AThe Los Angeles Times Los Angeles, California Sunday, January 10, 1971 - Page 113
Challenge Matches To Start In March
Now that the Interzonal Tournament of 1970 is history, the next step for those qualified is a series of matches to determine the challenger for the world chess championship now held by Boris Spassky of the USSR.
American ace Bobby Fischer will be favored, based on his overwhelming victory in the Interzonal. He finished 3½ points ahead of those tied for second, Eufim Geller of the USSR, Robert Huebner of West Germany and Bent Larsen of Denmark.
Also in the top six are Mark Taimanov of the USSR and Wolfgang Uhlmann of East Germany. They will be joined by two seeded players, both of the USSR, former world champion Tigran Petrosian, and the last to be eliminated in the previous cycle, Victor Korchnoi.
Dr. Max Euwe, recently appointed president of the International Chess Federation, supervised the drawing of numbers to determine the pairings for the matches.
Fischer is scheduled to play a 10-game match in March with Taimonov. Larsen will meet Uhlmann in the same half of the draw. The two winners will then play each other in July, also in the best of 10 games.
Matches are also scheduled in March, with the opponents Petrosian vs. Huebner and Korchnoi vs. Geller. The two winners will also play it off in July.
The two survivors of the series to that time will play a final match of 12 games in September. The winner will have earned the right to a match for the title with Spassky. This will be in the spring of 1972, with 24 games to be contested.
The sites for the matches have yet to be determined. Every effort is being made by the U.S. Chess Federation to have at least the Fischer-Taimanov match played in this country.
Funds could probably be raised to have all four of the first matches played here, if the players and their federations would agree. Offers to stage all four matches have already been made by Spain and Yugoslavia.
USSR Championship
The 38th annual USSR Championship Tournament, completed late in December in Riga, had a strong entry list of 22 masters and grand-masters. It was not up to the status of prior years, however. Missing were world champion Spassky, and four potential challengers who were busy at Palma de Mallorca, Geller, Polugaevsky, Smyslov and Taimanov. The winner, with the good score of 16-5, was Korchnoi, one of the seeded players for the coming series of challenge matches.
In second place, with 14½-6½, was Tukmakov, 24-year-old who moved strongly to the forefront last year. He also finished second to Fischer in the very strong tournament in Buenos Aires.
Other leaders in Riga were Stein. 14-7, Balashov, 12½-8½, and Gipslis, Karpov and Savon, who tied with 12-9.
Following are games from the tournament:
