Real Chess, Too

In the championships of Russia's national indoor game some 700,000 competed in 1936. The game: chess. This week, with short-wave radio bridging Moscow and Manhattan, the Russians tried their hand at international competition.-A queen's pawn was nudged ahead two squares.

The best of Russia's ten best chess-masters engaged in the four-day frolic was Mikhail Botvinnik, an engineer whose double-thick spectacles made him look like the right man for the No. 1 board. Topping the U.S. big ten was Arnold Denker, who was a welterweight, flunked plane geometry, looked as much like a deep thinker as most 200-lb. fullbacks. Cracked Champion Denker before he dug in, by remote control,against Champion Botvinnik: "I've just got to beat him . . . my dentist's name also happens to be Botvinnik."

But Russia's Botvinnik promptly outmaneuvered Denker in 25 lightning-quick moves. All Russians played a wide-open game that left the orthodox Americans staring blankly at their boards. It was not only in politics that the Russians were good chess players.

* This month, with an eye toward the 1948 Olympics, Red Army athletes will compete against British, French and U.S. servicemen in track & field at Berlin's Sports Palatz Stadium.

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