The Baltimore Sun Baltimore, Maryland Sunday, December 26, 1971 - Page 14
Russian Chess Fans Are Quiet, Intellectual--and Hungry for Blood
Moscow Bureau of The Times — Moscow — At the Railroad Workers Club the other day, the crowd moaned and hollered out sarcastic bravoes when Boris Spassky, the world champion, ended still another game in a draw.
It was all rather quiet and cerebral, of course, as befits the royal game. But they had the same violence in their hearts as a boxing audience cheated out of most of the main event by a TKO. “Short draws, more short draws he gives u,” muttered the disgruntled spectators at the Alekhine International Memorial Chess Tournament.
The Russian chess fan, that most dedicated and quietly fanatical of sports spectators, is getting very hungry for blood—something he sees less and less of these days as the world's best chess players play it conservative.
A short draw is a brief series of plays ending with white and black in obvious and hopeless deadlock. Every grandmaster has a few of them now and then if he plays a wise game—a dull quick draw, after all, makes more tournament points than a brilliantly executed loss.
9 Out of 10 Play Chess
But the crowd hates it.
And the crowd is important in a country where chess is a genuine spectator sport, with hundreds packing in to watch matches and exhibition games by the grandmasters. (In fact the players here, tense enough from the rigors of the world's most intellectually demanding game, are often spooked by the crowd scene; there are suggestions that they be glassed away from the noise in see-through booths.)
Soviet officials estimate that 9 out of 10 citizens play the game, making nearly everyone a potential fan for tournaments. From 80,000 to 100,000 are estimated to play in tournaments.
Chess reporters here are essential members of newspapers' sports staff. Magazines and newspapers are riddled with chess problems, chess games, and critical analyses of chess by the masters. There are city chess clubs throughout the country, and a national society headquartered at the Central Chess Club of the USSR in Moscow.
In the Old Palace
The pre-revolutionary palace which houses the club features bas reliefs of cupids, high-ceiling rooms constantly full of dozens of games in progress, display cases full of the trophies taken by Russian and Soviet players, and card No. 1 of the Moscow Chess Society for the 1922 to 1923 season, made out to Vladimir Illyich Lenin.
The game, whether because of the leader's example or because of its comfortably non ideological content, soon came under the generous protection of the Soviet government following the revolution.
Since the war the support—including substantial personal subsidies for the top players—has paid off in enormous prestige for the Soviet Union. Since 1948 the world championship has been a private Soviet matter, passed from hand to Soviet hand.
American Applauded
Even though foreigners did not come within yipping distance—until Robert Fischer won a crack at the championship by beating runner-up Tigran Petrosian this year—it was for a while a delightfully stormy period for the Soviet spectator, Young and feeling their hormones, the post-war masters preferred aggression to safety, and the fans loved them.
“After the war,” says Robert Byrne, the only American to play here in the Alekhine Memorial, “they got off to a tremendous bang. They were all wild players, the kind the audience like very much. The new generation is incomparably conservative.”
Even the 20-year-old who tied for first place in the Alekhine played a conservative game. “Where,” says Mr. Byrne, “is the ‘sturm und drang’ period they should have come through?”
Although he is not a particularly wild player, Mr. Byrne himself went over like a bang with the Soviet spectators here. By comparison to that of the Russians, his style was aggressive — and satisfying.
Chess On Rise in U.S.
“He gives the audience what they want,” said a Soviet journalist as he watched Mr. Byrne get the biggest hand of the evening at the closing ceremony. “Exciting play, few short draws.” Mr. Byrne, 43, tied for eighth place. Mr. Spassky, the world champion, got a tie for sixth and polite applause.
In this tournament, no one had expected too much of the champion, preoccupied with his upcoming match with the American challenger; and he did not disappoint them.
Some Soviet experts suspect their chess players may be losing something more than audience appeal. They note with admiration the swift rise of the chess culture in the United State, which now has a respectable 30,000 tournament players, increasing at the astonishing rate of 20 to 25 per cent a year.
One Russian, no doubt exaggerating for politeness and dramatic effect, confides glumly: “You Americans are just beginning your rise. Here, we're in decline.”
Decline or not, Soviet chess talent still remains by almost everyone's estimation the best in the world. And they can be expected to keep at least close to the title for years to come.
Still the true fans here seem relatively unchauvenistic about the Spassky-Fischer match, scheduled for some time in the spring. There are even likely to be a few Fischer rooters on this side, admiring his unpredictability, his aggression, and a certain blood-lust.
