The News-Palladium Benton Harbor, Michigan Thursday, July 06, 1972 - Page 2
Anyone For Chess?
The time line between a sport turning from an amateur into a professional status or a combination of both is the marketplace rule of thumb of how many people will pay to watch the activity or bet on its outcome.
In the U.S. the oldest professional sports probably are horse racing.
Professional boxing and baseball came on the scene a century ago. Play for pay in football, basketball, and golf emerged following World War I. Hockey moved down from its Canadian homeland at the same time. Wrestling or the Broadway version of it started in the late '20s. Professional tennis started up in this period but only in recent years has it approached the financial stability necessary to stabilize it as a going concern. Auto racing has pre-World War I roots. Roller skating derbies are a TV byproduct.
The foregoing is not an exhaustive list, but is representative of a professional sport's basic requirement of sufficient spectator money being available so that the players and promoters foresee the opportunity to make at least pork chop and money laundry from their endeavor.
Though chess scarcely fits the basic requirement in any sport of a physical capability well above the sand lot level, the play for pay conversion has entered into this extraordinary mental game. If a mathematician can make more money programming computers than in teaching, there's no reason against a finely honed mind testing his marketability with a board and figurines. Any number of sharp people have earned highly respectable incomes demonstrating that the fall of the cards, has nothing to do with a good bridge game.
In the past few days Bobby Fischer, America's foremost grand master in chess, has demonstrated that holdout football stars and striking baseball players have nothing on him.
Following weeks, months even, of negotiations akin to Henry Kissinger's cloak and dagger jaunts to Red China, the International Chess Association arranged a world championship match between Bobby and Boris Spassky, the Russian who's held the titlist crown since 1969.
The plan first called for the two geniuses to play 12 games at Reykjavik, Iceland's capital and another dozen in Belgrade, Yugoslavia's capital.
The Association dropped this schedule because Fischer objected to the gate guaranteed by the Belgrade people. It set 24 games entirely at Reykjavik where the prize money was raised to $125,000, winner taking 60 per cent.
Sunday was to have been the starting date.
Spassky moved to Reykjavik two weeks preceding the opener. Fischer delayed his announced departure until this past Thursday.
Instead the American champ went into hiding and did not leave until Sunday, and not until the sweepstakes had been doubled. James Slater, a London millionaire put up the extra money. He told reporters the price was worth it to a chess buff.
The pot sweetened to his liking, Fischer said he was ready to sit down to the table on the Fourth.
This failed to suit Spassky who declared Bobby had insulted him and all of Russia by the delaying tactics.
Though the Russian did not refer publicly to Uncle Sam's birthday, it may well be that the Kremlin ordered him to skip an Independence Day starter.
The two intellectuals are supposed to begin dueling today.
Nick the Greek has wisely steered clear from handicapping the Olympic version of mental gymnastics, but regardless of the outcome Bobby has already won out on the dramatics.
Anyone For Chess? 06 Jul 1972, Thu The News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan) Newspapers.com
