Treysman's result in the 1936 US Championship was stupendous! He tied for third with Fine, behind Reshevsky and Simonson: http://members.aol.com/graemecree/c... .

According to Denker, Treysmann didn't really take tournament chess seriously--he was already 55 years old when he placed third in the 1936 US Championship, and only played in a half-dozen or so tournaments in his entire life. He was above all a hustler, making his living playing for quarters in what sounds like some of the seediest chess clubs in the history of the universe. He was, according to Denker, the best odds-giver around at the time, even better than Al Horowitz. Here is how Denker portrays a typical session:

<1937 Paul Morphy Centennial Tournament:

Let these few lines be a testimonial to D.H. Mugridge. If there had been a prize for keeping the neatest score, he would have won it. For contrast, G. Treysman's score looked like a scribble from the Ming dynasty.>

<One such story [about cheating in chess] concerns George Nelson Treysman, probably the greatest coffeehouse player of all time (and strong enough outside his natural habitat to have finished third in the 1936 United States championship). Treysman earned his livelihood in the dingy cafes on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he would take on all comers for small stakes. One day, or so this curious piece of folklore goes, he was playing one of his regular “customers” and was, as it sometimes happens with even the most succcessful of hustlers, losing. There was a huge crowd of kibbitzers around the board, and the levels of smoke, noise, and general confusion were at their usual befuddling heights. At the critical moment of the game a waiter elbowed his way through the crowd bearing a tray on which rested, among other things, a salt shaker. Treysman captured the salt shaker en passant, slammed it down on the appropriate square, and shouted “Mate!.” Before his startled opponent could protest, Treysman had pocketed the stakes and begun to set up the pieces for the next game. Legend has it that this unusual maneuver was successful: after considerable wrangling the game was held to be a win for Treysman, and all side bets were paid off.>

< "During my first year at 42nd Street, a man named Sam Richman made a singular impression upon me. He was perhaps 35 at the time, tall, had a thick head of black hair, and one eye had an ominous black spot in the corner, which belied his essentially gentle nature. I later learned that Sam had been married and owned a delicatessen in Brooklyn in the 1930's. A strong player, he plunged into a series of increasingly high stakes games with George Treysman, lost his delicatessen, and then his wife left him. His life in ruins because of chess miscalculations, he then chose to become a hustler for the rest of his life!>

Can this oversight be corrected?

<Sam Richman, who hangs out at Chess and Checker, started in Austria in 1909. He is a tall, gaunt man with a head of hair that Paderewski would have admired. He is 64 years old, they call him the champion of Seventh Avenue and the southern part of 42d Street, and he will take any­body on at odds. In a few moves he knows exactly the caliber of his opposition. “What book?” he says. “I never opened a chess book in my life.”

Generally he ends the eve­ning with a profit, but even he can be fooled. Some years

To Richman, chess is not just a way of life. It is his life. To others, it is almost as important.>

From a NYT's Nov. 29, 1964 article about coffeehouse players:

<The Chess Nut Is a Helpless Pawn>

On p226 (upper left) is a photo of <Treysmen // Pollack> playing at Chicago.

It would be nice to get a photographic quality scan with good contrast of it for here.

<Phony> maybe?

Yes, exactly - I was hoping we could get a much better scan as I'm sure it would be possible (provided someone had access to the original).

BTW- the PDF version I've seen is really crumby, and off the net. Is the official USCF PDF version equally as bad?