AChicago Tribune Chicago, Illinois Saturday, October 30, 1971 - Page 30
A Chance to Be Champion
WHEN a reporter recently asked Bobby Fischer if it would be proper to call him the best chess player in the world, Fischer replied, “You would be stupid not to.”
Fischer, a Chicagoan by birth [1943], will get his chance to prove it next spring when he challenges champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union for the world chess title. Fischer will be the first American ever to be in that position.
On his part, Spassky laconically says he was “neither impressed nor surprised” when Fischer won the right to challenge him by defeating another Soviet and former world champion, Tigran Petrosian, last week in Buenos Aires. “Petrosian defeated himself alone,” Spassky says, “with his own hands.”
The Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Chile, and Greece have already made firm offers to stage the 24-match championship, and 16 other countries have expressed interest in it, according to International Chess Federation president Max Euwe.
The 34-year-old Spassky is known to prefer playing outside the Soviet Union where bigger prizes are at stake. The minimum prize for the winner of the World Final will be about $3,750, but this could go much higher, Euwe said. The loser will taken home a minimum of about $2,250.
Fischer earned a huge following at the San Martin Theater in Buenos Aires, where he showed remarkable coolness and confidence in brushing aside Petrosian's challenge.
His visit intensified a long-standing chess craze in Argentina. Bookstores are displaying in their front windows collections of technical chess manuals, and chess sets seem available in almost every store.
On Thursday, Fischer and Petrosian were awarded the May Merit Order by the Argentine government for “uniting the world around your chess board.”
Fischer has won the open admiration of many Soviet chess fans with his impressive victory over Petrosian.
“This will be the most interesting title match in many years” was the almost unanimous reaction in a sampling of fans in Russia, where chess players are numbered in the millions and the game ranks as a major sport.
FISCHER has been concentrating on changing his image.
He became the United States champion at 14, a grand master at 15, and won the American championship eight times.
Despite efforts to control his temper, Fischer still hates noise, flashbulbs, movement of spectators, and adjourned games.
But he undeniably is a master chessman. Even Spassky calls him “a chess genius of the 20th century, along with Mikhail Tal,” Soviet former world champion whose own career was meteoric.
Spassky and Fischer have played each other on one occasion, one game in the world chess Olympics in 1970. Spassky won.
In fact, Spassky said before the Buenos Aires battle that he would rather play Fischer than Petrosian.
“Fischer's competition results are better,” Spassky said, “but a competition is one thing and a challenger's match is another.”
Millions of chess fans will have to wait and see if Fischer finally reaches the pinnacle toward which his stormy climb has been directed. His opponent is a formidable one, to say the least.
