1939-1948

CL_12-2008_uscf_history_AKF_r9.qxp:chess life
12/10/08
11:45 AM
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U S C F H I S T O RY
On the Shoulders of Chess Giants
W
USCF’S 1ST DECADE: 1939-1948
by Al Lawrence
e’ve come to expect a lot from our
USCF: hundreds of school and community clubs, thousands of tournaments each year with timely rating adjustments, and a professionally-prepared,
monthly Chess Life. Even the sky is no
longer the limit; U.S. school children, with
voting tallied by USCF, are now sending
moves into space, playing against orbiting
U.S. astronaut Gregory Chamitoff. With
that gravity-defying feat in mind, it seems
doubly appropriate to recall Sir Isaac New-
bloody invasion of Russia put an end to its
national chess championship prelims.
Sheltered in the U.S., aging legends took
their leave of the Earth: Emanuel Lasker,
longest reigning chess king; José Raúl
Capablanca, the once-dashing idol of the
gilded age; Frank Marshall, U.S. champ
for nearly three decades. A future champ
was born, Bobby Fischer.
In 1942 Mona May Karff, born in czarist
Russia, won her second U.S. women’s
championship title in a row, ending the
70 million), 10 of our best players took on
the U.S.S.R.’s stars in a double-round
robin played by radio. On boards one
and two, Botvinnik blanked Denker and
Smyslov shut out Reshevsky. Overall,
the Soviets won 15½ to 4½. (An in-person match the next year in Moscow saw
the U.S. lose by an improved but still
lopsided score.) Also in 1945, C.F.
Rehberg won the first USCF Golden
Knights correspondence tournament.
EN PASSANT
• New Yorker Sammy Reshevsky
dominates the decade’s U.S.
championships; only exceptions—
Arnold Denker wins in 1944, and
Hollywood’s Herman Steiner in 1948.
• 1944: Chess Review flooded with
letters debating the change in notation
from “Kt” to “N.”
• Chess Life begins as a newspaper
in 1946.
• 1948: Fine declines to play in the
world championship tournament;
Botvinnik wins, beginning the long
Soviet domination of world chess.
• Trivia: Two of the three U.S. champs
who ruled USCF’s first decade were
promising young boxers—Steiner and
Denker knew their way around the
board and the ring.
Samuel Reshevsky (left) dominated the U.S. championship in USCF’s first decade. George Sturgis (top of page) was USCF’s first president.
ton’s humbling reminder that we can see
so far only because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Over the next eight issues,
we’ll briefly recall some of those giants of
USCF, looking this month at its first decade.
On December 27, 1939, the National
Chess Federation and the American Chess
Federation merged to form USCF, with
yearly dues of one dollar and fewer than
1,000 members. USCF’s first president,
George Sturgis of Boston, set his sights on
2,000—a goal not realized for 15 years. In
1940 Reuben Fine bested 27 others to
win USCF’s first U.S. Open in Dallas (where
the first USCF business meeting was also
held). An ominous event in 1941 reminds
us of the state of their world—Hitler’s
10
Chess Life — January 2009
back-and-forth with Belgian-born Adele
Rivero. The 1940s ended with the rise of
the astonishing Gisela Kahn Gresser.
Discovering the Swiss System was the
invention of the tournament chess wheel.
Texan J.C. Thompson, at the advice of
George Koltanowski, ran the 1942 Southwest Open as a Swiss. Before this, large
events were unwieldy, requiring many
games to determine a winner. When
Thompson organized the 1947 U.S. Open
in Corpus Christi, won by Isaac Kashdan
and directed by “Kolty,” he made it a
Swiss, and ingenuity became tradition.
In September 1945, three weeks after
VJ Day brought peace to a war-exhausted
world (lest we forget, the dead numbered
On September 5, 1946, Chess Life
began as a twice-monthly newspaper,
edited by picaresque Chicagoan Montgomery Major, who wrote some columns
under the inverted pseudonym William
“Rojam.” Koltanowski launched a nationwide “simul” exhibition and blindfold tour.
Larry Friedman won the first U.S. junior
chess championship in Chicago.
In 1948, USCF ended its initial decade
as two promising teenagers, Larry Evans
and Arthur Bisguier, won the Marshall
Chess Club championship and the U.S.
Junior, respectively. Weaver “White to
Move and Win” Adams steamrolled his
last nine opponents 7-1 to win the U.S.
Open in Baltimore.
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