A WONDER CHILD.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3463, 17 April 1920, Page 2

A WONDER CHILD.

BABY CHESS PLAYER.

TVVENTY SIMULTANEOUS GAMES

This tiny-Polisll—Je\v “chess wonder child,” as the GP-l'lTlllllS call him, who is taking on all the best pla_vel‘s of Berlin at once. and beating them is. a. most 1-eniark-able atom (writes G. Ward Price in the LolldOll D2111)‘ Express) . I spent‘ last evening at the rooms of the Berlin Chess Society, which prides itself on being the chess club with the highest standard of play in Europe, and watched the I_»henomen-.11 frail little thing play 20 of the best chess exponents of Germany simultaneously~a. task that is normally .«.:_- tempted only by inusters of the gzime. He lost one of the games and drew about three. The rest he won.

It Was a positively uncanny sight. There" the little fellow was In :1 sort of pen, made up of .21, ring of tables on the opposife sicle of which sat‘ his 20 opponents. I-le——--11001‘ little chapcould not even sit. he had to walk from board to board all the time, and he stood continually.

And behind the players in a dense crowd’ stood about. 200 spectators, craning their necks to catcll a glimpse of the_“w4onder-child,” as ‘if he were :1. curious specimen in a bottle. which, indeed_, is rather what he looks like. It would have tried a. Stoic philosopher, with all those -huge forms bending over him, like ogres feasting their eyes on a dwarf.

DOESN’T WANT TO SEE BOARD. But little Samuel Reschevski flid not seem to know they were there. He dropped his thin little‘ arms on the table edge, in front of him, and fixed his dreamy eyes on the tboard, Occasionally he would raise them and peer fixecletlly into his'opponellf"s face. as if to read his ‘rhollgh‘.'Es.

And they are extraordiliary eyessclellm, profound, full of a sort. of wezu-iness, as if they had looked deeply upon many things. The soul cf what. old dead-and-gone chess-master lives in this bady hood‘? With swift decision the .'tiny white hand shoots out, grasps a heavy chessman. ..-incl moves it in a flash. Then, like :1 docile child turning to a. new ‘plaything, Samuel addresses himself to the next board, and the doomed, bulging little head is bowed over .a problem which it is resolving at the time as twenty others.

He is rather a pretty little l.m'_'.-3 with a tiny round, fat. face, but so very, very small. His uncle says he is eight, he looks ufive. He speaks only Yiddish, and his life is entirely made up of chess, which he learnt from his father. No particular ability seems ever to have existed in his family, but his uncles were wellkuown for their elaborate knowledge of the Talmud.

He can play the most complicated game without even seeing the board, carrying all the moves in his head. and he can remember and reconstruct the most co-mplicated game in every detail days afterwards.

“Where is Lasker?” is the only question he asks strangers who try to talk with him. He has heard that Lasker is ‘the best player in the world and he wants to meet, him_ His other anxuselnents are riding on merry-go-rounds, and sleeping. He sleeps tremendously, and presuma‘bly it is owing to this that his amazing« 1y over-developed brain does not wear out the frail little body.