AThe Guardian London, Greater London, England Wednesday, May 09, 1962 - Page 7
All-American Chessman 09 May 1962, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
All-American Chessman
by Leonard Barden
In the Soviet Union chess enjoys greater popularity than any other indoor or outdoor game, except soccer; so that for an American to defeat the top Russian grandmasters in a world chess event will be fore some Russians the biggest moment of truth since the Twentieth Congress. This upheaval could well come to pass in the Candidates' Tournament for the world championship, which began last week in Curaçao and continues until the end of June. Curaçao is the last stage of a triennial series of eliminating events which will produce a fresh title challenger for Mikhail Botvinnik, the holder. All the grandmasters at Curaçao have qualified either from the last Candidates' event or from the Interzonal in Stockholm earlier this year. They are Geller, Keres, Korchnoi, Petrosian, and Tal (all from the Soviet Union), Benko and Fischer (Czechoslovakia). Each contestant plays the others four times in a marathon contest of 28 rounds.
The Russians will not lose much sleep over Benko and Filip; the threat to their world supremacy comes from Bobby Fischer, who is already, at 19 among the game's greatest masters. In his last eight games against Soviet grandmasters, he has won four and drawn the rest; while he swept through the field in the Interzonal, finishing 2½ points clear of his closest rivals, Geller and Petrosian. On his way to the top he has broken a strong of records, winning the United States championship at 14, qualifying for the Candidates' when 15, and now winning the Interzonal at 18. He still has plenty of time to become the youngest world champion—Tal was 23 when he defeated Botvinnik in 1960.
Fischer is a chess genius. Technically, his outstanding qualities are his rapid sight of the board, his flair for finding both simple and incisive plans, his mature endgame technique, and his knowledge of opening variations combined with a facility for discovering new moves. All this adds up to a great player; the extra qualities which make him a potential world champion are his single-minded devotion to chess, his fierce ambition, and the self-assurance with which he already regards himself as the greatest player of all time. Asked for his verdict on former champions, he is decidedly cool: Alekhine was “mechanical,” Lasker a “weak player.” He has little respect, either for the 51-year-old Botvinnik, whom he dismisses as “old”.
FISCHER'S drive and urge to reach the top in chess is reflected at the board. While he lacks the demon glare and hooked nose which helped to unnerve Tal's opponents three years ago, his intense hunger for points communicates itself to his opponents and both Keres and Petrosian, normally among the most imperturbable of masters, have shown distinct signs of nerves against him. Just as Alekhine prepared for his match with Capablanca by a close study of his rival's games, Fischer has absorbed the opening variations published in the Russian “Schachmatny Bulletin” and has caught out the Russians by improvements on their own analysis.
His single-minded approach is Bobby's own explanation of why he left school at 16 after an undistinguished career: “They couldn't teach me how to become world champion.” While some 90 per cent of grandmasters are highly educated, the exceptions indicate that chess is a special ability which need not correlate with general intelligence. Sultan Khan, an Indian who reached world class a couple of years after learning the moves, was illiterate. It would be interesting to have Fischer's abilities assessed by a psychologist: talking to him, one's impression is not one of a lack of intelligence but one of his direct and almost childlike absorption in his own needs. A person of this nature will lack interest in subjects which require to be studied for their own sake. For Bobby, chess is a means of winning and he can demonstrate his skill by the objective test of a point on the score table. Other champions, like Botvinnik and Euwe, view chess partly as a scientific discipline, while the imaginative Tal sees his combinations as being minor works of art.
Fischer has an intense streak of stubbornness and persistence which helps to explain his apparently petulant reactions when things go wrong. As a schoolboy he used to burst into tears whenever he lost a game. Last year, he refused to turn up for one of his match games with Reshevsky when he claimed that the playing time had been altered to suit his opponent [My Note: (See Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1961, the actual reason. A spokesman for the Fischer-Reshevsky organizing committee clearly states the time was advanced without Bobby Fischer's consent so that the referee and organizers could be present at the U.S. Open in San Francisco)]. The case has now been transferred to the law courts, with Fischer suing for breach of contract and asking that Reshevsky be suspended from tournament competition until the match is completed.
Most players would have their concentration disturbed by such events, but Fischer does not appear in the least affected. He scored one of his biggest tournament successes when the controversy following on his match with Reshevsky was at its height. Undoubtedly he has the capacity to shut off his mind from extraneous circumstances and, indeed, to reject unpleasant facts.
Last year the BBC commissioned a radio consultation between Bobby and two leading British players. The game was unfinished, and was sent to ex-world champion Dr. Euwe for adjudication, with Fischer firmly convinced that his position was won. Dr. Euwe, however, analyzed the position deeply and published extensive variations demonstrating a draw. At Stockholm I showed Fischer the chess magazine containing the analysis. His first reaction was that the decision must be wrong and that he could disprove it just by studying the diagram of the position. However, as he turned over the pages of packed analysis his expression became thoughtful. Finally, he turned to me and asked: “Why do they have to publish such boring endings?”
SOVIET reaction to Fischer's successes has changed as the American's threat to Botvinnik's title has become more obvious. Five years ago, it was customary for Russian magazines to contrast the flourishing conditions of Soviet chess, recognized as a cultural activity by a Socialist State, with the distressed condition of Western professionals struggling to earn a living. As late as 1959, when Fischer finished fifth in the Candidates' Tournament, he was underestimated. Tal then commented: “Fischer's ambition was to win the Candidates' and become world champion. He would have done better first to have won the junior championship.”
In the summer of 1960, the United States student team (without Fischer) shocked the Russians by winning the world title—in Leningrad of all places. The Soviet chess magazine criticized their players for insufficient training and pointed out how the Americans had made a thorough study of Russian theoretical research. The Trauma of Leningrad stimulated Soviet self-criticism. Botvinnik himself remarked that enthusiasm for the game was declining, and other grandmasters commented that Soviet young players lacked the incentive to devote much time to chess owing to the complete dominance of the national team by established world title contenders. After Bled and Stockholm the Russians taken Bobby seriously. Alexander Kotov, the Soviet team captain, claimed that many Soviet chess players had written to congratulate the American on his successes, commented favorably on Fischer's study of Soviet chess literature, and said that, whereas Russian magazines praised his creative successes, the New York newspapers were only ready to write anecdotes about their young champion. The Soviet line on Bobby Fischer, indeed, is changing: if he wins the Candidates' I half expect to find “Schachmatny” claiming that he is descended from Tchigorin, the Karl Marx of Soviet chess.
Individual chess successes often lead to a surge of enthusiasm for the game in the country producing the champion. When Euwe won the world title in 1935 clubs, tournaments, and newspaper columns flourished as never before, and Dutch chess organization is still the best in Western Europe. The holding of the Candidates' in Curaçao marks a new stage in the growing interest of Dutch commercial sponsors. The victories of Botvinnik and other grandmasters raised Soviet chess to a new level, and similar developments occurred in Yugoslavia when that country won the world team title (Russia not competing) in 1950.
If Fischer wins the Candidates' and defeats Botvinnik it may dispel the still current view in the West of chess as a game played by absent-minded elderly gentlemen at a funereal pace. Fischer himself refutes the first part of the legend, and if chess in schools in the United States achieves the popularity it has already gained in England it could bring in hundreds
of thousands of new enthusiasts. To combat the second part of the image American tournament organizers have introduced faster time limits—up to 30 moves in half an hour—which enables whole tournaments to be played off completely in a weekend. This has proved a boon to addicts who like to play competitively while returning home early enough to retain the goodwill of their wives.
In the Soviet Union chess has mass support, and among all outdoor and indoor games it ranks second only to soccer in active participants. Ten million Russians are registered members of chess clubs. By contrast, the United States Chess Federation, though rapidly expanding, still has under six thousand members. These differences are reflected in the earnings and status of leading players. A top Russian master can earn the equivalent of around £4,000 a year by playing and writing, and the best players have a State pension of £25 a month. By contrast, Fischer, the leading American player, averages £2,000 a year in prize money; other American grandmasters have full-time jobs outside chess. It could be that not only the world championship but the future status of the game in the United States and Russia will be decided in Curaçao.
THESE implications of a Fischer victory ensure that the five Soviet grandmasters will try strenuously to stop his winning. Their exemplary sportsmanship in previous events argues against deliberate collaboration by the Russians to ensure the success of one of their players, even though the stakes have never before been so high. Another factor which may help Fischer is that each Russian has a reasonable chance of winning, and so will most likely play as hard against his compatriots as with the American.
In his 1959 form Tal would win, but since losing the return match with Botvinnik his health has been uncertain and his form inconsistent. Chess history shows that—Botvinnik apart—grandmasters knocked off the top rung of the ladder can rarely find the renewed mental energy to climb back, and Tal seems less eager for a continual round of tournaments and for spending his off-duty hours playing five-minute games than when he was heading for the championship.
Keres, who at 46 has been a title contender for a quarter of a century would be a most popular winner, but I feel that 1959 was his last chance and that his age handicap will prove too great. Korchnoi is an imaginative and artistic player, but his style of balancing on the edge of complications and egging on his opponents to attack is self-exhausting, and he was already showing signs of wear in the closing rounds at Stockholm. Geller is a daring but inconsistent attacking player who can be very dangerous given the impetus of a winning streak; but it is the fifth Russian who seems most likely to keep out Fischer.
Tigran Petrosian has an ultrasound style, very handy for qualification tournaments but less adaptable to outright wins. His great psychological weakness is to retreat into his shell after a defeat and to become overcautious. As Fischer said: “Petrosian is one of the strongest grandmasters, but he lacks courage.” Petrosian is trying to remedy this failing; when he lost a game in last year's Soviet Championships, he deliberately played the next few games in extra sharp style to offset his own timidity.
Petrosian's bored expression when analyzing a move and the skepticism which his eyebrows register at other masters' positions gives him an air of effortless superiority which can demoralize opponents as much as Tal's glare and Fischer's references to “weakies.” I take him to win, partly because he has been the most consistent Russian player during the last two years, and partly because I cannot quite believe in the idea of a 20-year-old world champion; though Fischer should be very close to the top. My forecast of the result is: 1. Petrosian; 2. Fischer; 3-4. Keres and Tal; 5-7. Filip, Geller, and Korchnoi; 8. Benko.
