AThe Miami Herald Miami, Florida Sunday, October 17, 1971 - Page 14 — Chess Masters Don't Seem to Fit Shaw's 'Idle' Mold by Steve Harvey — George Bernard Shaw once wrote that chess is “a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.”
However, he would have a difficult time convincing the spectators who have been jamming a 1,000-seat theatre in Buenos Aires to watch Bobby Fischer of the United States and Tigran Petrosian of the Soviet Union battle each other in their 12-game grandmaster series.
The winner of the series, which is tied after five games, will meet Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in spring for the world chess championship. The Russians have held the title since 1948.
Fischer and Petrosian play the sixth match this afternoon.
MORE BOOKS have been written about chess than about all other sports combined. In the Soviet Union, an estimated four million are buffs. But there is a chess gap between Russia and the United States, in that fewer than 10,000 people are believed to play regularly in America.
The origin of chess is a matter of debate, although lately some credence has been given to the view that the Hindus invented it, perhaps around the Sixth Century.
An 11th-Century Chinese writer recounted how Emperor Wen-ti came upon travelers playing this foreign game with carved ivory pieces.
He asked about the game and was informed that the main piece was a rajah or shah, meaning emperor in Chinese. This so outraged Wen-ti's royal dignity that he ordered the players decapitated.
THE MONGOL conqueror Tamurlane was reputed to have been as skillful a player as a warrior. Chess, he said, helped “whip his brains for new campaigns.”
One of history's most over-rated players appears to have been Napoleon Bonaparte. Most of his published games were against ladies of the court rather than against reputable players.
The emperor, it was said, could not bear to be checkmated by a woman and often, when defeat approached, he would sweep the pieces from the board — an effective, if, illegal, defensive maneuver.
One author notes that George II of England “was a much better chess player than Napoleon, though perhaps lacking in some other respects.”
THE CHESSBOARD has often been compared to the battlefield. In 1921, a chess set was presented to Lenin by the Bolshevik Central Committee.
The pieces were red on one side and white on the other, representing Lenin's victorious Red Army and the defeated White Army, which fought in the Russian Civil War.
Every piece represented a political figure. Trotsky first appeared as a rook on the red side. But later his piece was bleached and moved to the White side when he was purged.
Actually, except for a couple of years, the Russians have held the world chess title since 1927 when the legendary Cuban champion Capablanca was dethroned.
FISCHER, the 28-year-old American known for his aggressive play and his temper, is rated as the most serious challenger to Russian domination of the game in recent years. He first won the U.S. title at the age of 14.
Spassky, 34, the current champ, captured the world title from Petrosian in 1969. To prepare mentally and physically for the grueling series. He went to a psychologist for six months and swam every day. Petrosian, 42, a former street cleaner, water skis to stay in shape.
“Chess may start out as an art or science, but in the end, physical endurance is so important it becomes an athletic event,” he said. When he defeated Mikhail Botvinnik for the title in 1963, the 22-game series took two months. Like other grandmasters Petrosian eats and sleeps chess. “Even when I'm fighting with my wife, I'm thinking about chess,” he says.
Chess Masters Don't Seem to Fit Shaw's 'Idle' Mold Sun, Oct 17, 1971 – 14 · The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) · Newspapers.com
