Evening star., 1942-11-22
By Paul J. Miller.

| rel I'D pS llleIe Will IlOC De Ine usual
District championship tournament
this winter. Rumor has it that way.
In the green game room of the
Washington Chess Divan at Park
side Hotel on I street, there is in
progress a really strong tourney-tar
stronger. exceedingly more important
and with an entry field of greater
distinction and prestige than any
District championship tournament
has enjoyed in the last four decades.
Today comes the bad news that
former District champion, Donald H.
Mugridge, is forced to withdraw from
match play upon the advice of his
physician. Mugridge is president of
the Divan and also holds the club
title for which nine ace players are
competing.
Leading the field is Reuben Fine,
one of the greatest and most popular
of world grandmasters. His name
on the players list insures the uni
versal respect of chess authorities.
Next is Albert w. Fox, local attor-
ney, onetime European newspaper
correspondent, globe trotter, and
known to the oldtimers as a brilliant
master and a United States repre-
sentative in Anglo-American cable
tournaments. Then comes Oscar
Shapiro, quiet in manner but foe
man so deadly that he has held
simultaneously the city Of Boston
title and the Massachusetts, cham
pionship.
Ariel Mengarini, born at Rome,
Italy, a naturalized American, Is
tall, lanky, with jet-black eyes, pen
sive and penetrating. When scarcely
20 years old he shared the District
crown, has written an unpublished
manuscript on chess and mathe-
mates and will be a doctor of medi-
cine two years hence. Henry Rous-
seau of Georgia, not so much the
book player as the master OF tactics
and attack, onetime champion OF
Capital City Chess Club-he is the
type of player you may not trif1e
with, for a single slip spells disaster.
Intellectual, suave, ever the
courteous knight is dark-haired,
olive skinned Luis Neftai Ponce,
diplomat from Ecuador, little
Napoleon on the chessboard and
onetime holder of the District cham
pionship. Within a velvet glove he
carries mail fist that is capable of
Fer-de-lance fury in positional play.
Coolly planning his opening
H.;
the scientific concentration he gives
to traffic problem. or clover-leaf
motorists nightmare, Martin c.
Stark believes haste makes waste
and SCOTS at blitzkrieg as by COM
mando tactics he carries on war of
attrition, chopping his adversary
into bits with the calculating pre-
cision of Steinitz. A Harvard
varsity player. onetime District
champion, Stark now intersperses
formal chess with bridge-a beguil-
ing device that often lures the un-
wary into deadly pitfalls from which
no Rommel may escape.S
More the theoretician and strate-
gist than the cautious scientist, gift
ed with a brilliant mind for combi-
nation and traps, long experienced
and world renowned for his problem
themes Is Vincent Lanius Eaton,
present District champion. sometime
problem editor of American Chess
Bulletin and Chess Review, Amer
ica's most outstanding chess period
icals. Eaton plays match chess for
the fun of it: his heart is wrapped
in theory while his mind ingeniously
conceives bottomless traps and COM
bination plays baited with willy
stratagems. This 26-year-old world
famous problem composer was grad
uated from Harvard University,
cum laude." when only 18.
4 Debonnaire, world sophisticate,
lover Of good books-and the author
of some-William E. Napier, insur-
ance analyst, statistician, pragmatic
I In his subtle approach to Caissa's
treasurer, skyrocketed In his youth
as an unknown American player to
carve q niche for himself in New
York's galaxy Of kleiner meisters
and stepped across the Atlantic to
annex the British chess champion
ship-a feat that has probably been
duplicated by only one other Ameri-
can. Napier is foxy, clever, will
deliberately scheme to force his
opponent to battle on two fronts
and then knife him on q third by a
coup de grace. As one Of the games
! outstanding gentleman masters hts
name alone does honor to any tour
!. nament.
These are the masters-every one
n