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Hartford Courant Hartford, Connecticut Sunday, May 15, 1960
Chess, Anyone?
Almost as exciting to the people of the Soviet Union as the political sensations of the day is the finale of the world chess championship match. It was won recently by a young Latvian, 23-year-old Mikhail Tal. Tal defeated Mikhail Botvinnik of Moscow in a tournament lasting two months, by a score of 12½ to 8½.
The Russians take their chess seriously. It might even be called their national game, with the championships the equivalent of our World Series. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that the Bolsheviks snatched Dr. Alexander Alekhine away from a firing squad in the revolution of 1917 on the ground that his skill at the chessboard represented a national asset. At any rate Alekhine went on to win the world title in 1917. Today, with chess experts heavily subsidized by the Kremlin, a grand master can live like a Romanov.
It would be well if the same sort of encouragement were given to promising chess players in the United States. True, we have had a number of masters at the game, including the present champion Bobby Fischer. But we cannot boast of a world champion since the redoubtable Paul Morphy defeated all comers here and abroad in the late 1850s. If our schools gave their chess teams a fraction of the attention they give physical sports, the Russians would have more of a struggle to retain their monopoly on the title than they do.
Unfortunately too many people regard chess as a formidable mental exercise like solid geometry. In reality a bright child of six or seven can learn the rules of the game and enjoy playing it while at the same time developing his ability to use his brain. Care for a game?
