From Newsgroup: rec.games.chess.misc
The Horny Goat wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2025 18:44:00 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
If Capa's fees had been less steep he might have played Alekhine
earlier, in 25 or so, and most likely would have won. Alekhine kept
Capa's fees, which were even harder to raise in the depression.
Normally the prize fund was quoted in terms of X% for the winner Y%
for the loser so "Alekhine kept Cata's fees" isn't strictly true.
Under the London rules set up by Capablanca and agreed to by leading
players, including Alekhine, no champion was required to defend his
title for less than ten thousand dollars, plus expenses, and the prize
was to be split 60-40. Alekhine retained these terms when he was
champion. Of course the champion could defend for less if he chose.
The challenger had to raise the money. Alekhine raised ten grand US
with the help of South Americans. In the depression, Capa could not
raise the same amount.
Their last match negotiations were in 1938, but again Capablanca
couldn't raise the money. By this time he was out of favour in Cuba,
which would have made it even harder to raise the cash.
Bogolyubov also failed to raise 10k, but he did raise 6k and agreed that
this would go to Alekhine, win or lose. Thus the champion got exactly
the same fee as he would get if he won a 10k match, with no risk. This
is similar to the deal Kasparov should have cut with Shirov, if he was a person of honour.
If the challenger agreed to play for zero money that was his business,
and indeed Bogo made nothing from the match, and would have made nothing
even if he won.
The smallest prize fund was the one for Lasker-Schlechter because that
was all Schlecter could raise - and Austria wasn't a good place for
raising funds. Fundraising in that era was all about who got title
shots and who didn't.
Do you know the size of the prize fund? For the match with Tarrasch,
which was of full length, Lasker got 11,500 marks, according to Kasparov.
Marshall got a match for only a thousand dollars, but that was doubtless because Lasker knew he'd win that one.
Maroczy never got his match with Lasker, being unable to raise the 2500
required. He lost interest in chess and you can see his retrospective
rating drop significantly in a time when he should have been in his
prime, only to rise again when he decided he wanted to continue playing,
even if the championship was out of reach.
This also was one of two things that cost Kashdan his US title. He was
clearly stronger than Marshall in the early 1930s, but couldn't raise
the required five grand (or four grand, the Marshall club volunteered to
put up the last grand) in the depression. By the time Marshall finally
gave up the title Reshevsky and Fine were on the scene. And the only
time Kashdan outpaced those the title was stolen by an insane TD, of
course.
Reuben Fine was invited to the 1948 World Championship
Match-Tournament
Reshevsky, Fine, and Euwe were also invited to the 1950 candidates in Budapest. Cold war politics prevented this, but they were again invited
to the Zuricch 53 event. Reshevsky and Euwe accepted.
but declined as he was in a conflict between the M-T
and doing his psychiatric residency.
Actually he was finishing his PhD. in psychology. He never qualified as
a psychiatrist. That would have meant real work.
On balance I think he made the
right choice.
Of course he didn't. He became a Freudian psychologist and wrote all
kinds of nonsense. He was a visiting professor at several universities
but seems never to have been offered a tenure track position. He'd have
done the world far more good as a chess player, or for that matter a
dock worker.
Or as has been observed:
"When Fine switched his major interest from chess to psychoanalysis, the result was a loss for chessrCoand a draw, at best, for psychoanalysis.
Many psychologists, some Freudians included, now believe that the sexual symbolism in chess is vastly overdrawn."
Read his comments on Morphy and see if you can keep a straight face.
Reinfeld noted that while Fine recognized logical fallacies in the
arguments of others, and delighted in pointing them out, he happily
adopted the same fallacies if he thought he could get away with it.
A perfect psychologist, in other words.
And if he'd stayed in chess his later books wouldn't have been as bad as
they are. I've one of his books which is mostly written about 1948, and
is very good, with additions about 1975, which are terrible. I suspect
that income from books was very important to him.
William Hyde
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