REMARKABLE ATOM.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 12074, 10 June 1920, Page 7

REMARKABLE ATOM.

OHESS CHAMPION AT EIGHT. This tiny Polish-Jewish ''chess i wonder child," as the Germans call j him, who taking on uil the best I players of Berlin at once and beating ' them, is a moat remarkable atom, j writes U Ward Price in the Loudon . Daily Express. j I spent las; evening at ti e rooms ;of the Berlin Chess Society, which i prides itself on being the chess club ' with the higiieaS standard of play in I Europe, and, watched the phenomenal ! frail little thing play 20 of the best j chess exponents of Germany siruulI taneously—a tas-i that is normally I attempted only by masters of the | game. He lost one of thegarn.es and drew about three. The rest he won. lb was a positively uncanny sight. There the little fellow was in a sort j of pen, mane up of a ring of tables, on the opposite side of which sat his 20 opponents. He—poor little chap!—could not even sit; he had to walk from board to board all the time, and he stood continually, Asd. behind tb9 "layers, in a dei3e6 crowd, stood about 200 spectators, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the wonder child, as if he were a curious specimen in a bottle, winch, indeed, is rather what he looks like. It would have tried a Stoic philosopher, with ail these huge forms bending over him, like ogres feasting their eyes oh a dwarf. But little Samuel Reuchevaki did nofcs : :- j to know they were there. He dr ied bis thin little arms on the ta v.- edge in front of him, and fixed i ..) dreamy eyes on the board. Occasi :ally he would raise them and p i i fixedly iato his opponent's face, if to read his thoughts. And ney are extraordinary eyes—solem . profound, fall of a sort of weari s, as if tt:ey had looked deeply pon many things. The soul of wh old dead and gone chess mastei ves in this babyhooc? With swift ision the tiny white hand shoot , cut, grasps a heavy chessman, a.m moves it in a flash, Then, like a docile child turning to a new plaything, Samuel addresss himself to the next board, and the doomed, bulging little head is bowing over a problem which it is resolving at the same time as 20 others. He is iather a pretty little boy, with a tiny, round, fat face ; but so very small. His uncle says he is ei«ht; lie looks five. He speaks only Yiddish, and his life is entirely made up of chess, which he learni from his father. No particular ability seems ever to have existed in his family, but his uncles were well known for their elaborate knowledge of the Talmud. Hb can play the most complicated game without evou seeing the board and he can remember and reconstruct the rr-ost complicated game ir. every detail afterwards. "Where is Lasker?" is the only question he asks strangers who try to talk to him. Ho has heard that Lasker is the best player in the world, and he wants to meet him. His other amusements are riding on merry-go-rounds and sleeping. He sleeps tremendously, and presumably it is owing to this that his amazingly over developed brain does not wear out the frail little body.