Samuel Reshevsky
American chess player
Samuel Herman Reshevsky (born Szmul Rzeszewski; November 26, 1911 – April 4, 1992) was a Polish chess prodigy and later a leading American chess grandmaster. He was a contender for the World Chess Championship from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s. He tied for third place in the 1948 World Chess Championship tournament, tied for second in the 1953 Candidates tournament, and was a Candidate as late as 1968. He was an eight-time winner of the US Chess Championship, tying him with Bobby Fischer for the all-time record.
He was an accountant by profession, and also a chess writer.
Early life, early chess exhibition and competition
Reshevsky was born at Ozorków near Łódź, Congress Poland, to a Jewish family. He learned to play chess at age four and was soon acclaimed as a child prodigy. At age eight, he was beating many accomplished players with ease and giving simultaneous exhibitions.
In November 1920, his parents moved to the United States to make a living by publicly exhibiting their child's talent. Reshevsky played thousands of games in exhibitions all over the US. He played in the 1922 New York Masters tournament; at that stage, he was likely the youngest player ever to have competed in a strong tournament; in it, he defeated former World Championship match contender David Janowski.
“Samuel Reshevsky” enters the record as american chess player. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Samuel, Reshevsky and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Samuel Reshevsky” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Samuel, Reshevsky and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q311737. VIAF identifies the subject as 34962128. The Library of Congress control number is n50043976. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1992, 1948 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Samuel Reshevsky” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.