WHEN the police pounced on Willie Sutton last winter, they found in his hideout a book entitled How to Think Ahead in Chess. In this way, some 8,000,000 U.S. chess players learned that Bank Robber Sutton was a member of their cold-eyed fraternity. They were not especially surprised. As devotees of one of the oldest and most intellectually satisfying games ever invented, they assume that chess appeals to every thinking man, whether he uses his talents to crack safes or split atoms. But most of these thinking men, from Einstein to Humphrey Bogart, are Patzers--a German word that can best be translated as "duffers." Several million light-years above them in ability are the chess masters. Above these stand a handful of grand masters. There are scarcely a dozen in the world, and only two in the U.S.: the relatively inactive Dr. Reuben Fine, and Samuel Reshevsky.

Grand Master Reshevsky is a neat little man of 40, with delicate fingers and a bald head. He wears glasses, stands a shade over five feet, and generally has the inoffensive air of a Casper Milquetoast. But at the chessboard Reshevsky becomes a thinking machine. Smoking cigarettes, sipping gallons of ice water, he plays his own special brand of relentlessly logical chess with all the lethal poise of a cobra. Said an opponent: "I think the ice water he drinks goes right into his veins."

Because chess is the struggle of one intellect with another, victory brings a sense of achievement unequaled in any other sport. Conversely, defeat lays bare a man's most homicidal instincts. Legend has it that after a chess game a prince of Bavaria was brained by a son of the King of France. Reshevsky appears impervious to these emotional tides. He is both admired and detested for his glacial self-control. "He acts as though he can save any game, no matter how hopeless the position," complained one master bitterly.

All chess masters have, roughly, an equal knowledge of technique, openings and variations of play. Therefore games between them usually develop into a war of nerves and a search for small advantages that are not always on the chessboard. Spain's Bishop Ruy Lopez recognized this as early as the 16th century when he recommended that an opponent always be seated so that the light shone in his eyes. Reshevsky's icy calm has a similar unsettling effect on his opponents. But the calm is only skin-deep. After match play, Samuel often breaks into a heavy sweat. When he has lost a game, or drawn one he should have won, sleep escapes him: "I go over and over it in my mind, searching for what went wrong. If I find it, I stay awake kicking myself. If I don't find it, the insomnia's even worse."

RESHEVSKY was born into a rabbinical family in Poland and learned chess as a kibitzer at his father's knee. At six, he was giving his father the odds of a rook and winning easily. Sammy came to the U.S. when he was nine, and promptly defeated a platoon of Army officers in simultaneous play at West Point. Then, when he was eleven, someone discovered that the boy wonder had never attended school. Merchant Julius Rosenwald, a Patzer and philanthropist, soon remedied this defect. Six months of tutoring brought Reshevsky up to high-school level and he went on to graduate from the University of Chicago. Except for a flair for mathematics, he was just an average student.

Reshevsky got a job as an accountant and went on playing chess. He won five U.S. championships, and defeated the famed Jose Capablanca in tournament play. He has had only one chance at the world's championship. In 1948 Reshevsky, three Soviet grand masters and the Dutch champion Max Euwe played for the title left vacant by the death of Alexander Alekhine. Russia's Mikhail Botvinnik won the title; Reshevsky tied for third with another Soviet player, Paul Keres. Though he didn't win first prize, Reshevsky is convinced he can defeat Botvinnik in match play, the usual way in which world championships are determined. As a step toward a meeting with Botvinnik, Sammy has challenged Keres to a 12-to 18-game match. Reshevsky has never been defeated in match play.

RESHEVSKY has given up his job and devotes all his time to chess. In his three-room Brooklyn apartment, where his wife and two children are more interested in keeping up his scrapbook than in playing chess, Reshevsky analyzes the significant games played in major tournaments, dating back to the London championship of 1851. He must have at his mental fingertips all of the important positions that have cropped up in hundreds of trail-blazing games of the past and present. An idea of the combinations he must keep in his head can be gained from the fact that the first ten moves on each side in chess can be played in 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 different ways. When asked how many moves he usually thinks ahead in a game, Reshevsky has a disarmingly simple answer: "One more than my opponent."

Because there are few players even in New York who can give him a tough game, Reshevsky gets most of his over-the-board practice from Rapid Transit chess (one move every ten seconds) and sometimes plays strong opponents blindfolded.

He finds relaxation in ice skating, bridge and table tennis; he used to play baseball and now watches it on TV. He reads a good deal and will spend hours listening to classical music, including opera. He takes a modest pride in his own untrained tenor voice, and will sing duets with his wife at the drop of a suggestion. His boyhood ambition was to become a famous cantor.

By making one-night stands across the nation (sometimes facing 75 opponents at once), Reshevsky earns about as much as he did as an accountant. Financial pressures caused a minor uproar at this spring's tournament in Havana. The trophy for the championship of the free world was donated, ironically enough, by Argentina's dictatorial President Juan Peron. A boastful Argentine player told U.S. competitors that it was worth $2,000. When a Cuban player died, it was suggested that the cup remain in Havana as a memorial instead of being given to the champion. Reshevsky, who was leading the tournament at the time, demurred until he had at least seen the cup. This caused a good deal of anti-Reshevsky feeling. Explains Sammy: "Whhen I saw the cup and realized it was nothing more than the usual $100 trophy, I was glad to agree. I can afford to donate $100 to a good cause, but I'd want to think twice about donating $2,000." Finances also had a crippling effect on the U.S. team that finished in fifth place in the international team championships in Helsinki last August. Though headed by Reshevsky, the team was far from the best that could have been placed in the field because many of the top U.S. players could not afford the fare to Finland.

No one can satisfactorily explain what makes a great chess player. Having a mathematical bent is not enough. The leading U.S. masters come from all walks of life, and include a psychologist, a wholesale meat merchant, a chemist, an editor, a college student, a pharmacist and a soldier. There has never been a top woman player. Reshevsky thinks that women are too easily rattled to make strong players. Of composure and self-confidence, the two most important ingredients after ability, Reshevsky has a full measure. He displayed both when a spectator asked him to explain the one-sidedness of his match score against Argentina's Najdorf. Replied Sammy: "It's very simple. Najdorf is playing Reshevsky."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.