Reuben Fine
| Reuben Fine | |
|---|---|
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| Full name | Reuben Fine |
| Country | United States |
| Born |
October 11, 1914 New York City |
| Died | March 26, 1993 (aged 78) New York City |
| Title | Grandmaster |
Reuben Fine (October 11, 1914 – March 26, 1993) was an American chess grandmaster, psychologist, university professor, and author of many books on both chess and psychology. He was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the mid 1930s into the early 1950s.
Fine won five medals (four gold) in three chess Olympiads. Fine won the U.S. Open Chess Championship all seven times he entered (1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1939, 1940, 1941). He was the author of several chess books that are still popular today, including important books on the endgame, opening, and middlegame.
He earned a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1932. After World War II, he earned his doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California. He served as a university professor, and wrote many successful books on psychology.
Fine was regarded as a serious contender for the World Chess Championship. Initially accepting his invitation to participate in the six-player 1948 World Championship, which was organized to determine the World Champion after the 1946 death of reigning champion Alexander Alekhine, he withdrew on the eve of the tournament, citing professional commitments, and virtually retired from serious competition around that time, although he did play a few events before exiting in 1951.
Fine was born in New York City to a poor Russian-Jewish family. He learned to play chess at the age of eight, and began tournament-level chess at the famous Marshall Chess Club in New York City, stomping grounds for many famous grandmasters, such as Bobby Fischer later on. At this stage of his career, Fine played a great deal of blitz chess, and he eventually became one of the best blitz players in the world. Even in the early 1930s, he could nearly hold his own in blitz chess against the then world chess champion Alexander Alekhine, although Fine admitted that the few times he played blitz with Alekhine's predecessor José Raúl Capablanca, the latter beat him "mercilessly".
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