Oakland Tribune Oakland, California Friday, July 07, 1972 - Page 22
World Chess Championship
If baseball this year could survive both the players' strike and the Vida Club cause celebre, perhaps chess will yet recover from the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky ordeal.
The uncompromising genius of the two acknowledged chess masters have at last apparently been mollified and the oft-postponed World Chess Championships are scheduled to get under way in Reykjavik, Iceland Tuesday.
Fischer, New York's 29-year-old grandmaster, delayed the scheduled July 2 opening match by demanding more prize money.
When Fischer got what he wanted, it was Spassky's turn. Claiming he had been insulted, the 35-year-old Russian champion demanded a postponement of his own. He got that plus a formal apology from Fischer.
In the end, it was apparent the stakes were too high — the championship of the world and a $156,250 prize — for either chess whiz to back off.
Perhaps it was all no more than psychological warfare, but the preliminary battle of wits did produce an extraordinary amount of publicity for chess, a game not normally known for its international repercussions.
That publicity, expected to last through the two months of play between Fischer and Spassky, promises to elevate chess to the levels of ping pong in world-wide interest and intrigue.
Simply because the two combatants are an American and a Russian, the match has taken on ideological proportions of a battle between the free world and the Soviet world.
This may have been unavoidable, but to the dyed-in-the-wool chess fan the games are the long-awaited classic match between the two giants of the chess world.
Now that the nerves frayed over whether the games would actually start have returned to normal, now suspense over the actual outcome will keep all chess devotees on edge.
Whatever the final results, play promises to be of the highest quality and filled with drama. Don't be too surprised, however, if that drama comes as much away from the chess board as on it as these two contestants continue their psychological game of oneupsmanship.
World Chess Championship 07 Jul 1972, Fri Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com
