Very Nice Champion

Mild-looking little Samuel Reshevsky hunched over the chess board, prodded his temples, thoughtfully munched a finger. His opponent, Olaf Ulvestad, paced the floor between moves like an expectant father. A few doors away, in an auditorium safely insulated from the ears of the players, fans watched the progress of the game on a huge chess board, happily kibitzed: "No, no, the bishop!" "Now, I would have played it this way. . . ."

After six hours of grueling play, Reshevsky was two pawns to the good. Suddenly, after the 66th move, Ulvestad resigned. To the parlor chess player, who doesn't know when he is licked, and thinks he has a fighting chance until he is behind by a rook, two knights and his queen, it was an outrage. But Reshevsky, Ulvestad and the initiates knew that, between masters, Ulvestad's position was no longer tenable. Reshevsky, four-time winner of the biennial U.S. championship, had clinched it again.

Reshevsky's victory last week in Manhattan earned him a sure berth as a U.S. representative in next year's world tournament to determine a successor to the late Alexander Alekhine.* The favorites will be the Russians, who walloped Reshevsky and his fellow Americans in a recent match in Moscow.

Polish-born Reshevsky, 35, a former child chess prodigy who is now a Boston accountant, lets his more impetuous opponents beat themselves. One of them, Stephen Kowalski, was so confused by Reshevsky's tactics that he failed to think up the required 45 moves in two and a quarter hours, and was counted out. Champion Reshevsky never plays chess between tournaments; during them, however, he keeps his mind on chess night & day. His wife, who is just learning the game (out of a book; he won't teach her), says that she has to be very careful not to annoy him during this difficult period. But, she adds: "Sam is really very nice. I don't see how the wives of some of those irritable chess players stand it."

*Alekhine, a captain in the Czar's army and later a Nazi sympathizer, was so hated by Soviet chessmen that, although they still make grudging use of his "Alekhine Defense," they call it the "Moscow Defense."

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