April 17 1988
Retired Chess Champ Making a Comeback 17 Apr 1988, Sun The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) Newspapers.com
Arthur Dake
Retired chess champ making a comeback
NEW YORK - Arthur Dake was one of the hottest chess players of the 1930s. Now, at 78, Dake is out of retirement and playing as an international grandmaster, the highest-rated level for chess players.
Dake competed in the sixth annual New York International held March 21-30 at the Penta Hotel in Manhattan. In a field of 63 international grandmasters, he won two matches, lost five and drew two, a score observers say is surprisingly good for a player his age.
“My motto is to think young,” said Dake, a tall man with a sharp gaze, smooth bald head and long stride.
Dake was one of the foremost American players from 1929 to 1938, with a record bested only by Reuben Fine and Sammy Reshevsky, two world class players. In 1932, he was the first American to defeat the then world champion Alexander Alekhine, with whom he shared many nights of carousing in the nightclubs of chess tournament cities like Prague, Czechoslovakia, and Pasadena, Calif.
Carousing seems to have been one of his favorite pastimes. At 16 he was an apprentice seaman adventuring in the Far East. He began to play chess at 17 and two years later, in 1929, landed in this city, startling the chess world with his ability and self-assuredness.
He retired from professional chess in 1938 at 28 to get married, and moved to his hometown, Portland, Ore. At that time, even top international players could not support a family on chess winnings. He sold telephone directories, served in the Army, worked in shipyards and did not play serious chess for the next 35 years.
In 1973 he retired after 27 years as a driving instructor at Oregon's Department of Motor Vehicles and began to compete again, defeating several strong young players.
“I wanted to see how much spark I had left to challenge these other, younger players,” he said.
The current rating systems were not in effect when he was a professional, and it was not until 1986 that he was awarded grandmaster status by the International Chess Federation, based on his level of play 50 years ago.
“It simply shows how good he really was,” said Edmar Mednis, an international grandmaster who was observing but not competing in the tournament.
