The Year Was 1932

     The year 1932 had some interesting events. The Great Depression was going on and in the US unemployment reached one in four with many living in cars and shanty towns. 
     It was a rough time for chess players. Some of the younger players made a precarious living by hustling games. Al Horowitz had been a trader on Wall Street, but by 1932 he couldn’t make a living so he abandoned Wall Street and returned to chess on the theory that he could win a quarter a game and it would buy a meal. 
     At one time Horowitz and Arnold Denker shared a room in a hotel managed by a fellow member of the Manhattan Chess Club who let them stay without paying rent. During the day, they would hustle games and whoever came home with a few quarters would buy dinner. The following year Horowitz started his greatest legacy, Chess Review magazine. 
     Arthur Dake had arrived in New York City from Portland, Oregon in 1929 with nothing more than his sailor’s seabag and was living at the Seaman’s Institute.  He teamed up with world class checker player Kenneth Grover and they were hustling on Coney Island, but within a month the stock market crashed and the customers dried up. Horowitz gave Dake a few of his students and mostly Dake was living on water, coffee and grapes.  Dake and Grover partnered in running a poker game in Manhattan, but it turned out to be too risky...they got robbed one night. 
     Dake stayed in chess until mid-1937 when his daughter was born and he returned to Portland where he ended up retiring from Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles. He returned to chess in 1973 when he showed up at Lone Pine.
     1932 was also the year Norman T. Whitaker and former FBI agent Gaston Means gained notoriety during the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby when they conspired to swindle $104,000 from a wealthy heiress, Mrs. Evalyn McLean, by claiming to be in contact with the kidnappers. They got caught and Whitaker claimed he never got any of the money, but he did get 18 months in prison. 
     Reuben Fine won the 15th Marshall Chess Club championship, ahead of Fred Reinfeld, Milton Hanuer, and Tony Santasiere and on March 22, 1932, Larry Evans was born in Manhattan. He won the US championship 5 times. He died at the age of 78 on November 15, 2010. 
     Fleischer Studios released Chess-Nuts starring Betty Boop. 

     
    
      There was an international tournament in Pasadena, California in August of 1932. Alekhine won ahead of Isaac Kashdan. Dake, Samuel Reshevsky and Herman Steiner tied for 3rd-5th. There were 12 players. 
     In Austria there was a magazine, The Kleine Blatt (The Little Leaf), that was a very successful daily and later weekly. It first appeared in 1927 with the purpose of disseminating the political ideas of Austrian Social Democracy and was aimed at the reading needs of less educated people. After the brief Austrian Civil War in 1934 it was transformed and in 1944 it was discontinued and replaced. Beginning in 1947, the Little Leaf appeared again, but only as a weekly newspaper and finally folded in 1971. 
     The following chess problem, author unknown, appeared in the October 9, 1932. White to move and mate in three. It had me stumped! There are four mates in 4 moves. 
     It was called the Swastika Problem because the outline of the pieces form a Swastika. 

White to mate in 3 moves

HIGHLIGHT for the solution: 

1. dxc6! ... 
Black’s last move was ...c5 (Surprise!) The four moves leading to mate in 4 are: 
1. Rg4 Kxd7 2. Rg8 e6 3. Rxe6 dxc3 4. Rd8# 
1. f6 e6 2. f7 Kxd7 3. f8=Q dxc3 4. dxe6# 
1. Rfe4 e6 2. Rxe6+ Kxd7 3. Re8 dxc3 4. Rd8# 
1. Rh4 Kxd7 3. Rh8 e6 4. Rxe6 dxc3 5. Rd8# 

1... e6 2. Rxe6+ Kd5 3. Rxd4#