Chess in a ghost town
Raymond Keene
Baguio 8aguio is a curious spot to stage such a major sporting event as the World Chess ChaMpionship. Situated in the hills of 11"1, orthern Luzon, the largest island in the 11111Ppine archipelago, Baguio is a remote ,Mountain fortress, which once defied the 3Panish conquistadors in search of native gold, and now defies chess enthusiasts and Journalists alike, who are hoping to witness „the most important chess event since the "%cher — Spassky match in Reykjavik in 1972. Fischer's refusal to defend his title in 1975 created the demand for a top-level c,hess match which is only now being satis'led by the meeting between Karpov and Korchnoi. The playing conditions are magnificent. ,.1,_he Convention Centre is splendid, quite t.ne most luxurious setting for a chess event rill the experience of the assembled experts, out h is embarrassingly empty. The irony is Painful. Anatoly Karpov, the youthful hero the Soviet establishment, is pitted against vIktor Korchnoi ('the Leningrad Lip' according to Ian Ward of the Daily Telegsraph), public enemy number one in the oviet Union, who defected two years ago a, ad has kept up a constant campaign of harassment against his ex-taskmasters ever ,s111. ce — including the release in Manila of a outer open letter to Brezhnev, which eManded the release of his family from the USSR.
Politically the situation is explosive, then, °IR more interestingly — from a chess point view — there is no doubt that these two 'randmasters are the best active players of ?lir time. (Bobby Fischer has been given up or lost, apparently having gone the way of the deranged Morphy.) Millions of chess Players all over the world wait for every Move, yet no one can actually reach Baguio to watch the match. Most of the spectators are there only for cosmetic reasons, having been drafted from the local military academy: the others are journalists or Members of the respective delegations. Ticket prices for each game have been reduced from sixteen pounds to four P°unds. Tax concessions have been offered to company employees to watch the games. Elut still nobody comes. But Baguio is not °Illy deserted, it is haunted — haunted by the Memory of the two outstanding world, championship matches of the past, Alekhine-Capablanca in 1927 and Fischer — SPassky in 1972. Victory in this match goes to the first player to win six games, and id.raWs do not count. These conditions dup„Ileate exactly those of the Alekhine`-apablanca meeting which resulted in the longest world championship match in chess
history. Three wins to Capablanca, six to Alekhine, and no fewer than twenty-five drawn games. The whole affair lasted for almost three months. The prospect is daunting to the officials and press here, who are already wondering whether they will have to spend Christmas in the Philippines.
There is also speculation that the Chess Olympics, scheduled for Buenos Aires in October, may have to be postponed if the match drags on. The first three games have all been drawn, despite some sharp and imaginative play in the second and third games. The prevailing opinion here is that the players are evenly matched, and factors, such as nerves and endurance may play a more significant role than pure knowledge and understanding of chess.
The ghostly legacy of Fischer-Spassky rests in the now universal conviction (confirmed by the Korchnoi-Spassky final in Belgrade), that no great chess match is complete without an unending stream of protests, counter-protests, semi-libellous statements, public character-assassination of the opposition, generally obstructive behaviour, and blackmail threats to abandon the match — in other words a psy-war off the board to complement the war on the chess board.
The Soviets unleashed the first volley by the sheer size of their delegation: sixteen men, five of whom have consecutively numbered passports, and most of whom have functions clearly unconnected with chess. The leader of this delegation is V.D. Baturinsky, a character remarkably lacking in humour. A squat toad-like creature who expresses himself in atrocious French, he used to be a military prosecutor under Stalin, and has now turned his claw to chess. His antagonist is Frau Petra Leeuwerik, the chief negotiator for Korchnoi's side, who has her own reasons to remain cheerless in the company of Russians. At the age of nineteen she was kidnapped from Austria on the pretext of being an American spy and sentenced to hard labour in the Vorkuta concentration camp, from which she was released after ten years by the Adenauer agreement.
Already excitable by nature, she understandably sees deep shades of red whenever she encounters communists. Although we became used to crises in Korchnoi's match with Spassky earlier this year, it strikes me that to create a deliberate environment of constant crises is an exercise in superfluity. Unfortunately, both Baturinsky and Frau Leeuwerik tend to do this.
Viktor Korchnoi brought a special chair with him from Switzerland. Baturinsky insisted that it should be X-rayed, which ludicrous exercise was duly carried out at Baguio General Hospital, under the eyes of an incredulous physician. A dispute developed over Korchnoi's intended use of the Swiss flag and both parties threatened to break off the match unless they got their own way. Eventually a reasonable compromise was reached, but Frau Leeuwerik could still be observed at 5 a.m. the morning after the conference announcing, to a lobby of dumbfounded Filipino journalists, the imminent departure of Korchnoi's group to Switzerland. She also claimed that Korchnoi is using a pocket geiger-counter to detect any harmful microwaves being directed at the stage.
During the second game Karpov was given a yoghurt and, to poke fun at the earlier protests, I wrote the following note in mock outrage to Lothar Schmid, the urbane chief arbiter: 'Dear Herr Schmid . . . it is clear that a cunningly arranged distribution of edible items to one player during the game, emanating from one delegation or the other, could convey a kind of code message. Thus a yoghurt after move 20 could mean "we instruct you to offer a draw" or a sliced mango could mean "we order you to decline a draw". A dish of marinated quails' eggs could mean "play N-N5 at once" — and so on. The possibilities are limitless.'
The only two to take it seriously were, predictably, Frau Leeuwerik and Baturinsky. Agreement was reached between the two sides that Karpov should be allowed a blue yoghurt at a stated time during each playing session. But Herr Schmid must be consulted in advance if Karpov gets the urge for yoghurt of a different colour. I hope that at least Herr Schmid will enjoy the joke.
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