Capa

Six feet apart, in a square on the floor of a Manhattan armory, 50 chessboards had been set up. Behind each board sat four men. In the middle of the square, alone against 200, stood a dapper, rather handsome man with keen eyes and a high forehead. He was the great Capa--Jose Raoul Capablanca--onetime chess champion of the world, newly returned to the U. S. after playing for two years abroad. He was competing with more players at once than any chess master had ever tried before;* it looked as if the job was too hard for him. Right at the start the team from the Bank of America beat him; the Staten Island Chess Club offered him a draw, which he refused, but a few minutes later things got worse for him on that board and he offered a draw himself which the Staten Islanders accepted, although they had the better position. He drew a couple of other games and a ripple of excitement stirred the watchers, chess players all; perhaps Capa had slipped, was no longer infallible. . . .

From 3p. m. to midnight Capa walked the armory floor. It was 150 yards around the square. He traveled round it some 40 times. The men he was playing against were the best chess players in Manhattan, but he had begun to win. Although he made 50 moves to every one by his opponents, he often got around the square before a team was ready for him. He. for his part, would stop at a table, glance at the 64 squares, tap his finger once or twice on the edge of the board, and move. Always he attacked, usually with his favorite strategy--some variation of the queen s pawn opening. Twice he won games with a curious plan called the "Hollandish" opening, becoming popular in Europe but rare here. At midnight he had won 28 games. drawn 16, been beaten six times. Said he: "I feel as if I had walked 100 miles."

* The greatest number of opponents, but not the greatest number of games. In 1922 at the National Athletic Club in Montreal, Frank Marshall, U. S. master, played 155 on as many boards, won 126 games, drew 21, lost 8. His opponents, however, were not as able as Capa-blanca's.

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