AAlabama Journal Montgomery, Alabama Tuesday, July 06, 1971 - Page 4
Can Bobby Fischer Whip Boris Spassky? Does Anyone Care? By Fred L. Zimmerman, In The Wall Street Journal
Get ready, America, for a great propaganda victory over the Russians. Not in space, not at the SALT talks but over the chess board.
Chess is an esoteric game to most Americans, so its doubtful the nation is aware of the resounding triumph at last within its grasp. But chess is a national sport in Russia, and Russians are very much aware of something that may well happen — something roughly equivalent to a Moscow baseball team winning the World Series.
A 28-year-old chess genius named Robert J. Fischer is heading toward a match next spring with the world champion, Russia's Boris Spassky, and there's a good chance Bobby Fischer will win. If so, a non-Russian will be world chess champion for the first time in 25 years. And an American will be official titleholder for the first time ever.
Brooklyn-born (correction: Chicago-born) Mr. Fischer. famous in the chess world since his days as a 13-year-old prodigy, already has won the annual U.S. championship eight times. He took the first of five big steps toward the world title last December, winning first place by a big margin at a tournament in Spain. The tournament was run by the International Chess Federation as part of a quadrennial cycle leading to a world championship match, and the top six finalists in the tournament then began elimination matches to determine who challenges champion Spassky.
In a May quarter-final match in Vancouver, Bobby demolished a Russian star, Mark Taimanov, six games to zero — a score unprecedented at that advanced level of chess competition. Tuesday in Denver he begins a match with the West's No. 2 player, Bent Larsen of Denmark. If, as expected, Bobby wins, only one more opponent (probably ex-world champion Tigran Petrosian of the USSR, whom he has beaten before) will stand between him and the champ.
THE PUBLIC statements of some Russian chess experts notwithstanding, Bobby's chances of beating the champ are considered good.
“We are not afraid of Fischer,” a top Soviet player, Yefim Geller, recently declared to a Yugoslav journalist. The journalist's account, however, tactfully omitted any mention of the Geller-Fischer game at that crucial tournament last December in Spain. There the hardly fearless Mr. Geller proposed a draw after seven moves, whereupon Bobby laughed at him, declined the offer, and beat him in a particularly humiliating fashion in 65 moves later.
Following Bobby's 6-0 shellacking of Russia's Mr. Taimanov in May, Soviet comments about the American star have been much more subdued. And champion Spassky is reported to have said that he now expects Bobby to be his challenger.
Victory would be a personal triumph as well as a national propaganda coup. For a decade, Bobby Fischer has been perhaps the game's most controversial player, forever complaining about everything from poor lighting and noisy spectators to the style of the chess sets. In 1962, he wrote an article for Sports Illustrated charging the Russians with cheating at big tournaments. He said he would never play in the championship cycle again.
He was only 19 then, although already one of the world's strongest players. Those who know him well say he's calmer now, simply because he has matured. The stresses of the championship cycle should put this theory to the test.
A championship chess match is a serious, high-tension struggle that can break a man's nerves and driven him to tears. This happened, in fact, during one of the elimination matches last May in Spain.
Serious chess is played with clocks each player having two and one-half hours to make his first 40 moves and comparable time limits thereafter. After five hours of play, unfinished games usually are adjourned. Most players have seconds, whose big task is to help analyze the adjourned positions. Often the player will go to sleep while the second studies the position all night, testing alternative sequences of moves. When the player awakens, his second presents him with pages of variations for study.
Bobby Fischer was playing chess like a mature master before he was old enough to shave and he doesn't rely on seconds much. He won't be using one Tuesday, and his second at the tournament in Spain later wrote that one of his main responsibilities was simply to get Mr. Fischer to the game on time. Excelling in all phases of the game, Bobby is known for a risky, attacking style of chess that can lead to fierce tactical battles.
Most top-flight players, when facing an equally strong opponent, pursue bland, low-risk strategies that wait for the opponent to blunder. If this doesn't happen, such games usually end in a draw. But Bobby always plays to win, accepting a draw only when he knows his position is so bad he hasn't a chance of victory. In Vancouver, Bobby reportedly angered the Russian contingent at the Taimanov match by refusing draw offers several times in positions that were theoretically barren. In each case, Bobby went on to win.
Unlike Mr. Fischer, top Russian players invariably use seconds, who are subsidized — like the players themselves — by a Soviet government that takes the game very seriously. In Russia, promising players are identified and cultivated in elementary schools, then given years of the best possible training for international competition. Many Russians maintain that their skill at chess reflects the natural superiority of Soviet culture.
Nothing like the elaborate Soviet system exists in the U.S., of course, Bobby Fischer seems to have sprung up totally as a fluke, and he can't be regarded as typical of American chess. But largely because of Bobby's ascendancy, U.S. chess officials say, U.S. chess activity has jumped sharply in recent years. Since 1968, the number of U.S. players participating in rated tournaments has climbed to 24,000 from about 12,000.
While U.S. chess seems to be blossoming, an international debate has began over whether Soviet chess is declining. Paul Keres, a top Russian player, recently declared that “urgent measures are required” to find and develop new young stars. Because of the tension and the concentration demanded, championship chess is a young man's game, and Mr. Keres worried that except for champion Spassky (age 34) the best Soviet players are over 40.
Some U.S. chess officials, however, think such talk is mainly bluff. “The Russians have plenty of strong young players coming up,” says one expert. “They're trying to hide them so we won't realize how bad off we really are.”
It is true that the number of serious U.S. players still comes nowhere close to the estimated four million Russians engaged in organized chess competition. With so many Russians following next year's championship match, a Fischer victory would come as a stunning blow. But U.S. chess hands already are resigned to the fact that to an overwhelming majority of Americans, it would come as no big deal.
“If Fischer becomes world champion,” says E.B. Edmondson, executive director of the United States Chess Federation, “he certainly should be invited to the White House.” But Mr. Edmondson doubts that any President—even one who has been known to make a congratulatory visit to a football locker-room — would do anything that grand for chess. “Few in government,” he sighs, “have the slightest awareness of the importance of chess in other countries.”
