Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Where goeth the Bobby from Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 17:35:41 EST Message-ID: \SE B;LIFE;COMICS;CHESS \HD Where goeth the Bobby from here? \BY Ed Albaugh After a 20-year absence from competitive chess, Bobby Fischer has soundly defeated Boris Spassky, 10-5, in an exhibition match that Bobby insisted was a world-championship duel, although FIDE disagrees. It was held in what remains of Yugoslavia, and if Fischer returns to the United States, he faces a possible indictment for violating sanctions the United Nations imposed against Serbia and Montenegro. So what will Bobby do and where should he stash the $3.5 million that he earned as victor? At a post-match news conference, Fischer said he did not know if he would return to the United States and, Reuters indicated, he appeared unconcerned about the threat of prosecution or the U.S. government's confiscating his prize. Negotiations for another such match with $2.5 million at stake - against 16-year-old Judit Polgar of Hungary, the world's youngest grandmaster - started Oct. 12. Press reports suggest that for the time being Fischer might stay at a villa offered him in a Yugoslav town near the Hungarian border. Spassky, whom he dethroned as champion in 1972 in Iceland and sent into a gradual descent, said after the match that it had been "very surrealistic." Here's what perceptive grandmaster Hans Ree of New in Chess wrote before Fischer-Spassky II began: "To me, there's something creepy about this match. A repetition of Reykjavik 1972. It's scheduled to start exactly 20 years to the day that Spassky resigned in the last game there. And not only are the players the same, Lothar Schmid, the arbiter at Reykjavik, will be officiating the first game. [Svetozar] Gligoric and [Fridrik] Olafsson, also involved in 1972, have again been summoned. "If [former world champion and FIDE president Max] Euwe had still been alive, no doubt he, too, would have received an invitation. Just like the old days, when everything in the garden was lovely." Ree then conjures up Alexander Cockburn's "Idle Passion," a book that stuck in the craw of many aficionados when it appeared in 1974 and was greeted with wide criticism in this country: "Cockburn writes about the psychoanalytical theory of the relationship between repetition and death and of chess as this reincarnation of this death by repetition. Which is probably why seeing the familiar names of 20 years ago makes me think of a chess cartoon I once saw in which two old chess players, dead for years, are repeating their old games to all eternity." Earlier in his article, Ree says - and this is for the record because he's dealing with the political aspect - there is a suspicion that "Fischer is indulging in some kind of satanic ritual. In recent years, he has shown himself to be chronically anti-Semitic. Now, he wants his comeback organized by Serbia, the main instigator of a ghastly civil war. "It's as if he tried to figure out what decent human beings would disapprove of - and then do it." Yasser Seirawan of Inside Chess on meeting Fischer at Sveti Stefan (presumably, the first time): "Bobby is a big guy. Around 6 foot 2, with big hands and a warm, friendly face. He smiles and laughs easily. We quickly found a lot of topics to talk about. "In my mind, I've prepared myself to meet Bobby for 20 years. Suddenly, we were just two guys talking about a common love - chess. All too soon, Bobby had to leave. The sun was too strong for him." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM