AMuncie Evening Press Muncie, Indiana Thursday, November 25, 1971 - Page 43
Bobby Fischer? He's the Joe Namath in the World of Chess by Bob Loy
Quickly, now, can you tell me who Bobby Fischer is?
Never heard of him?
Bobby Fischer is an international celebrity. In many quarters around the globe he is lionized. But in the United States, his native land, it is probably safe to assume not one person in 10,000 could identify his name.
He has been quoted as saying, “Throughout the world I am a Joe Namath, but at home I am nobody.”
So who is Bobby Fischer?
Recently the sardonic, politically acute newspaper cartoonist Bill Mauldin published a cartoon depicting a chess board on which were two chess pieces, one standing and the other lying on its side.
The standing piece was topped with a youthful-appearing male head and was labeled, “Bobby Fischer's chess victory.”
The reclining piece was topped with a head representing that of Secretary of State William Rogers and was labeled “State Dept.'s U.N. defeat.” This referred to the expulsion of nationalist China from the United Nations.
You will probably infer from this that Bobby Fischer is a chess player. But he is hardly the ordinary garden variety, pipe smoking, good natured, philosophical hobbyist chess player depicted in fiction.
At 28, Fischer may be the greatest chess player in the history of the game. He is certainly the best American player ever developed.
From all reports, he attacks chess with systematic ferocity of a hungry tiger shark going after his victuals.
John Campbell of the Ball State University music faculty and a knowledgeable and experienced chess player (he wouldn't permit me to refer to him as an expert), has given me some insight into Fischer's achievements.
World Title Held By Russian
In international chess competition, the world champion must defend his title once every three years, said Campbell. In the meantime, aspirants to his crown, the international grand masters, are knocking each other off in a series of challenge matches.
Fischer has engaged in a number of these matches during the past couple of years in his single-minded quest for the world title held by a Russian, Boris Spassky.
Usually in these encounters, the player who first wins six games takes the match, according to Campbell.
I his first match, Fischer annihilated his opponent in six straight games. Opponent No. Two fell the same way. Ditto. No Three.
Opponent No. Four put up a feeble defense and managed a tie after he had lost the first two games. Fischer could not be denied, however, and opponent Four ultimately fell.
Before that tie, Fischer had won 20 straight games from some of the world's best chess players.
There is really no analogy for this achievement in the world of sports. It is greater than a baseball player batting 500 for the season or a hockey player scoring 100 goals or a basketball player scoring 150 points in a game.
According to Campbell, such a performance is beyond bounds of credibility.
None Won More Than Three
“This is absolutely unheard of,” he said. “No one had ever won more than three straight games in international competition and here is a man who wins 20. It is beyond comprehension.”
So what is the meaning of Fischer's accomplishment? What is the real significance of the Mauldin cartoon?
Next spring, Fischer will play Spassky for the world championship. If he approaches the Russian with the carnivorean fury he has displayed in the past, the Soviet Union's 35-year domination of the chess world will come to an end.
It will mean an American victory and a Russian defeat in international prestige almost diplomatic in scope.
I would hate to be in Spassky's shoes.
As Campbell said, “If the Americans beat Russia in getting to the moon, that's fine, sure, we beat them. But more important to the Russia is beating him at his own game and his own culture and that is chess.”
The expert chess player is one of the most highly-esteemed persons in the Soviet Union. He is subsidized by the state.
Even Farm Boy Has a Chance
“I am sure that chess players are much more esteemed than the athletes and I imagine the cosmonauts, too. I am not sure of that, but chess in Russia is the national game and a national way of culture,” said Campbell.
Why is the chess player so highly esteemed, he was asked.
“Maybe it is because in our society an Abraham Lincoln can reach the top by his own personal drive, but in Russia I don't know that this is possible except on the chess board,” he said.
“A little farm boy barefoot in the snow in Russia, playing chess on the ground can actually achieve this ability to be one of the world's leading chess players.”
No doubt you have heard the old joke about the chess player who died during a match and his opponent didn't discover it for three days.
Campbell said this story has a basis in fact. It actually is supposed to have happened that a player concentrating for about 12 hours on his next move didn't notice his opponent had expired.
Given the fact that chess, in the popular conception, is almost a synonym for slowness of movement and boredom, what is there about the game that grabs certain people? What is the chess mystique?
It's Game of Sacrifice
Chess is at the same time a science, an art and a game, according to Campbell.
He tells the story of the Indian rajah whose life was saved in some manner by a pheasant and he promised the pheasant anything his heart desired as a reward.
The pheasant said that for his reward he would like the rajah to put one grain of rice on one square of a chess board, put two grains on another square and to proceed putting grains of rice on successive squares, each time doubling the previous total until all 64 squares were covered.
The rajah's mathematicians calculated that the amount of rice involved would cover the earth to a depth of nine feet.
Adds Campbell, “All of those individual grains of rice are in any one chess game that goes an average of 40 moves. The mathematical possibilities tend to eliminate luck.”
“It's a game of war and its merciless. It's even more merciless than that United States in the game of war because you not only go out and kill the enemy ruthlessly like we do in the army, but in a chess game you send your own soldier into suicide with no thought.
“If you can do it, that's great, that's glorious, there goes your queen, throw the queen away 'cause you catch the other's guy's king. You win the king you win the game and you sacrifice your own men to win.”
“Chess teaches patience, self-discipline and concentration. I preach this for the elementary school boy, the boy who does not like school. He hates English, grammar, music, anything, but, he does like football or something that does not teach concentration like chess.
Indian Is A Weed Patch
“You take him and put him on a chess board and you can get his concentration built up so that it spills over into English, I claim.
“They say this has been proven in Milwaukee, for instance, where the school system has masters teaching the boys.”
The use of chess in schools is being used in many places, he added.
“In Europe it is called a heavy subject the way we would consider geometry.”
In the international chess garden, Indiana is in the corner weed patch, according to Campbell.
Chess players are rated by the United States Chess Federation on a complex point system according to the number of games won in organized play.
Lowest-rated players are in the E class. The ratings progress upward alphabetically through A then on to &lquo;expert,” “master,” “senior master,” and “grand master.”
There are also the international grand masters, such as Bobby Fischer, who are good enough to play for the world title.
Indiana has about 25 class A players, Campbell said, four or five experts, no masters, but one senior master.
The latter is Elliot Hearst, an Indiana University faculty member and adopted Hoosier, who is rated the 17th best player in the nation. Hearst has played two simultaneous matches against the Ball State University Chess Club, taking on all comers at the same time.
Campbell is a B-rated player and is a president of the Ball State Chess Club which has about 40 members. Chess is a 'serious' hobby with him and he is working hard to promote the game in this area.
Although Campbell estimates that about three-fourths of the American male population plays chess, the game never has caught on here as it has in other countries.
In a recent Life magazine article, the writer told how Bobby Fischer would be mobbed by fans when he ventured out of his hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he was playing a match.
Such adulation in the United States is reserved only for sports heroes and it is doubtful that Bobby Fischer will receive the same treatment here when he wins the world championship.
Bobby Fischer? He's the Joe Namath in the World of Chess Thu, Nov 25, 1971 – Page 43 · Muncie Evening Press (Muncie, Indiana) · Newspapers.com
