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Jun-05-09
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| Nimzonick: Fine also said his book on the Spassky-Fischer match that by 1948, psychology had consumed him and he was "no longer interested" in pursing a world chess championship. Unrelated note:
http://images.google.com/images?q=R... There is also a huge series of photos on Fischer on this archive |
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| Jun-05-09 |
| Petrosianic: <By unofficial, I meant that FIDE did not sponsor it. Thus, there were no means to force Alekine to play the winner.> Even if they had sponsored it, it wouldn't matter. FIDE didn't control the title in those days. In 1938, FIDE's "official" challenger was Salo Flohr. That shows you how much pull they had then. |
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Jun-09-09
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| OhioChessFan: Ahem: <"My Most Memorable Under Twenty Move Losses to Little Chess Partner and How I Was Ashamed to Admit to It Except in the Vain Hope of Making the Memorable Quotes Page"> by OhioChessFan |
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| Jun-13-09 |
| mistreaver: Robert James Fischer beat Reuben Fine 4 to 1.
Isn't he also one of the world champions (altought the games were played before that moment.) |
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Jul-09-09
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| whiteshark: Quote of the Day
<Discovered check is the dive-bomber of the chessboard.> -- Fine
The sky is clearing up. |
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| Aug-18-09 |
| WhiteRook48: hey in the database Fine has a better score against capablanca. did they forget capablanca's win? |
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Sep-13-09
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| parisattack: Kashdan in the early 1930s, Fine in the early 1940s and Reshevsky in the early 1950s - all played World Champion calibre chess. |
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Sep-13-09
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| refutor: <kashdan in the early 1930s...all played world champion calibre chess> i think you're stretch it a bit...kashdan was a good player, but hardly world champion calibre kashdan never defeated alekhine or capablanca. he was 1.5 points behind capablanca in new york 1931. he was 4th= behind Alekhine, Bogoljubow, Nimzowitch in Bled 1931. He finished behind Flohr in Hastings 1931. He finished behind Alekhine and Flohr in London 1932. And by the 40s Kotov beat him pretty good in the Russia-USA Radio Match. i'd say he was an also ran. |
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| Sep-14-09 |
| AnalyzeThis: refutor is exactly right. |
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| Sep-14-09 |
| AnalyzeThis: <whiterook48: hey in the database Fine has a better score against capablanca. did they forget capablanca's win? > Correct me if I'm wrong, but Capablanca and Fine drew every game they played, except for Fine's win in a simul. |
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| Sep-14-09 |
| visayanbraindoctor: <AnalyzeThis> According to Fine himself, Capablanca treated him like a child in blitz (or rapid?) games; an euphemism that Capa was blasting him off the board along with every one else when it came to faster time controls. If Capa's CG.com database would include these games, I am pretty sure he would have a whopping record against every top player from the 1910s to the 1930s, as he seemed to have consistently beaten the tar out of Lasker, Alekhine, and all the rest (including Fine) in blitz and rapid games. In those days though, they did not usually keep track of the moves if the game wasn't under classical time controls; and so we will probably miss these games forever. I think Kashdan during his prime in the early 1930s might have been super GM level; but if there were Candidates matches during the early 1930s and he managed to qualify, he would probably never have made it to round two. I can't see him as good enough to beat Bogolyubov, Nimzovich, Euwe, Reshevsky, Fine, Flohr. The top two American masters crushed him (according to CG.com database): Samuel Reshevsky beat Isaac Kashdan 13 to 3, with 5 draws Reuben Fine beat Isaac Kashdan 6 to 0, with 3 draws |
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| Sep-14-09 |
| AnalyzeThis: Yes, you're right about the blitz games, of course. |
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Sep-14-09
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| HeMateMe: The Arnold Denker book "The Bobby Fischer I Knew and other stories" has a lot of good annectdotes about Kash and other players of the day, and pivotal games of theirs. |
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| Sep-14-09 |
| TheFocus: <He did not want to see the Russians throwing games to each other> According to Olga Capablanca, Jose's wife, in a letter to Edward Winter: ‘It is little known, I believe, that Stalin came to see Capablanca play, hiding behind a drapery. This happened in Moscow in 1936. Capa had mentioned it to me en passant, so I am a bit hazy about the details, such as who had accompanied Stalin – seems to me it was Krylenko. However, the gist of this encounter remains quite clear in my mind. Capa said to Stalin: “Your Soviet players are cheating, losing the games on purpose to my rival, Botvinnik, in order to increase his points on the score.” According to Capa, Stalin took it good-naturedly. He smiled and promised to take care of the situation. He did.
From then on the cheating had stopped and Capablanca had won the tournament all by himself. This was an important conquest, proving to the world that Capablanca returned to his own great form. As he told it to me Capa added: “I had promised you to be again the best chessplayer in the world. So I have done it for you.”’ |
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| Sep-14-09 |
| TheFocus: So it seems like the accusations of cheating and collusion did not begin with Fine or Fischer. Hmm. |
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| Sep-14-09 |
| AnalyzeThis: I'd heard this story before. It is obvious to the players themselves when someone is cheating. Mere mortals like ourselves, who have only the games scores, can argue about it for decades without reaching any firm conclusions. |
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Sep-14-09
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| JaneEyre: Olga Capablanca's stories always have a fairytale quality. |
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Sep-14-09
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| HeMateMe: Not to be a kill joy, but I don't believe this story. Stalin was involved in mass collectivization, which resulted in millions of russians dying by starvation, particulary, I think, in Ukraine, where the fertile grain lands were seized. He sent several hundred thousand to the prison gulags for little or no reason. Such a man does not take time out to debate chess protocol, it would be as though Jack the Ripper were a voracious reader of Keats and Shelby. |
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Sep-15-09
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| Gypsy: <...
He sent several hundred thousand to the prison gulags for little or no reason. Such a man does not take time out to debate chess protocol, it would be as though Jack the Ripper were a voracious reader of Keats and Shelby....>
It may sound in-congruent at first, perhaps. But such paradoxes were the norm, rather than the exception, when you consider the most severe European sociopaths of the last century or so: Hitler as a painter of serene streets and quiet cul-de-sacs of old Vienna; Hitler as a health conscientious vegetarian; Lenin as a philosopher, an attorney, an intellectual, a chess-player; Stalin as a student of orthodox-church theology, a life-long believer; Stalin as the founder of Stalin Peace Prize; Stalin as a gardener of human happiness; Stalin as a historian; Stalin as a ...; Mussollini as a socialist journalist. Stalin was actually well known to turn his charming side to visiting foreign dignitaries -- on a rather frequent basis. And here we are talking about a complaint of an ex-world champion playing in a tournament organized by Stalin's minister of justice. We are also talking about the time when Stalin's own cult of personality first reached previously unknown hights. He probably did not care intrinsically about chess too much, but he was vain to no end and he certainly yearned to be known as a great political and military thinker and strategist. In Russia, that was frequently shown by being also a strong chess-player. Stalin certainly could not stand to be upstaged in this department by Lenin or, more-so, by Trocky! Stalin finessed his power from under Lenin shadow when Lenin fell ill. But Stalin's prime rival, and Lenin's original heir apparent, was Leon Trocky. And, without a question, both Lenin and Trocky were expert chess-players. Thus Stalin had to also become widely known as a brilliant, even though a somewhat reluctant, chess-player. There actually is a 'proof' of his playing strength embodied in the (likely only attributed) game Stalin-Yezhov. |
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| Sep-15-09 |
| MaxxLange: <He sent several hundred thousand to the prison gulags for little or no reason> It was MILLIONS of prisoners, and one "good" reason was to exploit a labor force in the harsh conditions needed to produce goods like timber or gold, which the young USSR badly needed to have, so that they could trade for foreign currency and industrialize Where else are you going to get millions of people to die cutting trees in Kamchatka? Arrest them! |
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Sep-15-09
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| HeMateMe: <Gypsy> I guess you're right, its entirely possible Stalin was a sort of chess patron. It just seems an odd parellel with being a mass murderer. Hitler was a would be architect, his close friendship with Albert Speer resulted in Speer being the informal 'architect for the Reich'. When Fritz Todt died in a plane crash, Speer was elevated to Minister of Defence. Some in the West think his masterful efforts prolonged the war by a year, as he kept German munitions factories running even after the allies were bombing Germany to rubble. < MaxxLange > If it was millions, then it was millions. Joe just seemed to have more 'bad days' than the rest of us. One of the most brutal projects was a proposed railway across the polar circle, to shorten the rail distance for materials shipped from Siberia. The workers sent there had a very short life expectancy working inside the arctic circle. The day Stalin died, the project was cancelled. If it was any consolation to the above workers, Beria, the NKVD head under Stalin, was executed by Khruschev. |
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Sep-26-09
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| HeMateMe: Fine must have been a pretty good player. After the 1945 USA--USSR radio match, Fine played a 4 game BLINDFOLD simul blitz. The format for this was Fine getting just 10 seconds to make each move, as each new board and new positon came up. 10 seconds per move--I think is a sort of blitz variant called 'bell chess', which went out of vogue. But most interesting is that one of Fine's opponents in this was a 17-year-old robert Byrne. Byrne, of course, became a grandmaster, even reaching the Candidates matches in the '70s, losing to Boris Spassky. Fine won all 4 games. Most future GMs are very strong players at age 17, Fine had to be pretty good to beat Byrne in this format. |
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| Sep-28-09 |
| kingfu: The Soviets were ALWAYS trying to engineer an "outcome" that was in their favor. This was desperation, trying to prove the superior culture. There is no substitute for freedom. Botvinnik said that he was first among equals. This included Paul Keres. I consider Paul Keres and Reuben Fine the best players never to be actual champion. |
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| Sep-28-09 |
| theagenbiteofinwit: <Botvinnik said that he was first among equals.> That's because when he had a year to study the equal, he always turned it into a plus in his favor. |
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| Sep-30-09 |
| TheFocus: <kingfu> I think you could substitute Rubinstein in Fine's place. |
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