AThe Alton Democrat Alton, Iowa Thursday, May 20, 1971 - Page 3
Chess — a game about which the frph knows virtually nothing—is something, though, we have heard about since infancy since our elders played it and the pater was one of the experts of the Orange City chess club. In those days Capablanca, the Cuban chess master, was one of the top players. He played the Sioux City chess club which had arranged a circle of tables around the room. Capablanca moved from one table to the next, taking in the situation on each board at a glance and making his move.
At that session, Dad had the only board that the Cuban master conceded was a draw.
It's more than one hundred years since this country has had a chess champion, notes the Hemet, Calif., News, and if anyone can do it Bobby Fischer is the best hope we have.
Bobby started playing at the age of six, notes The News, and won the United States championship in 1958 at the age of 14. “In September of that year he became the youngest grandmaster in the history of the game.” Bobby is now 26.
An American-Russian chess battle was scheduled to get underway in Vancouver, B.C., May 13, and The News says the affair will carry a great deal of suspense. It was to be the first of ten games between U.S. champion Bobby Fischer and Mark Taimanov of the Soviet Union, one of four matches that started on the same days in as many countries to determine who will challenge Boris Spassky of the USSR for the world championship. Four of the eight players in the opening matches May 12 were Russians.
“Although played in silence, chess has a remarkable similarity to the lethal contests which, tradition says, occurred between gunslingers of the Old West,” reminds The News.
“The participant is on his own, with no resources except his individual skill. Furthering the similarity, rarely does one player meet another without silently trying to calculate their relative strengths or experiencing the blood-tingling desire to best him. And against a skilled pusher of pieces, a mistake can be as irretrievable as a too slowly drawn gun.
“Origin of the game is unknown, but attributed to any one of a number of nations, all of them ancient. The first known historical document connected with chess is an inscription on a tablet in a pyramid at Giza, dating back three thousand years before Christ.
“The game is a sweet poison that, can, if retained, rob people of the time and interest to acquire wealth or power in other fields.”
