Ground Control: A Journey Through Chess and Space

Chess in 1969

1969 was an important year for chess. The Fischer Boom, with the 1972 World Championship match in Reykjavík providing front-page headlines each morning and leading the news each evening, was three years in the future, but signs were already present the chess world would soon experience significant changes. Boris Spassky dethroned the world chess champion by a score of 12½-10½ in a match lasting over two months to become the tenth world champion. Petrosian would continue to play at a high level the rest of his career but would never again be a participant in a World Championship match. Like many of the best players (Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal and Yefim Geller) of the 1950s and 1960s, Petrosian’s best days came to end in the late 1960s. Soon a generation of young stars would be replacing them at the top, the one exception being Viktor Korchnoi who only reached his peak in the late 1970s as he approached his 50th birthday. The challenger was not as lucky in the 1969 Women’s World Championship match as Nona Gaprindashvili successfully defended her crown against Alla Kushnir by a score of 12-7. The two rivals would meet three times for the title between 1965 and 1972 with Nona winning on each occasion. The quality of play in these matches, on the level of an international master, was significantly higher than seen in previous Women’s World Championship competitions and would continue to rise in the 1970s, the result of more women playing and increased opportunities to meet stronger opponents in mixed competitions. Spassky and Gaprindashvili were not the only Soviets to triumph in 1969. Eighteen-year-old Anatoly Karpov, from the Siberian city of Zlatoust, won the World Junior Championship in Stockholm. Karpov’s victory ended a long drought for the Soviets in the annual competition open to players under 21 as he became their first winner since 1955. Who could have predicted in 1969 that Karpov would go on to become one of the greatest players of all time? In 1969 Women’s Olympiads were played on only two boards (with one reserve), and the Soviet Union dominated the competition. In the 1969 event held in Lublin, Poland, they scored 26 out of a possible 28 to finish well ahead of Hungary (201/2) and Czechoslovakia (19). Today the Open and Women’s competitions in the Olympiads have the same team composition—four players and one reserve—a reflection of not only how many more female players there are, but also how much stronger they play. Berkeley Chess School founder Elizabeth Shaughnessy made her debut for the Irish team in the 1969 Olympiad and would go on to represent her homeland in another six Olympiads. Later, in her new hometown of Berkeley, California, she would build a program from scratch that would teach tens of thousands of kids to play chess, a harbinger of the scholastic boom of the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Bobby Fischer played no tournament or match games in 1969, but his presence was still strongly felt. The publication of My Sixty Memorable Games in January was a commercial as well as critical success, and the hardcover and paperback editions would go through several reprintings. Even in the 21st century, this book is considered one of the greatest chess books ever written, both for its deep pre-computer analysis and Fischer’s frank comments. His 1972 match with Spassky would cause an explosion of interest in the game that would be noticed by English language publishers both in the United States and the United Kingdom. The result would be dozens and dozens of new chess books appearing in the mid-1970s with many of them published by the British firm Batsford and R.H.M. in the United States. Fischer’s 1968 victories at Netanya and Vinkovci helped make him the top-rated player on the 1969 FIDE rating list at 2720, 30 points ahead of World Champion Boris Spassky and forty points in front of GM Viktor Korchnoi. GMs Bent Larsen of Denmark and Lajos Portisch of Hungary joined Fischer as the only non-Soviets among the top ten. Right behind Korchnoi on the 1969 FIDE rating list was the “Patriarch of Soviet Chess,” 57-year-old World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. Rated number four in the world at 2660,  he shared first place with GM Efim Geller at the annual Wijk aan Zee tournament  with 10½/15, a half point ahead of GMs Portisch and Paul Keres. It was very good year for Portisch, who won at Amster-dam with 11½/15, at Monte Carlo (tied with Smyslov) on 8/11 and at Hastings (the 1969/70 edition), scoring 6/9, ahead of Vlastimil Hort, Svetozar Gligoric, and Wolfgang Uhlmann. The 1969 US Chess Championship was held at the end of the year in New York City. Fifty-eight-year-old GM Samuel Reshevsky won his eighth title with an 8-3 score followed by IM William Addison at 7½ and GM Pal Benko on 7. That year the U.S. Championship was a Zonal and all three won spots in the 1970 Interzonal. This proved significant when Benko ended up giving his place to Fischer, the beginning of the latter’s journey to becoming world champion. If Benko had not done this Bobby would have had to wait another three years for a shot at the crown. Before 1972, all American players outside of Fischer and Reshevsky were at best semi-professionals. This would soon change due to increased prize funds and more teaching and writing opportunities. WIM Gisela Gresser set a record when she won her ninth U.S. Women’s Championship at the age of 63 with a score of 7½ from 9, a point ahead of her long-time rival WIM Mona May Karff. The closest any woman has come to Gresser in the last 50 years is GM Irina Krush with seven titles. Today most top female players learn to play well before they are 10, but Gresser didn’t pick up the game until she was in her late 30s! She only won her first U.S. Women’s Championship title in 1944 at the age of 38 and became a US Chess rated master in 1963 at 57—an age when players are long retired. Contrast Gresser with GM Susan Polgar who hold the American records for highest rated female player (2577 FIDE) and (2598 USCF). Polgar was born on April 19, 1969, in Budapest, Hungary, and her parents started teaching the game not long after she could walk and talk. She later led the United States to its best-ever finish (second place) in the 2004 Women’s Chess Olympiad, turning in the best individual performance of the event. The former Women’s World Champion has led Texas Tech and Webster University to many collegiate titles. Future U.S. Chess Hall of Famers Pal Benko, Milan Vukcevich, and Arthur Bisguier tied for first with scores of 9½-2½ in the 70th U.S. Open held August 10-22 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Seattle Master Viktors Pupols of Seattle was the early front runner after defeating Benko in round seven, but faded near the end to finish with 8½ points. Pupols, at the age of 85, has already played over 100 tournament games in 2019. This past February he defeated International Master Bryce Tiglon in the Washington State Championship, an event he first played in back in 1954! This example of an octogenarian playing successfully is not common, but hardly unknown as just this year 82-year International Master Anthony Saidy defeated a 2500+ FIDE rated grandmaster at the National Open. During the U.S. Open in Lincoln, outgoing US Chess Federation President Marshall Rohland of Wisconsin reported the organization’s membership had increased from 11,202 to 13,488. This steady growth was typical for the US Chess Federation during the 1960s and set the table for the massive increase it experienced during the Fischer Boom—up to almost 60,000 members in 1973. This number rapidly decreased when Bobby failed to defend his title and the 1973 record total was not eclipsed until 1992. Today, thanks to a tremendous rise in the number of scholastic players, the organization is rapidly approaching 100,000 members. The U.S. Chess Federation magazine Chess Life and U.S. Chess Hall of Famer Al Horowitz’s Chess Review (founded in 1933) merged in the fall of 1969 with the new publication adopting the name Chess Life & Review. This lasted until the early 1980s when it reverted back to Chess Life. —IM John Donaldson International Master John Donaldson served as Chess Director of the Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco, California, from 1998 to 2018. He worked for Inside Chess magazine from 1988 to 2000 and has authored over 30 books on the game. Donaldson earned the IM title in 1983, has two norms toward the coveted GM title, and has captained the U.S. national chess team on 21 occasions, including to gold in the 2016 Baku Chess Olympiad—the first time for the U.S. since 1976.