A Century of Chess: New York 1931

There's a special corner in chess heaven that looks exactly like this — Capablanca just cruising through a field with elegant play and in a class all by himself. It's been a little while since we've had a scene like this, and it's nice to go back to a point of origin — Capa in New York, where he had had so many triumphs, now playing against a new generation and achieving the same kind of result (nine wins and two draws out of eleven games).

Look a little closer at the games, though, and his victory comes across as slightly hollow. He was completely lost against Dake and maybe Kevitz and somehow managed to win in the endgame. He blundered a whole piece in the opening against Herman Steiner and nonetheless drew in 21 moves. In many of his games he was winning through some combination of luck, intimidation, and late-career witchcraft, but then there were also games of consummate mastery. It's very possible that the ending of Raymond Chandler's The High Window refers to his game against Horowitz from this tournament. It reads as follows:

"It was night. I went home and put my old house clothes on and set the chessmen out and mixed a drink and played over another Capablanca. It went 59 moves. Beautiful cold remorseless chess, almost creepy in its silent implacability." 

American chess was actually just on the verge of entering something of a Golden Age, and a few new faces emerged in this tournament: Arthur Dake, a merchant seaman who appeared seemingly out of nowhere as one of the most talented players America has ever had; Alexander Kevitz, who would be a mainstay of American chess for decades with several opening lines named after him; and Herman Steiner, who would, essentially, found high-quality West Coast chess. But if Capablanca gave the impression of a strongman hitting the carnival bell smoothly in just about every tournament he played in, Isaac Kashdan earned his nickname "the little Capablanca" from results like this one, cruising through the field with +6-0=5 in an altogether excellent imitation of Capablanca. 

Sources: Miquel Sanchez discusses the tournament from Capablanca's perspective in José Raúl Capablanca: A Chess Biography. Tartajubow writes on it here. Edward Winter reprints a letter Kevitz wrote on his loss to Capablanca here and discusses the possibility of the Horowitz being the game in The High Window here.