The USA vs. USSR radio chess match 1945 was a

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

match between the United States and the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

that was conducted over the radio from September 1 to September 4, 1945. The ten leading masters of the United States played the ten leading masters of the Soviet Union (except for

Paul Keres Paul Keres (; 7 January 1916 – 5 June 1975) was an Estonian chess grandmaster and chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, and narrowly missed a chance at a World Chess Championship match on five ...

) for chess supremacy. The match was played by radio and was a two-game head-to-head match between the teams. The

time control A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed. Time controls are typically enforced by means of a game clock, ...

was 40 moves in hours and 16 moves per hour after that. Moves were transmitted using the Uedemann Code. It took an average of 5 minutes to transmit a move. The US team played at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York. The Soviet team met at the Central Club of Art Masters in Moscow. The USSR team won the match –. This result was met with astonishment around the chess world, since the USA had won four straight

Chess Olympiads The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 and ...

from 1931 to 1937; however, the Soviet Union had not competed in those tournaments. The Soviet program for producing a new generation of chess masters, originated and supervised by

Nikolai Krylenko Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko ( rus, Никола́й Васи́льевич Крыле́нко, p=krɨˈlʲenkə; May 2, 1885 – July 29, 1938) was an Old Bolshevik and Soviet politician. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Sovie ...

from the early 1930s, clearly was paying dividends. From 1945 onwards, Soviet players would dominate international chess for most of the rest of the 20th century. The radio match proved a watershed and a changing of the guard in the chess world . Other radio matches took place around this time.

The matchups

The matchup and results are in this table. Scores are from a Soviet point of view: "1" for a Soviet win, "0" for an American win and "½" for a drawn game. Nine of ten Americans and six of ten Soviets were Jewish. The match featured most of the leading players in the world: including the first, second and equal third placegetters at the 1948 World Championship (Botvinnik, Smyslov, Reshevsky); Fine, who declined his invitation to the 1948 Championship; and the top two placegetters in the 1950 Candidates tournament (Bronstein and Boleslavsky).

Reserve players

The following players were reservists in the U.S. team, to be called on, in the order given, if any of the primary team are unable to compete:

Alexander Kevitz Alexander Kevitz (September 1, 1902 – October 24, 1981) was an American chess master. Kevitz also played correspondence chess, and was a creative chess analyst and theoretician. He was a pharmacist by profession. Early life Kevitz was born in ...

, Robert Willman, Jacob Levin,

George Shainswit George Shainswit (January 3, 1918 – September 5, 1997) was a leading American chess player. He played various tournaments including five U.S. Chess Championships. Biography George Shainswit was born in New York City, United States on January ...

, Weaver W. Adams,

Edward Lasker Edward Lasker (born Eduard Lasker) (December 3, 1885 – March 25, 1981) was a German-American chess and Go player. He was awarded the title of International Master of chess by FIDE. Lasker was an engineer by profession, and an author of ...

Fred Reinfeld Fred Reinfeld (January 27, 1910 – May 29, 1964) was an American writer on chess and many other subjects. He was also a strong chess master, often among the top ten American players from the early 1930s to the early 1940s, as well as a college ...

, Edward S. Jackson, Jr., Samuel Factor, and Martin C. Stark. The Soviet reserves were:

Alexander Konstantinopolsky Alexander Markovich Konstantinopolsky (russian: Александр Маркович Константинопольский; 19 February 1910 – 21 September 1990) was a Soviet chess player, trainer and writer. He was a five-time champion of Ki ...

Vitaly Chekhover Vitaly Alexandrovich Chekhover (also spelled Tschechower or Czechower, pronounced "chekh a VYAIR") (russian: Вита́лий Алекса́ндрович Чехове́р) (December 22, 1908 – February 11, 1965) was a Soviet chess player and ch ...

, Iosif Rudakovsky, and

Peter Romanovsky Peter Arsenievich Romanovsky (russian: Пётр Арсеньевич Романо́вский; 29 July 1892 – 1 March 1964) was a Russian chess player and author. He won the Soviet Championship in 1923 and, jointly, 1927. Biography At the begi ...

Other radio matches

* Moscow vs. Leningrad, March 1941 * USSR vs. England, 18-6, 1946 * Australia vs. France, -4½, 1946 * Spain vs. Argentina, 8-7, 1946 . The USSR also won these matches: * USSR vs. United Kingdom, 1947 * USSR vs. United Kingdom, 1954 * USSR vs. United States, 1954 * USSR vs. United States, 1955 .

Notes

References

* * {{citation , last1=Hooper , first1=David , author-link=David Vincent Hooper , last2=Whyld , first2=Kenneth , author-link2=Kenneth Whyld , title=The Oxford Companion to Chess , year=1992 , edition=2nd , contribution = radio match , publisher=Oxford University Press , isbn=978-0-19-280049-7 , title-link=The Oxford Companion to Chess Chess competitions History of chess 1945 in chess Chess in the United States Chess in the Soviet Union Soviet Union–United States relations 1945 in American sports 1945 in Soviet sport 1945 in radio September 1945 sports events in Europe Correspondence chess Radio hobbies

The matchups

Reserve players

Other radio matches

See also

Notes

References