AThe Los Angeles Times Los Angeles, California Monday, September 27, 1971 - Page 16 ★
U.S. Player Popular: World Chess Finals to Open in Argentina by David F. Belnap
Buenos Aires — If chess were as popular with the public as soccer, the streets of this Latin American capital would be streaming with bunting today. The semifinal match for the world chess championship is to start here Thursday.
The match pits America's Robert J. (Bobby) Fischer, 28, against former world champion Tigran Petrosian, 42, of the Soviet Union. The winner earns the right to play world champion Boris Spassky, also of the Soviet Union, for the title.
Soviet Dominance — Despite chess' shortcomings as a spectator sport, local interest in the semifinal playoff is higher -- and not solely because Buenos Aires is easily the most important chess center in Latin America. Fischer is seen, here as elsewhere, as the most serious challenge to Soviet domination of the game in the modern history of the world championships.
Among local cognoscenti, amateur as well as professional, the betting is on Fischer, whose temperament and style of play appeals to Latin Americans much more than that of his opponent.
The amateurs include James Taylor, also an amateur dietician and headwaiter at La Cabana, a popular steakhouse. Taylor recalled that during his past visits to Buenos Aires, Fischer enjoyed two steaks for dinner every night.
But he noted that “the ban” probably would have little effect on Fischer's eating habits. “The ban” is a government measure prohibiting domestic consumption of beef on alternate weeks as a way of channeling more of this nation's principal farm product into exports.
“In the worst of cases, ‘the ban’ will affect his diet only five of the 12 playing days, and there's even talk of lifting it altogether,” said Taylor, an Argentina of Scottish ancestry who carefully follows the fortunes of his chess and golfing customers.
Local chess columnists bill the match as a renewal of the East-West confrontation across the chess board. Argentine chess masters have been interviews and re-interviewed for their predictions, and so far all but one picks Fischer. The lone dissenter agreed “Fischer has it on form and statistics but my intuition tells me Petrosian will win.”
Favors Fischer — Polish-born Miguel Najdorf, a naturalized Argentine citizen and the nation's best-loved grandmaster, predicted Fischer would win for several reasons, among them his youth.
“If chess is an art and a science, it is also a sport,” Najdorf said. “So a younger man has the edge on an older man with equal ability.”
Najdorf also cited Fischer's legendary capacity to concentrate on chess to the exclusion of all other interests.
“During an international tourney in Germany, we were having supper together one night when Miss Germany came to our table and asked Bobby to dance. ‘With pleasure,’ he replied, ‘when the tournament is over.’ Such discipline must have its reward,” exclaimed Najdorf.
Local chess buffs were deeply impressed with Fischer's recent record of 19 straight wins in international match play, including an unprecedented victory in every game against two opponents in the world championship quarterfinals. Petrosian, a cold, defensive player, won only one game against each of his two quarterfinal challengers, drawing all the rest.
Through Oct. 31 — The match here will last through Oct. 31, unless the players are tied at that time or one of them accumulates six and one-half points before then. Fischer, who arrived here Friday, predicted the match would end early.
On previous occasions, Fischer and Petrosian have played each other 18 times, each winning three games with the rest being drawn.
Often appearing diffident and even timid away from the chess board, Fischer strikes sympathetic chords with the Latins by his aggressive determination to win once he sits down to play. Argentina's commentators call his game “creative, innovative, brilliant and diabolically subtle,” while they classify Petrosian “a consummate specialist in drawn games because his first concern is not to lose rather than to win.”
Chess masters of Russian or Soviet origina have held a virtual monopoly on the world title since 1927 when Alexander Alekhine captured it from Cuba's J.R. Capablanca, Latin America's only world champion. Except for two years, Russian-born Alekhine was champion until his death in 1946, and Soviet players have been the only champions since the international chess federation reorganized the tournament in 1948.
Buenos Aires was the scene of the Alekhine-Capablanca championship match, and the Fischer-Petrosian competition is the most important happening in the chess world here since then, save for an international team tournament in 1939.
