The Livingston County Chess
Club meets every Monday night between
4pm and 10pm
at the Buffalo Wild Wings in
the Green Oak Mall in Brighton, MI.
Stop in for some friendly chess, good food
and 'refreshments'.
Everyone of all ages and playing strength are
welcome to attend. And free lessons to all beginners!
Our 2023 Club Championship will start soon.
Be sure to sign up. It is free of course! It will be one round per night with a
time limit of 45 minutes with no delay or increment.
That's Bobby Fischer in the picture at the top there.
So anyway, a couple nights ago while
suffering with a cold, I was browsing the internet. I came across an interesting article by
Anatoly Karpov about the 1975 world championship match that never happened:
Karpov vs Bobby Fischer.
First, what’s interesting is that Karpov
said almost nothing about the match that was never arranged, in 1975. From what
I have read in Chess Life, those negotiations fell apart over
Fischer’s insistence on a match to 10 wins, with a 9-9 tie going to the
champion (so that Karpov would actually have to beat him 10-8 to win the
championship).
Karpov merely said at that time was,
“It is possible that if we had met face to face earlier, then we might have
played the official match of 1975. At that time our intermediaries and
representatives did many things to keep that from taking place. Each of the
official sides considered it a matter of honor not to agree, and to take a
hard-line position. Both Fischer and I understood too late that we should have
met without the intermediaries.”
Whatever. Karpov was in lock step with
whatever his government wanted, and they wanted the title forfeited to Karpov. Not
saying Karpov did anything wrong, but pulling a “Spassky” and demanding to meet
with Fischer in private to save the match, was not in Karpov’s mind – ever.
Fischer and Karpov did not meet in
person until 1976, when they met three times: first in Tokyo, then in Madrid,
and finally at the Phillippine embassy in Washington. Karpov claims — and of
course, we have only his word for it — that he and Fischer very nearly agreed
on the conditions for a match.
Karpov says that he realized Fischer
would not back down from his insistence on a match to 10 wins, and so he agreed
to this, provided that there was a suitable break at the halfway point. What
about the 9-9 match clause?
Karpov (left) claims: “The rule about
retaining the title in case of a 9-9 score fell away of its own accord. Fischer
considered himself the champion of the world among professionals, the absolute
champion. I, from his point of view, was the official champion.”
If I’m interpreting Karpov’s writing
here correctly, Fischer was willing in case of a 9-9 score to let Karpov be
known as the “official” or FIDE champion, while he would be the “professional”
or absolute champion. A rather interesting precedent of the split that actually
occurred, more than a decade later, when Kasparov bolted from FIDE! Irony!
So why didn’t the match occur, then?
Karpov says that it was because of one technicality.
“At
first we met in the city of Washington, and then went to the Phillippine
embassy, (because Campomanes, the president of FIDE at that time, was a
Phillippine citizen) had agreed with the ambassador that if we came to an
agreement, we could come by and ask for his secretary’s help in formulating the
documents.
We
had agreed about practically everything, we arrived at the embassy, and the
text of the agreement was typed. Only one question remained unresolved — the
name of the match. I presumed that we would eventually work out the name
together, but at that moment we didn’t have a consensus. Fischer demanded (what
else is new?) that the match should have the name “The Absolute World
Championship for Professionals.
At
that time the idea of sports professionals was not well accepted either in
the Olympics Federation or in the USSR. I understood that with a name like that
I would never be allowed to play the match. I would not have been able to
convince the government of my country that we should forget about the name and
set as our main goal the organization of the most interesting sporting event,
at least in the history of chess.”
It’s very interesting to read this
passage, knowing about the hypocrisy that exists over the “professional”
designation, where virtually all Soviet athletes were considered “amateurs”
even though the state supported them financially. [We have the same system here
for our Olympic and college athletes, but it is usually corporate money spread
around (like there is a difference there, but I digresss)]
Fischer wasn’t stupid. He had to know
that this would be a way of thumbing his nose at the Russians. But also, it’s a
very consistent culmination of his lifelong battle to have chess players
recognized as professionals. You can also see why he didn’t mind leaving Karpov
with the title of FIDE champion in case of a tie: the only title he cared about
was being the absolute champion. I think it was a very interesting mind game
going on here, if this information is true!
According to Karpov, he and Fischer
never met again after their near-agreement in Washington.
It’s a little bit difficult to know
how seriously to take this tale of Karpov’s. There were certainly rumors of a
hush-hush meeting between Karpov and Fischer in 1976, but I have never before
read a detailed account of it.
The thing about the story that’s a bit
suspicious is that Karpov comes out looking awfully good. He and Fischer agreed
except for one little sticking point, but — darn it! — that mean old Soviet
government kept them from playing the match. Aw, shucks. Better luck next time,
and Karpov gets the title.
Here is what one reader of the Russian
“64” magazine has to say about Karpov’s article and his supposed willingness to
play a match against Fischer:
“One
doesn’t wave one’s fists around after the fight is over! This isn’t the first
time we have seen something like this from you, Anatoly Evgenievich [Karpov].
I’ve heard more than once about how you “wanted” to play Fischer and Kasparov.
Unfortunately, I’ve only heard it from your mouth.”
A little harsh. How hard would most people actually fight to play a very long and tough match to win a world title that your opponent is handing to you? If only those typed documents from the
Phillippine embassy would turn up, then Karpov’s story might have a little bit
more veracity. Until then, I would take it with a grain of salt.
My opinion is that some of the above
tale is true. But in reality, I feel Fischer was never going to play anyone
ever again. His ego would never let him lose the title over the board.
I think Fischer had gone over Karpov’s
games by this time and knew losing was possible, if not probable.
Chess history is that much poorer as that match was never happening.
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