The Los Angeles Times Los Angeles, California Sunday, May 09, 1971 - Page 88
Fischer, Taimanov Start Thursday
Bobby Fischer, best hope of the U.S. for the world chess championship, and Mark Taimanov of the USSR, also after that goal, will start the first game of their match Thursday afternoon in the Graduate Center of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
The two grandmasters will contest a 10-game series, with 5½ points required to win the match. Games will be played on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Play will be continued the following day if a game is not completed in the first session.
The players will be in a room by themselves, with only the officials and seconds present. Spectators will be in a large area, watching the game on wall-boards, with moves being transmitted from the playing room.
If the match is tied after 10 games, up to four additional games will be played on a sudden death basis, with a win for either player deciding the outcome. If still tied after 14 games, a toss will break the deadlock.
Three other matches will also start on Sunday, the protagonists being among the group of eight who previously qualified for the series of elimination encounters.
Facing each other will be Bent Larsen of Denmark and Wolfgang Uhlmann of East Germany in the Canary Islands, Spain; former world champion Tigran Petrosian of the USSR and Robert Huebner of West Germany in Seville, Spain, and two other Soviet stars, Eufim Geller and Victor Korchnoi, in Sochi, USSR.
The semi-finals are scheduled for early July. The winners of Fischer-Taimanov and Larsen-Uhlmann will battle it out in another 10-game match, as will the other two victors.
The survivors will met in a final 12-game match in September to determine the official challenger for the championship match with titleholder Boris Spassky of the USSR, which will be for the best of 24 games some time next spring.
All the games of the Fischer-Taimanov match will be published in The Times as soon as available, as well as selected games of the other matches.
Who will win? Based on his fantastic successes last year, Fischer is favored by most experts to be the eventual challenger. This would break the pattern of all-Soviet championship matches which has existed since Mikhail Botvinnik first won the title in 1948.
The four Russians in the match series are all older than their rivals. They have considerably more experience in high level competition, but probably have lost some of their zest and will to win, essential qualities for a champion.
The youngest player is Huebner, 22, who was the greatest surprise when he qualified in the Interzonal Tournament last December. He is given little change to go any further, however.
Fischer is another matter. He won the U.S. championship before he was 14, and became an international grandmaster a few months later, the youngest in history.
His record in international tournaments is already legendary, and he is now the highest rated player in chess annals. He has never before persisted in following the prescribed course for world championship contenders, however. This time he may go all the way.
The other non-Russians are Larsen and Uhlmann, both 36. Larsen is the more aggressive player, and far more successful in tournaments. He may take the challenger's seat, should Fischer fail.
Of the Russians, Geller is 46, Taimanov 45, Petrosian 42 and Korchnoi 40. None of them measures up in this or other respects to Spassky, who is 34.
