In early December 1895 he took part in a quadrangular tournament in St Petersburg Russia.

Between those two events, he contracted
a venereal disease that was diagnosed the night before his fourth round game with Lasker. Surging along before that point, he lost that game and several others in a row, and never got a match with Lasker.

So my choice would be to see how Pillsbury would have fared if he had avoided spending his Hastings money on
ladies of the evening.

Wikipedia has quite an expansive biography on Reuben Fine, compared to other sites (CG included).

Reuben Fine has a lifetime plus score against WCs Lasker, Euwe, Botvinnik, and Alekhine, and is co-winner of ARVO 1938 with Keres. Also, at ARVO, in the first half of that elite tournament after six rounds he had an incredible 5.5/6 points, a performance that reminds us today of Topalov at the WCC in San Luis after the same number of rounds.

I believe Fine would have the best chance to defeat Alekhine in a title match had it been arranged; I believe Fine's style would have thwarted Alekhine more than Keres (Incidentally Fine won both his games with Alekhine at ARVO). Keres is a more dynamic player than Fine, certainly, but I believe Alekhine would be able to exploit that better (being a dynamic, aggressive, risk-taking player himself, but with a lifetime more experience than Keres behind him, and less "holes" in his technique) than Fine's super-refined, technician style, which not even Capablanca could crack. In fact, Fine was a New Jack Capablanca retired too early for him to really shine in chess annals.

The wikipedia page has other interesting infobites about him, included an off-hand quote to Larry Evans about why he declined to participate in Hague 1948, as well as bits about his career in psychology and his personal beliefs. Amidst his other well-known literary efforts in the chess world he also revised the sixth edition of MCO, to much acclaim.

Reshevsky seemed to be his most difficult rival (many players of historic note often have one particular rival that seems to trouble them OTB more than their peers), while at the same time Fine had a stronger international tournament record. In 1950 when the first US Chess rating list was published, Fine was ahead of Reshevsky rating-wise.

Fine managed an impressive blindfold chess feat in winning four simultaneous games in which he was limited to 10 seconds per move when each board came around. Also, little known, he was an impressive blitz player too. It would have been something to see him compete with Najdorf and Tal in this arena.

Reuben Fine, whilst not my favorite player exactly, wrote my favorite game anthology, "The World's Great Chess Games." The edition I own covers up to the late 70s with Karpov's ascendence. It's a historic travelogue of chess since the days of Ruy Lopez, peppered with games covering the careers of all the greats including minor masters here and there, replete with bios. Very informative and entertaining; a good crash course in chess history for the curious.

Why not try the one here? http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/...

Amatzia Avai
Israeli Master
Organizational Psychologist

Hans Berliner
US Master
Industrial Psychologist

Adriaan de Groot
Dutch Master
Psychologist

Sune Larsson
Swedish Master
Social Psychologist

Martin Harrow
US Master
Professor/Director of Psychology
(Drew two tournament games with GM Fischer)

Johan Barendregt
Dutch International Master
Professor of Psychology

Raymond Weinstein
US International Master
Psychology Major
(Physically assaulted IM Barendregt in the Netherlands)