AThe Vancouver Sun Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Wednesday, September 29, 1971 - Page 66
Botvinnik Sees Era of Fischer, Spassky
Moscow (UPI) — Mikhail Botvinnik, one of the Soviet Union's greatest chess players, says America's Bobby Fischer and Russia's Boris Spassky will dominate world chess throughout this decade.
For former world champion Tigran Petrosian, this is not encouraging. Petrosian, a Soviet Armenian, and Fischer begin a 10-game match Thursday in Buenos Aires for the right to challenge Spassky's world title.
“There is every reason to assert that the 1970s will see keen rivalry between Spassky and Fischer,” Botvinnik said in a review of chess, published in the current issue of Yunost (Youth) magazine.
“Chess lovers around the world will gain a lot of memories from the struggle of these two chess players, but it cannot now be told who will have the odds in his favor,” he said.
This was the highest praise the Soviets have ever given the 28-year-old American, a brash, outspoken chess personality whom Russians respect but do not like.
Botvinnik is the grand old man of Soviet chess, a mathematical genius who was world champion from 1948-56, 1958-60 and 1961-62. He then retired to help develop a computer programmed with chess-like patterns of logic.
His comments on the even of the Fischer-Petrosian match were all the more striking because of the intensive pride the Russians take in their own domination of world chess.
Spassky, 34, won the world title in 1969 from Petrosian, who is now in his 40s.
Botvinnik said he rated Spassky “a more level-headed and many-sided player and man than Fischer, although Spassky is perhaps not as capable of counting variants as quickly and skillfully as Fischer.”
Botvinnik, however, discounted predictions that Fischer would roll over Petrosian without a defeat in the same way as he disposed of the previous two opponents on his current campaign.
“Fischer sometimes loses,” he said “because man is not a machine.”
