Champion Chessman

As wartime stay-at-homes took to their chessboards last week, Samuel Reshevsky, onetime child prodigy, for the fourth successive time won the biennial U.S. chess championship.

If thin-haired, bespectacled, 31-year-old Reshevsky lived in present-day Russia--where chess is the national pastime and people jam the streets to watch the moves of championship matches on giant dummy boards--he would be a national hero. But in the U.S., where chess has no more spectator appeal than calisthenics, Reshevsky is just another guy named Sam.

When Sam came to the U.S. from his native Poland at the age of nine, he lived up to his triumphant European press clippings by playing 20 U.S. Army officers simultaneously (a contest that gives each opponent 20 times as much time to contemplate each move) without losing a game.

Child prodigies often grow up distorted. But Sam Reshevsky was fortunate enough to come to the attention of the late great Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who made him give up exhibition chess at the age of 13 so he could get an education. By the time he was 23 and resumed playing, Reshevsky proved that his early talent had been no flash in the pawn. At the 1935 International Masters Tournament at Margate, England, little Sam copped first prize--outwitting among others, onetime World's Champion Jose Capablanca.

Today Reshevsky is one of the world's recognized Grand Masters.* He has crossed the Atlantic four times to compete, and in no tournament has he ever failed to win a prize (first, second or third). But Reshevsky has never yet bid for the world's championship--a title acquired only by challenging and defeating the champion. Reason: to challenge, one must put up $10,000, of which 66 2/3% goes to the defending champion--win, lose or draw. At War's end, Reshevsky hopes to raise the necessary funds.

Meanwhile, Sam Reshevsky has a job as accountant for a Manhattan engineering & construction firm, coaches its chess team on the side. For recreation he plays rapid-transit chess, a variation in which competitors are allowed only ten seconds per move.

* Others: World's Champion Alexandre Alexandrovitch Alekhine of France, The Netherlands' Max Euwe, Russia's Mikhail Botwinnik, Estonia's Paul Keres, Czecho-Slovakia's Salo Flohr, Manhattan's Reuben Fine.

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