December 1964 'On the Cover'

As I round out the monthly look at chess in the USA for 1964, I can't help but notice that Chess Life had only 20 pages in December 1964 vs. an average of more than 26 for the preceding 11 months. Was this because 'The USCF's annual rating list will appear in the January issue'? Chess Review continued with a steady 36 pages per issue.

Left: 'Happy Chess in '65'
Right: 'Coming Back?'

Chess Life

[No additional info]

Chess Review

"Is Botvinnik really invincible? No, indeed: no man is. Botvinnik is not invincible, but he plays as if he were", wrote the late Fred Reinfeld. And, though his statement applied to the period of the '20's through the '40's, it came to life again in October of 1964, during the Moscow Team Matches.

Although no source was given for the images on the Chess Life cover, they appear to have been taken from Jerzy Gizycki's 'A History of Chess'. The large woodcut, subtitled 'from an Italian treatise of 1493', can be found on p.19 of the English edition (Abbey Library, London, 1972, 'first published in 1960 in Polish'). The smaller illustrations, by S. Luckiewicz, are from the book's title page for each chapter.

As for my question from November 1964 'On the Cover',

Let's see when our two magazines report on the 1964 Olympiad.

CL had three pages on the event, including games. CR had a column on the preliminaries, illustrated with a photo from the 1963 Petrosian - Botvinnik World Championship match.