Supervised Coffee

In the U.S. last year, anxiety-prone Argentine Chess Champion Miguel Najdorf seemed in terrible physical shape all the while he matched moves with chainsmoking U.S. Champion Samuel Reshevsky (TIME, Oct. 20). Najdorf was soundly beaten, eleven games to seven. Soon a rumor, whipped up by the Argentine weekly newspaper Verdad (Truth), swept across the pampas: the nefarious yanquis had doped Najdorf's coffee. Back home, making no sportsmanlike denial of the nasty tiding, Najdorf instead cried for revenge. He finally persuaded Argentina's Chess Federation to put up about $3,000 for his enemy to come south for a comeuppance.

Last week, in the President Peron Salon of Buenos Aires' Postal Savings Building, Miguel Najdorf again sat facing stone-faced Sammy Reshevsky. Sipping coffee brewed under exquisite precautions against doping, Najdorf nonetheless seemed in the worst shape ever. Perspiring and twitching, wringing his shaky hands, frantically rumpling his hair, he leaped up after nearly every move to dash into the men's room, situated next to him as demanded by his strict terms. Once, while nearly 1,000 chess fans watched and chuckled, Najdorf soared from his chair as if it were a hot seat, tripped and sprawled on the floor. Arising, he seized the lapels of his personal physician, always on hand at the matches, and screamed: "How am I?" Replied the tactful doctor soothingly to his nerve-racked patient: "Never better."

But Miguel was not good enough. The matches ended last week in the same old story: Reshevsky, 9 1/2 games; Najdorf, 8 1/2. Angry Najdorf rolled his eyes heavenward and snorted: "This man has his own personal god." But a veteran local chess player was more pragmatic about implacable Sammy Reshevsky's victory: "Reshevsky plays chess like a man who eats fish; first he takes out the bones and then he swallows the fish."

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