AThe Independent-Record, Helena, Montana, Sunday, July 24, 1983 - Page 2
Temperaments make quiet game tempestuous
Moscow (AP) — In the tempestuous circles of grandmaster chess, the current debate over sites of two world matches is only the latest in a series of flaps over money, politics, food — and even massages and hypnotism.
Top players have accused each other of all kinds of underhanded ploys, from Boris Spassky's “war of nerves” charges against Bobby Fischer to Soviet defector Viktor Korchnoi's fears of poisoning.
Chess is taken very seriously in the Soviet Union, whose grand masters have held the crown since 1927 except for brief reigns by Fischer and Holland's Max Euwe. Emotions run high over what many consider much more than a game.
“Chess is my life,” world champion Anatoly Karpov once told an interviewer.
The current furor is over where to hold two matches next month that will help determine which of the world's best players will have the right to challenge the Soviet.
The Soviet Chess Federation has protested the decision by the chess world body, the International Chess Federation, to hold the matches in Pasadena, Calif., and Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Tass news agency also charged “there are no governmental guarantees of security” and free access to Soviet officials in Pasadena.
But Florencio Campomanes, president of the International Chess Federation, said the Soviets oppose Pasadena because they fear “political factors.”
The Soviets have protested match sites before, after Fischer beat Spassky in 1972, the Soviets called Manila, Fischer's choice for the 1975 series, a “steambath.”
Fischer wound up losing his title that year to Karpov when he and the International Chess Federation couldn't agree on rules.
Politics often has entered chess, especially in the case of Korchnoi, who provoked bitter official attacks when he claimed harassment had caused a loss to Karpov in 1974—and then defected.
Korchnoi struggled for eight years to win emigration rights for his family — a battle that Boris Gulko, a grandmaster who wants to go to Israel, is still fighting. Gulko was briefly detained in 1982 for protesting outside a match in Moscow.
Grand masters have regularly displayed their tempers in the days since Alexander Alekhine, who began the Soviet domination of the crown in 1927, resigned a match by hurling his king across the room.
In a 1977 contest with Tigran Petrosian, Korchnoi refused to drink anything prepared for him by a hotel in Florence, Italy. He boiled his own tea water because he feared poisoning.
He also demanded a bulletproof screen, which he didn't get, and both men insisted on separate eating and toilet facilities and refused to shake hands.
In 1979, after losing a match to Spassky, Korchnoi claimed Soviet team psychiatrist Vladimir Zhoukar sat too close to the board and hypnotized him into hallucinating. Officials refused to get involved.
Last April, West German Robert Huebner ignored Smyslov's proffered hand because the Soviet grandmaster wouldn't allow a masseur to knead Huebner's neck muscles during games.
But perhaps the most flamboyant grandmaster was the American, Fischer, and the most talked-about match his 1972 contest against Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Fischer first delayed the series by demanding more money. A private donation of $130,000 nearly doubled the purse, Fischer “humbly” apologized to Spassky in writing, and the contest began.
But there were delays, arguments, reconciliations, and more arguments over everything from television cameras to Fischer's demeanor.
The Soviet press complained Fischer wanted nothing but “money, money, money,” and commented later that he had “introduced…such fuss and confusion that chess masters suddenly were in urgent need of diplomats, speakers and lawyers.”
