Showdown on Boardwalk

the world series of monopoly, where the stakes are high, the dice are fickle and the action is mostly in the wrist

"Gentlemen, roll your dice!"

The voice on the loud-speaker echoed through the Grand Ballroom of the Detroit Hilton, where 164 competitors from a dozen states waited expectantly. It signaled the start of the world series of Monopoly, an invitation-only tournament held on the third Friday of October for the past ten years. Among the regulars seated at 41 checker-clothed tables was Paul J. Rice, an intense research engineer dressed in the rumpled salt-and-pepper suit and Argyle socks he had worn while winning the 1971 title. According to unconfirmed rumors, Rice had employed a computer to devise this year's strategy, which he refused to divulge. But no player was more feared than two-time winner Karl Schaefer, an Oak Park, Michigan, insurance agent known for his ruthless play and absence of visible emotion. The last time anyone could recall Schaefer smiling was after his 1970 victory, which he celebrated by lighting a cigar with a $500 bill--in Monopoly money, of course.

Moments before, security officers had intercepted the heavily bearded Apostalas Pondaledes Christedese, the self-proclaimed Greek national champion, who through some inexcusable oversight had failed to receive an invitation. Accompanied by an interpreter, he defiantly presented his credentials: a 100-drachma note, a hunk of feta, a bottle of Cyprus red wine and a can of grape leaves stuffed with rice. Finally, he produced a hand-lettered scroll reading: "The above has remained undefeated in the game of Monopoly while holding in one hand three Coney Island sandwiches (heavy on onions) and doing a Greek dance with handkerchief (continued on page 100) Showdown on Boardwalk (continued from page 95) waving." Scrutinizing the proclamation, which was authenticated by the presumed signatures of Nick the Greek, and Jackie Onassis, the hastily gathered credentials committee unanimously sanctioned Christedese's participation.

In years past, some less-than-serious contestants had arrived in Dracula capes, safari suits, sheik outfits, hard hats and swallowtails. This year was no exception. Stares greeted the entrance of a real-estate developer wearing a crushed-velvet dinner jacket in Baltic Avenue maroon. He paid his entry fee with a crisp five-dollar bill and then, to the knot of curiosity seekers gathered around him, distributed business cards reading: "Arthur L. Greenbaum... truly a legend in his own time."

James Treloar, a 1971 finalist who had covered previous tournaments as the Detroit News "Monopoly editor," was holding court at one of the two bustling bars inside the ballroom. To anyone within earshot, he explained a painstakingly researched graph titled: "Dollars of Revenue Produced for $100 of Development in the Highest Revenue-Producing Property from Each Color Group in Monopoly." Treloar--who in previous tournaments had brought his own sterling-silver dice, which he burnished with a chamois between moves--claimed his study proved that the light blues (Connecticut, Vermont and Oriental) were the best investment on the board.

Conversations overheard at the bar disclosed some equally impressive game plans, along with several fanciful ones. There was the Pum-Tuckeroy Defense--a war-of-attrition strategy pioneered by the legendary doubles team of Max Pum and Hartford Tuckeroy in the 1937 grand nationals; it involved ownership of all four railroads and at least one property of all color groups, thus preventing their opponents from obtaining any monopolies. Others argued that the oranges are the most valuable properties on the board, since an inordinate number of moves originate from Jail and rolls of six, eight and nine from Just Visiting are fairly common. A few fanatics adhered to the Royal Blue Ploy: the neglect of other properties in favor of exclusive development of that high-rent ghetto, Boardwalk and Park Place. And one group debated the causes of Baltiphobia, an unnatural; fear of Baltic Avenue and its blighted companion, Mediterranean.

Before moving to their assigned tables, the competitors also swapped stories of past gaffes and glories. Like the time a well-known attorney cooled his heels in Jail for two turns--refusing to use his Get Out of Jail Free card--while opponents landed on his heavily developed properties and knocked themselves out of the game. And the time a Canadian champion sealed his downfall in the quarter-finals by passing Go and forgetting to collect $200.

Michael Alber, a diligent flack for Parker Brothers (Monopoly's manufacturer), who drinks his Scotch out of a glass emblazoned with the Water Works symbol and uses a Just Visiting coaster, informed a group of questioners that Monopoly is the most popular board game--other than chess and checkers--ever marketed. It has sold more than 70,000,000 sets in 12 languages since being introduced in 1934, he said proudly. This revelation was followed by a discussion of the classic poser: whether Monopoly is a game of chance or of ability. Opinions were sharply divided, but none explained it as well as Dr. Joyce Brothers, who once wrote, "There is enough skill so that if you win you can compliment yourself on being the best player, and enough luck so that if you lose, you can blame it on the dice."

Conspicuous by his absence was perhaps the most skillful all-around player in the country, title attorney Bernie "Flatiron" Ginsberg--so named for his severe crewcut and favorite token. Old-timers spoke of his gamesmanship with hushed reverence. Ginsberg traditionally appeared in rented top hat and tails--an unsettling sight with his six-foot, 140-pound physique--but one year he excused himself just prior to game time, entered a nearby phone booth and changed from his tux into a suit of baggy tweeds. This perfectly timed Clark Kent ploy threw his three formally attired opponents completely off balance, making them feel overdressed, and they never recovered their aplomb. Ginsberg also benefited from uncommonly providential rolls of the dice, both during the game and in its preliminaries. When disputes developed over claiming the flatiron token, he never lost the roll deciding its ownership, and the loser was left at a distinct psychological disadvantage. This combination of superior dicemanship and gamesmanship enabled Ginsberg to become the only three-time winner of the coveted Stein-Fishbub trophy, a three-foot trophy of the Winged Victory named after a legendary undefeated doubles team.

Karl Schaefer, whose name was engraved on the Stein-Fishbub as 1967 and 1970 champion, loomed as Ginsberg's heir apparent--having developed some diabolical maneuvers of his own. He was widely despised for disconcerting opponents with a series of distractions that included constantly drumming fingers, grating coughs, periodic tics, occasional hyperventilation and, most disconcerting of all, nervous glances over the shoulder. "Schaefer's style of play is slashing and intimidating right from the start," warned attorney Lee Weisenthal, chancellor of the United States Monopoly Association. "Throughout the game, for example, he'll speed things up by moving everyone else's tokens as well as his own. Rice may be the defending champion, but watch out for Schaefer."

The kitchen, bedroom and dining room of Weisenthal's Detroit home were the site of the first world series, actually a reunion of 16 boyhood friends. Word-of-mouth accounts circulating among the city's legal and medical fraternities swelled the number of participants to 40 in 1964. Following these bitterly contested early matches, everyone would wind down by adjourning to a neighborhood, bar. Numerous rounds of drinks inspired misty-eyed visions of future tournaments featuring trick-move and blindfold Monopoly exhibitions, workshops with titles like "How to Stop Doubling into Jail," a lecture series on the Baltic juggernaut and a search for the mythical bible of the game, an out-of-print book titled Monopoly Pincers.

The world series really came of age as an important sporting event in 1967, when the finals were broadcast, play by play, on a local FM station. Listeners were able to hear the shrill whistles of stripe-shirted referees arbitrating such floor disputes as whether or not a roll had ended in cocked dice (meaning one of the dice had nestled against the Community Chest or Chance stack rather than lying flat on the board) and when players were eligible to build houses (only after passing Go).

Through the years, the officials had ejected one player who attempted to sneak a hidden $500 bill into a game and had found several other miscreants guilty of "cuffing," a moving violation described in the U. S. M. A. glossary as "token manipulation requiring split-second timing and a well-starched shirt cuff; executed after the throw of the dice and before moving the prescribed number of spaces; most common forms are the cuff-back and the cuff-ahead."

From the outset, women were cheerfully admitted to the proceedings as nonpay-ing guests, forbidden to play but welcome to serve as bankers and drink couriers. "Women do not play as a result of an oversight," according to the 1972 tourney notes. "When the rules were amended in 1949, it was decided that competition would be open to any qualified male or female player. Through inadvertence, the words 'or female' were omitted from the final draft, which was duly ratified and adopted. Tied up as it is with serious matters, the board of governors has just not gotten around to correcting the mistake. "A minor fem-lib disturbance had occurred three years before, when several Monopoly widows unsuccessfully picketed for a coed tournament. "This is totally ridiculous," Weisenthal told the press. "I don't know of a single woman who has ever established a name for herself in Monopoly."

There was to be no such skirmish in (continued on page 195) Showdown on Boardwalk (continued from page 100)1972. The few militant women in attendance, most of them cigar smokers, seemed woefully out of place. While the public-address countdown advanced toward the opening dice toss, most of the stylishly dressed wives and dates retreated to the opposite end of the ballroom, where they proceeded to belly up six-deep at the bar. In the final moments, a murmur of concern was heard among the veteran players. Where was Karl Schaefer? His seat at table five was vacant. He was risking disqualification. Their speculation ended precisely 17 seconds before the 9:10 P.M. deadline, when Schaefer, impeccable in a pinstripe suit, dramatically appeared, threaded his way through the tables, waved to some familiar faces and jauntily took his assigned place. It was a deft bit of gamesmanship consistent with his reputation.

Neatly arranged before Schaefer and each of the other players was a stack of fresh bills totaling $1500, an ashtray and a Marsh-Wheeling Deluxe cigar. Every set of dice had been set at snake eyes and placed, side by side, within the second O of the word Monopoly printed on the game board. Rules for the first three rounds of the elimination tournament were the standard Monopoly rubric, with several variations. The preliminary games would last for only an hour, with property cards first being shuffled and then distributed by the banker. A maximum of 20 minutes would be allowed for pregame property trading and there would be no private deals following pregame trading nor any owing of monies. At the end of an hour of play, should there be no winner, the players would convert all assets to cash and the one holding the largest bank roll would advance to the next round. No one-dollar bills would be used; all transactions would be rounded off to the nearest five dollars. The promise of future concessions--such as the notorious Plenary Indulgence in Perpetuity, which guarantees a player permanent immunity to any monopoly created by his sale of a property to another player--were strictly forbidden. The use of personal tokens, finally, was optional--as long as they weren't too big to fit into a square. This permissive rule opened the floodgates for a large array of talismans, among them a wine cork, a false tooth, a simulated diamond, a British Guiana one-penny black stamp encased in Lucite, various metal sculptures and an obstetrician's circumcision instrument. One player, an assistant prosecutor for Wayne County, Michigan, attempted--unsuccessfully--to intimidate the opposition by using a lucky .38-caliber police-special bullet.

Once play began, only 30 minutes elapsed before the first player was eliminated, earning him a mocking round of applause. Another early casualty was Christedese, the Greek, who complained through his interpreter that he was unable to comprehend the unfamiliar American street names.

"I don't mind losing a close game with all my resources intact," said psychiatrist Dr. James Fisch a few minutes later, thrusting a fallen tiki-god token into his pocket. "But having to liquidate your assets by first selling houses to the bank at half price, then enduring the disgrace of mortgaging and finally winding up penniless is a traumatic experience. My psychoanalytic training has done nothing for me in this tournament." Confident that he'd last until the finals, Dr. James Labes, a Detroit physician, had brought along not only a complete change of clothing but a can of deodorant and surgical gloves to protect against dice-chafed hands. "I had the blues and the oranges and I still lost," he sighed at the end, shaking his head. "I can't believe it."

From his perch at the bar, he could see that Rice, Schaefer and Milton Manley, Jr., a stockbroker, were among the 41 survivors competing at 12 tables in the second round. "How long does this thing last?" asked a man in black tie drinking Heineken's from the bottle.

"It could go on all night," Lee Weisenthal replied. "One year we went until five in the morning. A couple of dozen spectators sacked out on the floor. The only people awake were the players."

"That's nothing," said Michael Alber, a fount of Monopoly trivia. "Did you know that the longest Monopoly game on record lasted eight hundred and twenty hours? It happened in Danville, California, just last year."

"No shit."

"Yeah," Alber continued, warming to his subject. "And last week a bunch of kids in Orlando, Florida, set a record for the longest underwater Monopoly game. Thirty members of a DeMolay high school fraternity. They played for fifty hours."

Schaefer was a winner in the quarterfinals. His usually dour face beamed as if he had just won first prize in a beauty contest. When the public-address announcer reported his victory, he immediately left the ballroom rather than watch the ten other games in progress and risk a loss of concentration. His intensity seemed to increase during the early moves in the semifinal round of 12. Settling himself at one of the three remaining tables, he removed his jacket, unwrapped a fresh stick of gum and thrust it into his mouth. Soon afterward, a token landed on one of his unimproved monopolies.

"Seventy dollars," Schaefer snapped.

He was handed a $100 bill.

"I want the seventy in small bills," he insisted, relishing the embarrassment of his infuriated opponent, who dutifully counted out a pile of fives, tens and twenties.

Schaefer's satisfaction was short-lived. Before making a full circuit of the board, he landed on Boardwalk with a hotel--the territory of one Harvey Rosenberg, making his first world-series appearance. Schaefer's jaw slackened. He could have weathered this crushing blow by mortgaging various properties to produce the needed $2000, thereby salvaging a slender chance of survival. But there remained a more noble alternative, one befitting a champion. Without hesitation, he rose from his chair and clasped the hand of each opponent.

"Instead of hanging by my fingernails, I concede," he said, in a quavering voice. "Never before has this happened so soon."

Then he shambled out the room, jacket slung over a slumped shoulder. In his haste to leave, he left behind the souvenir Monopoly set awarded to winners of the preliminaries.

Schaefer would have winced had he been able to hear the victor's analysis of the game he lost. "Nobody wanted to trade," said the elated Rosenberg, a distributor of automobile, truck, Marine and aircraft batteries. "So at the last minute, I said the hell with it and traded off a couple of valuable properties, just so I'd have a monopoly. It turned out to be Boardwalk and Park Place. I just happened to get the good ones and they landed on me. I haven't played Monopoly in probably twelve years. A friend sent me an invitation. I thought it would be a lark, so here I am. I'm really a novice. The game is just luck, and I've been lucky."

Another finalist was Marvin Daitch, a mortgage banker participating in his second tournament. "My strategy has always been to build on one monopoly first and stop at three houses," he said, puffing on a Flamenco panatela. "If you evaluate the ratio of rentals, three houses give you the best return on your investment. I also attempt to trade for the lower-valued monopolies--other than Baltic and Mediterranean--the light blues, lavenders, oranges or reds. They're easier to build on and seem to be landed on more often."

Daitch and Rosenberg both waited patiently for the outcome of a close match at table one involving three veteran players: defending champion Rice, attorney A. Donald Kadushin and Bob Naftaly, a certified public accountant. Unable to consummate any pregame trades, they had proceeded to play despite the fact that nobody owned a monopoly. The winner would be determined by accumulated assets in cash and property. Finally the time limit expired and spectators standing on folding chairs anxiously watched Rice's girlfriend tabulate the champion's worth while the others methodically counted out their own fives, tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds and five hundreds.

"It's Rice!" shouted a kibitzer close to the action, passing the news to those huddling behind him. Rice had, indeed, edged Kadushin--$4945 to $4935. But Naftaly was still counting. With the precision one would expect of an accountant, he carefully added his neat column of figures before handing the stack of bills to the banker for verification. The broad grin on his face told it all. The announcement of his $5045 total prompted a chorus of cheers.

Fifteen minutes later, the three finalists straggled one by one toward a fresh game board unfolded on a table in the center of the ballroom. Still exhilarated by his narrow victory, Naftaly was discussing the outcome with a cordon of admirers. "There's nothing like it when you know you've got it," he said. Those who recognized the mustachioed Naftaly from his six previous tournaments and his third-place finish in 1970 regarded him as the sentimental favorite in the no-time-limit finals. He stood out as the seasoned old pro. Daitch, the knowledgeable mortgage banker, seemed somewhat uneasy standing beside the table. He shuffled his feet, flashed his monogrammed cuffs and repeatedly attempted to relight his soggy Flamenco. Rosenberg, the rookie, had removed his jacket and taken a seat. His buxom blonde wife sensually massaged his back muscles while he removed the cellophane from a Tiparillo and sized up the challengers. When table talk about the previous game persisted long after the strangers had introduced themselves, Rosenberg grew impatient.

"C'mon, who's banker here?" he asked edgily. "Let's get going."

Arthur L. Greenbaum, his "legendary" status somewhat tarnished, eased into the banker's chair and began shuffling property cards, which he dealt face down.

"I'll be out of here in twenty minutes," Rosenberg predicted.

Each contestant scooped up the properties and studied them close to the vest, like gin-rummy hands, before fanning the cards out on the table. Naftaly put a match to his pipe, rocked back on his chair and studied the possibilities. Daitch finally lit his frazzled cigar.

"All right," said Rosenberg, noting that nobody owned a monopoly, "let's make some fast deals. Ok, whaddya guys have two of?"

Instead of responding to Rosenberg. Naftaly coolly extracted the cards he was willing to exchange, exposed them to Daitch and said: "Make me a reasonable offer." The two of them explored at least a dozen provisional deals while Rosenberg restlessly hung back, his eyes occasionally rolling upward in exasperation.

"You're asking for a lot," said Daitch, hearing which of his belongings Naftaly was willing to relieve him of. He politely refused to conclude a deal unless he was certain of obtaining at least a couple of monopolies from Rosenberg in a subsequent three-way swap. More than 15 minutes passed in this frustrating war of nerves before Rosenberg ended his silence.

"Whaddya want of mine?" he asked beseechingly. "Let's get something going!"

His adversaries scanned Rosenberg's holdings, but once again offered nothing.

"This game might never end," Greenbaum muttered.

Many spectators were becoming bored with the prolonged negotiations, especially since the bar had closed. One of them had fallen asleep on a nearby table, using her fur coat as a pillow.

"Did you know that the longest Monopoly game played while traveling in an elevator lasted fifty hours?" asked Michael Alber of no one in particular. "The players were a group of freshmen at the University of Kansas, who stayed in a dormitory elevator for a total of seven thousand two hundred and twelve floors." He would have continued his recitation if the rising voices at the table hadn't interrupted.

"A good fistfight would probably solve this whole thing," said Naftaly.

Turning to Rosenberg, Daitch declared, "I won't give anybody a monopoly unless I know I'm gonna get a monopoly. I could be squeezed out of the game. Why don't you deal with him and then deal with me?"

"OK."

"Spread 'em out. Let's see what you've got," said Naftaly, sucking on his pipe. He evaluated Rosenberg's cards for only a few moments. "You and I haven't got much to deal with."

A brooding silence followed.

"Honey, go to my office and get me my special chair," said Naftaly, addressing his wife. "The lights are beginning to bother me."

"Do you wanna give me those for these?" asked Daitch, overlooking the jest, as he flashed several red and green cards.

"No-o-o-o-o," sighed Naftaly. "We went through that before."

"I'm willing to make some trades, but you're not being reasonable," Daitch complained. "So we better start playing without monopolies. But if we do that, the game can't possibly be played to a finish in the next two or three years."

"Goddamn it, let's get this show on the road!" snapped Rosenberg. "Isn't there any time limit on trading?" The referee said there wasn't.

"Then c'mon, let's start playing. Roll the dice!"

At 1:45 a.m., after 45 minutes more of haggling and acrimony, a series of trades was finally consummated. Along with the light blues, Daitch held the powerful red-and-orange corner he had coveted. A shrewd trader, Naftaly emerged--out of nowhere, it seemed--with the Baltic, Boardwalk and Pennsylvania monopolies, an awesome gantlet abetted by both utilities. The yellows, lavenders and all four railroads belonged to Rosenberg.

Their tokens finally stood poised on the Go square. Naftaly was using the horse. Rosenberg selected the car. Daitch had brought his own token, a miniature sculpture that bore his name. Immediately after circling the board and passing Go, Rosenberg went for a quick kill--building hotels on all three lavenders and a house on each of the yellows. This unorthodox plunge betrayed his inexperience. By depleting cash reserves, he was violating one of the basic principles of the game: maintaining a balanced ratio between money and property.

Naftaly countered by pursuing the moderate approach of improving Boardwalk and Park Place with three houses apiece. Daitch, in turn, erected three houses each on St. James, Tennessee and New York, and then rolled the dice. The result was disastrous. He landed directly on Boardwalk, a $1400 rental.

"It's impossible," he groaned, discarding his cigar butt. "I'm out of the game already."

"We've got excellent resources here," replied Greenbaum, the banker. "We can buy those houses back for fifty cents on the dollar."

Rubbing his eyes with manicured thumb and forefinger, Daitch contemplated his desperate circumstances. "If I knock off all my houses," he said, "I'll never be able to get them back up again."

"You can come up with the money by mortgaging, without touching the oranges," Greenbaum advised.

"No, I can't," said Daitch, wringing his hands. "No way."

"You'll end up with a house on each one."

"I'm gonna forfeit the game," Daitch declared, rising unsteadily from his chair. "God, that was quick."

The stunning withdrawal came after only 13 minutes.

"It's a brand-new ball game," observed one of the three dozen spectators still remaining.

Playing conservatively, Naftaly developed a total of four houses on the greens and was quickly rewarded when Rosenberg's car halted on North Carolina, a $130 expenditure that left him--depleted by his outlay on hotels--with less than $100 in cash. A glutton for punishment, Rosenberg took another tour of the board and landed on Pennsylvania with two houses--forcing him to raise most of the $450 rental by mortgaging three railroads. With his token stationed on Go and Rosenberg's three hotels looming around the next corner, Naftaly decided to refrain from further construction. His precaution proved unnecessary when a Chance card advanced his token to Illinois, bypassing the lavender monopoly.

Naftaly soon added two more houses on each of the greens, retaining more than enough capital to cover his subsequent landing on Rosenberg's St. Charles. Overconfident now, Rosenberg played recklessly, ignoring his precarious fiscal position by using the $750 from Naftaly plus most of his other funds to build two more houses on each of the yellows. He regretted that decision with the very next roll of the dice. Sympathetic sighs and whistles issued from the gallery; he had landed on Boardwalk with four houses.

"Seventeen hundred," said Naftaly without emotion.

"Son of a bitch," muttered Rosenberg.

"Seventeen hundred big ones!"echoed a kibitzer.

"You sure that was a legal throw?"Rosenberg pleaded. The referee gravely nodded.

"This is liable to be the longest trading session and the shortest game in history," said Greenbaum, whose watch read 2:07 A.M.

"Do I have that much money?" groaned Rosenberg.

"You have it," said Greenbaum, "but the next time you go around the board, look out!"

The ensuing liquidation of properties left Rosenberg with only two houses on each of the yellows and St. Charles, one each on States and Virginia, and absolutely no cash. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Calmly refilling his pipe, Naftaly began adding insult to injury by erecting hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean. Rosenberg used a portion of his $200 Go money to buy Daitch's late-lamented Connecticut from the bank--why, God only knew--while Naftaly contented himself with languishing in Jail and buying one more house on each of the greens.

Inevitably, Rosenberg's car soon braked to a stop on Pennsylvania with a hotel--a $1400 whiplash that compelled him to eliminate all his yellow houses. Naftaly immediately replaced all on single-family housing on Boardwalk and Park Placewith a pair of dazzling red hotels. Ironically, he next landed on recently cleared Atlantic, a paltry $45 rental rather than the $330 Rosenberg would have realized a turn before. The handwriting was on the wall. Rosenberg reached Go safely, but the $200 went straight to Naftaly, along with the $45 and another $5: He landed on Mediterranean's fleabag hotel.

Left with exactly five dollars to his name, Rosenberg miraculously held out for another five turns, finally rolling an unlucky seven that deposited his battered car on Pennsylvania. Without bothering to check mortgage rates, he struggled wearily to his feet and congratulated the champion.

"We have a new winner!" shouted the referee, at precisely 2:24 A.M."The winner of the Stein-Fishbub trophy is Bob Naderley." Hearty cheers and the sound of New Year's Eve noisemakers accompanied the announcement.

"He can't even pronounce my name right," complained Naftaly good-natured, holding the trophy aloft to a crescendo of applause and whistles. While flashbulbs popped, he numbly fielded a barrage of questions posed by Monopoly diehards during an impromptu press conference.

How did he rate his opponents? "I thought Daitch was a nice, reasonable guy. I didn't mind making any trade I could with him. The other fellow came in with an overbearing attitude, like he was superior to us. He was just plain irritating and it began getting to me. I figured that by ignoring him, I would put him in a position where he no longer could feel superior. The biggest factor in this game is the psychological advantage you try to get over your opponent. It's the same way in real life. I think Monopoly is played like the game of life."

Did he consider Monopoly a game of skill? "There must be some skill involved, because if you look at the names on the trophy, there are several people who have won more than once. But this was the only time I played all year. So maybe it was just luck, mazel."

Was his physical condition a factor? "Maybe it was. For one thing, when you roll those dice four or five hundred times a night, you've got to have a strong wrist. I play tennis year round, and I guess that helps strengthen the wrist and improve my coordination."

Did he abstain sexually the night before? "Not intentionally. Looking back now, it's something I might have considered. When you're something I might have considered. When you're dedicated to the game, just looking at girls could probably a fact you adversely. Especially in a situation like tonight, where many attractive women were floating around. You have to concentrate on the job."

When did he realize that Rosenberg was beaten? "When he had to pay me seventeen hundred dollars for landing on Boardwalk and said 'Son of a bitch.' Among the high-level people we get at this tournament, you rarely hear profanity. His use of such language made me feel that for America it was important to prevent someone from winning who wasn't a good guy with the white hat."

Knotting his tie and buttoning his belted corduroy jacket, he grasped the Stein-Fishbub trophy and posed for several formal photographs. His other hand clutched the other reward for his labors: a $50 executive-model Monopoly game whose inlaid wooden board was enclosed in a handsome presentation case.

Sloughing through stray $100 Monopoly bills littering the carpeted floor on his way out, Naftaly encountered U. S. M. A. chancellor Lee Weisenthal, who vigorously shook his hand.

"You know something, Bob," he said. "Of all the champions I've congratulated in the past ten years, by far you've got the strongest grip."

"In Monopoly, the grip is nothing." Naftaly confided. "It's all in the wrist."