A Century of Chess: Hastings 1935/6
With his victory at the annual Hastings Christmas tournament, Reuben Fine now joins our merry band of top-level talent. Fine, born in 1914 in the Bronx, epitomized the American ‘straphanger’ style. Opening theory and endgame theory were both de emphasized — Fine would claim that he never read a single chess book before becoming a master — and all that mattered was middlegame tactics, a cool head, and ‘the shot’ that could change the positional balance. Fine was one of the greatest talents ever, and it all came to him with no discernible effort, through his skittles play in the Manhattan and Marshall Chess Clubs. He had emerged in the first rank of American players but struggled at Pasadena 1932. Hastings was his first trip abroad and he immediately unseated Flohr as Hastings champion and took his place among the world’s elite.
The first-round Flohr-Fine game is the centerpiece of the tournament and one of the more arresting fighting games in chess history. Flohr, who had become a dry positional player, reverted to old ways and launched an attack. Fine kept holding the delicate balance. By the critical position on move 25, four pieces were en prise and the position was like a medieval fortress of pins and traps and hidden tactics. For months after the game, submissions would pour in to chess magazines from around the world about how Flohr could have won. But the real lesson here was psychological. Fine had gotten to a worse position and deserved to lose, but he kept his head in the game and, even with Flohr finding one ingenious trick after the other, Fine stayed right with him and his nerve held out.
The win seemed to be all that Fine needed. He went +5-0=3 the rest of the way, outpacing Flohr who had the same score.
For Flohr it must have been difficult to end his streak of four straight Hastings wins — and that in a year when a different player, likely objectively weaker, became world champion. But it’s really a treat playing over his wins from this tournament. There was a ‘Moscow winter’ approach to his play _ just kind of gliding along in the backcourt for the early middlegame while an opponent gradually overextended himself and then suddenly playing in the spaces that an opponent had gifted him. His …a5, …Ra6, …Qa8 maneuver in the Michell game is a thing of beauty as the …Kf8, …Kg8, …Rh7, …Kh8, …Rg8 maneuver against Alexander. You could call what he’s doing Nimzowitschean with the hoarding of kinetic energy and the willingness to play on the wings, but his play was more fluid and common-sensical than anything in Nimzowitsch.
This Hastings iteration was a bit weaker than previous years. The aging Tartakower and the Belgian master Koltanowski made up the rest of the international field, but they were strong enough to stay ahead of the Britishers. Tartakower’s win against William Winter showcases his style — finding a knockout blow out of a skirmishing game.
Sources: Reuben Fine's Lessons from My Games is, unfortunately, not currently available online. Alexander Kotov discusses the Flohr-Fine game in Think Like a Grandmaster.
