Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, Stockton, California, Tuesday, October 11, 1960
Where U.S. Won't Challenge Russia
Chess is a game that finds comparatively few takers in the United States, and hence the Chess Olympics opening in Leipzig Friday list no entry of an American team. Thirty-nine nations, including tiny Puerto Rico, will participate.
Lack of financing, not of talent, stymies American competition. Bobby Fischer, 17, three times national champion, will compete in Leipzig with excellent chances of success. His mother, Mrs. Regina Fischer, has tried desperately but vainly to raise $6,000 to finance an American team's expedition.
Russia has dominated international chess competition for more than 30 years, but there is a chance the United States might score respectably well in the German tournament. Young Fischer tied for first place with one of Russia's best players at an Argentine meeting in April, and in July, the American students' team beat the Russians to win an international match in Leningrad.
Russians compete against us in some of our own games—notably basketball—and usually take a drubbing. It would hardly be nationally embarrassing to be beaten by the Soviet chess masters at their own game in an international tournament, and there's the exciting prospect that we might score a few checkmates.
