State Champ to Analyze World Chess Match

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The Capital Times Madison, Wisconsin Friday, June 30, 1972 - Page 21

State Champ to Analyze World Chess Match by Peter Dorman
(Editor's Note: Peter Dorman, a U.W. graduate who now lives in Madison, is the Wisconsin state chess champion. He will contribute occasional articles to The Capital Times sports pages analyzing the world chess championship match that starts Sunday between Bobby Fischer of the U.S. and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union.)
(Wisconsin State Chess Champion)
Sunday, July 2 is the scheduled beginning of the most dramatic contest in chess history: Bobby Fischer, former child prodigy whose play sometimes approaches absolute perfection, finally gets his crack at the world championship.
It's been a long time coming. Fischer first gained national attention in his early teens, when he won a spectacular game from Robert Byrne, one of America's best. Bobby, just 13 at the time, gave up his queen for a knight and a bishop in a long forced series of moves. A year later he won his first U.S. Championship.
Fischer's first stab at the world championship was back in 1958, when he was 15. With the death of the legendary Alexander Alekhine at the end of the Second World War, FIDE, the international chess federation, established a regular 3-year cycle for the world title. They divided the world into zones, each to hold its own championship. Then the top players would play in a worldwide interzonal tournament. The finalists from this event, plus the runners-up from the previous cycle. would compete in a candidates' tournament, and the winner of the final contest would play the reigning world champion in a 24-game match.

Mikhail Botvinnik, a Russian, became the world champion after a special tournament in 1948. He successfully defended his title against David Bronstein and Vassily Smyslov, both Russians, in 1951 and 1954. Botvinnik lost to Smyslov in 1957, but won his title back a year later in a return match.
Since the U.S. Championship suits as a zonal tournament, Fischer played in the 1958 interzonal. He qualified, but fell short in the candidates tournament, which was won by Mikhail Tal—another Russian. Tal's brilliant attacking style gave him the world championship in 1960, but Botvinnik took it back with another return match.
As the next cycle began, it looked like Fischer was destined to break the Soviet spell. He was regularly clobbering his rivals in the U.S., and he placed a clear first in the 1962 Stockholm interzonal. But he could only take fourth place in the candidates' tournament in Curacao that year, finishing behind three Russians.
This defeat provoked his famous charge that the Russians were “fixing” international chess. He claimed that they arranged to draw with each other, and then ganged up to defeat the only serious non-Russian challenger, Fischer.

There may be some truth to this accusation. Some of the games played between the Soviet masters show little indication of a fight; some games were drawn in the opening. But the real cause of Fischer's set-back was that the top Russian players could still beat him more often than he could beat them. Bobby was good, but not yet good enough.
Behind his public posturing, Fischer came to this conclusion himself. His appearances became less frequent; for a while, he disappeared altogether. He was boning up for a comeback.
Meanwhile, there was a new world champion, Tigran Petrosian. His was a bloodless style of chess, relying on slow maneuvering. He rarely took any risks. He rarely lost. In addition, FIDE, acting on a recommendation of Fischer's, scrapped the candidates' tournament and replaced it with a series of elimination matches.
Then Fischer came back. With one victory after another, he seemed to be on his way to the top. But he got into a personal quarrel with the directors of the Interzonal tournament in Tunisia in 1967 over scheduling questions. Even though he was far ahead of the rest of the field, Bobby dropped out. Before long, he was in seclusion once again.

Fischer surfaced in 1970 to play in a team match that pitted the best players from the Soviet Union against the best from all the other countries combined. By this time, Petrosian had lost his title to Boris Spassky, but it was Petrosian that Fischer played. Bobby won two games and drew the other two, a decisive victory against the former world champion.
Then Fischer took the interzonal tournament at Palma De
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Chess Match
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Mallorca, winning the last seven games in a row and finishing far ahead of everyone else. Then the elimination matches: Fischer plays Mark Taimanov, a leading Russian master, and wins six out of six. Next in line was Bent Larsen, second only to Fischer among non-Soviet players. Again, Bobby wins six out of six. Finally, Fischer faces Petrosian again, and, after a shaky start, takes the match with five wins, one loss, and three draws. These scores are particularly impressive in view of the fact that most games between the strongest players end in draws.

Now only one player stands between Fischer and the world championship: Boris Spassky. The world champion has done well against Fischer in the past: of the five games they have played, Spassky has won three and drawn two. So far, just pulling together the details of the match has been a formidable problem. Fischer wanted to play in Belgrade, Yugoslavia where he is idolized by thousands in that chess-crazy country. Belgrade had also put in the highest bid, offering cash prizes of $152,000, an unprecedented figure in tournament chess. Spassky wanted to play in Reykjavik, Iceland, where the climate is similar to that of the champion's native Leningrad.
The FIDE decision was a compromise: half of the match in Belgrade, the other half in Reykjavik. But Fischer got into a dispute with the Belgrade organizers, and the Yugoslavs pulled out. Now the entire match is slated for Iceland, with the total prize fund slightly under $100,000.
The best-of-24 game match is due to begin Sunday. Spassky is in Reykjavik, accompanied by his official “second”, Evim Geller. (In the past, Spassky's second has always been the veteran Bondarevsky. The switch is said to be caused by “difficulties”. What are they? The Russians aren't talking.) Two other companions are chess experts Krogius and Nei. Nei is also a psychologist.
Fischer complains about the lighting, which was installed to facilitate the television crews from different countries.
As of now, the match is officially on. but no one knows for sure if Fischer will blow his big chance by refusing to play at the last moment. If he does play, millions of chess fans around the world will see ten years of suspense resolved in a two-month display of unparalleled mental combat.

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Chess Goes Other Way

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The Windsor Star Windsor, Ontario, Canada Friday, June 30, 1972 - Page 22

Chess Goes Other Way
IN GOLF SOME PLAYERS do better at match, rather than stroke play. However, almost all prominent competition today is conducted at stroke play which has two main features - it rewards consistency and hurts the hot and cold competitor, and it keeps the field and more major names around longer.
Chess has gone the other way, in part at least because Bobby Fischer demanded it. And this is the principal reason Fischer, the 29-year-old American, is favored in many circles to dethrone Russia's Boris Spassky in a 24-game match starting Sunday at Reykjavik. Iceland.
Fischer, conceded by his peers the most exciting chess player in the world, decreed several years ago he would never again compete in tournament play against force of Russian numbers. He argued, and so did others, that no single Westerner could hope to win the world championship because the Russians were able to exert so much massive candidacy.
It is a simple fact that Russia mass produces more chess masters than any other country or even any group of nations. For that reason they have owned the world title for 45 years, a crushing domination broken only for three years in the middle thirties when Dr. Max Euwe, a Hollander and now head of FIDE, the ruling body, intervened between tenures of the first of great modern Russian champions, Alexander Alekhine.

FISCHER HAS LONG considered himself the best chess player in the world. It enraged and frustrated him that his ambitions for world supremacy were stymied by the FIDE system of round-robin competition which served to perpetuate Russian dominance. He called it a Communist plot hatched in Moscow.
FIDE has finally capitulated to his pleas. It allowed him to challenge through match play. Head to head, he knocked off six major qualifiers in a devastating display of mastery.

HIS FINAL OBSTACLE to getting to Spassky was Tigran Petrosian, a Russian and world champion from 1963 to 1967. He blew Petrosian off the boards last fall at Buenos Aires without difficulty.
So now it is not Russia versus Fischer, but Spassky versus Fischer. The odds have swung to Fischer, a brilliant player at the height of his powers. Spassky is 35, and in five games against Fischer has won three and drawn two. But, chess experts don't take much stock in that. In head-to-head play, Fischer is rated unbeatable by more disciples than himself.
Fischer can become the first official American world champion. The strongest American of the past was Paul Morphy who performed in the 19th century. Morphy was unofficial world champion of his time. He quit serious chess before he was 25.
The first world champion, so recognized, was William Steinitz of Vienna. Steinitz ruled for 27 years through 1893. He died in poverty, insane, on Ward's Island in 1900, having moved from Europe to the United States while still champion.

A GERMAN, DR. EMANUEL LASKER defeated Steinitz and held the crown for another 27 years. A Cuban, the all-time great Jose Capablanca succeeded Lasker. After that it was the Russians from Alekhine to Spassky with Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal and Petrosian in between.
Nerves will play a major role in the matches at Reykjavik. They will play three games a week, using three other days in the week for adjourned games. The rules call for 40 moves in two and a half hours, 16 moves per hour in adjourned play. The clock is a merciless taskmaster in match chess. The unsure player often blunders against time, and if the blunder doesn't get him, the clock does by way of forfeit.

MASTER CHESS PLAYERS are notorious for the size of their egos, also for the depth of their apprehension.
The classic story on self-confidence concerns the Russian master, Efim Bogolyubov. When an admirer asked him whether he preferred the white or black pieces, he answered, “I have no preference. When I play white, I win because I have the first move. When I play black, I win because I am Bogolyubov.”
One of the best tales on apprehension would be the cigar smoking of Lasker. During a tournament, one of Lasker's opponents got him to promise he wouldn't smoke during the game. Lasker had a habit, apparently, of blowing smoke in his opponent's face.
After a few moves, Lasker took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth. His opponent protested to the tournament director, saying, “Lasker agreed not to smoke.” The umpire responded. “But, he isn't. His cigar is not lit.”
Whereupon the man said. “Ah, but he threatens to smoke, and you know very well how he values a threat.”

SPASSKY IS REPUTED to possess an excellent set of nerves. No hangups are reported about him. On the contrary, Fischer has a history of wild reaction to distraction. He is wont to make all kinds of demands concerning arrangements.

THIS DOESN'T MEAN Fischer is likely to lose his cool in a tight game situation. On the contrary, his recent opponents have been the ones to lose their cool. Petrosian and two others he defeated in the eliminations wound up in hotel or hospital room seclusion suffering from nervous exhaustion.
Fischer has done nothing in his life except study chess from the age of nine. When he was 14 he actually had more experience than most chess masters twice his age.
Some observers figure Spassky is in for a nervous breakdown.

Chess Championship To Be Played In Iceland

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The Cameron Herald Cameron, Texas Monday, June 19, 1972 - Page 2

Chess Championship To Be Played In Iceland
By Thorsteinn Thorarensen
Reuter Correspondent
Reykjavik, Iceland
Iceland is enthusiastically preparing to play host to a world chess championship likely to gain the attention of more people than any other event of its kind ever held.
The contest, opening on July 2, has become one of the most fascinating confrontations in the centuries-old history of chess.
The American challenger Bobby Fischer, poses the biggest threat in many years to the long hold of Soviet players on the title, and has established a reputation as one of the most colorful and enigmatic players ever to reach world status.
Fischer's recent record along is enough to excite chess buffs. When he meets the formidable world champion, Boris Spassky, the 29-year-old Fischer will be riding the crest of an extraordinary string of one-sided victories over top players in the elimination tournament which made him the challenger.
Spassky, 35, will be defending a Soviet hold on the title that has remained unbroken for 24 years - - and the dominant player for two decades before that was a Russian-born chess genius who lived in France, Alexander Alekhine.
Fischer, a former child prodigy who has once thought to have blighted his career by a series of withdrawals, has now emerged as a chess juggernaut.
Experts here are divided on whether he will be able to demolish Spassky the way he did former world champion Tigran Petrosian, also of the Soviet Union, last autumn to gain the right to challenge for the title.
Petrosian is famous for his patient, systematic play, but analysts agreed that Fischer shattered his game. After their Buenos Aires series, one of Petrosian's analysts, Soviet grandmaster Yuri Averbach, said: “His spirit was completely broken after the sixth game of the match.
“There is some strange magnetic influence in Bobby,” Averbach said. “The same happened with his two previous opponents in his march for the world title, Grandmasters Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen. They were also spiritually wrecked after the first couple of games.
But many experts feel Fischer will be up against a different problem in Spassky, who took the world championship from Petrosian in 1969 and has earned broad respect for his attacking flair and deep determination.

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Fischer Ready For Test

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Calgary Herald Calgary, Alberta, Canada Wednesday, June 14, 1972 - Page 13

Fischer Ready For Test By Al Horowitz
The New York Times, Copyright, 1972
New York — When, on July 2, many-time United States chess champion Robert Fischer sits down to play the first game of his world championship match against title-holder Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, it will be the first time in 71 years that an American has participated in a match for chessdom's highest title.
Although Samuel Reshevsky took part in a tournament held in 1948 to determine the successor to the throne left vacant by the death of Alexander Alekhine — and finished fourth — no American has faced a reigning world champ in a head-to-head confrontation for the title since Frank J. Marshall in 1901, when he suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Emmanuel Lasker.
Those 71 years represent a long period of hope and frustration for American chess fans, and it is little wonder the national chess community should await the event in a fever of enthusiasm.
Many American chess players have followed Fischer's career from the time when, at the age of 12, he first proved himself a force to be reckoned with. When two years later, in 1956, he won the U.S. championship for the first time, there were many who predicted that he would win the world title before he was old enough to vote. But, although he went on to become, at the age of 15, the youngest grandmaster in the history of the game, the road to the summit proved to he much longer and rockier than his admirers had anticipated.
That road has now led to, of all improbable places, Reykjavik, Iceland, where play, barring accidents, will begin July 2; the first player to score 12½ points (counting one point for a win, half-a-point to each for a draw) within the limit of 24 games will be the winner. If the match is tied at the end of 24 games, the champion will retain his title.
Spassky, at 35, is six years older than Fischer. He won the title in 1969 by besting his compatriot, Tigran Petrosian, after losing to him in his first try in 1966. Spassky was also a world championship contender while still in his teens, but, like Fischer, suffered some sobering setbacks before finally achieving his goal. He should now be at the height of his career and, under ordinary circumstances, might be expected to hold on to his crown for many years to come.
However, it is the firm opinion not only of most American experts, who might well be open to the charge of wishful thinking, but of knowledgeable people all over the world, that the world champion is a decided underdog. International Chess Federation President Dr. Max Euwe, himself a former world champion, some months ago was quoted as saying that Fischer has a “60-per-cent chance” to win the title — mighty long odds in favor of the challenger.
On what, one may reasonably ask, do the authorities base such a sanguine view of Fischer's chances? Certainly not on previous games between these two opponents: the score stands 3-0 in Spassky's favor, with two draws. A careful examination of the games they have contested, however, reveals a different picture. Their first meeting, in a tournament at Mar del Plate, Argentina in 1960, when Fischer was only 16, resulted in a wild battle in which Bobby had a winning advantage, but went astray in the complications of the play and lost.

NOT SO ONE-SIDED
Spassky's second win came in 1966, when Fischer made a mistake in an even position and then succumbed to a brilliant attack. And when Spassky again beat Fischer, at the Chess Olympics — a team event — at Siegen, East Germany, in 1970, it was largely because, with the American team losing to the Russians, Fischer tried too hard and finally over-extended himself. Surely Spassky's three wins against Fischer without a loss cannot be simply dismissed with a few glib explanations, but close analysis does indicate that their meetings have not been so one-sided as all that.
What the experts are basing their opinions on, and rightly so, are the performances of the two protagonists over the past few years. There Fischer has a big edge, as he would have even if Spassky's results were far more impressive than they are. In order to win the right to contend for the championship, Fischer had to win a series of candidates' matches against some of the strongest players in the world, and he did so in extraordinary fashion.
First, he defeated Russian grandmaster Mark Taimanov, in a match held at Vancouver, last May, by an incredible 6-0 score, unprecedented in this form of competition. Then, in August, in a match played at Denver, Colo., he defeated Bent Larsen of Denmark, widely thought to be the top player of the western world, after Fischer of course, by the same margin. And then, to top it off, he disposed of former world champion Petrosian in a match played last November in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by 6½-2½.
Meanwhile, Spassky, since winning the title, has had to he content with a series of indifferent results. His most recent appearance in a major event was in a tournament in Moscow late last year, where he finished tied for sixth — by no means a disgraceful showing in such strong company, but pallid by comparison with Fischer's extraordinary doings.
Indicative of a player's recent results is a numerical ranking system which employs a complicated formula to translate tournament and match performances into a four-digit number, and can be employed to predict future results as well. Spassky's current rating is a healthy 2,690 — anything over 2,500 indicates play at the grand-master level. Fischer's however, is 2,824 — by far the highest ever achieved.
Thus, the mathematical projections indicate that Fischer will have an easy time of it, and suggest, that the final score will be about 12½-8½ in his favor.
Chess matches, of course, are not won by reference to probably tables, but over the board. Fischer is Spassky's superior both technically — his play exhibits fewer weak spots — and temperamentally Spassky has been having personal troubles recently that have markedly affected his concentration, whereas Fischer's whole life is devoted to chess. With the qualification that a player who has once won the world championship is of course capable of beating anyone, anytime, the conclusion is inevitable: Fischer will win, and most likely win big.
Fischer is capable of every type of chess — modern, hypermodern and eclectic. In these branches, control of the centre is paramount, though hypermodern chess, paradoxically, vests the center to the antagonist.
All grandmasters agree that it is important to gain control of the center yet, the hypermodernist actually inveigles his opponent into taking control of this area. Why?
In the beginning, plans of this player are long-termed. And, he cedes and bequeaths the centre.
As play progresses, the hypermodernist's efforts are to retrieve the median area, and every effort is bent on its repossession. Once regained, the hypermodernist intends to hold on and never to part with it. It goes without saying that the more knowledgeable a player, the greater his choice and also the greater technician, the finer the play. These are Fischer's attributes.
Fischer is a great, end-game expert and he favors hypermodern chess in many wins games.
All things being equal, he is confident — and confidence wins games.

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U.S. Champ Eyes World Chess Title

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Courier-Post Camden, New Jersey Monday, April 03, 1972 - Page 12

U.S. Champ Eyes World Chess Title
Though an American was hailed as the world's best chess player 114 years ago, Robert J. Fischer may become the first player officially to bring the title to the United States.
Brooklyn-born Bobby Fischer, 28, is given a good chance to defeat reigning champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in their 24-game match scheduled to begin June 22 in Belgrade.
Fischer and Spassky will play three games a week. After 12 games, the match will move to Reykjavik. The winning player will receive almost two-thirds of the $138,500 prize money offered by the Yugoslav and Icelandic capitals for the international championship bout.

IF FISCHER wins, he will be the first non-Russian to hold the world chess title since World War II. Even the prewar champion, who retained the title from 1927 with only one two-year lapse, was a Russian emigre, Alexander Alekhine.
Chess never has been as popular in the United States as in the Soviet Union, where the government rewards Spassky with a handsome salary and spacious Moscow apartment.
Yet when international chess matches were in their infancy, Paul Morphy of New Orleans defeated all his opponents here and abroad to be acclaimed the world champion of the game in 1858. He held his title four years, then retired from competition.

THE FIRST recorded international tournament may have been a match between Italian and Spanish players in 1566, but chess itself dates from antiquity. India generally is credited with creating chaturange or “four arms,” the game that evolved into to-day's chess.
In the Indian version, the king and his counselor took the field flanked by their elephants, cavalry, and war chariots. The fourth arm of the army, the foot soldiers, were ranged in front.
Victorious Persian armies took the game home with them. Checkmate, signaling the end of the game, comes from Persian shah mat, mean-ing “the king is dead.”

MOSLEM conquerors learned the game in the seventh century and it traveled with them to Spain. Because the Koran forbade images, they substituted abstract pieces for the carved figures previously used. Pieces whose V - cut tops were supposed to suggest elephant tusks looked like bishops' mitres to European eyes, and became bishops. The war chariots were turned into boats in Russia and towers in Europe.
The counselor was a messenger, a wise man, or a court jester before it became a queen. A rule change allowing a pawn advanced to an opponent's rear rank to be promoted to queen alarmed purists in the Middle Ages, who pointed out the move could make the king a bigamist.

CHESS players in China were more pragmatic. In the Chinese game a captured pawn is dead, as is true elsewhere. But a captured general goes back into play—now working for the other side.
Chess frequently has involved high stakes and high tempers, and was described by a 17th-century writer as “a testy cholericke game and very offensive to him that looseth the mate.”
The author may have had in mind King Canute, said to have been so furious at losing a game that he had the hapless winner beheaded.

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