World Championships from 50 and 25 Years Ago

Last week on my main blog, I encountered a few World Championship topics that needed more time than I had. In the post January 1974 & 1999 'On the Cover' (January 2024), I commented,

That mention of Fischer and Marcos deserves further exploration, but I'm worried it might lead me down a rabbit hole from which I won't return in time to finish this current post. Maybe later...

That comment referred to January 1974, while a second comment in the same post referred to January 1999:-

The cover introduction continued with news about two World Championships. [...] Once again, that news 'deserves further exploration'.

The post quoted 'Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)':-

The great Philippines International Tournament, the most important chess event ever held in Asia and the Pacific area, ended November 6. The significance of the event was highlighted by the ceremonial presence of World Champion Bobby Fischer and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.

Re Fischer/Marcos, good thing I didn't go any further for that post. I've already dealt with the meeting in posts on both of my blogs:-

• 2012-09-19: The Philippine Connection • (WCCB) '1973 Manila: Fischer visits tournament; meets Marcos, Campomanes'
• 2014-07-03: Treated Like a World Champion • (CFAA) 'I [found] a 1973 Fischer photo that doesn't yet seem to have been made available on the web'

Here is that Fischer photo again.

Re the 1999 'news about two World Championships', the first concerned the FIDE Knockout Matches; Las Vegas, VII-VIII, 1999 (m-w.com). The post quoted 'Chess Life (25 Years Ago)':-

De Firmian, Benjamin, and the other semi-finalists, Dmitry Gurevich and Tal Shaked, qualified to participate in the FIDE World Championship, along with Boris Gulko and Sergey Kudrin, both of whom qualified by previous performance or rating; and Alexander Ivanov, who qualified by winning the 1998 Pan American Championship, which was held in Venezuela in October. Gata Kamsky has also been invited (by rating).

My page Zonal Qualifiers 1998-1999 (C18) (m-w.com) has info on all eight players:-

Zone 2.1
55. J. BENJAMIN (USA)
56. N. de FIRMAN (USA)
57. D. GUREVICH (USA)
58. T. SHAKED (USA)
59. B. GULKO (USA)

Nominee by the Administrator
14. S. KUDRIN (USA)

Nominees by Continental President
16. America: A. IVANOV (USA)

Qualified by ELO (average January-July 1998)
85. G. KAMSKY (USA) (2720)

The qualification of GMs Gulko, Ivanov, and Kudrin, is not consistent between the two sources. GM Ivanov's qualification is confirmed in TWIC 209, but the details about the other two GMs need further investigation.

Re the 1999 news about the second World Championship, the January 1999 CL said,

Alisa Galliamova-Ivanchuk forfeited her match with Jun Xie. China was awarded the bid for the match; Alisa wanted to play at least half of the match in Russia, so she didn't show up at all. Jun Xie, the former women's world champion, will now challenge the current champion, Susan Polgar.

The reference is to an unprecedented sequence of matches for the 1995-99 cycle outlined on the World Chess Championship for Women (m-w.com). The Candidates final match is listed there as 'Xie Jun - Galliamova (forfeit)'; the subsequent World Championship match is listed first as 'Xie Jun - Z.Polgar (forfeit)'; and then as 'Xie Jun - Galliamova'. I've already posted twice about these matches:-

• 2017-02-08: 1995-1999 Women's Cycle
• 2017-02-15: The Last Standard Women's Cycle

There is nothing more to add here.

Rules for the 1973 Interzonals

After posting Qualifiers for the 1973 Interzonals (October 2023) a few weeks ago, I found another source of info even more detailed than the source for that post. The January 1973 issue of Chess Life (p.33-34) had an article titled 'FIDE Congress : The Men's World Championship' by Fred Cramer, Vice President of FIDE. It covered all aspects of the cycle, including the following section headers:-

• The Cycle Ending at [1972] Reykjavik
• The New Cycle, First Stage : The 1972 Zonals
• The 1973 Interzonals - The Euwe Plan
• The 1973 Interzonals
• The 1974 Candidate's Matches
• The 1975 World Championship Match
• A Championship Match Out of Cycle?

I extracted the two sections covering the 1973 Interzonals and created the following composite image.

(Can be expanded)

I then added the image to my page (C09) Zonals 1972-1975 (m-w.com). The Cramer article presents new details about several aspects of the Interzonals and sometimes contradicts sources that I have previously used. Since Cramer was as close to the original discussions as anyone, his word takes precedence.

Competing World Championships in 1998

Continuing with Small Projects 'On the Cover' (October 2023), the next follow-up is small enough that I have time to handle a second project. Together the two follow-ups provide a snapshot of the World Championship in 1998.

(1) August 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (August 2023) • The two part match report by GM Leonid Shamkovich started in the July 1998 issue of Chess Life and ended in August 1998. Since I gave the full introduction to the first part of the report in the August 'On the Cover', I'll repeat only the first paragraph of that intro here:-

Two outstanding young grandmasters, [Kramnik and Shirov], crossed chess swords in the best of 10 World Chess Council (WCC) World Championship candidates' match. The match started May 24 and finished June 5 in the small Spanish city of Cazorla, in Andalusia. Alexei Shirov, who won the match with a score of 5.5-3.5, will meet Garry Kasparov in October for the WCC World Championship.

The rest of the report included annotations for all nine games of the match. GM Shamkovich, after commenting on the ninth game, closed the article saying,

This game turned out to be a final brilliant ending to a relatively dull duel.

An inline text box accompanying the article added,

The World Chess Council (WCC) World Championship Match between defending champion Garry Kasparov and challenger Alexei Shirov will begin October 16 in Seville, Spain. Besides the WCC title, $1.9 million will be on the line, with $1.235 million to the winner and $665,000 to the loser. We will pass along more information on the match as it becomes available.

All in all, largely because the Kasparov - Shirov match was never played, the 1998 Shirov - Kramnik match must be one of the most neglected high-level matches in chess history.

(2) July 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (July 2023) • The post provided some background and introduced an important historical speech by (then) FIDE World Champion Karpov.

Karpov's presence in Las Vegas [for the National Open] was explained in the story '1998 National Open, Part II: "A Really Big Shew"' by Jerry Hanken. A sidebar to the story, titled 'Karpov Speaks', started [...]

Karpov's speech covered many topics relevant to the World Championship in the last decades of the 1900s. Following are the sidebar's bullets (in bold text) and its main points. There is much more of historical value behind the '[...]s'.

• Karpov on his trip to America to play in San Antonio: "I remember 1972, my second trip to the U.S. (The first was to Puerto Rico for the Student Team Championship in 1971.) 1972 was a serious tournament which happened in November. Fischer and Spassky had played in the summer, and when I came through New York in November it was not possible to buy a chess set or book, because all America was crazy for chess and all books and sets had been sold. [...]
  
  
• Karpov on meetings with Fischer: "My first meeting was actually in San Antonio. He was invited by Bill Church, and was to appear at the last round. He was, as usual, late. So the organizers didn't want to start the round. He came and greeted all the people and grandmasters, and then he disappeared almost immediately." [...]
  
  
• Karpov [on] later meetings with Fischer: "Even after '75 we met three times. At the meeting in Washington in 1977, we were very close to signing a contract and agreement to play a match. All the problems were solved. We already had pens in our hands to sign, and then Fischer said, 'OK, we play. We agree to everything but one point. The match should be called ...' [...]
  
  
• Karpov on Kasparov: Karpov disputed Kasparov's contention that the Fischer - Spassky match of 1992 was an amateur level match. He thinks some of the games were quite good and could rank in the top ten games of 1992. [...] • Also: Kasparov's claim to be World Champion, Kasparov's claim that Karpov was not a legitimate World Champion, and a private match with Kasparov.
  
  
• Karpov on the last [1997] FIDE Championships: Anatoly noted the criticism (which came from some American magazines) of his entering the matches at the end. [...]
  
  
• Karpov on the future of chess: 'For [chess] to be in the Olympic Games would be very good. Chess is not a sport in every country, and you can get much better support from sponsors and official organizations [once you are part of the official Olympics]. [...]

Wouldn't it be enlightening to have the full transcript of the talk? I suppose it is lost to us forever.

Qualifiers for the 1973 Interzonals

Continuing with Small Projects 'On the Cover' (October 2023), the next small project is a follow-up to September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (September 2023). In those posts I noted,

The bulletin said, [...] Here are the final scores from Petropolis. [...] Bronstein replaced Leonid Stein, who died suddenly a few weeks before the tournament. • 'Bronstein replaced Stein', doesn't square with related info on my other pages. More research needed

By 'related info' I was referring to two pages. The first page was (C09) Zonals 1972-1975 (m-w.com). There I quoted a correspondent, EK:-

I am missing one player. I have Polugaevsky, Smyslov, Keres, Stein, Gligoric, Hort, Portisch and ???. That missing player was then in late-1972/early-1973 replaced by Panno. After Stein passed away in July 1973, he was replaced by 2nd reserve Bronstein. Who was that missing player that was nominated by committee but declined to participate?

The second page was (C09) Zonal Qualifiers 1972-1975 (m-w.com). There I quoted another correspondent, GMG:-

The FIDE committee selected the players who did not win a zonal spot. Leonid Stein was selected, but passed away a few weeks before, and was replaced by Oscar Panno. Bronstein, the second reservist, made a special appeal to FIDE president Euwe and was allowed to play. • Reshevsky was chosen as third reserve by the FIDE selection committee. He seems to have been been given a place to balance the numbers at Petropolis when FIDE president Euwe gave second reservist Bronstein special dispensation to play.

It turns out that neither of those correspondents got the story right. The full story starts with the following info, taken from an appendix titled 'How They Qualified' (p.282) in World Championship Interzonals : Leningrad and Petropolis 1973 by Wade, Blackstock, and Kotov.

The first point to note is 'two, as nearly equal as possible, 16-players tournaments'. In fact, both events had 18 players; see:-

• 1973 Leningrad Interzonal (m-w.com)
• 1973 Petropolis Interzonal (ditto)

Wade, Blackstock, and Kotov (WBK) say that the 32 Interzonal participants (16 * 2) qualified as follows:-

*   6 candidates from the previous cycle
*   8 selected by a FIDE commission
* 17 zonal qualifiers
*   1 World Junior Champion

WBK also say that four other participants qualified by rules added afterward:-

*   3 additional zonal qualifiers
*   1 additional World Junior Champion

What about those eight participants who were 'selected by a FIDE commission'? Like EK (above), WBK listed only seven names. (This isn't the only omission on the WBK page, but the details are not important for this discussion.) Six names are the same on both lists, but EK mentions Gligoric as the 7th, while WBK mentions Tal. The six names on both lists plus Gligoric and Tal all played in the two Interzonals.

In addition to the eight selected participants, WBK listed more players as reserves: Panno, Bronstein, Reshevsky, Ivkov, and Mecking. Other sources say a total of 14 players was nominated by FIDE (apparently 8 + 6), but this doesn't change the narrative.

Both Panno and Reshevsky qualified from zonals -- as did Ivkov and Mecking -- leaving only Bronstein as a reserve player not qualified otherwise. How did my two correspondents, who were generally accurate in their other remarks on similar topics, make their mistakes?

According to WBK, the 13/14 players selected by the FIDE commission were known 'before 31 December 1971'. The zonals were all played in 1972. It appears that most of the players on the FIDE reserve list, wanting to boost their chance of qualifying for the Interzonals, decided to participate in the appropriate Zonal. Unless a researcher was aware that some players were on two different lists of (potential) qualifiers, he had only half the story.

It's worth noting that Panno qualified from a zone that was expanded from two to three qualifiers at the 1972 FIDE Congress, Skopje. Quinteros and Panno finished tied for 2nd/3rd at the zone 8 tournament, held at Sao Paulo in May 1972. If the number of qualifiers from the zone had stayed fixed at two, Panno would have played a match against Quinteros for the second qualifying place. I couldn't find any trace of a match between the two players in 1972.

Getting back to September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover', the simple statement 'Bronstein replaced Stein' was the truth, if not the whole truth. I hope the preceding discussion is closer to the whole truth.

Small Projects 'On the Cover'

Last week's post, Small Projects Checkpoint (September 2023), was all about establishing a plan for the next few months on this blog. For example,

One topic demands attention -- documenting the qualification paths for the most recent World Cup, '2023 World Cup, Baku' (August 2023).

On my main blog, 'Chess for All Ages', the past year has seen a dozen posts on various aspects of the World Championship. It's useful to summarize these posts in order to group them chronologically using this blog's system of labels. Posts marked '(*)' need further attention to develop some interesting aspect which was only mentioned in the original post.

• 2022-11-18: 'A Clock Without Hands' • '"We're nearing the end of this blog's 'Fischer Friday' series". I'll end the series with a post on "1975 Fischer forfeits to Karpov" (m-w.com)'; also summarizes previous posts in Fischer series
• 2022-12-23: Wayback to Chess.net • 'What did former World Champion Karpov say exactly?'
• 2022-12-30: World Championship Columnists • 'In the mid-1990s, both Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov -- bitter rivals at the time -- wrote separate columns for the USCF's Chess Life'
• 2023-01-03: January 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'Interviews of Fischer, Spassky, and Gudmundur Thorarinsson, president of the Icelandic Chess Federation'
• 2023-01-05: Chess at Trump Tower • 'Intel World Chess Championship Quarterfinal Matches'
• 2023-02-02: February 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • CL: 'Anand cuts through FIDE knock-out to challenge Karpov'
• 2023-03-09: March 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'Karpov defended his FIDE World Championship title'; 'Kasparov will finally defend his PCA World Championship title'; 'Ilyumzhinov has announced plans to make the knockout world championship an annual affair. Las Vegas is high on the list of possible sites for 1998.' (*)
• 2023-04-18: April 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'Byrne's progress in that World Championship cycle' [needs better intro in post]; ' news of Kasparov's non-FIDE World Championship title; see also the letter from Karpov' (*)
• 2023-07-20: July 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'FIDE World Champion Anatoly Karpov addressed more than 200 players'
• 2023-08-15: August 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • IZ 1973 Leningrad; Shirov/Kasparov news (*)
• 2023-09-12: September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • IZ 1973 Petropolis, Brazil; '"Bronstein replaced Stein", doesn't square with related info on my other pages. More research needed' (*)
• 2023-10-03: October 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • Vukcevich; Kasparov - Shirov (WCC); *1998* FIDE World Championship, Las Vegas (*)

I trust that the title and description of each post is sufficient to place it chronologically.

Karpov on the Rock

Earlier this year, for a featured monthly video on my main blog, I chose Retro Engine Chess (February 2020). There was another good choice, but it had already so many views and comments that I decided not to use it. It popped up on my radar again this past week, and it's too good to ignore a second time.

"I wanted to defeat Bobby" | GM Anatoly Karpov Interview (20:20) • '[Published on] Jan 29, 2020'

The GibChess description said,

A candid interview with former World Champion Anatoly Karpov. The Russian GM shares stories and reflections on his chess career with Tania Sachdev. Special thanks to Chess Base India.

For a transcript of the video, see Karpov on Fischer, Korchnoi, Kasparov and the chess world today (chessbase.com). For a related Youtube video, this one from GBC News and with far fewer views, see Former Official Chess World Champion Anatoly Karpov on the Rock. Its description said,

Former Official Chess World Champion Anatoly Karpov is visiting the Rock as part of the Gibraltar International Chess Festival. Considered one of the greatest players in history, he's the third longest world champion, behind Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov. Christine Vasquez took the opportunity of gaining an insight into current developments in Russian politics but first asked Mr Karpov how he felt to be on the Rock supporting the Chess festival.

Change 'third longest world champion' to 'third longest world champion in post-WWII times' and I'll say no more, even though Carlsen hasn't (yet) caught up with Karpov.

Zonal Qualifiers C09-C12

At the end of the previous post, Zonal Qualifiers C11, I concluded,

I've decided that the format of the data in the chart is sufficient for new zonal pages on my World Championship site.

I applied the format to four cycles and created four new pages:-

• C09: 1972-75
• C10: 1975-78
• C11: 1978-81
• C12: 1981-84

These pages show only the qualifier data. The other bells and whistles found on the existing pages, like (C13) 1984-1987 Zonal Cycle Qualifiers, will be added after I create similar pages for C01 through C08.

Spassky: 'The Dr. Zhivago of Chess'

In a recent post on my main blog, Sports Illustrated 'On the Cover', I showed that a prominent American sports magazine ('SI') once demonstrated a keen interest in chess. Through the series of Kasparov - Karpov clashes in the 1980s, SI had regular, multi-page features on top World Championship events. Here, for example, are the first two pages of a five-page spread on the Korchnoi - Spassky final in the 1976-78 Candidates Matches.

Sports Illustrated, 12 December 1977

The article started,

With the notable exception of Bobby Fischer, who won the world championship from Boris Spassky in 1972 in a memorable Icelandic psychodrama, Soviets have dominated world chess for 30 years. And their reign is not about to end. This week, in the shabby elegance of the Dom Sindikata Theater in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, two Russians, Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi, are meeting for the right to play still another Russian, 26-year-old world champion Anatoly Karpov, for the title.

Spassky is now 40, and his figure, which was trim in Reykjavik, is a bit fleshier, his dark hair longer and more styled. But the same calm green eyes study the board, and the same long artistic fingers are placed along his cheekbones. The world champion from 1969 to 1972, Spassky remains the gentlemanly, dignified, poetic grand master, the Dr. Zhivago of chess.

Across the board sits the volatile, daring Korchnoi, 46, the world's No. 2 grand master. In further contrast to Spassky, the formerly chubby Korchnoi has lost a great deal of weight recently. His brown eyes glitter, his shoulders hunch as he lunges forward to advance a bishop into dangerous territory. Korchnoi seeks the dangerous position -- in life as well as at the chessboard.

That's the sort of colorful sports reporting that is seldom seen outside of the mainstream press. Here is a list of all SI articles on the World Championship that I was able to locate.

• 1960-04-18: A New Moscow Revolution • 'Mikhail Tal's brilliant and bewildering victories in world championship chess stunned the Russians'
• 1960-05-30: A Nod for a Title • 'Sports Illustrated's correspondent in Moscow reports on the new world chess champion Mikhail Tal and on the new chess era that opened with a smile'
• 1961-05-08: The Young Botvinnik • 'An aging champion created a new training technique to recover the fire of youth -- and his title'
• 1967-11-20: The Further Adventures of Terrible-tempered Bobby • 'Bobby Fischer played like a champion at the international tournament in Tunisia, but he ended by forfeiting his way out of the competition'
• 1971-08-02: Maybe You Can Win Them All • 'Bobby Fischer has pitched 19 no-hitters in a row'
• 1971-11-08: Bobby Clears the Board for the Title • 'The young U.S. master, after Tigran Petrosian smashed his 20-game streak, closed strong to earn a shot at the world's chess champion'
• 1972-07-10 A Sudden Stalemate in Reykjavik • 'The world championship was plunged into check when Bobby Fischer decided that a better game was hide-and-seek'
• 1972-07-24: Boris in Wonderland • 'Russia's Spassky played Alice to Bobby Fischer's Mad Hatter in Reykjavik last week'
• 1972-08-14: How to Cook a Russian Goose • 'First, catch a Russian -- and at long last Bobby Fischer apparently has, dominating Boris Spassky so completely...'
• 1974-01-28: Memo from Moscow: don't get byrned • 'Hot on his world chess championship comeback, Boris Spassky faces a scholarly and unintimidated American'
• 1974-09-30: A Case of Beauty Before Age • 'Two Russians are meeting to see who will take on Bobby Fischer...'
• 1977-12-12: Taut Duel for Two Old Comrades • 'They grew up together in Russia and meet again for the right to face the champion, but one is a defector, the other an émigré'
• 1978-01-30: They Couldn't Zap the Viktor • 'Korchnoi came out of his match with Spassky smiling and ready for world champion Karpov, but in Belgrade he was grimly convinced that the Soviet KGB was bombarding him with rays'
• 1978-07-31: Back to Drawing Old Board • 'The Soviet champ and a vocal defector drew the first three games of what could be a drawn-out world championship'
• 1985-02-25: A Dubious Gambit In Moscow • 'Just when chess champion Anatoly Karpov seemed to be weakening, the challenger was abruptly checkmated'
• 1986-11-13: Beating Back A Game Challenge • 'Anatoly Karpov played valiantly in their Leningrad showdown, but Gary Kasparov outlasted his rival to retain the world chess championship'
• 1987-12-07: Duel Of Two Minds • 'Opposites Gary Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov battle for the world chess title'
• 2016-11-12: Chess Pieces of History • 'Board in 1972 battle up for auction'

The reports aren't always perfect. There is sometimes confusion between the concepts of 'game' and 'match' that is irksome to many chess fans, and the 1971 baseball analogy...

Maybe You Can Win Them All • 'Bobby Fischer has pitched 19 no-hitters in a row'

...is clearly an exaggeration. Even with those nitpicks, I'll gladly accept a slightly flawed report that promotes chess to a non-chess readership. For some reason, the World Championship reports stopped after the 1980s. Was it because of a changing perception of chess as a sport, because of the political turmoil in the chess world, or because of something else? I would really like to know.

Elo and Edmondson

My previous post on Folke Rogard, FIDE's Consummate Diplomat, ended,

As for Cramer, the most comprehensive biography I could find is now in Archive.org: The Chessmill -> Fred Cramer by Roman Levit.

For convenience, here's the link again: Fred Cramer by Roman Levit. I found a couple of paragraphs particularly noteworthy.

Fred worked closely with [Arpad] Elo. He edited Elo's book, The Rating of Chessplayers Past and Present. He was a delegate to FIDE, and kept after FIDE to adopt Elo's rating system. Then, after its adoption, Fred continued to fight, this time battles with his own federation, who wanted to tinker with Elo's system as a promotional tool to make more money for the USCF. That led to some legendary battles between Cramer and Elo on the one side and USCF Director Ed Edmondson and Bill Goichburg [Goichberg] on the other.

The hostility grew between Edmondson and Cramer to the point where Edmondson had Fred replaced as FIDE delegate with Pearle Mann. (Fred always blamed Edmondson for the difficulties in negotiating the 1975 Fischer - Karpov match, claiming that just when things would be settling down Edmondson would stir up the Russians with insults or other violations of protocol. Fred always believed Edmondson resented being fired by Fischer during the Reykjavik negotiations, and so after that he tried to sabotage Fischer at every turn.)

Another page (undated) on the same site (now defunct), The Chessmill -> Interview With Arpad Elo, expands on both topics. The introduction to the interview starts,

We continue with our plundering of Wisconsin chess history by reaching back into the longest-published of all the local chess periodicals, Badger Chess, for this interview with Arpad Elo, conducted by Dave Brimble. Arpad Elo has influenced the history of the chess world with his scientific approach to the rating of chess players. In name recognition among chess aficionados, he ranks up there with the world champions.

The observation about name recognition is not exaggerated, although some chess players think 'ELO' is an acronym for something. The tie-in with the Cramer topics is later in the interview.

I was continually attacked by Goichburg [Goichberg] for example, for imagined and supposed usurpation of authority about the rating system. He eventually even got Edmundson [Edmondson] on his side and they tried to get me out of FIDE. They made quite an effort to get rid of me but I finally prevailed, I think because the people in FIDE that I worked with realized the integrity of the system and what I was trying to hold up was the integrity of the system. Whereas Edmundson and Goichburg [ditto] looked on it as a means to finagle and promote, inflating the egos of American chess players, that they are better than they really are. They wanted to use the rating system for political purposes, trying to influence the way the rating system worked. Then they would examine under the microscope all the numerical mistakes I would make and make an issue out of them. That was in the late 70's.

Fred Cramer had a run in with Edmundson in 1972 during the Fischer era. His gripe was about how Edmundson tried to manipulate Fischer. I still believe that Edmundson's shenanigans were a contributing factor to the failure of the Fischer - Karpov match in 1975. I think he deliberately insulted the Russians. Averbakh, the Russian master who was part of the negotiating team, who was also a member of the qualifications committee with me and who I became good friends with said that every time it seemed as if they were making progress about the conditions, Edmundson would throw about insults and such, and violate protocol. The Russians are very serious people and want to stick to the rules and when they get insulted repeatedly it really turns them off.

BC [Badger Chess]: So why would Edmundson try to sabotage the match?

Elo: Because he was fired by Fischer as his second back in '72. Edmundson was then the executive director of USCF and used his influence adversely. Fischer made certain conditions of course and the conditions were a matter of debate. Fischer insisted on the condition that in the event of an equal score at a certain point that the title would be retained by the champion and draws would not count and things like that. Eventually those conditions were slightly modified and adopted when Karpov became champion. So Karpov got everything Fischer asked for with minor changes. Of course I don't know if Fischer would have played in any case. I have a feeling that he would have found some other impossible condition. I agree with those who say that Fischer probably could psychologically not afford to risk losing the championship over the board.

Since the Elo interview might well be the source of the Cramer paragraphs, I would like to see these accusations against Edmondson confirmed elsewhere. Whatever I find, I'll report here. Fischer's default of the 1975 match signalled the end of the Fischer boom in American chess.

An Infamous Unplayed Match

A few months ago I received a message concerning my page 1975 Fischer forfeits to Karpov.

Subject: World championship rules 1974
From: GMG

On your Fischer forfeits to Karpov page [link given above], you wrote, "The same rules governing World Championship matches had been in place since the 1949 FIDE Congress in Paris. They were confirmed at the 1974 Congress in Nice."

In Bozidar Kazic's article "Anatoly Karpov The New World Champion" in Chess Informant 19, he writes that "In September 1971, the FIDE Congress in Vancouver decided that ... the world title in 1975 will be played for 6 won games draws not counting." In 1972, Euwe reportedly tabled a proposal for a match of 30 games. At Helsinki, Fischer sent his 10 wins and 9-9 plan, and a commission was created to draw up rules. At Nice, Kazic has them adopting a match of 36 games where one could win ahead of schedule by scoring 10 wins.

GMG, Toronto

Indeed, the referenced Informant has two-and-a-half pages titled 'An Outline of the Dispute Over the Unplayed Match' with a summary of FIDE actions between 1971 and 1975. While looking a bit more into the background of the 1975 match, I discovered the following table in a 1974 article titled 'The Historical Background' by Frank Skoff, President, USCF.

Chess Life & Review, October 1974, p.652

Although it might contain its own errors, it's a good summary of pre-WWII top-level matches and shows that Fischer's demands were not as outrageous as many of his critics declared.

Zone 7 Details, 1969 & 1975

Thanks to a couple of Bill Hook articles in Chess Life, I added clippings for zone 7 to my detail pages on the World Chess Championship Zonals:-

• Zonals 1969-1972 (C08)
• Zonals 1975-1978 (C10)

The 1975 writeup included a note on a tentative Fischer match.

A surprise visitor was Florencio Campomanes of the Philippines, FIDE Deputy President, fresh from negotiations in Caracas for a possible Fischer - Mecking match.

I don't recall seeing mention of this before.

Averbakh on the World Championship

In yesterday's post on my main blog, Friendly Chess Players, I introduced Averbakh's 'Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir'. The book is filled with stories about the World Championship, some of them new to me, many of them in more detail than I've seen before. Here's a list, each entry starting with its first page number in the book.

059 : 1950 CT
063 : 1951 19th USSR Chp semifinal (pre-zonal)
064 : ---- Pen portraits (A)
070 : 1951 19th USSR Chp (zonal)
071 : 1952 IZ
078 : 1953 CT
092 : 1955 22nd USSR Chp (zonal)
100 : ---- Sparring partner to MB
108 : 1958 25th USSR Chp (zonal)
110 : 1958 IZ
112 : ---- Early rules for WCC
120 : 1959 CT
129 : 1962 CT
147 : 1968 IZ playoff
154 : 1971 CM: TP-VK, RF-TP
157 : ---- Baturinsky
163 : 1972 WC: RF-BS
164 : 1963 VS & zonal
166 : 1974 CM: TP-LP, VK-TP
169 : 1977 CM: VK-TP
171 : 1974 FIDE Congress: AK-RF
175 : 1974 CM: AK-VK
178 : 1976 VK defection
185 : 1978 WC: AK-VK, Sevastianov
190 : 1982 IZ
193 : 1972 WC: RF-BS, Euwe
194 : 1982 FIDE President Campomanes
199 : 1982 CM: VS-RH, VS-ZR, GK-VK
214 : 1984 WC: AK-GK I
220 : 1985 WC: GK-AK II
221 : 1986 WC: GK-AK III
223 : 1987 FIDE Presidential election, GMA
223 : 1987 WC: GK-AK IV
224 : 1988 USSR Chp, GK-AK playoff
227 : 1988 USSR vs. World charity match
229 : 1990 Women's CT, Krogius
232 : 1972 Graz, Huebner - Rogoff (B)
233 : 1990 FIDE Presidential election
235 : 1987 GMA
236 : ---- Chess psychology (C)
240 : 1982 OL: Manila
242 : 1993 Schism, PCA, GK-NS, AK-JT
247 : 1994 OL: Salonika -> Moscow
250 : 1994 FIDE Presidential election
251 : 1995 FIDE Congress, Paris, Ilyumzhinov

IZ: Interzonal
CT: Candidate Tournament
CM: Candidate Match
WC: World Championship
OL: Olympiad (esp. Congress++)

AK: Karpov, BS: Spassky, GK: Kasparov, JT: Timman, LP: Portisch, MB: Botvinnik, NS: Short, RF: Fischer, RH: Huebner, TP: Petrosian, VK: Korchnoi, VS: Smyslov, ZR: Ribli

(A) Zubarev, Blumenfeld, Duz-Khotimirsky, Rabinovich, Verlinsky, Romanovsky
(B) A little known story about the future IMF Chief Economist; nothing to do with WC
(C) Incl. six categories of player as in 'Friendly Chess Players'

Although Averbakh's book deserves a review on my blog, this summary will have to do for now.

The Philippine Connection

While writing yesterday's post on my main blog, The Match That Never Was, I had a vague recollection of another fabricated Fischer - Karpov game from a few years ago. Sure enough, I found it on Chessbase.com and added the relevant links to the 'Never Was' post.

One unfabricated fact about the game didn't seem right: that the main negotiations between Fischer and Karpov occurred in the Philippines. The one reference by Chessbase -- Russians vs. Fischer, by Plisetsky and Voronkov (1994), p.366-367 -- mentions only meetings in Tokyo and Cordoba. Then I turned to Kasparov's volume on Fischer, My Great Predecessors IV, where starting on p.467, there is a long, detailed account titled 'Abdication'. Here is a timeline derived from that account.

1972-09	•	Reykjavik: Fischer wins title from Spassky
1972	•	San Antonio: Fischer visits tournament; meets Karpov for first time
1973	•	Manila: Fischer visits tournament; meets Marcos, Campomanes
1973-09	•	Helsinki: FIDE Congress, Fred Cramer presents Fischer's proposals
1974-06	•	Nice: FIDE Congress; Fischer resigns title
1974-11	•	Moscow: Karpov beats Korchnoi in Candidates final
1975-01	•	Philippines offers $5.000.000 for match
1975-03	•	Bergen-aan-Zee, Holland: Extraordinary FIDE Congress
1975-04	•	Euwe declares Karpov World Champion
1974(?)	•	Campomanes takes role of intermediary between Fischer & Karpov
1976-07	•	Tokyo: First negotiations
1976-08	•	Cordoba: Next meeting
1977-10	•	Washington: (1) restaurant, (2) Philippine embassy

There are some gaps in that table, especially months and venues, which I'll fill in from other accounts.

Zonals & Bad Championships

Using two recent summaries as a guide -- The U.S. Championship as FIDE Qualifier and Zonals : Links (and Other References) -- I updated my index of World Chess Championship Zonals. The last five cycles are now more accurate than they are misleading, largely due to the Zonals : Links records taken from ratings.fide.com, a wonderful resource for chess history that I only discovered while working on the zonals project. If you've never used it before, try entering a name, e.g. Seattle, in the box titled 'Archive Tournaments Database'.

***

Working on cycle 21 -- that's the one that culminated in the 2004 Tripoli KO -- prompted me to write The Worst World Championship Ever on my main blog. After I posted it, I started thinking that maybe it wasn't really the 'Worst World Championship Ever'. The aborted 1975 Fischer - Karpov match and the terminated 1984 Karpov - Kasparov match are two other strong choices, not to mention the nearly-abandoned 1993 Karpov - Timman match. I just realized that all three of those matches featured the same player. Now that's a coincidence!

Names: Certainty and Uncertainty

Now that the results are in for the 2009-2010 Women's Grand Prix, Doha, the final event in the 2009-2010 FIDE Women's Grand Prix, I added the players to the Index of Women Players for all women's events.

Although no format has yet been announced for the next cycle (2011-?) of the unrestricted World Championship, it appears from my recent post 2010 FIDE General Assembly : Whither the World Championship?, that it will follow the same World Cup -> Candidates -> Title Match format being used for the current cycle (2008-12?). This means that the unrestricted World Championship and the Women's World Championship will be using different formats: a three year cycle (my best guess) and a two year cycle (according to FIDE's announced plans). Let's see which format succeeds better.

***

By coincidence, I recently received a couple of emails related to Korchnoi's matches from the 1970s. The first asked for clarification on where the 1974 Korchnoi - Mecking quarterfinal candidates match had been held, so I added a detail to my page on the 1973-75 Candidates Matches. This reminded me that I still have a number of historical matches which lack the month when the match was played. The second email was about a paragraph in my page on the 1978 Karpov - Korchnoi Title Match, titled Yogurt, Parapsychology, Ananda Marga, ... Where I had written,

When play resumed for game 18, Rita Mataragnon, who worked for [a professor in the Department of Psychology at Manila University, Dr. Jaime] Bulatao, was present in Baguio, seated in the fifth row. Luc Claes, another associate of Bulatao, was present for game 19, along with groups of young psychology students. Karpov sent a letter to Schmid after game 20 complaining about the students.

I learned that the real identity of the person named Luc Claes is not at all certain. I rewrote the paragraph to reflect the uncertainty.

***

Later: Following up a subsequent idea, outlined in 2015-2016 Women's Grand Prix, the Players (December 2016; 'The first two posts, 2009-2010 & 2011-2012, could use a chart like the one shown above.'), I added the chart shown on the left.

For each of the players who competed in the 2009-2010 Grand Prix, it shows the total score achieved and the number of games played by the player.

Fischer in the World Championship

While working on a post for my main blog, The Brady Bunch, I noticed that Frank Brady's book 'Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy' (Dover 1989), had good summaries of all the zonal events where Fischer participated. I updated the relevant zonal pages with specific page references, combined them with links about Fischer from my World Championship Index of players (A-G), and created the following table. The links to zonal pages are in the 'ZT' column.

Fischer's World Chess Championship Participation

WCC	ZT	IZ	CT	TM
1960	1957-12; Brady p.20	Portoroz 1958	Yugoslavia 1959
1963	1960-12; Brady p.41	Stockholm 1962	Curacao 1962
1966	1962-12; Brady p.68
1969	1965-12; Brady p.92	Sousse 1967
1972	1969-11; Brady p.155, 173-174	Palma de Mallorca 1970	Candidate Matches 1971	Reykjavik 1972
1975				(1975 Fischer - Karpov)
***
1992				(1992 Fischer - Spassky)

The left column 'WCC' is the year when the corresponding title match was played. The right column 'TM' shows the title matches where Fischer had a role. I've included the 1992 Fischer - Spassky rematch in the TM column to avoid creating another column. I don't believe that anyone except Fischer considered that match to have been for a recognized title.

Carlsen Quits (Again)

GM Magnus Carlsen's announcement that he would no longer participate in the current World Championship cycle -- Magnus Carlsen drops out of World Championship cycle (Chessbase.com) -- sent shock waves through the chess world and shivers (déja vu style) up my spine. Instead of jumping to any conclusions as to Carlsen's motives, I decided to compile a list of similar incidents. Before I could start, I discovered I had been anticipated by the Daily Dirt (the dates in square brackets '[]' are mine):-

Alekhine dodged Capablanca [>1927]. Fischer disappeared instead of playing Karpov [1975]. Or was he taking a principled stand for rigorous rules? Shirov should have played Kasparov for next to no money. Or was it Kasparov who was dodging Shirov [1998]? Kramnik dodging Kasparov's quest for a rematch, or was he trying to restore a credible cycle [2001]? Kasparov skipping the Dortmund qualifier [2002], Ponomariov and Kasparov never playing [2003], and now Carlsen and, well, Ilyumzhinov [2010]. There are a dozen more we could add. • Carlsen Bails from WCh Cycle (Chessninja.com)

'Only a dozen more?', I thought. Here's a list I came up with after about 30 minutes, mostly spent on verification:-

• 1948: Fine [WCC match tournament]
  
• 1950: Reshevsky, Fine, Euwe, Bondarevsky [Budapest CT]; for several reasons
  
• 1965: Botvinnik [CM]

• 1964: Fischer [Amsterdam IZ]
  
• 1967: Fischer [Sousse IZ]
  
• 1972: Fischer [Reykjavik WCC]; will he or won't he?
  
• 1975: Fischer [WCC vs. Karpov]

• 1971: Huebner [CM qf vs. Petrosian]
  
• 1980: Huebner [CM f vs. Korchnoi]

• 1985: KK1; terminated by Campomanes
  
• 1986: KK3; Kasparov threatened to quit
  
• 1993: Kasparov - Short; played wthout FIDE

• 1996: Ilyumzhinov cancels Interzonal and replaces with KOs
  
• 1997: Kramnik [Groningen KO]
  
• 1999: Karpov [Las Vegas KO]

• 1998: Anand [WCC vs. Kasparov, declined]
  
• 1999: Anand [ditto, cancelled]
  
• 2000: Anand [ditto, declined]

There's some overlap there with the Chessninja list. I could have added more from the FIDE KOs played after 2000, but I became bored with the exercise. More challenging would have been a list of cycles where there weren't any such shenanigans. For a similar overview, see my post Troubled Matches from a few years ago. Maybe it has something to do with chess players not wanting to submit to authority.

1972-75 Zonals Complete

World Championship Interzonals : Leningrad and Petropolis 1973 by Wade, Blackstock, and Kotov has full crosstables for all zonals in the 1972-75 cycle. The additional info includes a zone 4 playoff missing from Soviet Zonals 1951-87.