ACorpus Christi Caller Times, Sunday, July 08, 1962, Corpus Christi, Texas - Page 11
Chats on Chess 08 Jul 1962, Sun Corpus Christi Caller-Times (Corpus Christi, Texas) Newspapers.com
Not A Lost Dream
In a competition I ran recently, I asked the reader to give the three players who would top the rest at the Candidates' tournament in Curacao, Dutch West Indies. This tournament was to pick the challenger against the world champion. Mikhail Botvinnik, the match for the title to be played in Moscow, March-April 1963.
Well, among the great number of entries to the prediction competition less than 1 per cent omitted our young Grandmaster Bobby Fischer. In fact, 90 per cent predicted that he would win.
What went wrong? A few months earlier he had met the present competitors, with the exception of Tal-ex-champion of the world and Paul Keres, at the interzonal in Stockholm, and had won first place with a couple of points to spare. In New York the betting was all in favor of Bobby winning first place at the Candidates.
It is difficult to put your finger on anything being wrong with Fischer's play, except maybe that he is a stickler to his own lines of play, which were so successful at Stockholm, but which failed him badly at Curacao. The opponents must have studied these lines very carefully and came prepared against Bobby's innovations — and as we now know, successfully.
For some reason, he started badly, losing in the very first round to Pal Benko of New York — Bobby hadn't lost a game in a number of years before that dreadful event — and was completely shaken up for the first quarter of the tourney.
Bobby is still the greatest hope for the world title the United States has, and as he is young (19) he should make the grade easily. The setback at Curacao, if one can call it that, should help Fischer in the long run, as only by losing does one learn.
[Ralph Ginzburg, a dubious source, removed.]
Dr. Max Euwe, ex-champion of the world, predicted some time ago: “…that Petrosian would win the Candidates' tournament and would beat Botvinnik for the world title AND that in 1966 Bobby Fischer would defeat Petrosian to become a Champion of the World!”
