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When Grandmaster Arnold Denker, U.S. Champion from 1944 – 46, died on January 2, 2005, at age 90, I lost a long-time political enemy. And a very dear friend.
How did two political enemies stay friends? Arnold and I entertained a common passion for what Fred Reinfeld once called “the bright side of chess” in a book of the same title. He knew about my fascination with New York chess during the 1930s, which would later lead to our collaborating on an award-winning book (see below), and he appreciated my capacity to listen to his stories and then frequently correct their contents. On one memorable afternoon in Philadelphia, we sat in a deli and talked about nothing except the lives of his long dead friends for three or four hours. Arnold craved those moments. So did I. And here is the story behind, I believe, our personal, if not political, compatibility. DENKER THE CHESS PLAYERTo begin with, it was impossible for any chess lover not to appreciate GM Denker’s super-aggressive approach to our game. His playing career spanned three quarters of a century from 1929 to 2002, was renowned not only for American domestic tournament successes but also for a tempestuous attacking style filled with risky sacrifices. His 15½ - 1½ total in the 1944 U.S. Championship, a 91 percent result, is second in U.S. title history only to Bobby Fischer’s 11-zip sweep in 1963 – 64. In the late 1930s, Al Horowitz wrote of his friend’s play, “The attack is both his strength and his weakness. He can handle an attack with a fertility of ideas and richness of imagination that are rare. Yet frequently he tries to attack where defense is necessary.” To which GM Denker responded feistily, “P.S. I still like to attack. If this be treason, then make the most of it.” Arnold worked hard at the chess master’s trade in the early to mid-1930s because opponents did indeed “make the most of it” when he donated material. His results were studded with dreary crosstables and glittering brilliancy prizes. In the 1936 U.S. Championship, he tallied 6 – 9 to finish 11th – 12th, tanking badly against the top half of the tournament (½ - 7½). But he won the first brilliancy prize. When Arnold and I later collaborated on The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories, a memoir that won the U. S. Chess Federation’s “Book of the Year” award in 1996, he explained why he improved his results after the 1936 title fiasco. “I could feel my pain” was how he put it. He knew the critics of his style were right, and he honed the Queen’s Gambit into a dangerous and sound Kingside attacking weapon. As Black, he revived the Tarrasch Defense to that same opening, while against 1.e4, he conducted the Sicilian Defense in the modern counter-attacking spirit. Arnold quickly climbed the American chess ladder, finishing 6th – 7th and 3rd – 4th in, respectively, the 1940 and 1942 U.S. Championships. The latter result would undoubtedly have been still better but for an astounding incident in a game with Sammy Reshevsky. Denker stood at 4½ - ½, and Reshevsky’s flag fell in time pressure. The tournament director picked up the clock, turned it around so that Reshevsky’s clock-face was on Arnold’s side, and forfeited … Arnold. “I played the remainder of the tournament … like a squashed cabbage leaf,” he later wrote.
In 1946, Arnold had his most active year in
chess. He played in Hastings (3rd-5th), the London
“Victory” International (3rd), and Groningen (10th –
12th, tied with Kotov and Tartakower). He was somewhere among
the top 20 players in the world. The American habit of living well by doing business then took over. Arnold raised a family (two sons and a daughter), got rich in meat-packing, and competed only sporadically thereafter. He became known as a chess personality, serving as America’s FIDE zonal president from 1983 to 1991 and manning analysis tables in the pressrooms of several world championships. In 1988 he became the first grandmaster to lose a match, ½ - 3½, against a computer; and in 1995, at age 81, he finished sixth in the U. S. Open. MEETING ARNOLD DENKERMy first meeting with Arnold Denker back in 1983 was simultaneously exciting and deflating. We ended up getting along fabulously. Arnold was visiting Seattle, Washington, with his beautiful wife Nina, who had done radio and movie work in the 1930s and 40s. Robert Karch, a local chess organizer and a future USCF secretary, asked if I wished to meet the great man, and I reverentially toted along my copy of If You Must Play Chess, his book of best games published in 1947. “What’s this? A British edition?” Arnold asked in booming Noi Yawkese as he autographed the book without my asking. “They never told me about it. I’ll have to ask them for royalties.” All of this, and we had not yet said hello, though he had slapped me on the back with the force of someone who had once been a boxer and a fight manager. When I asked for his favorite game, Arnold replied without a second’s hesitation, “That’s easy.” But it was neither his brilliant and famous win against Reuben Fine, the game that gave him the U.S. title, nor several other attacking efforts against the best and brightest. It was a game against a “nobody,” the very first in the book. “How could that be his best game?” I asked myself. I felt cheesed off. Fobbed off. I did not understand Arnold’s uncompromising chess values. “When asked to name their favorite games,” GM Lev Alburt once wrote, “99 grandmasters out of 100 select victories over famous adversaries with little regard for the intrinsic value of the wins. Denker is different …. [H]is favorite achievement is a game played at age 15. None of his other games, he claims, ‘can compare with this one for absolute purity and charm’”:
W: Arnold Denker B: Harold Feit (Notes abbreviated from GM Denker’s If You Must Play Chess)
Arnold noticed the disappointed expression on my hero-worshipping face because he had selected a game from a high school tournament. “But that’s how my buddy Najdorf played when he was young!” he exclaimed.
If you must meet Arnold Denker, I surely
did it in the very best way. For it was the beginning of a beautiful
friendship – as someone far more eminent than I once said in Casablanca. The author,
Larry Parr is currently living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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