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Chess Board• , - lt;t*Bent Larson unique: He shuns drawsBy JOSEPH MILL BROWN Copley News Service—It was no surprise to anyone at this year’s international chess tournament in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, that DenmarkJsr vsupergrandmaster, Bent Larsen,displayed his unique* characteristic once again: the losingest as well as the win-ningest and fightingest of today’s chess stars.Too many grand masters are all too quick to settle for the strategic draw. If less than 55 per cent of a tournament’s games are drawn, it’s considered a real rouser. But with Larsen more than most, the win is the thing.“I am not interested in second prizes,” he once told me.“It is a grand master’s dutyto win.”Not all chess players agree; many accuse Larsen of the cardinal sins: ehutzpafi and overconfidence. Boris Spassky added one more: optimism.. Overconfidence? Optimism? Possibly. Not all chess masters are so richly endowed. At the Nice Olympiad, Victor Korchnoi — the underdog — predicted it would take him only 18 games to annihilate Anatoly Karpov in their match to decide a challenger for Bobby Fischer.Yet, when asked by Yugoslav journalist Dmitri Bjelica whether he or Karpov would have the better chance against Fischer, Korchnoiresponded, “I don’t know but, frankly speaking, I, too,would lose to Fischer.” (And added-lamely, ‘T would not allow Fischer to treat me as he did Spassky. I would try tobe as extravagant as he in his demands.”)i You don’thave to. be a merechallepger ta Jack confidence.After Alexander Alekhine conceded the final draw, in their 1935 match, that made a world champion of Holland’s Max Euwe, there was pandemonium in the hall and, literally, dancing in the streets as traffic came to a stop in central Amsterdam. Euwe’s victory gave.Holland a pride and feeling for chess that made it, to this day, the No. 1 chess country in the West.But then came the victory banquet, and Euwe’s startlingmodest speech, It stunned hisadmirers when he candidly admitted that he didn’t believe he would remain a champion very long. And, of course, he didn’t; losing the title to Alekhine in his very first defense, two years later.~ Chutzpah, now, is something else.. It is Yiddish slang; best described as a characteristic of someone who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that h^ is an orphan. That doesn’t describe Larsen at all. But chutzpah is commonplace in chess, and you don't have to be an expert player to have it.A few years ago a mediocre; chess-playing Englishwoman accused a book by an early American writer of being “just about the worst chess book we ever had in theEnglish language. I’m not blaming- the -author-for my own lifetime of unsuccessful qhess, because I didn’t readthe book,” she continued — not bothering to explain howshe knew it was “just about the, wor$t ehe^bldok** if She had never, read it. , * r' ‘ 1 ‘Chutzpah may also have been on display at the 1953 Candidate Tournament in Zurich, Switzerland.There, in the world-famous home of supposedly superior watchmaking, it was discovered more than once that, in crucial games to decide a challenger for the world championship (it was the USSR’s Vasily Smyslov;, both sides of a chess clock were moving at the same time.LARSEN’S OPENING1. P-QN3 P-Q42. B-N2 P-QB4TEESIDE, England —1972 Bent Larsen Robert Wade3. P-K3N-KB34r B-N5eh- B-Q2 -5. BxBch*QNxB6. N-KB3P-K37. P-B4B-K2» •8, 0*0.....9.Q-K2P-QR3.v v Q-R4 3lh^XpPxP« * *12. P-Q4QR-B1 *13. PxPNxP14. N-Q4N-K315. N-B5B-R616. QR-B1R-B217. N-QR4BxB18. QxBP-QN419. N-B5Q-N320. P-QN4NxN21. RxNRxR22. PxRQ-K323. N-Q4Q-K424. Q-R3N-N525. N-B3Q-B226. R-BlP-QR427. Q-Q3P-N528. P-B6N-B329. N-Q4P-R430. Q-B5Q-Bl31. P-B7P-QR532. QxQRxQ33. N-B5►ResignsYouth crawls to world markONEONTA, N.Y. (UPI) -Steven Talevi, 17, has claimed a world’s crawling record.Talevi crawled around a soccer field in Oneonta, N.Y., Sunday, covering a total of 5.73 miles. He said that breaks the former mark of 5.71 miles set earlier this summer by a crawler in the community of Horseheads.Talevi said that in addition to winning a total of $55 bet by friends, he is now trying to getin touch with the Guinness Book of World Records to see if he qualifies for mention.The current edition of the book says the hands-and-knees crawling record is held by a man who crawled 5.53 miles in Spain in 1972,
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Scottsdale Progress
Scottsdale, Arizona, US
Mon, Oct 14, 1974
Page 11
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Los A.
CA, USA 13 Jan 2023
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