Afterwards he moved to the rival Marshall Chess Club in New York City, stomping grounds for many famous players, such as Bobby Fischer, later on.

Fine played in his first top-class international tournament at Pasadena 1932, where he shared 7th–10th with 5/11; the winner was world champion Alexander Alekhine.

Fine repeated as champion in the 16th Marshall Club Championship, held from October to December 1932, with 11½/13, 2½ points ahead of the runner-up.

[12] Fine won five medals (including three team golds) representing the United States; his detailed record follows; his totals are (+20−6=19), for 65.6%.

Having had outstanding successes in North America, Fine tried his first European individual international tournament at Łódź 1935, where he shared 2nd–3rd with 6/9 behind Savielly Tartakower.

Although Fine was active and very successful in U.S. open tournaments, he was never able to win the U.S. Championship, usually placing behind his great American rival, Samuel Reshevsky.

Then in the 1944 U.S. Championship at New York, Fine scored 14½/17 for second, losing his game to Arnold Denker, and finishing half a point back, as the latter won his only national title.

By the end of 1937, Fine had won a string of strong European international tournaments, and was one of the most successful players in the world.

Fine captured Zandvoort 1936 with 8½/11, ahead of World Champion Max Euwe, Savielly Tartakower, and Paul Keres.

Fine shared 3rd–5th at the elite Nottingham 1936 event with 9½/14, half a point behind winners José Raúl Capablanca and Mikhail Botvinnik.

At Kemeri, Latvia 1937, Fine had a rare relatively weak result, with just 9/17 for 8th place, as the title was shared by Reshevsky, Flohr, and Vladimirs Petrovs.

It was organized with the hope that the winner of AVRO, a double round-robin tournament, would be the next challenger to world champion Alexander Alekhine.

In 1941 he wrote Basic Chess Endings, a compendium of endgame analysis which, some 80 years later, is still considered one of the best works on this subject.

His book was the most comprehensive on the subject written to that time, included significant original work by Fine, and received worldwide acclaim.

Fine played a few serious American events during World War II, with international chess at a virtual standstill, and continued his successes with dominant scores.

Fine won the New York State Championship, Hamilton 1941, with 8/10, a point ahead of Reshevsky, Arnold Denker and Isaac Kashdan.

Then Fine traveled to Europe one last time to compete, in the 1946 Moscow team match against the USSR, scoring ½/2 on board three against Paul Keres.

[8] As the World War ended in early September 1945, Fine was 30 years of age, and working on his doctorate in psychology.

As co-winner in the AVRO tournament, Fine was invited to participate, but he declined, for reasons that are the subject of speculation even today.

Negotiations over the tournament had been protracted, and for a long time it was unclear whether this World Championship event would in fact take place.

Fine's 1951 written statement on the matter in his book The World's Greatest Chess Games was: Unfortunately for the Western masters the Soviet political organization was stronger than that of the West.

Dissatisfied with this arrangement and the general tenor of the event, I withdrew.Edward Winter quoted Fine as saying financial, professional and scheduling problems all influenced his decision.

He faced five World Champions: Emanuel Lasker (+1−0=0);[16] José Raúl Capablanca (+0−0=5, excluding simultaneous games);[17] Alexander Alekhine (+3−2=4);[18] Max Euwe (+2−2=3);[19] and Mikhail Botvinnik (+1−0=2).

He struggled against Paul Keres (+1−3=8); Milan Vidmar (+0−1=2); and Isaac Boleslavsky (+0−1=1), but he handled everyone else: Miguel Najdorf (+3−3=5); Savielly Tartakower (+2−1=4); Salo Flohr (+2−0=7); Grigory Levenfish (+1−0=0); George Alan Thomas (+2−0=3); Erich Eliskases (+1−0=2); Viacheslav Ragozin (+1−0=1); Vladimirs Petrovs (+2−1=1); Efim Bogolyubov (+1−0=1); Jan Foltys (+2−0=0); Salo Landau (+4−0=1); George Koltanowski (+2−0=1); Igor Bondarevsky (+1−0=0); Géza Maróczy (+1−0=0); William Winter (+4−0=0); Ernst Grünfeld (+1−0=0); Gideon Ståhlberg (+4−2=5); Andor Lilienthal (+1−0=0); László Szabó (+0−0=1); Vladas Mikėnas (+1−0=1); Rudolph Spielmann (+0−0=1); and Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander (+1−0=3).

Finally, against the new generation of American masters which emerged in the late 1940s, Fine proved he could still perform well: Arthur Bisguier (+1−0=1); Larry Evans (+0−0=2); George Kramer (+1−0=1); and Robert Byrne (+0−0=1).

The site Chessmetrics.com, which specializes in historical ratings throughout chess history, ranks Fine in the world's top ten players for more than eight years, from March 1936 until October 1942, and then again from January 1949 until December 1950.

During World War II, Fine worked for the U.S. Navy, analyzing the probability of German U-boats surfacing at certain points in the Atlantic Ocean.

Later, Fine turned the article into a book, The Psychology of the Chess Player, in which he provided insights steeped in Freudian theory.

In successive rounds, Fine once defeated Botvinnik, Reshevsky, Euwe, Flohr and Alekhine, and drew with Capablanca.

The New York Times first mentions a marriage to Emma Thea Keesing (1916–1960), whom he met in the Netherlands, married in September 1937,[26] and divorced in 1944.