 Given all the nationalities present at the tournament and the information presented in the article, which nationality would be most likely to win?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The large hall was crammed with energetic dark-suited men of whom a disproportionately large number were bald, wore glasses, were faintly untidy and indefinably shabby, had Slavic or Scandinavian features, and talked foreign languages. Chess sets were everywhere—big ones on tables, still bigger diagram-type electric ones on walls, small peg-in sets dragged from side pockets and manipulated rapidly as part of the conversational ritual and still smaller folding sets in which the pieces were the tiny magnetized disks used for playing in free-fall. The many clocks, bedside table size, would have struck a familiar note except that they had little red flags and wheels sprinkled over their faces and they were all in pairs, two clocks to a case. That Siamese-twin clocks should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance. Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding the first American manned circum-lunar satellite—and the five alternate pairs who hadn't made the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandra much further out of the world. Samples: "They say the Machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barcza System and Indian Defenses—and the Dragon Formation if anyone pushes the King Pawn." In that case...." "The Russians have come with ten trunkfuls of prepared variations and they'll gang up on the Machine at adjournments. "Why, the Machine hasn't even a Haupturnier or an intercollegiate won. "Yes, but maybe like Capa at San Sebastian or Morphy or Willie Angler at New York. "Have you studied the scores of the match between Moon Base and Circum-Terra?" How wonderful it would be, she dreamed, to walk out this minute, find a quiet bar and get pie-eyed in an evil, ladylike way. But in sharp contrast to the somberly clad men around them, he was wearing a pearl-gray suit of almost exactly the same shade as Sandra's—a circumstance that created for her the illusion that they were fellow conspirators. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them. "You know nothing whatsoever of chess—so you will be able to write about it understandably for your readers."
 Russian
 Russian  Hungarian  French  American