AAiken Standard Aiken, South Carolina Tuesday, July 18, 1972 - Page 6
Aiken Club on World Chess Championship by Dr. Lee Hyder
(Editor's note: The Fischer-Spassky World Chess Championship match has brought a renaissance to the ancient game. Yet, the various complications of such a match, the positions, the notation often escape the inexperienced player. The Aiken Chess Club has volunteered a series of articles to simplify the 24-game series. They will be written by Dr. Lee Hyder with collaboration of club members. Dr. Hyder, an SRP employee, is a former South Carolina state chess champion and ranks as an expert on the game.)
America's chess playing ace Bobby Fischer, has accomplished something Aiken area chess players had never imagined possible. He has made the game of tremendous interest throughout the community.
The interest is amazing. Now that play has begun people are following the game and asking about the positions or about the decisive moves in completed games.
The sudden public interest in chess may be a new phenomena in this century, but it is not unprecedented in South Carolina.
In the late 1850s the Charleston Courier carried a weekly chess column, as did many other newspapers around the South.
At that time an American, Paul Morphy of New Orleans, was recognized as the best player in the world and he seems to have aroused widespread interest in the chess. This all stopped with the War Between the States. The Courier published a chess column again in the 1890's but it was not widely read.
The popularity of the game has been increasing locally for some time.
More than 200 players now compete in tournaments in South Carolina. Five years ago there were no more than 50.
Children take to chess rapidly, especially teen-agers and a growing number of high schools have active chess clubs.
Aiken High and Ridge Spring Monetta High recently competed in the state high school championship along with 11 other schools.
This weekend the Carolina's Open, the most important tournament in the Carolina's, will be played in Beaufort. The organizers are planning for 50 or more entries.
As for the World Championship the third game which Fischer won was highly significant. Fischer in fact gave away the first two games, the first was a terrible blunder and the second a protest of the playing conditions.
But in the third game he showed that he could completely outplay Spassky. Spassky has not yet shown that he can get an advantage on Fischer through his own initiative.
Aiken Club on World Chess Championship 18 Jul 1972, Tue Aiken Standard (Aiken, South Carolina) Newspapers.com
