I just had a quick read through of Chess Life's article on the "Reshevsky Centenary", and am finding a lot of the little factual errors that seem to pervade Chess Life articles these days. Here's a short list of what I spotted on just a quick read-through.


1) p. 41. For one thing, it's not the Reshevsky Centennial at all. The adult Reshevsky made little secret of the fact that he was actually born in 1909, and his handlers claimed it as 1911 to make his child prodigy exploits seem more impressive. This fact has been reported in the same magazine previously.

2) p. 41. Reshevsky won the US Championship 8 times, not 6.

3) p. 42. "You can shoot, I can play." Never heard it told that way before. Every other account of this story that I've heard has reported that Sammy said "You play war, I play chess."

4) p. 45. "In April and May of 1936, the very first U.S. Championship was held in New York City." That should in fact say "very first U.S. championship TOURNAMENT". But even that isn't technically true, it's only the first tournament in the current series. Showalter got his title by being the top American finisher at New York 1889, I believe, but defended it in matches afterwards.

5) p. 45. Despite the article's assurances, Simonson did NOT in fact beat Reshevsky in the 1936 U.S. Championship. Reshevsky's two losses were to Horowitz and Bernstein, not Horowitz and Simonson.

6) p. 45. "Fine had to settle for third." Well, a tie for 3rd, anyway. A nitpick, but worth mentioning.

7) p. 47. "In the next few years [after 1951], old rivals like Denker and new guns like Larry Evans and Art Bisguier win the [US] title." Denker did not win the title in the years after 1951. His two titles were in 1944 and 1946.

8) p. 47. "Sammy won [the US title] again in 1957 after a playoff match that kept Bisguier from repeating." No idea what this is talking about. Reshevsky did not win the US Title in 1957, Fischer did. Reshevsky did win a 10 game match from Bisguier earlier that year, but the title wasn't on the line. But if you want to count that somehow, then his title total would be 9, not 6. No idea what "playoff match" he's referring to.

9) p. 49. "Fischer would play in and win his last U.S. Championship in 1967..." Nope. It concluded on December 29, 1966.

10) p. 49. "...collecting a seventh title." No, it was Fischer's eighth title. How could any American chess magazine get this wrong??

11) p. 40. "In 1969, drawing close to 60, Reshevsky won his sixth - and last [US title]." It was neither his sixth, nor his last. Reshevsky's titles were in 1936, 1938, 1940, 1941 (the match with Horowitz), 1942 (tied with Kashdan, later won a playoff), 1946, 1969, and 1972 (tied with Byrne and Kavalek, but lost a playoff 9 months later in 1973, when only two of them could get into the Interzonal).

12) p. 49. "At the 1971 Interzonal in Palma de Mallorca..." As is well known, this tournament was in 1970. But it was played in Palma, so give them some credit.

13) p. 49-50. "[Fischer and Reshevsky] had played their first [game] in 1956, when Sammy prevailed, and won the 3rd Rosenwald Memorial." Not a memorial tournament. Rosenwald was the sponsor, very much alive, and sponsored all the US Championships from this point on until 1969, before dying in 1979.

14) p. 52. "Nearing 90, he gave a simultaneous exhibition..." That should say "Nearing 80."

Taken in isolation, a couple of these might be mere nitpicks, but added together, this is a LOT of factual errors for such a short article. And these are just ones I spotted on a quick read through. Who knows how many I missed? Anything I wasn't sure of one way or the other, I just assumed that the article got it right. I often use older Chess Life articles as source material for facts and figures. Up through the Burt Hochberg years (which ended in 1979!), you were pretty safe doing so. But since 1980-ish, this kind of thing has happened far too often to be able to take the magazine without a salt shaker handy.

Several incidents that are told basically correctly, are oddly condensed. They tell the L. Walter Stephens incident without even mentioning the famous Kennesaw Mountain Landis comment, or the fact that Reshevsky ducked out of the room, saying "It's not my decision", when Denker appealed to him for help. Page 47 comments that "Reshesky was still seen as the player to beat west of the "Iron Curtain"." without making any mention at all of his "Championship of the Western Hemisphere" title, won in the matches with Najdorf, and promoted by Chess Life all the way up to the time that Fischer won his second US title. No mention of Reshevsky's unbeaten match string either, or the fact that the 1968 match with Korchnoi (which is mentioned) was his first ever match defeat. You used to never be able to read an article about Reshevsky without that match record being mentioned.

On the positive side, there are stories here that I hadn't heard before. I didn't realize that Sammy once got a poke in the eye from Uncle Fester.

Good Grief. It is amazing that there were that many factual errors at minimum in a short article. How hard could it have been to look a few of those up? I mean, number of championships, date of birth.....etc. Those should have been easy to fix. It appear there was a failure at the editor's level as well.

How is Chess Life as a publication these days? (not the aforementioned article withstanding). I would like to support the USCF, but don't need piles of drivel filling up my coffee table either.

Read an article that Nakamura is mentoring with Kasparov now. Hpoefully that will be as successful as it was for Carlsen.

I didn't notice the many factual errors, as I was ignorant of most of them. I did notice that the article was rather shallow and uninspired. There's not many important games by Reshevsky, and there are too many photos for my taste.

COP, save your money. Piles of drivel is exactly what you will get.