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MOSCOW (AP) — A former world chess champion says that a half century of chess dominance by the Soviet Union rnay be drawing to a close. And the Soviet chess patriarch says Britain is the country to watch.• ‘I think in the first place our mass base has to some extent become smaller. 1 think school children play chess less than they used to, Mikhail Botvinnik said in a recent interview in his pleasant flat.But the mass base is still large. I think what is happening is that the level of analysts is falling because now the older generation is fading. Now,fortunately, we practically do not have theorists.“And therefore we no longer have the special training benefits we used to be able to offer-young players.Botvinnik, for 15 years world chess champion and now one of Russia’s leading trainers of new talent, called Anatoly Karpov, 27, the only great Soviet chess player of the younger generation.un-Karpov is defending his world championship title in the Philippines against defector Viktor Korchnoi, 47. It was another member of the old guard, BorisBody in bay identifiedas former CIA officialBALTIMORE (AP) - The body of aman who was found in Chesapeake Bay wearing diving weights and with a bullet wound in his head has been identified as former CIA official John Paisley, Maryland State Police said today.Paisley. 55, was identified through dental records, and died from a gunshot wound to the head, authorities said.Bill Clark, a police spokesman, said tests indicated the weapon was touching the victim’s head at the time it was fired. That could mean either a suicide, or an execution-type murder, Clark said.adding that an investigation of the case was continuing.Clark said no weapon has been recovered.Paisley, who lived in Washington, retired in 1974 as deputv director of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research.He was last seen alive while sailing his 30-foot motorized sailboat on the bay Sept. 24. His boat was found aground nearSolomons, Md., his home mooring, the next davThe body was discovered floating at the mouth of the Patuxent River by a pleasure boat. The Ramada. said Chief William Patterson of the Coast Guard.Patterson said the diving weights were adequate to take a body down to the bottom until the bodv bloated and filled with*air.Mary Ann Paisley. Paisley’s estranged wife, said Monday that her husband was an active scuba diver, and kept diving weights on board his boat.When found. Paislev’s bodv was dress-•» *ed in dungarees and a T-shirt, Patterson said, adding the man also was wearing gloves.dearabbySpassky, 41, whom Korchnoi beat to make the finals.Recalling that Soviet grandmasters once won all the international tournaments of the International Chess Federation, Botvinnik, 67, sighed, “Now it’s only here and there.”In the world junior team championship completed in September in Mexico, for example, the Soviet team placed an unheard-of second. First place was taken by the British.Still, the white-haired patriarch raised the possibility that a 15-year-old student of his, Garry Kasparov, the youngestchess master/ in the country, could become a potential player of the top rank. His burden will be to carry on a tradition that goes back to 1927.Except for the short reips of Holland’s Max Euwe and the United State’s Bobby Fischer, the Soviets have reiped since Alexander Alekhine beat Cuba’s Raul Capablanca that year, Alekhine, who migrated to France in 1921, held the title almost continuously until his death in 1946.Then Botvinnik won the crown in playoffs, the first of the Soviet-trained champions. It was, the Communist party newspaper Pravda decreed, a victory of our Socialist culture.11Botvinnik lost and but soon regained the championship twice during his reign, But in 1963, at the grand old age — for achessplayer — of 52, he lost it for good to yet another Soviet, Tigran Petrosian.Six years later, the title went to Spassky, and then in 1972 to Fischer, who held it for three years. When the temperamental American refused to defend it under international rules and branded the Russians cheaters, Karpov became champion by default.Accident victim declareddead for the second timeAUSTIN, Texas (AP) — For thesecond time in a week, 19year-o!dRoger T. Ragland of Dripping Springs has been declared dead—the victim of an automobile crash.A spokesman at Austin’s Brackenridge Hospital said Ragland, who showed sips of life 12hours after being declared dead following the accident last week, died at 6;35 p.m. Monday Ragland suffered massive head injuries m the accident last Wednesday and doctors at the hospital told his family Ragland was dead He was put on a respirator after his family agreed to let doctors remove a kidney for a transplant.Ragland’s family, meanwhile, called a funeral home and the funeral home gave Ragland’s death notice to newspapers.But as doctors prepared last Thursday to remove Ragland’s kidney, they noticed movement in his legs. An electro-encephalopam was performed to measure Ragland’s brain acivity. A neurosurgeon called Ragland's family and informed them of the lifeBeathard late Monday.sips.Following brain surgery, Ragland clung to life on an artificial life support machine. He remained in critical condition until his death MondavBeathard, chairman of Brackenridge Hospital’s organ donor committee, said the original determination of Ragland’s death was made without the application of “brain death techniques.”Texas has no legal standard for declaring a person dead. Brain death, however, is a medically accepted definition.“The error that was made— thereal tragedy—was that the family was told he was dead. It is a semantic thing At that time, there was no question his injury was so severe that there was no hope for his recovery.” said Dr GeorgeDr. James Lindley had said Ragland had shown no brain activity when he was brought to the hospital.The shock over the latest death announcement Monday squelched the possibility of another kidney transplant, a member of the family said. •• Vw-.#.isaWhy have the ov ets dom nated?“Those long winters;^tlmseHilong winters, Eu we once exp ainea Karpov, howevern disagreed.“In the United Statel,”^he||ai® “there’s winter, too. It would be vej^.hi|pffg if in the United States chess werditd be*i S?J ■ 1 . . . . y# ./.r, ’ * ■ I*.come as popular as American football,’.’; S ■ 'It has been because of its pcpularity.irtj the Soviet Union, he went on, that till:* Russians have endured.“If we have widened the field, we cM plant and grow chess players, we will g|tf appropriate results,” Karpov maintained.The number of players has sometimes been pegged at four million, including 65 grandmasters, 105 international masters and 720 masters of the U.S.S.R. There are said to be 1,620 “workers’” chess clubs.But Soviet chess experts sometimes belittle the statistics, saying “inflation” is at work. Today’s master might be the equal of yesterday’s grandmaster, theysay.“In Russia if you have talent it will be protected, nurtured,” Euwe observed; “If you have talent in the U.S.A., you may lose it because some day you will have tosay, i have to make a living.’ ”In Botvinnik’s view, two other prerequisites that must be met were met by the Soviet Union. One was to have a large base of players on which to draw and the second was a system of chess theorists to nurture young talent and to evolve newmethods of play.They were achieved in full measure in Soviet Russia, he said, soon after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.“To have strong chess players,” Botvinnik joked, “it’s not absolutely necessary to have a socialist revolution — but it helps.”
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Odessa American
Odessa, Texas, US
Tue, Oct 03, 1978
Page 30
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Los A.
CA, USA 23 Jul 2020
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Odessa American
