The Leader-Post Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada Monday, August 23, 1971 - Page 7
Fischer's Chess Chances Mooted by Ken Pritchard
New York (CP) — Can Bobby Fischer go all the way this time?
That's the question chess aficionados are debating as officials try to decide on a site for the world challengers' final between the 28-year-old Fischer, presiding genius of United States chess, and Tigran Petrosian, 42, the former world champion from the Soviet Union.
The winner of that clash, scheduled for next month, will battle defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union next March or April for world supremacy.
Max Euwe of Holland, former world champion who is president of the International Chess Federation, said here this week that the site of the 12-game series between Fischer and Petrosian remained up in the air.
“Maybe I'll have to decide the issue by tossing a coin in front of the American and Soviet ambassadors in Amsterdam,” he said.
Euwe is among Fischer admirers. He gives the young American a 60-40 chance to become world champion in 1972. Euwe, now 70, won the world title in 1935 from Alexander Alekhine, a Russian-born Frenchman. Alekhine took it back from the tall Dutchman two years later.
Fischer's biography, as presented in Anne Sunnuck's Encyclopedia of Chess, says he once declared himself the greatest chess player who ever lived. Within the next few months he will have the chance to prove he's at least the best of the current crop.
In 1957, Fischer won the U.S. championship for the first of eight times. The next year, at age 15, he became an international grandmaster after placing fifth in the inter-zonal tournament and qualifying for the world candidates' tournament.
The Brooklyn bachelor has shown stunning form in his current quest for the world title. He finished first by a wide margin in a preliminary tournament in Spain last December. In the ensuing elimination matches he knocked off Mark Taimanov of the Soviet Union 6-0 in Vancouver and toppled Bent Larsen of Denmark by the same score in Denver, Colorado.
