For Chess a Capitalistic Turn

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Florence Morning News Florence, South Carolina Wednesday, July 05, 1972 - Page 4

For Chess a Capitalistic Turn
Americans, addicted as they are to more bruising sports, have difficulty whipping up a lot of enthusiasm for a chess match — even if it is the world championship match pitting against Russian titleholder Boris Spassky.
If and when the match finally gets underway, it's hard to envision a contest that will exceed the drama of the preliminaries, even for avid chess fans. The first game was scheduled to begin Tuesday in Reykjavik, Iceland, but Spassky accused Fischer of violating the rules and refused to play.
That was only the latest of a series of hitches that have threatened to cancel the match entirely.
First Fischer and Spassky ([The Soviet Regime. Spassky was not present and making the declarations.]) jostled over the site of the showdown match. Fischer favored Belgrade, Yugoslavia, while Spassky ([The Soviet delegation. Spassky was not present.]) favored Reykjavik. A compromise under which the tournament would be played in both cities fell through. At the eleventh hour Fischer, his capitalist upbringing showing through ([Soviet Empire capitalism subsidized its players, while American Fischer received nothing but a nominal fee provided by the American chess organization, at best. Bobby was expected to pay for the gig out of pocket... ? It's not capitalism going on here, Americans have got to derive a source of income from somewhere.]) indicated that the payoff for the match was insufficient and he threatened not to show. A London banker sweetened the pot with $130,000 and Fischer was on his way.
The match could run 24 games unless a winner emerges earlier. Fischer is given a slightly better than even chance at dethroning Spassky. But skeptics point out that Spassky has beaten Fischer in all five of their previous matches.
In any case, Americans in general will not be hanging on to every move as they might in, say, a super bowl football game. Chess is widely regarded by Americans as boring and strictly a game for the cerebral elite.
But tests made in 1970 at Temple University concluded that chess is a game that calls for prodigious amounts of physical as well as mental exertion. To determine how much energy is actually expended by a chess player during tournament play, bio-kinetic readings of pulse, heartbeat and other psychological measurements were taken on 12 volunteer players.
Surprisingly, it was found that chess is as physically taxing as a strenuous session of boxing or football.
From the way things are shaping up in Reykjavik, keeping physically fit seems to be at least as essential for coping with the preliminaries of a match as the match itself.