A Fine Draw

Reuben Fine was born in New York City on October 11, 1914.  He learned to play chess from his uncle in 1923 at the age of 8.  He began tournament level chess at the Marshall Chess Club.  He won the 15th Marshall Chess Club Championship in 1931.  He was one of the best players in the world from the mid 1930s to the early 1940s.  Fine won the U.S. Open all seven times he entered (1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1939, 1940, and 1941).   At age 17, he won his first of seven US Open Chess Championships in 1932.  He drew with Reshevsky in the final round to score half a point ahead of Reshevsky.  The tournament was then known as the Western Open and was held in Minneapolis.  This final round drawn game by perpetual check is featured here.  He represented the U.S. in three chess Olympiads, winning the team gold all three times, with one board silver and one board gold.  Fine never won a U.S. championship.  In 1935, he made his first international tournament appearance in Hastings.  He came in first without losing a game.  In 1938, he tied with Paul Keres for first place in the AVRO tournament in the Netherlands.  During World War II, he turned to chess writing.  In 1941 he wrote Basic Chess Endings, recently updated by Pal Benko.  In 1943, he wrote, Ideas Behind the Openings.  During World War II, he worked for the U.S. navy calculating the probability of German U-boats surfacing.  He later did research on Japanese kamikaze attacks.  He was also a translator who could speak French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Yiddish, and German.  After the war, he obtained a doctorate in psychology and became a psychoanalyst.  He was also invited to play in the World Chess Championship tournament in 1948, but declined to play.  In 1950, he was named an International Grandmaster.  The first USCF rating list in 1950 had him as the highest rated player at 2817.  He died at the age of 79 on March 26, 1993.  He took first place in 23 of 27 important events in his chess career.  He was the only player to have a total plus score in his games against world champions without being a world champion himself.  He had plus scores against Lasker (one win), Alekhine (3 wins, 2 losses, 3 draws), and Botvinnik(1 win, 2 draws).  He had even records against Capablanca (5 draws) and Euwe (2 wins, 2 losses).  Reuben Fine was married five times.

In this game, Fine only needed a draw, but may have missed a winning move earlier.  He won the Western Open (US Open) at age 17 in this game br drawing Reshevsky in the final round.  Fine scored 9.5 out of 11.  Reshevsky score 9.  Fred Reinfeld scored 8.5, including a win from Reshevsky.