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| Najdorf and Kashdan |
The club was founded in 1877 and started with three dozen men, eventually increasing to hundreds, with women allowed as members from 1938. The club moved to several locations over the years. The club organized the New York international tournaments of 1924 and 1927, frequently hosted rounds of the US Championship starting in the 1930s and was the site of World Championship matches in 1886 and 1891.
The club's own championships were some of the strongest tournaments in the United States with Frank Marshall and Isaac Kashdan winning the club championship three times each. Notable participants include Geza Maroczy, who played in several championships and won the club championship in 1927, Abraham Kupchik, who won the club championship eleven times, Arthur Bisguier, who won seven times, Alexander Kevitz, Arnold Denker, and Walter Shipman, all won six times each, and D.G. Baird and Pal Benko, who won five times each.
Players who developed their skills at the club included Arnold Denker, Arthur Feuerstein, Bobby Fischer, I. A. Horowitz, William Lombardy. Samuel Reshevsky was a long standing member. In 1970 Fischer played in a blitz tournament organized by the club and scored 21.5 our of 22 games!
Former world champion Capablanca was watching a casual game in the club on March 7, 1942 when he suffered a stroke and died the next day.
On November 2, 1947 the Manhattan Chess Club suffered a disastrous and unexpected defeat in a radio match against the Jockey Club of La Plata, Buenos Aires by a score of 6-1/2 to 3-1/2.
The news of the loss by the vaunted Manhattan club shook everyone’s complacency and observers proclaimed the defeat was a real blow not just to the club, but all of American chess. Although it was only club match, for all intents and purposes it was an international event.
The reality of it was that the US players, with the exception of Reshevsky, were out of shape, had little international experience or were young. La Plata on the other hand had a formidable lineup of experienced GM strength players.
Headed by US champion Samuel Reshevsky, the Manhattan team included most of the top US players. Isaac Kashdan was US Open titleholder at the time and Arnold Denker was the former US champion.
I. A. Horowitz, Alexander Kevitz and Albert Pinkus were all leading masters and former Scottish champion Max Pavey, though having little time for tournament play, still ranked as one of the Manhattan club's top players.
George Kramer was ninth in the 1946 US championship and fourth at the 1947 US Open in Corpus Christi. George Shainswit and Donald Byrne were talented younger players.
With such an array, the one-sided defeat was unexpected and the implication was that the United States was losing its place as one of the strongest chess playing countries in the world.
Only Reshevsky was able to win when he downed Gideon Stahlberg, who had recently won a Mar del Plata sextangular tourney ahead of Najdorf and Euwe. The Swedish Stahlberg had stayed in Argentina following the Olympiad in Buenos Aires 1938. During his time there he won many tournaments, some of them in competition with Miguel Najdorf, before returning to Sweden in 1948.
The way in which Reshevsky was able to extract a win from an apparently dead even position showed he was one of the best players in the world.
In his game against Najdorf, Kashdan put himself at an early disadvantage by choosing a dubious line in the Slav Defense and Najdorf pushed home his attack relentlessly. The game was the best of the series. Hans Kmoch used a fragment of the game to demonstrate the power of a N in his book Pawn Power In Chess.
Kashdan was world championship caliber in the 1930s but after WWII his world standing fell of drastically and by the time this game was played Chessmetrics assigns him a rating that puts him outside the world’s top 50 players.
Najdorf, on the other hand, according to Chessmetrics was peaking. According to Chessmetrics, between July 1946 and June 1949, Najdorf was ranked number two in the world 33 different months.
Against Argentine champion Julio Bolbochan, Denker's sharp tactical play got him an early edge. Later, tired after a long session, he lost his grip on the position and began to drift. Even when Denker accepted Bolbochan’s draw offer he still had winning chances, but was to exhausted to continue.
The remaining games were hardly noteworthy. Horowitz and Pilnik played a book variation which left little play for either side. Kevitz could make nothing out of his slight advantage against Maderna.
Pinkus was the first to lose. He won a P in the opening, but Michel got an absolutely crushing K-side attack and the issue was never in doubt. Pavey allowed too many exchanges and the ending with Bs of opposite colors was drawn. Kramer played a K-side attack that was actually more of a gesture than an attack and suffered the logical consequences.
Shainswit's game against Garcia was a display of boring shadow boxing. A young Donald Byrne was simply out of his depth against his adversary's positional play.
The moves were transmitted by radio teletype installed at the Manhattan club by RCA Communications. Messages were sent to a relay point where they were transmitted to Argentina. Despite the speed, the lag between moves was interminable.
There was also a problem at the other end...spectators! The crowds impeded the running of messages between the radio and playing rooms. Whatever the cause, there were incredible delays. After only four moves, Byrne had to wait an hour for his opponent's reply. Six moves later, a time check indicated that Luckis had taken only three minutes for his first ten moves!
Under these conditions, play dragged unbearably. The match began at noon on November 2nd and was only seconds short of being twelve hours long, but not a single game went more that 40 moves. The time limit for play was forty moves in two hours, so eight hours were consumed for transmission alone!
Manhattan had white on odd numbered boards.
1) Reshevsky 1 Stahlberg 0
2) Kashdan 0 Najdorf 1
3) Denker ½ Julio Bolbochan ½
4) Horowitz ½ Pilnik ½
5) Kevitz ½ Maderna ½
6) Pinkus 0 Michel 1
7) Pavey ½ Rossetto ½
8) Kramer 0 Guimard 1
9) Shainswit ½ Garcia ½
10) Donald Byrne 0 Lukis 1
Manhattan = 3.5 La Plata = 6.5
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