The Joys of Chess

In 1961, Fred Reinfeld published The Joys of Chess. Here are some interesting items from his book.

On page 13, Reinfeld says that Edward Lasker (1885-1981) wrote the first fine chess primer, Chess Strategy. This book is now available as an ebook from the Project Gutenberg. It was originally written in German, and, in 1915, it was translated into English by Julius Du Mont.

On page 13, Reinfeld says that the musician Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982) had a love for chess.

On page 14, Reinfeld states that Alekhine had two degrees in law. Is that true?

On page 14, Reinfeld states that Max Euwe was an excellent swimmer, boxer, and flier.

On page 15, Reinfeld states that Capablanca's good looks ran him a close third to Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926) and Ramon Navarro (1899-1968). We now know that Navarro was a homosexual that was brutally murdered in 1968. This was probably Reinfeld's own opinion.

On page 15, Reinfeld states that Arthur Dake of Portland, Oregon, took a plane to San Francisco in 1929 to play World Champion Alekhine, and lost in 13 seconds. The game was a simul and lasted 17 moves. Did it really last 13 seconds? The game was played on May 11, 1929 at the Mechanics Institute. Alekhine played 43 opponents that day. The shortest game and the first to finish was against Arthur Dake.

On page 16, Reinfeld says there are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 different ways of playing the first 10 moves. Is this right? On ply (move) one, White can make 20 different moves. After ply two (with White and Black moving), there are 400 different positions that can arise. On ply 3 (after 2 moves for White and one move with Black), there are 5,362 different positions, of which 1,862 are unique. On ply 4, there are 72,068 different positions, of which 9,825 are unique. On ply 5, there are 822,518 positions, of which 53,516 are unique. On ply 6, there are 9,417,681 positions, of which 311,642 are unique. On ply 7, there are 96,400,068 positions, of which 2,018, 993 are unique. On ply 8, there are 988,187,354 positions, of which 12,150,635 are unique. On ply 9, there are 9,183,421,888 positions, of which 69,284,509 are unique.

On page 17, Reinfeld says that a prize in a chess tournament in Germany in 1916 was a half pound of butter. This was probably the Tarrasch-Mieses match in 1916.

On page 17, Reinfeld says that Steinitz and Capablanca had horses named after them. So has Alekhine, Smyslov, Karpov, and Kasparov.

On page 17, Reinfeld says the the Indian ruler Akbar played chess with 32 beautiful young virgins used as liviong pieces and awarded to the winner. We do know that his palace grounds had a large checkered board to play living chess or checkers on.

On page 18, there is a story by Gilbert Highet (1906-1978) called Chess Men. The copyright says 1957 by Oxford University. No source can be found for this. On page 13, Reinfeld says this was originally a radio talk inspired in part by his book, The Human Side of Chess. He did host his own radio program. Highet was a Scottish-American classicist, academic, writer, critic, and literay historian.

On page 49, an article by Harold Schonberg says that Bobby Fischer's birthday is March 12. He was actually bon on March 9, 1943.

On page 94 is a diagram of a chess problem by A. C. White. Reinfeld says White mates in two after 1.Qa1. But it is mate in one after 1.Qg1. Reinfeld has the diagram wrong. The White Queen should be on the f6 square instead of the g7 square.

On page 118, there is a diagram of a combination from a game Gruenfeld-Tarrasch, Baden-Baen 1925. The tournament book says that Tarrasch resigned on move 50 (move 2 in the combination), but Reinfeld carries out the moves until mate (4 more moves).

On page 284, Reinfeld quotes M. E. Goldstein of a memory 20 years ago of Hastings in which Rubinstein overslept and showed up 30 minutes late to beat G. M. Norman. The quote was dated in 1946 from Chess World. But Norman and Rubinstein played at Hastings in 1922, not 20 years before 1946.

On page 286, Reinfeld quotes Alekhine that "Chess is a matter of vanity." The source is Chess Review in 1934. But Alekhine never said that. The article was called "Vanity and Chess" by Barnie Winkelman and published in the September 1934 issue.