AThe Windsor Star Windsor, Ontario, Canada Friday, June 30, 1972 - Page 22
Chess Goes Other Way
IN GOLF SOME PLAYERS do better at match, rather than stroke play. However, almost all prominent competition today is conducted at stroke play which has two main features - it rewards consistency and hurts the hot and cold competitor, and it keeps the field and more major names around longer.
Chess has gone the other way, in part at least because Bobby Fischer demanded it. And this is the principal reason Fischer, the 29-year-old American, is favored in many circles to dethrone Russia's Boris Spassky in a 24-game match starting Sunday at Reykjavik. Iceland.
Fischer, conceded by his peers the most exciting chess player in the world, decreed several years ago he would never again compete in tournament play against force of Russian numbers. He argued, and so did others, that no single Westerner could hope to win the world championship because the Russians were able to exert so much massive candidacy.
It is a simple fact that Russia mass produces more chess masters than any other country or even any group of nations. For that reason they have owned the world title for 45 years, a crushing domination broken only for three years in the middle thirties when Dr. Max Euwe, a Hollander and now head of FIDE, the ruling body, intervened between tenures of the first of great modern Russian champions, Alexander Alekhine.
FISCHER HAS LONG considered himself the best chess player in the world. It enraged and frustrated him that his ambitions for world supremacy were stymied by the FIDE system of round-robin competition which served to perpetuate Russian dominance. He called it a Communist plot hatched in Moscow.
FIDE has finally capitulated to his pleas. It allowed him to challenge through match play. Head to head, he knocked off six major qualifiers in a devastating display of mastery.
HIS FINAL OBSTACLE to getting to Spassky was Tigran Petrosian, a Russian and world champion from 1963 to 1967. He blew Petrosian off the boards last fall at Buenos Aires without difficulty.
So now it is not Russia versus Fischer, but Spassky versus Fischer. The odds have swung to Fischer, a brilliant player at the height of his powers. Spassky is 35, and in five games against Fischer has won three and drawn two. But, chess experts don't take much stock in that. In head-to-head play, Fischer is rated unbeatable by more disciples than himself.
Fischer can become the first official American world champion. The strongest American of the past was Paul Morphy who performed in the 19th century. Morphy was unofficial world champion of his time. He quit serious chess before he was 25.
The first world champion, so recognized, was William Steinitz of Vienna. Steinitz ruled for 27 years through 1893. He died in poverty, insane, on Ward's Island in 1900, having moved from Europe to the United States while still champion.
A GERMAN, DR. EMANUEL LASKER defeated Steinitz and held the crown for another 27 years. A Cuban, the all-time great Jose Capablanca succeeded Lasker. After that it was the Russians from Alekhine to Spassky with Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal and Petrosian in between.
Nerves will play a major role in the matches at Reykjavik. They will play three games a week, using three other days in the week for adjourned games. The rules call for 40 moves in two and a half hours, 16 moves per hour in adjourned play. The clock is a merciless taskmaster in match chess. The unsure player often blunders against time, and if the blunder doesn't get him, the clock does by way of forfeit.
MASTER CHESS PLAYERS are notorious for the size of their egos, also for the depth of their apprehension.
The classic story on self-confidence concerns the Russian master, Efim Bogolyubov. When an admirer asked him whether he preferred the white or black pieces, he answered, “I have no preference. When I play white, I win because I have the first move. When I play black, I win because I am Bogolyubov.”
One of the best tales on apprehension would be the cigar smoking of Lasker. During a tournament, one of Lasker's opponents got him to promise he wouldn't smoke during the game. Lasker had a habit, apparently, of blowing smoke in his opponent's face.
After a few moves, Lasker took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth. His opponent protested to the tournament director, saying, “Lasker agreed not to smoke.” The umpire responded. “But, he isn't. His cigar is not lit.”
Whereupon the man said. “Ah, but he threatens to smoke, and you know very well how he values a threat.”
SPASSKY IS REPUTED to possess an excellent set of nerves. No hangups are reported about him. On the contrary, Fischer has a history of wild reaction to distraction. He is wont to make all kinds of demands concerning arrangements.
THIS DOESN'T MEAN Fischer is likely to lose his cool in a tight game situation. On the contrary, his recent opponents have been the ones to lose their cool. Petrosian and two others he defeated in the eliminations wound up in hotel or hospital room seclusion suffering from nervous exhaustion.
Fischer has done nothing in his life except study chess from the age of nine. When he was 14 he actually had more experience than most chess masters twice his age.
Some observers figure Spassky is in for a nervous breakdown.
