Reuben Fine

A Major League Chess Talent

While his playing career was not particularly long, Reuben Fine made an extraordinary impact on the development of United States chess. Fine was first or equal first in 23 of the 27 important events in his chess career. World Champion Candidate Robert Byrne as a young man was not alone when he "thought Fine was chess itself, was perfect chess, a great positional player and a great writer."

Born in New York on October 11, 1914, Fine learned to play chess from his uncle at about age 8. Countless hours of speed chess at the Marshall Chess Club developed the tactical eye that helped Fine to compete at the highest levels of chess competition. His devastating skill at blitz chess earned him the nickname Kid Gefaehrlich ("dangerous"). He won his first U.S. Open title before the age of 18 and went on to win a total of seven in his career.

Fine was one of the strongest U.S. players of the 1930s. Finding the job market poor for young men during the Depression, in 1934 Fine decided he would try to support himself "temporarily" as a chess player. He took a tour to Mexico where he played a brief match against Carlos Torre. He played in his first European tournament in 1935, at age 21. He made his first big impression on the International scene by winning at Zandvoort, Holland, in 1936, ahead of Euwe, Bogoljubow and theory maven Gruenfeld. Fine ran up a score of +9 -1 +5 on second board at the Stockholm Olympiad in 1937, a gold medal performance. Throughout his career, Fine won matches against H. Steiner (twice), Dake, Horowitz and Stahlberg, while drawing a match against Najdorf.

Through Hastings 1937-38, Fine had an extraordinary run of successes in international tournaments. He was first or equal first 12 times, finished second 3 times, and tied for fourth place Hastings. His only subpar result was Kemeri 1937. Fine's winning percentage through this period was a remarkable 72.6%.

While his archrival Reshevsky and Denker prevented him from ever winning the U.S. title, Fine was the only American with a winning record against World Champion Alekhine (+3 -2 =4). Fine's decision to play more aggressively than usual paid off with his equal first place with Keres at AVRO 1938:

Though Keres on tiebreak earned the right to be considered the "official" challenger to Alekhine, the result in that tournament made it clear that Fine was a threat to take the world championship if he ever got a title match. As Fine (who had served as Euwe's second during the 1937 world championship match) later wrote, "Had a match between [Alekhine and myself] been arranged in 1939, right after the AVRO tournament, there is little doubt in my mind that I would have won." Many knowledgeable people agree with Fine's assessment. Professor Arpad Elo retroactively calculated his rating for his best five year period as 2660, while Alekhine was in decline.

The Second World War disrupted international chess competition. Fine continued to write chess books during the war years, but he also supported the war, effort first as a translator (French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Yiddish and German) and then worked on intriguing classified missions. First, he was part of a team that tried to predict where German U-boats were most likely to surface. Subsequently, he did research on Japanese Kamikaze attacks.

Immediately after the end of the war, Fine actively tried to promote a championship chess competition of some sort. Met with delay on the part of international chess authorities, and unable to find sponsors, Fine decided to devote his energies to other activities. By the time of the 1948 match/tournament for the world championship title left vacant by Alekhine's death, Fine was working toward his doctorate in psychology. He declined the invitation to participate in the world championship event. In fact, except for a few New York tournaments (including the 1944 U.S. Championship and the 1948 New York international tournament, which he won with an 8-1 score) Fine did not play much serious chess after 1938.

At his peak, Fine was considered "the fastest player alive," because he won nearly every speed chess competition he entered. Shortly after the end of the 1945 U.S. -- U.S.S.R. Radio Match, in which Fine, like nearly every member of the American team, performed poorly, Fine performed a spectacular feat of speed chess. Fine played and won four rapid transit (10 seconds per move) games while blindfolded. Fine's opponents included Robert Byrne, who, even at that young age, was much stronger than the typical challenger in a simultaneous exhibition.

Fine's most lasting impact on the chess scene was through his writings. While some technical errors have been discovered in it, his Basic Chess Endings (available from Chesslinks Worldwide associate Amazon.com) is still considered a towering achievement in chess literature, still the standard endgame reference work in English. Many players have found his Ideas Behind the Chess Openings (also for sale through Amazon.com) to be an invaluable alternative or supplement to the maze of variations found in most opening books. By writing successful books, Fine was the first American since Marshall to be able to support himself professionally through the game of chess.

The Psychology of the Chess Player is a controversial book that takes a Freudian approach to analyzing player motives. Although this book did not win many friends for Fine in the chess world, it should be understood that he was considered a significant writer in the medical world, with at least 17 books on psychology to his credit. For example, Fine's History of Psychoanalysis was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. One of Fine's conclusions that appears to have some validity is that chessplayers with significant lives apart from chess (such as Botvinnik and Lasker) tended to be more stable than professional players (such as Alekhine and Steinitz).

Fine's chess books have been translated into at least 10 languages. Ironically, for one whose books later proved so influential and instructive for others, Fine was fond of boasting that he never studied a chess book until after he became a master.

Although Fine played very little serious chess after the 1940's until his death in 1993, it is interesting that Robert Fischer considered him a serious enough opponent to justify including in his book, My Sixty Memorable Games, a casual game the two played in 1963.

In recognition of his significant contributions to American chess, Reuben Fine was inducted into the Chess Hall of Fame in Washington, DC as an Inaugural Member in 1986.

Other Views of Fine

In his heyday, Fine's combinative skill was one of the most dangerous talents in the world.

--GM Andy Soltis, in Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess, 1977

 

When he felt like showing off, Fine could play three or four simultaneous blindfold speed games. His skill at rapid chess dazzled even world-class players.

--NM Macon Shibut, in The U.S. Chess Hall of Fame, 1995

 

It was Fine who, alone, contributed more to the science of Chess than any other author. It was Fine, the mathematician, philosopher, psychologist, to whom the Chessboard was indeed his breath of life.

--I.A. Horowitz and P.L. Rothenberg, in The Personality of Chess, 1963