Reuben Fine
Encyclopedia
Reuben Fine was one of the strongest chess
players in the world from the early 1930s through the 1940s, an International Grandmaster, psychologist
, university professor
, and author of many books on both chess and psychology.
Fine won five medals (four gold) in three chess Olympiad
s. Fine won the U.S. Open Chess Championship
all seven times he entered (1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1939, 1940, 1941); this is a record for that event. He was the author of several chess books that are still popular today, including important books on the endgame, opening
, and middlegame.
He earned a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York
in 1932. After World War II, he earned his doctorate
in psychology
from the University of Southern California
. He served as a university professor
, and wrote many successful books on psychology as well.
Although Fine was regarded as a serious contender for the World Chess Championship
, he declined his invitation to participate in the six-player 1948 tournament
, which was organized to determine the World Champion after the 1946 death of reigning champion Alexander Alekhine
, and he virtually retired from serious competition around that time.
in New York City, stomping grounds for many famous grandmasters
, such as Bobby Fischer
later on. At this stage of his career, Fine played a great deal of blitz chess
, and he eventually became one of the best blitz players in the world. Even in the early 1930s, he could nearly hold his own in blitz chess against the then world chess champion Alexander Alekhine
, although Fine admitted that the few times he played blitz with Alekhine's predecessor José Raúl Capablanca
, the latter beat him "mercilessly".
Fine's first significant master-level event was the 1930 New York Young Masters tournament, which was won by Arthur Dake
. He narrowly lost a 1931 stakes match to fellow young New York master Arnold Denker
.
Fine placed second at the 1931 New York State Championship with 8/11, half a point behind Fred Reinfeld
. Fine won the 15th Marshall Chess Club
Championship of 1931 with 10.5/13, half a point ahead of Reinfeld. He defeated Herman Steiner
by 5.5-4.5 at New York 1932; this was the first of three matches the two players would contest.
s at Minneapolis 1932 with 9.5/11, half a point ahead of Samuel Reshevsky
; this tournament was known as the Western Open at the time. Fine played in his first top-class international tournament at Pasadena
1932, where he shared 7-10th with 5/11; the winner was world chess champion Alexander Alekhine
. Fine repeated as champion in the 16th Marshall Club Championship, held from Oct.-Dec. 1932, with 11.5/13, 2.5 points ahead of the runner-up.
Fine graduated from City College of New York
in 1932, at age 18; he was a brilliant student there. He captained CCNY to the 1931 National Collegiate team title; a teammate was master Sidney Norman Bernstein
. This tournament later evolved into the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship
. Fine then decided to try the life of a chess professional for a few years.
in a match at New York 1934 by 6-3. Fine shared 1st-2nd places at the U.S./Western Open, Chicago
1934, on 7.5/9, with Reshevsky. He then shared 1st-3rd places at Mexico City
1934, on 11/12, with Herman Steiner
and Arthur Dake
. At Syracuse
1934, Fine shared 3rd-4th places, on 10/14, as Reshevsky won. Fine won his fourth straight U.S./Western Open at Milwaukee 1935, scoring 6.5/9 in the preliminary round, and then 8/10 in the finals.
Having had outstanding successes in North America, Fine tried his first European individual international tournament at Łódź 1935, where he shared 2nd-3rd places with 6/9 behind Savielly Tartakower
. Fine won Hastings
1935-36 with 7.5/9, a point ahead of Salo Flohr
.
, usually placing behind his great American rival, Samuel Reshevsky
. The U.S. Championship was organized in a round-robin
format during that era. When in 1936 Frank Marshall voluntarily gave up the American Championship title he had held since 1909, the result was the first modern U.S. Championship
tournament. Fine scored 10.5/15 in the U.S. Championship, New York
1936, a tied 3rd-4th place, as Reshevsky won. In the U.S. Championship, New York 1938, Fine placed 2nd with 12.5/16, with Reshevsky repeating as champion. In the U.S. Championship, New York 1940, Fine again scored 12.5/16 for 2nd, as Reshevsky won for the third straight time. Then in the 1944 U.S. Championship at New York, Fine scored 14.5/17 for 2nd, losing his game to Arnold Denker
, as the latter won his only national title.
Fine tallied 50/64 in his four U.S. title attempts, for 78.1 per cent, but was never champion. Not being national champion seriously hurt Fine's prospects for making a career from chess.
1936 with 6.5/7, half a point ahead of Flohr. Fine captured Zandvoort
1936 with 8.5/11, ahead of World Champion Max Euwe
, Savielly Tartakower
, and Paul Keres
. Fine shared 3rd-5th places at the elite Nottingham
1936 event with 9.5/14, half a point behind winners José Raúl Capablanca
and Mikhail Botvinnik
. Fine shared 1st-2nd places at Amsterdam
1936 on 5/7 with Euwe, half a point ahead of Alekhine. Fine placed 2nd at Hastings
1936-37 with 7.5/9, as Alekhine won.
The year 1937 would be Fine's most successful. He won at Leningrad
1937 with 4/5, ahead of Grigory Levenfish
, who would share first in that year's Soviet Championship. Fine won at Moscow 1937 with 5/7. Those two victories make Fine one of a very select group of foreigners to win on Russian soil. Fine shared 1st-2nd places at Margate
1937 with Paul Keres
on 7.5/9, 1.5 points ahead of Alekhine. Fine shared 1st-3rd places at Ostend
1937 with Paul Keres
and Henry Grob on 6/9. At Stockholm 1937
, Fine won with 8/9, 1.5 points ahead of Gideon Stahlberg
. Fine then defeated Stahlberg by 5-3 in a match held at Gothenburg
1937. Fine placed 2nd at the elite Semmering
/Baden
1937 tournament with 8/14, behind Paul Keres
. At Kemeri
, Latvia
1937, Fine had a rare relatively weak result, with just 9/17 for 8th place, as the title was shared by Reshevsky, Flohr, and Vladimirs Petrovs
. Fine shared 4-5th places at Hastings 1937-38 with 6/9 as Reshevsky won.
in the prestigious AVRO tournament
in the Netherlands, on 8.5/14, with Keres placed first on tiebreak. This was one of the most famous tournaments of the 20th century, and some believe to this day that it is the strongest tournament ever staged, since it had the world's eight strongest players. It was organized with the hope that the winner of AVRO, a double round-robin tournament
, would be the next challenger to world champion Alexander Alekhine
. Since Alekhine won the title in 1927, he had been avoiding a rematch with his predecessor, Capablanca, whom many considered the strongest possible challenger. Fine finished ahead of future champion Mikhail Botvinnik
, current champion Alekhine, former world champions Max Euwe
and Capablanca, and Grandmasters Samuel Reshevsky and Salo Flohr
. Fine won both of his games against Alekhine. Fine got out to a tremendous start, scoring five wins and a draw in his first six games, but then lost in round seven to Keres.
. His work on the sixth edition of the book led to a significant increase in sales. In 1941 he wrote Basic Chess Endings
, a compendium of endgame analysis which, some 70 years later, is still considered one of the best works on this subject. His book was the most comprehensive on the subject written to that time, included significant original work by Fine, and received worldwide acclaim. His The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings, though now out of date, is still useful for grasping the underlying ideas of many standard chess opening
s; it was revised in 1989.
During World War II, Fine worked for the U.S. Navy, analyzing the probability of German U-boats
surfacing at certain points in the Atlantic Ocean. Fine also worked as a translator.
Fine was unable to compete in Europe during the war, since it was cut off from the Americas by the German Nazi naval blockade. However, Fine did play a few serious American events during World War II, and continued his successes with dominant scores, but there was little prize money available, even for winning. He won the U.S. Open at New York 1939 with 10.5/11, half a point ahead of Reshevsky. In the 23rd Marshall Club Championship of 1939, Fine won with 14/16. He won the 1940 U.S. Open at Dallas with a perfect 8/8 in the finals, three points ahead of Herman Steiner
. Fine won the New York State Championship, Hamilton 1941, with 8/10, a point ahead of Reshevsky, Denker, and Isaac Kashdan
. Fine won the 1941 Marshall Club Championship with 14/15, ahead of Frank Marshall. Fine won the 1941 U.S. Open at St. Louis, with 4/5 in the preliminaries, and 8/9 in the finals. Fine won the 1942 Washington, D.C. Chess Divan title with a perfect 7/7. He defeated Herman Steiner
in match play for the second time by 3.5-0.5 at Washington 1944. Fine won the U.S. Speed Championships of both 1944 (10/11) and 1945 (10/11). In the Pan-American Championship, Hollywood 1945, Fine placed 2nd with 9/12 behind Reshevsky. He played in the famous 1945 USA vs USSR Radio team match
, scoring 0.5/2 on board three against Isaac Boleslavsky
. Then Fine travelled to Europe one last time to compete, in the 1946 Moscow team match against the USSR, scoring 0.5/2 on board three against Paul Keres
.
in psychology. After World Champion Alekhine died in March 1946, FIDE (the World Chess Federation) organized a World Chess Championship
tournament to determine the new champion. Alekhine was the first champion to die as title-holder, creating an unprecedented problem. As co-winner in the AVRO tournament, Fine was invited to participate, but he declined, for reasons that are the subject of speculation even today. Fine had played a third match against Herman Steiner
at Los Angeles 1947, winning 5-1; this match was training for his potential world championship appearance.
Publicly, Fine stated that he could not interrupt work on his doctoral dissertation in psychology
. Negotiations over the tournament had been protracted, and for a long time it was unclear whether this World Championship event would in fact take place. Fine wrote that he didn't want to spend many months preparing and then see the tournament cancelled. However, it has also been suggested that Fine declined to play because he suspected there would be collaboration among the three Soviet participants to ensure that one of them won the championship. In the August 2004 issue of Chess Life
, for example, GM Larry Evans
gave his recollection that "Fine told me he didn't want to waste three months of his life watching Russians throw games to each other." Fine's 1951 written statement on the matter in his book "The World's Greatest Chess Games" was:
"Unfortunately for the Western masters the Soviet political organization was stronger than that of the West. The U.S. Chess Federation was a meaningless paper organization, generally antagonistic to the needs of its masters. The Dutch Chess Federation did not choose to act. The FIDE was impotent. The result was a rescheduling of the tournament for the following year, with the vital difference that now half was to be played in Holland, half in the U.S.S.R. Dissatisfied with this arrangement and the general tenor of the event, I withdrew."
Edward Winter discusses the evidence further in a 2007 Chessbase
column.
, Max Euwe
, and Herman Pilnik
. Fine drew a match against Najdorf at 4-4 at New York 1949. He participated for the U.S. in the 1950 radio match against Yugoslavia
, drawing his only game. Fine was named an International Grandmaster
by FIDE in 1950, on its inaugural list. Fine's final top-class event was the Maurice Wertheim
Memorial, New York 1951, where he scored 7/11 for 4th, as Reshevsky won.
(+1 =0 -0); José Raúl Capablanca
(+0 =5 -0, excluding simultaneous games); Alexander Alekhine
(+3 =4 -2); Max Euwe
(+2 =3 -2); and Mikhail Botvinnik
(+1 =2 -0). His main American rivals were Samuel Reshevsky
(+3 =12 -4); Herman Steiner
(+21 =8 -4); Isaac Kashdan
(+6 =6 -1); Albert Simonson
(+6 =1 -1); Al Horowitz
(+10 =7 -2); Arnold Denker
(+7 =7 -6); Fred Reinfeld
(+10 =7 -5); and Arthur Dake
(a shocking +7 =5 -7, but three losses as a 16-year-old against Dake in his 20s). Internationally, Fine faced the best of his time, and usually more than held his own, with three exceptions. He struggled against Paul Keres
(+1 =8 -3); Milan Vidmar
(+0 =2 -1); and Isaac Boleslavsky
(+0 =1 -1). But he handled everyone else: Miguel Najdorf
(+3 =5 -3); Savielly Tartakower
(+2 =4 -1); Salo Flohr
(+2 =7 -0); Grigory Levenfish
(+1 =0 -0); George Alan Thomas
(+2 =3 -0); Erich Eliskases
(+1 =2 -0); Viacheslav Ragozin
(+1 =1 -0); Vladimirs Petrovs
(+2 =1 -1); Efim Bogolyubov (+1 =1 -0); Jan Foltys
(+2 =0 -0); Salo Landau
(+4 -0 =1); George Koltanowski
(+2 =1 -0); Igor Bondarevsky
(+1 =0 -0); Géza Maróczy
(+1 =0 -0); William Winter
(+4 =0 -0); Ernst Gruenfeld (+1 =0 -0); Gideon Stahlberg
(+4 =5 -2); Andor Lilienthal
(+1 =0 -0); László Szabó
(+0 =1 -0); Vladas Mikėnas
(+1 =1 -0); Rudolph Spielmann (+0 =1 -0); and Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander
(+1 =3 -0). Finally, against the new generation of American masters which emerged in the late 1940s, Fine proved he could still perform well: Arthur Bisguier
(+1 =1 -0); Larry Evans
(+0 =2 -0); George Kramer (+1 =1 -0); and Robert Byrne (+0 =1 -0).
.com, which specializes in historical ratings throughout chess history, ranks Fine in the world's top ten players for more than eight years, from March 1936 until October 1942, and then again from January 1949 until December 1950. Between those two periods, he was less active as a player, so his ranking dropped. Fine was #1 in the world from October 1940 until March 1941, was in the top three from December 1938 until June 1942, and reached his peak rating of 2762 in July 1941. However, chessmetrics.com is missing several of Fine's major events from its database. Fine was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame. He continued his successful chess writing career for many years after he retired from competition.
in psychology from the University of Southern California
, Fine abandoned professional chess to concentrate on his new profession. Fine continued playing chess casually throughout his life (including several friendly games played in 1963 against Bobby Fischer
, one of which is included in Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games
). In 1956 he wrote an article, "Psychoanalytic Observations on Chess and Chess Masters", for a psychological journal. Later, Fine turned the article into a book, The Psychology of the Chess Player, in which he provided insights steeped in Freudian
theory. Fine is not the first person to examine the mind as it relates to chess - Alfred Binet
, the inventor of the IQ test
, had studied the mental functionality of good chess players, and found that they often had enhanced mental traits, such as a good memory. He went on to publish A History of Psychoanalysis (1979) and a number of other books on psychology. As did many psychoanalysts of his day, Fine believed that homosexuality
could be "cured" (through conversion therapy), and his opinions on the subject were cited in legal battles over homosexuality, including the legislative battle over same-sex marriage
in Hawaii
. Fine served as a visiting professor at CCNY, the University of Amsterdam, the Lowell
Institute of Technology, and the University of Florence
. Fine founded the Creative Living Center in New York City.
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
players in the world from the early 1930s through the 1940s, an International Grandmaster, psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, university professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
, and author of many books on both chess and psychology.
Fine won five medals (four gold) in three chess Olympiad
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...
s. Fine won the U.S. Open Chess Championship
U.S. Open Chess Championship
The U.S. Open Championship is an open national chess championship that has been held in the United States annually since 1900.-History:Through 1938, the tournaments were organized by the Western Chess Association and its successor, the American Chess Federation .The United States Chess Federation ...
all seven times he entered (1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1939, 1940, 1941); this is a record for that event. He was the author of several chess books that are still popular today, including important books on the endgame, opening
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...
, and middlegame.
He earned a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
in 1932. After World War II, he earned his doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. He served as a university professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
, and wrote many successful books on psychology as well.
Although Fine was regarded as a serious contender for the World Chess Championship
World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....
, he declined his invitation to participate in the six-player 1948 tournament
World Chess Championship 1948
The 1948 World Chess Championship was a tournament played to determine a new World Chess Champion following the death of the previous champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946. The tournament marked the passing of control of the championship title to FIDE, the International Chess Federation which had...
, which was organized to determine the World Champion after the 1946 death of reigning champion Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
, and he virtually retired from serious competition around that time.
Teenage master
Fine was born in New York City to a poor Russian-Jewish family. He learned to play chess at age eight, and began tournament-level chess at the famous Marshall Chess ClubMarshall Chess Club
The Marshall Chess Club in New York City is one of the oldest chess clubs in the United States, located in Greenwich Village. The club was formed in 1915 by a group of players led by Frank Marshall. It is a non-profit organization.-History:...
in New York City, stomping grounds for many famous grandmasters
International Grandmaster
The title Grandmaster is awarded to strong chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain....
, such as Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...
later on. At this stage of his career, Fine played a great deal of blitz chess
Blitz chess
Fast chess, also known as blitz chess, lightning chess, sudden death, speed chess, bullet chess and rapid chess, is a type of chess game in which each side is given less time to make their moves than under the normal tournament time controls of 60 to 180 minutes per player.-Overview:The different...
, and he eventually became one of the best blitz players in the world. Even in the early 1930s, he could nearly hold his own in blitz chess against the then world chess champion Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
, although Fine admitted that the few times he played blitz with Alekhine's predecessor José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...
, the latter beat him "mercilessly".
Fine's first significant master-level event was the 1930 New York Young Masters tournament, which was won by Arthur Dake
Arthur Dake
Arthur Dake was an American chess master. He was born in Portland, Oregon and died in Reno, Nevada....
. He narrowly lost a 1931 stakes match to fellow young New York master Arnold Denker
Arnold Denker
Arnold Sheldon Denker was an American chess player, Grandmaster, and chess author. He was U.S. Chess Champion in 1945 and 1946....
.
Fine placed second at the 1931 New York State Championship with 8/11, half a point behind Fred Reinfeld
Fred Reinfeld
Fred Reinfeld was an American chess master and a prolific writer on chess and many other subjects, whose books are still read today.-Biography:...
. Fine won the 15th Marshall Chess Club
Marshall Chess Club
The Marshall Chess Club in New York City is one of the oldest chess clubs in the United States, located in Greenwich Village. The club was formed in 1915 by a group of players led by Frank Marshall. It is a non-profit organization.-History:...
Championship of 1931 with 10.5/13, half a point ahead of Reinfeld. He defeated Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
by 5.5-4.5 at New York 1932; this was the first of three matches the two players would contest.
U.S. Open Champion
At 17, Fine won his first of seven U.S. Open Chess ChampionshipU.S. Open Chess Championship
The U.S. Open Championship is an open national chess championship that has been held in the United States annually since 1900.-History:Through 1938, the tournaments were organized by the Western Chess Association and its successor, the American Chess Federation .The United States Chess Federation ...
s at Minneapolis 1932 with 9.5/11, half a point ahead of Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel "Sammy" Herman Reshevsky was a famous chess prodigy and later a leading American chess Grandmaster...
; this tournament was known as the Western Open at the time. Fine played in his first top-class international tournament at Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
1932, where he shared 7-10th with 5/11; the winner was world chess champion Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
. Fine repeated as champion in the 16th Marshall Club Championship, held from Oct.-Dec. 1932, with 11.5/13, 2.5 points ahead of the runner-up.
Fine graduated from City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
in 1932, at age 18; he was a brilliant student there. He captained CCNY to the 1931 National Collegiate team title; a teammate was master Sidney Norman Bernstein
Sidney Norman Bernstein
Sidney Norman Bernstein was an American chess master.He tied for 2nd-4th in Marshall Chess Club Championship at New York 1930/31 , tied for 6-7th in New York State Chess Championship at Rome 1931...
. This tournament later evolved into the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship
Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship
The Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship is the foremost intercollegiate team chess championship in the Americas...
. Fine then decided to try the life of a chess professional for a few years.
Olympiad brilliance
Fine won the U.S. Team Selection tournament, New York 1933, with 8/10. This earned him the first of three national team berths for the chess Olympiads. Fine won five medals (including three team golds) representing the United States; his detailed record follows; his totals are (+20 =19 -6), for 65.6 per cent.- Folkestone 19335th Chess OlympiadThe 5th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 12 and July 23, 1933, in Folkestone, United Kingdom...
: board three, 9/13 (+6 =6 -1), team gold, board silver; - Warsaw 19356th Chess OlympiadThe 6th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 16 and August 31, 1935, in Warsaw, Poland...
: board one, 9/17 (+5 =8 -4), team gold; - Stockholm 19377th Chess OlympiadThe 7th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 31 and August 14, 1937, in Stockholm, Sweden]....
: board two, 11.5/15 (+9 =5 -1), team gold, board gold.
North American successes
Fine repeated as champion at the U.S./Western Open, Detroit 1933, with 12/13, half a point ahead of Reshevsky. Fine won the 17th Marshall Club Championship, 1933–34, with 9.5/11. He defeated Al HorowitzAl Horowitz
Israel Albert Horowitz was a Jewish-American International Master of chess. He was clearly a grandmaster-strength player by present day standards, but he never received the title...
in a match at New York 1934 by 6-3. Fine shared 1st-2nd places at the U.S./Western Open, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
1934, on 7.5/9, with Reshevsky. He then shared 1st-3rd places at Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
1934, on 11/12, with Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
and Arthur Dake
Arthur Dake
Arthur Dake was an American chess master. He was born in Portland, Oregon and died in Reno, Nevada....
. At Syracuse
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
1934, Fine shared 3rd-4th places, on 10/14, as Reshevsky won. Fine won his fourth straight U.S./Western Open at Milwaukee 1935, scoring 6.5/9 in the preliminary round, and then 8/10 in the finals.
Having had outstanding successes in North America, Fine tried his first European individual international tournament at Łódź 1935, where he shared 2nd-3rd places with 6/9 behind Savielly Tartakower
Savielly Tartakower
Ksawery Tartakower was a leading Polish and French chess Grandmaster. He was also a leading chess journalist of the 1920s and 30s...
. Fine won Hastings
Hastings International Chess Congress
The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...
1935-36 with 7.5/9, a point ahead of Salo Flohr
Salo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...
.
Narrow misses at U.S. Championship
Although Fine was active and very successful in U.S. open tournaments, he was never able win the U.S. ChampionshipU.S. Chess Championship
The U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational tournament held to determine the national chess champion of the United States. Since 1936, it has been held under the auspices of the U.S. Chess Federation. Until 1999, the event consisted of a round-robin tournament of varying size...
, usually placing behind his great American rival, Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel "Sammy" Herman Reshevsky was a famous chess prodigy and later a leading American chess Grandmaster...
. The U.S. Championship was organized in a round-robin
Round-robin
The term round-robin was originally used to describe a document signed by multiple parties in a circle to make it more difficult to determine the order in which it was signed, thus preventing a ringleader from being identified...
format during that era. When in 1936 Frank Marshall voluntarily gave up the American Championship title he had held since 1909, the result was the first modern U.S. Championship
U.S. Chess Championship
The U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational tournament held to determine the national chess champion of the United States. Since 1936, it has been held under the auspices of the U.S. Chess Federation. Until 1999, the event consisted of a round-robin tournament of varying size...
tournament. Fine scored 10.5/15 in the U.S. Championship, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
1936, a tied 3rd-4th place, as Reshevsky won. In the U.S. Championship, New York 1938, Fine placed 2nd with 12.5/16, with Reshevsky repeating as champion. In the U.S. Championship, New York 1940, Fine again scored 12.5/16 for 2nd, as Reshevsky won for the third straight time. Then in the 1944 U.S. Championship at New York, Fine scored 14.5/17 for 2nd, losing his game to Arnold Denker
Arnold Denker
Arnold Sheldon Denker was an American chess player, Grandmaster, and chess author. He was U.S. Chess Champion in 1945 and 1946....
, as the latter won his only national title.
Fine tallied 50/64 in his four U.S. title attempts, for 78.1 per cent, but was never champion. Not being national champion seriously hurt Fine's prospects for making a career from chess.
International triumphs
However, Fine's international tournament record in the 1930s was superior to Reshevsky's. Fine did play many more top-class international events than Reshevsky during that period, and was usually near the top of the table. By the end of 1937, Fine had won a string of strong European international tournaments, and was one of the most successful players in the world. Fine won at OsloOslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
1936 with 6.5/7, half a point ahead of Flohr. Fine captured Zandvoort
Zandvoort
Zandvoort is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.Zandvoort is one of the major beach resorts of the Netherlands; it has a long sandy beach, bordered by coastal dunes...
1936 with 8.5/11, ahead of World Champion Max Euwe
Max Euwe
Machgielis Euwe was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion . Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.- Early years :Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam...
, Savielly Tartakower
Savielly Tartakower
Ksawery Tartakower was a leading Polish and French chess Grandmaster. He was also a leading chess journalist of the 1920s and 30s...
, and Paul Keres
Paul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
. Fine shared 3rd-5th places at the elite Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
1936 event with 9.5/14, half a point behind winners José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...
and Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...
. Fine shared 1st-2nd places at Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
1936 on 5/7 with Euwe, half a point ahead of Alekhine. Fine placed 2nd at Hastings
Hastings International Chess Congress
The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...
1936-37 with 7.5/9, as Alekhine won.
The year 1937 would be Fine's most successful. He won at Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
1937 with 4/5, ahead of Grigory Levenfish
Grigory Levenfish
Grigory Yakovlevich Levenfish was a leading Jewish Russian chess grandmaster of the 1920s and 1930s. He was twice Soviet champion - in 1934 and 1937. In 1937 he tied a match against future world champion Mikhail Botvinnik...
, who would share first in that year's Soviet Championship. Fine won at Moscow 1937 with 5/7. Those two victories make Fine one of a very select group of foreigners to win on Russian soil. Fine shared 1st-2nd places at Margate
Margate
-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....
1937 with Paul Keres
Paul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
on 7.5/9, 1.5 points ahead of Alekhine. Fine shared 1st-3rd places at Ostend
Ostend
Ostend is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke , Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the largest on the Belgian coast....
1937 with Paul Keres
Paul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
and Henry Grob on 6/9. At Stockholm 1937
7th Chess Olympiad
The 7th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 31 and August 14, 1937, in Stockholm, Sweden]....
, Fine won with 8/9, 1.5 points ahead of Gideon Stahlberg
Gideon Ståhlberg
Anders Gideon Tom Ståhlberg was a Swedish chess grandmaster.He won the Swedish Chess Championship of 1927, became Nordic champion in 1929, and held it until 1939....
. Fine then defeated Stahlberg by 5-3 in a match held at Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
1937. Fine placed 2nd at the elite Semmering
Semmering
For the town of the same name, see Semmering, Austria.Semmering is a mountain pass in the Eastern Northern Limestone Alps connecting Lower Austria and Styria, between which it forms a natural border.-Location:...
/Baden
Baden
Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....
1937 tournament with 8/14, behind Paul Keres
Paul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
. At Kemeri
Ķemeri
Ķemeri resort is a part of Jūrmala in Latvia, 44 km from Riga. From 1928 to 1959, Ķemeri was a separate town, famous for the healing mud baths and luxurious hotel. Now about 2 200 inhabitants live there, while the main hotel is under reconstruction....
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
1937, Fine had a rare relatively weak result, with just 9/17 for 8th place, as the title was shared by Reshevsky, Flohr, and Vladimirs Petrovs
Vladimirs Petrovs
Vladimirs Petrovs or Vladimir Petrov was a Latvian chess master.He was born in Riga, Latvia. Though he learned the game of chess relatively late, at age thirteen, Petrovs made rapid progress. By 1926, at age 19, he won the Riga Championship and finish third in the national championship...
. Fine shared 4-5th places at Hastings 1937-38 with 6/9 as Reshevsky won.
AVRO showdown
In 1938, Fine tied for first place with Paul KeresPaul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
in the prestigious AVRO tournament
AVRO tournament
The AVRO tournament was a chess tournament held in the Netherlands in 1938, sponsored by the Dutch broadcasting company AVRO. The event was a double round-robin tournament...
in the Netherlands, on 8.5/14, with Keres placed first on tiebreak. This was one of the most famous tournaments of the 20th century, and some believe to this day that it is the strongest tournament ever staged, since it had the world's eight strongest players. It was organized with the hope that the winner of AVRO, a double round-robin tournament
Round-robin tournament
A round-robin tournament is a competition "in which each contestant meets all other contestants in turn".-Terminology:...
, would be the next challenger to world champion Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
. Since Alekhine won the title in 1927, he had been avoiding a rematch with his predecessor, Capablanca, whom many considered the strongest possible challenger. Fine finished ahead of future champion Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...
, current champion Alekhine, former world champions Max Euwe
Max Euwe
Machgielis Euwe was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion . Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.- Early years :Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam...
and Capablanca, and Grandmasters Samuel Reshevsky and Salo Flohr
Salo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...
. Fine won both of his games against Alekhine. Fine got out to a tremendous start, scoring five wins and a draw in his first six games, but then lost in round seven to Keres.
Wartime years
As World War II interrupted any prospects for a world championship match, Fine turned to chess writing. In 1939, Fine became the first grandmaster-class player to edit the classic opening guide Modern Chess OpeningsModern Chess Openings
Modern Chess Openings is an important reference book on the chess openings, first published in 1911 by the British players Richard Clewin Griffith and John Herbert White...
. His work on the sixth edition of the book led to a significant increase in sales. In 1941 he wrote Basic Chess Endings
Basic Chess Endings
Basic Chess Endings is a book on chess endgames which was written by Grandmaster Reuben Fine and originally published in 1941. It is considered the first systematic book in English on the endgame phase of the game of chess. It is the best-known endgame book in English and is a classic piece of...
, a compendium of endgame analysis which, some 70 years later, is still considered one of the best works on this subject. His book was the most comprehensive on the subject written to that time, included significant original work by Fine, and received worldwide acclaim. His The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings, though now out of date, is still useful for grasping the underlying ideas of many standard chess opening
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...
s; it was revised in 1989.
During World War II, Fine worked for the U.S. Navy, analyzing the probability of German U-boats
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
surfacing at certain points in the Atlantic Ocean. Fine also worked as a translator.
Fine was unable to compete in Europe during the war, since it was cut off from the Americas by the German Nazi naval blockade. However, Fine did play a few serious American events during World War II, and continued his successes with dominant scores, but there was little prize money available, even for winning. He won the U.S. Open at New York 1939 with 10.5/11, half a point ahead of Reshevsky. In the 23rd Marshall Club Championship of 1939, Fine won with 14/16. He won the 1940 U.S. Open at Dallas with a perfect 8/8 in the finals, three points ahead of Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
. Fine won the New York State Championship, Hamilton 1941, with 8/10, a point ahead of Reshevsky, Denker, and Isaac Kashdan
Isaac Kashdan
Isaac Kashdan was an American chess grandmaster and chess writer. Kashdan was one of the world's best players in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was twice U.S. Open champion...
. Fine won the 1941 Marshall Club Championship with 14/15, ahead of Frank Marshall. Fine won the 1941 U.S. Open at St. Louis, with 4/5 in the preliminaries, and 8/9 in the finals. Fine won the 1942 Washington, D.C. Chess Divan title with a perfect 7/7. He defeated Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
in match play for the second time by 3.5-0.5 at Washington 1944. Fine won the U.S. Speed Championships of both 1944 (10/11) and 1945 (10/11). In the Pan-American Championship, Hollywood 1945, Fine placed 2nd with 9/12 behind Reshevsky. He played in the famous 1945 USA vs USSR Radio team match
USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945
The USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945 was a chess match between the USA and the USSR that was conducted over the radio from September 1 to September 4, 1945. The ten leading masters of the United States played the ten leading masters of the Soviet Union for chess supremacy. The match was played...
, scoring 0.5/2 on board three against Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Yefremovich Boleslavsky was a Soviet–Jewish chess Grandmaster.-Early career:Boleslavsky taught himself chess at age 9...
. Then Fine travelled to Europe one last time to compete, in the 1946 Moscow team match against the USSR, scoring 0.5/2 on board three against Paul Keres
Paul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
.
Declines to enter 1948 World Championship
As the World War ended in early September 1945, Fine was just 30 years of age, and working on his doctorateDoctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in psychology. After World Champion Alekhine died in March 1946, FIDE (the World Chess Federation) organized a World Chess Championship
World Chess Championship 1948
The 1948 World Chess Championship was a tournament played to determine a new World Chess Champion following the death of the previous champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946. The tournament marked the passing of control of the championship title to FIDE, the International Chess Federation which had...
tournament to determine the new champion. Alekhine was the first champion to die as title-holder, creating an unprecedented problem. As co-winner in the AVRO tournament, Fine was invited to participate, but he declined, for reasons that are the subject of speculation even today. Fine had played a third match against Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
at Los Angeles 1947, winning 5-1; this match was training for his potential world championship appearance.
Publicly, Fine stated that he could not interrupt work on his doctoral dissertation in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
. Negotiations over the tournament had been protracted, and for a long time it was unclear whether this World Championship event would in fact take place. Fine wrote that he didn't want to spend many months preparing and then see the tournament cancelled. However, it has also been suggested that Fine declined to play because he suspected there would be collaboration among the three Soviet participants to ensure that one of them won the championship. In the August 2004 issue of Chess Life
Chess Life
Chess Life is a monthly chess magazine published in the United States. The official publication of the United States Chess Federation , it reaches more than a quarter of a million readers every month. A subscription to Chess Life is one of the benefits of Full Adult, Youth, or Life membership in...
, for example, GM Larry Evans
Larry Evans
For the football player of the same name, see Larry Evans .Larry Melvyn Evans was an American chess grandmaster, author, and journalist. He won or shared the U.S. Chess Championship five times and the U.S. Open Chess Championship four times...
gave his recollection that "Fine told me he didn't want to waste three months of his life watching Russians throw games to each other." Fine's 1951 written statement on the matter in his book "The World's Greatest Chess Games" was:
"Unfortunately for the Western masters the Soviet political organization was stronger than that of the West. The U.S. Chess Federation was a meaningless paper organization, generally antagonistic to the needs of its masters. The Dutch Chess Federation did not choose to act. The FIDE was impotent. The result was a rescheduling of the tournament for the following year, with the vital difference that now half was to be played in Holland, half in the U.S.S.R. Dissatisfied with this arrangement and the general tenor of the event, I withdrew."
Edward Winter discusses the evidence further in a 2007 Chessbase
ChessBase
ChessBase GmbH is a German company that markets chess software, maintains a chess news site, and operates a server for online chess. Set up in 1998, it maintains and sells massive databases, containing most historic games, that permit analysis that had not been possible prior to computing...
column.
Final competitive appearances
Once Fine completed his doctorate, he did play some more competitive chess. He won at New York 1948 with 8/9, ahead of Miguel NajdorfMiguel Najdorf
Miguel Najdorf was a Polish-born Argentine chess grandmaster of Jewish origin, famous for his Najdorf Variation....
, Max Euwe
Max Euwe
Machgielis Euwe was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion . Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.- Early years :Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam...
, and Herman Pilnik
Herman Pilnik
Herman Pilnik was an Argentine chess Grandmaster.-Career:...
. Fine drew a match against Najdorf at 4-4 at New York 1949. He participated for the U.S. in the 1950 radio match against Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, drawing his only game. Fine was named an International Grandmaster
International Grandmaster
The title Grandmaster is awarded to strong chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain....
by FIDE in 1950, on its inaugural list. Fine's final top-class event was the Maurice Wertheim
Maurice Wertheim
Maurice Wertheim was an American investment banker, chess player, chess patron, environmentalist, and philanthropist. He financed much of the activity in American chess during the 1940s. Wertheim founded Wertheim & Co. in 1927.-Biography:Maurice Wertheim graduated from Harvard University in 1906...
Memorial, New York 1951, where he scored 7/11 for 4th, as Reshevsky won.
Lifetime scores against top players
Fine had a relatively short career in top-level chess, but scored very impressively against top players. He faced five World Champions: Emanuel LaskerEmanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years...
(+1 =0 -0); José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...
(+0 =5 -0, excluding simultaneous games); Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
(+3 =4 -2); Max Euwe
Max Euwe
Machgielis Euwe was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion . Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.- Early years :Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam...
(+2 =3 -2); and Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...
(+1 =2 -0). His main American rivals were Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel "Sammy" Herman Reshevsky was a famous chess prodigy and later a leading American chess Grandmaster...
(+3 =12 -4); Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner
Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
(+21 =8 -4); Isaac Kashdan
Isaac Kashdan
Isaac Kashdan was an American chess grandmaster and chess writer. Kashdan was one of the world's best players in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was twice U.S. Open champion...
(+6 =6 -1); Albert Simonson
Albert Simonson
Albert Simonson was an American chess master. He was one of the strongest American players of the 1930s, and was part of the American team which won the gold medals at the 1933 Chess Olympiad...
(+6 =1 -1); Al Horowitz
Al Horowitz
Israel Albert Horowitz was a Jewish-American International Master of chess. He was clearly a grandmaster-strength player by present day standards, but he never received the title...
(+10 =7 -2); Arnold Denker
Arnold Denker
Arnold Sheldon Denker was an American chess player, Grandmaster, and chess author. He was U.S. Chess Champion in 1945 and 1946....
(+7 =7 -6); Fred Reinfeld
Fred Reinfeld
Fred Reinfeld was an American chess master and a prolific writer on chess and many other subjects, whose books are still read today.-Biography:...
(+10 =7 -5); and Arthur Dake
Arthur Dake
Arthur Dake was an American chess master. He was born in Portland, Oregon and died in Reno, Nevada....
(a shocking +7 =5 -7, but three losses as a 16-year-old against Dake in his 20s). Internationally, Fine faced the best of his time, and usually more than held his own, with three exceptions. He struggled against Paul Keres
Paul Keres
Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....
(+1 =8 -3); Milan Vidmar
Milan Vidmar
Milan Vidmar was a Slovene electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, philosopher, and writer. He was a specialist in power transformers and transmission of electric current.- Biography :...
(+0 =2 -1); and Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Boleslavsky
Isaac Yefremovich Boleslavsky was a Soviet–Jewish chess Grandmaster.-Early career:Boleslavsky taught himself chess at age 9...
(+0 =1 -1). But he handled everyone else: Miguel Najdorf
Miguel Najdorf
Miguel Najdorf was a Polish-born Argentine chess grandmaster of Jewish origin, famous for his Najdorf Variation....
(+3 =5 -3); Savielly Tartakower
Savielly Tartakower
Ksawery Tartakower was a leading Polish and French chess Grandmaster. He was also a leading chess journalist of the 1920s and 30s...
(+2 =4 -1); Salo Flohr
Salo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...
(+2 =7 -0); Grigory Levenfish
Grigory Levenfish
Grigory Yakovlevich Levenfish was a leading Jewish Russian chess grandmaster of the 1920s and 1930s. He was twice Soviet champion - in 1934 and 1937. In 1937 he tied a match against future world champion Mikhail Botvinnik...
(+1 =0 -0); George Alan Thomas
George Alan Thomas
Sir George Alan Thomas, Bart. was a British badminton, tennis and chess player. He was twice British Chess Champion and a 21-time All-England Badminton champion. He also played in the semi-finals of the men's tennis doubles at Wimbledon in 1911...
(+2 =3 -0); Erich Eliskases
Erich Eliskases
Erich Gottlieb Eliskases was a chess Grandmaster of the 1930s and 1940s, who represented Austria, Germany and Argentina in international competition....
(+1 =2 -0); Viacheslav Ragozin
Viacheslav Ragozin
Viacheslav Vasilyevich Ragozin was a Soviet chess Grandmaster, an International Arbiter of chess, and a World Correspondence Chess Champion. He was also a chess writer and editor.- Biography :...
(+1 =1 -0); Vladimirs Petrovs
Vladimirs Petrovs
Vladimirs Petrovs or Vladimir Petrov was a Latvian chess master.He was born in Riga, Latvia. Though he learned the game of chess relatively late, at age thirteen, Petrovs made rapid progress. By 1926, at age 19, he won the Riga Championship and finish third in the national championship...
(+2 =1 -1); Efim Bogolyubov (+1 =1 -0); Jan Foltys
Jan Foltys
Jan Foltys , was a Czech chess International Master.-Biography:...
(+2 =0 -0); Salo Landau
Salo Landau
Salo Landau was a Dutch chess player, who died in a Nazi concentration camp.-Early life:...
(+4 -0 =1); George Koltanowski
George Koltanowski
George Koltanowski was a Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer. He was informally known as "Kolty". Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on 20 September 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded, making headline news around the world...
(+2 =1 -0); Igor Bondarevsky
Igor Bondarevsky
Igor Zakharovich Bondarevsky was a Soviet Russian chess Grandmaster in both over-the-board and correspondence chess, an International Arbiter, trainer, and chess author...
(+1 =0 -0); Géza Maróczy
Géza Maróczy
Géza Maróczy was a leading Hungarian chess Grandmaster, one of the best players in the world in his time. He was also a practicing engineer.-Early career:...
(+1 =0 -0); William Winter
William Winter (chess player)
William Winter was a British chess player. He won the British Open Chess Championship in 1934 and the British Chess Championship in 1935 and 1936. An acolyte of Siegbert Tarrasch, his sound, strategic play enabled him to defeat a number of the world's top players, including David Bronstein, Aron...
(+4 =0 -0); Ernst Gruenfeld (+1 =0 -0); Gideon Stahlberg
Gideon Ståhlberg
Anders Gideon Tom Ståhlberg was a Swedish chess grandmaster.He won the Swedish Chess Championship of 1927, became Nordic champion in 1929, and held it until 1939....
(+4 =5 -2); Andor Lilienthal
Andor Lilienthal
Andor Arnoldovich Lilienthal was a Hungarian and Soviet chess Grandmaster. In his long career, he played against ten male and female world champions, beating Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, and Vera Menchik...
(+1 =0 -0); László Szabó
László Szabó (chess player)
László Szabó was a prominent Hungarian Grandmaster of chess.Born in Budapest, he burst onto the international chess scene in 1935, at the unusually young age of 18...
(+0 =1 -0); Vladas Mikėnas
Vladas Mikenas
Vladas Mikėnas was a Lithuanian International Master of chess, an Honorary Grandmaster, and a journalist.- Early life :Vladas Mikėnas played for Lithuania at first board in five official and one unofficial Chess Olympiads....
(+1 =1 -0); Rudolph Spielmann (+0 =1 -0); and Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander
Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander
Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander, CMG, CBE was an Irish-born British cryptanalyst, chess player, and chess writer. He worked on the German Enigma machine at Bletchley Park during World War II, and was later the head of the cryptanalysis division at GCHQ for over 20 years...
(+1 =3 -0). Finally, against the new generation of American masters which emerged in the late 1940s, Fine proved he could still perform well: Arthur Bisguier
Arthur Bisguier
Arthur Bernard Bisguier is an American chess Grandmaster, chess promoter, and writer. Bisguier won two U.S. Junior Championships , three U.S. Open Chess Championship titles , and the 1954 United States Chess Championship title. He played for the United States in five chess Olympiads...
(+1 =1 -0); Larry Evans
Larry Evans
For the football player of the same name, see Larry Evans .Larry Melvyn Evans was an American chess grandmaster, author, and journalist. He won or shared the U.S. Chess Championship five times and the U.S. Open Chess Championship four times...
(+0 =2 -0); George Kramer (+1 =1 -0); and Robert Byrne (+0 =1 -0).
Top ten for eight years
Although FIDE, the World Chess Federation, did not formally introduce chess ratings for international play until 1970, it is nevertheless possible to retrospectively rate players' performances from before that time. The site chessmetricsChessmetrics
Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.-Implementation:...
.com, which specializes in historical ratings throughout chess history, ranks Fine in the world's top ten players for more than eight years, from March 1936 until October 1942, and then again from January 1949 until December 1950. Between those two periods, he was less active as a player, so his ranking dropped. Fine was #1 in the world from October 1940 until March 1941, was in the top three from December 1938 until June 1942, and reached his peak rating of 2762 in July 1941. However, chessmetrics.com is missing several of Fine's major events from its database. Fine was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame. He continued his successful chess writing career for many years after he retired from competition.
Notable games
- Reuben Fine vs Mikhail Botvinnik, Amsterdam AVRO 1938, French Defence, Winawer/Advance Variation (C17), 1-0 In the final position, "Black does not have a single move, and Rf3 is threatened. A combination of a splendid strategic idea with tactical subtleties." (Botvinnik)
- Reuben Fine vs Salomon Flohr, Amsterdam AVRO 1938, French Defence, Winawer/Advance Variation (C17), 1-0 Deep tactics in an unusual variant of French Defense.
- Reuben Fine vs Herman Steiner, Pan-American Championship, Hollywood 1945. Queen's Gambit Accepted, Classical (D29), 1-0 Fine sees further than his opponent in a sharp tactical position.
Psychologist
After receiving his doctorateDoctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in psychology from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, Fine abandoned professional chess to concentrate on his new profession. Fine continued playing chess casually throughout his life (including several friendly games played in 1963 against Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...
, one of which is included in Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games
My 60 Memorable Games
My 60 Memorable Games is a chess book by Bobby Fischer, first published in 1969. It is a collection of his games dating from the 1957 New Jersey Open to the 1967 Sousse Interzonal. Unlike many players' anthologies, which are often titled My Best Games and include only victories, My 60 Memorable...
). In 1956 he wrote an article, "Psychoanalytic Observations on Chess and Chess Masters", for a psychological journal. Later, Fine turned the article into a book, The Psychology of the Chess Player, in which he provided insights steeped in Freudian
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
theory. Fine is not the first person to examine the mind as it relates to chess - Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who was the inventor of the first usable intelligence test, known at that time as the Binet test and today referred to as the IQ test. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum...
, the inventor of the IQ test
Intelligence quotient
An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...
, had studied the mental functionality of good chess players, and found that they often had enhanced mental traits, such as a good memory. He went on to publish A History of Psychoanalysis (1979) and a number of other books on psychology. As did many psychoanalysts of his day, Fine believed that homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
could be "cured" (through conversion therapy), and his opinions on the subject were cited in legal battles over homosexuality, including the legislative battle over same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. Fine served as a visiting professor at CCNY, the University of Amsterdam, the Lowell
Lowell
- In the United States :* Lowell, Massachusetts** Lowell National Historical Park** Lowell * Lowell, Arkansas* Lowell, California* Lowell, Florida* Lowell, Indiana* Lowell, Bartholomew County, Indiana* Lowell, Maine* Lowell, Michigan...
Institute of Technology, and the University of Florence
University of Florence
The University of Florence is a higher study institute in Florence, central Italy. One of the largest and oldest universities in the country, it consists of 12 faculties...
. Fine founded the Creative Living Center in New York City.
On chess
- Dr. Lasker's Chess Career, by Reuben Fine and Fred Reinfeld, 1935.
- Modern Chess OpeningsModern Chess OpeningsModern Chess Openings is an important reference book on the chess openings, first published in 1911 by the British players Richard Clewin Griffith and John Herbert White...
, sixth edition, by Reuben Fine, 1939. - Basic Chess EndingsBasic Chess EndingsBasic Chess Endings is a book on chess endgames which was written by Grandmaster Reuben Fine and originally published in 1941. It is considered the first systematic book in English on the endgame phase of the game of chess. It is the best-known endgame book in English and is a classic piece of...
, by Reuben Fine, 1941, McKay. Revised in 2003 by Pal BenkoPál BenkoPal Benko is a chess grandmaster, author, and composer of endgame studies and chess problems.- Early life :Benko was born in France but was raised in Hungary. He was Hungarian champion by age 20. He emigrated to the United States in 1958, after defecting following the World Student Team...
. ISBN 0-8129-3493-8. - Chess the Easy Way, by Reuben Fine, 1942. 1986 Paperback re-issue. ISBN 0-6716-2427-X.
- The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings, by Reuben Fine, 1943. Revised in 1989. McKay, ISBN 0-8129-1756-1.
- The Middlegame in Chess, by Reuben Fine. ISBN 0-8129-3484-9.
- Chess Marches On, by Reuben Fine, 1946.
- Practical Chess Openings, by Reuben Fine, 1948.
- Lessons From My Games, by Reuben Fine, 1958.
- The Psychology of the Chess Player, by Reuben Fine, 1967.
- Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World's Chess Championship: The Psychology and Tactics of the Title Match, by Reuben Fine, 1973. ISBN 0923891471
- The World's Great Chess Games, by Reuben Fine, Crown Publishers, Inc. 1951, LOC # 51-12014; Dover, 1983. ISBN 0-486-24512-8.
On psychology
- Freud: a Critical Re-evaluation of his Theories, by Reuben Fine (1962).
- The Healing of the Mind, by Reuben Fine (1971).
- The Development of Freud's Thought, by Reuben Fine (1973).
- Psychoanalytic Psychology, by Reuben Fine (1975).
- The History of Psychoanalysis, by Reuben Fine (1979).
- The Psychoanalytic Vision, by Reuben Fine (1981).
- The Logic of Psychology, by Reuben Fine (1985).
- The Meaning of Love in Human Experience, by Reuben Fine (1985).
- Narcissism, the Self, and Society, by Reuben Fine (1986).
- The Forgotten Man: Understanding the Male Psyche, by Reuben Fine (1987).