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Warring on the boardWASHINGTON — More than a score wars are raging around the world and the administration seems determined to get America into more than its fair share of them. Unfortunately, the cost of making U.S. soldiers into pawns in a global chess game is all too real.Luckily, not all chess games are geopolitical. To the contrary, two separate and competing championship matches are raging. The international chess world — never sedate, despite the image of an intellectual game played in a book-lined study — has perhaps never been more roiled.In London, Russian Gary Kasparov, officially defrocked as world champion but universally recognized as the world’s best player, is defending his title against Nigel Short, the first British pretender to the throne this century. So far Kasparov has lived up to his billing, winning two of the first three games of the 24-game match.The international chess federation, or FIDE (officially the Federation Internationale des Echecs) originally sponsored the Kasparov-Short bout. But Kasparov and Short — who dislike each other intensely, though less intensely than they detest FIDE president Francisco Campomanes — objected to FIDE’s match arrangements and created their own Professional Chess Association to host the match. ICampomanes promptly stripped Kasparov of his title, voided Shot’s challenge, and dropped the two from FIDE’s official ratings list. Campomanes explained: “There’s been a cancer and this is just an excision.”To come up with its own match, FIDE turned to former world champion Anatoly Karpov, toppled by Kasparov in 1985, and Dutch grandmaster Jan Tim man. Alas, the FIDE match suffers from a modem credibility gap: Karpov failed in threetries, most recently in 1990, to retake the title from Kasparov and, along with Timman, was defeated by Short last year. While Timman has the bestThe Capitol Eyelegal claim to challenge Karpov, he is today ranked only 31st in the world and recently lost a warm-up match to an obscure Greek grandmaster who is not even ranked in thetop 100.“If one wants to be absolutely formal, the world champion must be the winner of the Karpov-Timman match,” says British international master William Hartson. “Other sports have had world champions who haven't been the best player in the world.”The chess marketplace is obviously unimpressed Vith Hartson’s impeccable legal logic, however.The PCA has raised, privately, 80 percent more than the purse of the FIDE match, almost all of which is coming from the Sultan of Oman, a chess fan. Even Timman’s countrymen have been unwilling to contribute much toward it, despite the fact that Amsterdam is hosting the first half of the match.Perhaps the ultimate commentary on the two matches has been unintentionally provided by The New York Times. As during past championship contests, columnist grandmaster Robert Byrne is providing in-depth analysis of the Kasparov-Shortgames; in contrast, The Times is only running short wire service stories on the Karpov-Timman outcomes. There is, in short, no doubt as to which of these is the real cham-P*00S*I*P* Jl| ;V .As messy as is the PCA-FIDE feud, it is still pretty tame comparedto chess during the Cold War, when the Soviets monopolized international chess competition. Former U.S. champion Bobby Fischer — now reportedly trying to set up a $5 million match with 17-year-old Hungarian wunderkind Judit Polgar — long charged the U.S.S.R. with cheating, allegations since backed by some former Soviet players. Karpov uncomplainingly defended his title in 1981 against defector Victor Korchnoi though Moscow refused to allow the latter’s wife and son to emigrate. In 1984 Campomanes halted the first Kasparov-Karpov championship match under suspicious cir-cumstances when Karpov, the favorite of the Soviet establishment, faltered in an abnormally longmatch.All of this may seem pretty esoteric for non-players. (Bruce Pan-dolfini’s “Pandolfini’s Chess Complete, new from Simon Schuster, will help even the rankest patzer understand the game.) And chess will almost certainly never make it as a mass spectator sport: the average game is rather like watching grass grow, observed one master.But chess is quite different to play. It is war at its best — the challenge without the carnage. There is the elegance of a sophisticated combination, capped by a devastating sting that leaves one’s opponent with no escape. There is the thrill of the brutal assault that reduces the defense to ruins. There is the quiet satisfaction of pursuing an end game where victory is forced. And there is the dismay, horror and pain of losing. Yet all the combatants walk away, ready to fight another day.If President Clinton really wants to burnish his military reputation with a war, perhaps he should take up chess. Then he could wildly sacrifice pawns without losing any liveshi the process. . * .Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a syndicated columnist. *
Newspaper Details
New Bern Sun Journal
New Bern, North Carolina, US
Wed, Sep 15, 1993
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
Los A.
CA, USA 29 Nov 2022
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