AThe San Francisco Examiner San Francisco, California Monday, July 10, 1972 - Page 20
Will Chess Become Great Spectator Sport? by Joel Tiumak
Chess has all the ingredients of a great spectator sport — for the edification of sceptics who view tomorrow's television re-creation of the Fischer-Spassky world chess championship without much fervor.
True, there are some drawbacks — but if you're objective, you cannot fail to see that chess is on its way competing with football, baseball, basketball and tennis as one of America's top sports attractions.
Like football and baseball, chess is readily accessible to sport fans — except chess is cheaper, even free.
Just go to the Golden Gate Park recreation tables at Stanyan and Page Streets and you'll see chess matches free of charge — minor league, of course, but some of the players are so fascinating to watch.
Or go to the Mechanics' Institute at 57 Post St., where San Francisco's chess center is located on the Fourth Floor. Here, too, the matches are free. But this is the big league — and the atmosphere is quite different from the Golden Gate Park scene.
“Banging the chess or checker pieces or making any unnecessary noise when resetting them will not be tolerated” says one of the rules posted on the wall of the institute's Chess and Checker Room.
Will Chess Become Great Spectator Sport? 10 Jul 1972, Mon The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) Newspapers.com
While in Golden Gate Park some of the chess players look like they might also be rabid baseball fans and beer guzzlers, at the Mechanics' Institute, the players look more remote from life's everyday's frenzies.
Compete in Trance
But in both the minor and major leagues of chess, all players compete in a trance — not unlike the trances yogis are famous for.
So as far as the pocket-book is concerned, chess has the other major American sports beat.
Now in football, you have a super-bowl championship, which, no matter how exciting, is not a world championship; in baseball, the world series excludes most of the world.
The chess game itself, separated from personalities, is obviously more exciting than the other sports.
Chess players are not just out to win a game; they are assassins, out to kill bishops, knights, queens and kings.
Personalities, of course, make any sport.
And to tell the truth, who made out better in his fight for big money — Vida Blue of the Oakland A's or Bobby Fischer, the U.S. chess king? Maybe Fischer should challenge the reserve clause?
In football and baseball, you admire physical prowess and game savvy — and you suspend judgment of a player's deeper mental capabilities.
In chess, you have to admire a player's mental facility — and from the way Fischer and Spassky look, as fit and trim as any football and baseball star (even trimmer in many cases), chess looks like a body builder.
In chess everything is out in the open. A chess player is so involved in the game, he usually forgets himself and lets his whole personality escape through facial expressions and little nervous habits.
When you see Fischer and Spassky on television tomorrow in their first championship match, you won't be able to keep from trying to unravel their inner selves.
You'd never think of doing this when you see Joe Namath hit with a bomb, Willie Mays leap for a drive in center or Hank Aaron drive one out. They are different persons on and off the field.
Now if sceptics are not convinced that chess is on its way up as a spectator sport, they ought to see Cyrus Weiss of San Francisco.
Weiss has this advertisement on the bulletin board of the Chess and Checker Room of the Mechanics' Institute:
“The Sales Promotion of the Century — Chess. Let Cyrus Weiss design and tailor your next big promotion with America's newest traffic builder — chess.”
America is ready.
