky 5.5
2) Olaf Ulvestad 4.5
3) Weaver Adams 4.0
4) Joseph Rauch 3.0
5) Irving Rivise 1 2.5
6) Nicholas Bellome 1.0
7) Bernard Wolk 0.5
Preliminary Section 2
1) Reuben Fine 4.5
2) Herbert Seidman 4.0
3-5) Gabriel Hellman, D.A. Yanofsky and Bernard Friend 3.5
6 Boris Garfinkel 1.5
7 Mark Peckar 0.5
Hellman qualified by winning the coin flip by Referee Fred Reinfeld.
Preliminary Section 3
1-2) I.A. Horowitz and Charles Jaffe 4.5
3) Matthew Green 3.5
4) Samuel Kitces 3.0
5) Michael Neckermann 2.5
6-7) John E Fulop and Schulyer Broughton 1.5
Preliminary Section 4
1) Albert Pinkus 5.0
2) Anthony Santasiere 4.5
3) Boris Blumin 4.5
4) Walter Suesman 3.5
5) Carl Pilnick 2.0
6) Thomas Connelly 1.0
7) Joseph Hidalgo 0.5
Championship
1) Reuben Fine 10.5
2) Samuel Reshevsky 10.0
3) I.A. Horowitz 8.0
4) Albert Pinkus 7.5
5-6) Anthony Santasiere and Herbert Seidman 6.0
7-8) Matthew Green and Gabriel Hellman 4.0
9-10) Weaver Adams and Olaf Ulvestad 3.5
11) Boris Blumin 3.0
12) Charles Jaffe 0.0 I
llness forced Jaffe's withdrawal after five rounds.
Fine and Reshevsky drew with each other and Reshevsky also drew with Pinkus causing him to bemoan, "Nowadavs it seems if you draw twice, you can't win a tournament."
Consolation Tournament results: 1) Yanofsky, 2) Friend, 3) Neckermann, 4-5) Kitces and Rauch, 6-7) Carl Pilnick and Suesman, 8) Rivise
Class A Tournament results: 1) Wolk, 2) Garfinkel, 3) Bellome, 4) Peckar, 5) Broughton, 6-7) Connely and Hidalgo
Was Yanofsky really just 14 years old?
ReplyDeleteYanofsky won his first Manitoba championship at age 12 in 1937, also making his debut in the Closed Canadian Championship that same year in Toronto. In 1939, just 14 years old, he played for Canada at the Buenos Aires Olympiad. Yanofsky was the sensation of the tournament, making the highest score on second board.
ReplyDeleteSounds like another player who could have gone much further in chess if he had concentrated on it instead of making a living!!
Keesings Historisch Archief (Dutch) was a high class magazine with top professors contributing but had never more than 5000 paying readers.
ReplyDeleteYou can find a picture of Reuben Fine and Emmy Keesing at
http://redeenportret.nl/portret/854a2a2e-60b6-11e2-ab3e-003048976c14