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| Rzeschewski in 1921 |
Sidebar: While preparing this post I came across the name of Ralph Talitikoff of Chicago whose picture appeared in the Sunday, December 18, 1921 edition of the Butte (Montana) Miner with the blurb BOY CHESS WIZARD HAS RIVAL; CHICAGO BOY WOULD LIKE TO MEET HIM. The same picture appeared in a few newspapers in 1922 with the blurb that he was a rival of Reshevsky, but I could find no additional information on Ralph Talitikoff...none! Whatever happened to this Boy Wonder?
In Philadelphia Rzeschewski scored 16 wins and 4 draws. Some of the games had to be adjudicated because of the lateness of the hour and the boy’s slow play and it seems the referee gave him the benefit of the doubt in a couple of the games.
Rzeschewski showed up on the stage at 8:30pm. One observer wrote that physically he appeared to be about seven, but his face looked like he was 10 or 11 years old. Andy Soltis claimed in Chess Life that Reshevsky told a number of people that he was actually born in 1909. In an interview with Hanon Russell the year before his death Reshevsky stated that the 1911 date was accurate. But then Reshevsky was known to be less than truthful on a number of occasions. Some have claimed his parents lied about his age in order to make his chess exploits even more of a sensation.
Neatly dressed, graceful and with pleasing manners and without any show of conceit or self-consciousness, for the first few rounds of the boards he moved rapidly while softly whistling to himself.
By 9 o’clock he had slowed down and for the next two hours he had only made it around the boards twelve times. Mostly that was attributable to his habit of after making his move, he would stand there in the hopes that his opponent would make a quick reply even though they were not required to do so. If his opponent wouldn’t move, little Sammy would say under his breath, “Move!”
If his opponent complied, he would sometimes reply instantly and at other time he would study the position for 15 seconds to a minute and a half. Then he’d move and still stand there hoping his opponent would rush their next move. His tactic worked because sometimes 4 or 5 move would be made before he moved on to the next board. There’s no doubt that some of his wins were obtained thanks to this little trick of forcing his opponents to rush their moves.
As he made the rounds Rzeschewski showed little signs of either worry or fatigue and he seemed to be playing most of his moves by intuition although there were times when it was clear that he was actually analyzing.
One master observer believed Rzeschewski’s manager was being honest when he said the boy had not studied any chess books because his openings were not theoretically recognized lines and his knowledge of them was probably refined by the games he had played over the previous two to three years. For example, it was noted that against the French Defense he played the Advance Variation (3.e5) without hesitation. It was also noted that in his game against Sydney Sharp (given below) he was not familiar with the Falkbeer Counter Gambit and took considerable time in the opening...a behavior that was observed in many of his simultaneous games. Observers had no way of knowing it but that was to become a Reshevsky trait throughout his entire career!
For reasons that are not clear, before the simul an announcement was made that Rzeschewski was not a Pole, but a Jew. Nobody had questioned his Jewishness and it was believed that both he and his parents were born in Poland and so it was not clear to those in attendance why such an announcement was made.
His performance came as quite a surprise to the Philadelphia players when 16 of their best players went down to the nine year old boy. The remaining four games were drawn.
They were also impressed with his speed of play and the confident way he banged the pieces down on the board. There was something about it that was impressive. A writer for the Philadelphia Ledger said, “You have to see Sammy in action to realize the strength of his chess ability.”
The writer, a Mr. Mitchell, spoke to Rzeschewski before the start of the match and observed, “...the child impressed us as being about thirty years in advance of his actual age...I have never seen a child quite so serious in all my experience.”
When playing it was said he had all the mannerisms and gestures of a finished performer like Capablanca or Marshall. In fact, the writer went so far as to comment, “Sammy is a little old man, at least when playing chess."
In the following game Sydney Sharp praised Sammy’s conduct of the game. It was claimed, with considerable embellishment, that time after time the boy had an opportunity to make a fatal mistake, but only “the genius of a master chess mind could have evaded the traps set by the Philadelphia chess champion.”
Sydney T. Sharp (June 17, 1885 – September 28, 1953) won the Pennsylvania championship 10 times, was a former president of the Mercantile Library Chess Association, former vice president of the Eastern Chess Federation and an officer of the Franklin Chess Club.
Unusual position after 27. Bb8 with all three bishops side by side on the 8th rank.
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