The brief glory of Reuben Fine

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

Reuben Fine was on the short list of the world's greatest players from the mid-1930s through the late 1940s, and is perhaps the only player to have a total plus score in his games against world champions without being a world champion himself (based on some non-trivial minimum number of games). From his breakout win at Hastings 1935/6, to his tie for first (but behind Keres on tiebreaks) in the 1938 AVRO event (designed as a Candidates' event to face Alekhine), to his (declined) invitation to play in the 1948 The Hague/Moscow world championship match-tournament, Fine was a legitimate contender for the highest title throughout most of his all-too-short career.

Unfortunately for chess (but fortunately for his bank balance), he retired from the game at an early age to pursue and utilize a Ph.D. in psychology; still, even in his relatively brief career, Fine produced many high-quality games. In his Lessons From My Games (p. 163), he even picks out his best game, a win with the White pieces against Czech great Salo Flohr, from the aforementioned AVRO tournament in 1938. Fine introduces the game as follows:

“No doubt opinion as to what is one's best game would differ considerably among the masters. In my own mind I have always stressed accuracy above everything else; whatever happens then flows naturally out of the position. In the following game Flohr made one slight error in the opening; I was able to exploit it to the fullest.”

It really is a brilliant game, lauded by no less an authority than Garry Kasparov (My Great Predecessors, vol. 4 page 34). I think you’ll enjoy our tribute to this great player, and those shopping around for an anti-Winawer system may find Fine’s opening choice of practical value as well. Hope to see you this Monday night! (9 p.m. ET)

Dennis Monokroussos is 38, lives in South Bend, IN (the site of the University of Notre Dame), and is writing a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy (in the philosophy of mind) while adjuncting at the University.

He is fairly inactive as a player right now, spending most of his non-philosophy time being a husband and teaching chess. At one time he was one of the strongest juniors in the U.S., but quit for about eight years starting in his early 20s. His highest rating was 2434 USCF, but he has now fallen to the low-mid 2300s – "too much blitz, too little tournament chess", he says.

Dennis has been working as a chess teacher for seven years now, giving lessons to adults and kids both in person and on the internet, worked for a number of years for New York’s Chess In The Schools program, where he was one of the coaches of the 1997-8 US K-8 championship team from the Bronx, and was very active in working with many of CITS’s most talented juniors.

When Dennis Monokroussos presents a game, there are usually two main areas of focus: the opening-to-middlegame transition and the key moments of the middlegame (or endgame, when applicable). With respect to the latter, he attempts to present some serious analysis culled from his best sources (both text and database), which he has checked with his own efforts and then double-checked with his chess software.

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