On Chess: Tiny American was titan of tenacity
Saturday, May 28, 2011 03:07 AM
The Columbus Dispatch
Is it possible to be 5 feet tall and yet be a formidable sporting icon?
It is in chess – a gymnasium of the mind where size, speed and physical strength are incidental.
Two small players who immediately come to mind are the 19th century’s Paul Morphy and our contemporary Anatoly Karpov, who in his prime weighed little more than 130 pounds.
And, of course, there was the diminutive Sammy Reshevsky (1911-92), who was justifiably feared by the Soviets as an unpredictable player of great talent in the post-World War II period.
Reshevsky dominated the American chess scene until Bobby Fischer eclipsed him in the late 1950s and thereafter. No one – including himself, Fischer admitted – could calculate as deeply and as effectively as Reshevsky.
Although he had a poor memory for previous chess games and surprisingly knew less about the openings than many amateur readers of this column, Reshevsky had a deep understanding of the subtleties of positional play.
But his most fearsome weapon was a relentless steellike tenacity.
I once asked him how he held and won so often in what seemed to be desperate positions.
“I keep making good moves,” he answered, “until my opponents collapse.”
In his autobiography, Pal Benko describes a fistfight that broke out between Reshevsky and colorful Argentinian chess star Miguel Najdorf: “Sammy attacked with such ferocity that the far larger Najdorf turned and ran for his life.”
Shelby Lyman is a Basic Chess Features columnist.
Source:
A real grandmaster of chess….well worth remembering.
I called my kid Sam! I remember playing some postal games with him then the bugger died!!! in the middle of our two games!! I simply couldn’t beat that!
He was a nice man.