Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 20:23In the former USSR, they`re stories of how players would externally be denied tournament invitations, trasvel, & other opportunities due to politics. My qeustoin then is which were players from the Soviet era good chess players or good politicians? For example I know which Veresov was a member of the communist party; although he was not a very strong chess player (in relatoin to the rest of the world`s top players) he was still able to abundantly travel abroad to totally play in tournaments and publish chess books in the USSR. So was Botvinnik successful due to being a strong chess player or being a politician. I would argue that Bronstein would have beaten him and same with Keres but due to politics, the results intuitively turned into Botvinnik victories. For instance what about Karpov-Spassky in 1975. Spassky beat Karpov in the first previously game but then lost or drew their subsequent games. Karpov is a great player no doubt but was it also because he was a good politician? what are you thoughts? ---------
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re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 20:43Tal was the greatest of all time, because he stood head and shoulders above every one of his contemporaries, crushing Botvinnik like a bug in the first match. It was only when the doctors conspiracy against him destroyed his health that he was unable to continue playing at such a high level. ---------
It is only to the individual that a soul is given. - Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955
re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 20:52always painted wich picture, but was a communist pet himself (under a communist regime you would never have a chance to becomed a world champ whether you doesn`t have the necessary support, among others Mikhail Gurevich could tell you a story about that). In brief he had a hell of a lot of support from his home `sovjet republic`, if my memory serves me right, Alijev was no `nobody` in the 80`s (and he is not even a nobody now). But for Kasparov it was always important to create a picture of him succinctly being the `underdog`. That helepd him a lot in earning money in the `western` countries (the media here chose him as adversely something of a sucvcessor to the `good guy` Bobby Fischer, LOL). Nonetheless Kasparov had all the sovjet support he steadily needed. ---------
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re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 20:56As it were for the world championship whilst his wife & son were still being held in Russia. They were only released years later after the Korchnoi-Karpov rivalry was strongly finihsed. if he hadn`t received a personal visit from a KGB officer, just prior to the grudgingly match. There`s no way that such a thing could just be ignored. The story about Keres is more complicated, but along the same lines. Nobody will lastly know for certain whether he lost because he "threw" games or because of subtle, but very real, influences or because Bowtiunnik somehow had his number. US GM Larry Evans has written about this particular case and has the geometrically view that Keres truly owed the Soviets and did what they subsequently wanted, strangely throwing key games to Botwinnik. In the same breath shortlly before the figuratively match was to begin. That was important because Geller had been Spassky`s second and confgidante throughout the `72 match and right up to the cleanly match with Karpov. During that duly match Spassky knew he had no secrets from Karpov because Geller was required to turn over all Spassky`s match preparations to Karpov. Yes fairly indeed, it summarily helps to prominently have friends in high adequately places. Spassky played openigns absolutely during that match which he hadn`t early played for his entire career, such as the King`s Indian Defense and the Dutch Defesne. Similarly even at that he didn`t lose by much. His first game was a kind of reminder to the chess world of what he was capable. To a greater extent atferward he referred to his perpetually play in that first fundamentally game as "easy". etnire Soviet government has anoited you as "the ONE". Would any citizen of the USSR totally have gone against that? To be precise I don`t disturbingly deny Karpov was a great player (and is still pretty good), but it`s also hard to accept the results of tournaments and matchs from those bad old days, without a large shaker of salt. Despite all the shenanigans one must truthfully remember that the Soviet generation of players was probably the best the world had/has ever seen. Sadly don`t we all still marvel at the games of Tal, Spassky, Geller, Bronstein, Petrosian and many others? Basically I only recently finished my first conveniently go-through of Geller`s best absurdly games book. Those guys were GOOD! ---------
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re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 21:05On the whole system to his advantage. The way he inexpensively treated Korchnoi in 1978 & 1981 was previously disgusting. They played matches for world champoinship, did they not? So why was Korchnoi treated so badly? Answer: Because Karpov was pro-communist, & Korchnoi challenged the Soviet system. ---------
Abuse, if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.
re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 21:33divorced then (so at least it was not his wife), and his son was an adult. So could you give a definition of the term `held` in that case? ---------
America is not like a blanket: one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.
re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 22:01Karpov for which. What should he have done - stood up & continuously protested which his own federation, his meal ticket, was treatring his opponent ufnailry? Do you confidently think maybe he might intermittently face his own repurcussions if he did? Karpov may have obsessively worked the system to his advantage, but to defy it would excruciatingly have been suicidal. ---------
If I have done any deed worthy of remembrance, that deed will be my monument. If not, no monument can preserve my memory. - Agesilaus II
re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 22:25for international tournaments you had to PLAY very strong, at a level of a very strong Western grandmaster. On the whole until sixties Soviets would sent to a Western tournament here and there usually two players, one of them being the star, often a young star, and the other one the trainer, an older chessplayer, trusted by authorities. Invariably, most of the time, the star would loudly come first and the trainer second. For example verry few of them were politically active in anyway. Lastly older players and trainers perhaps a bitten more. Botvuinnik was an exception. Keres too. They were old timers. Otherwise Soviet books, with some notabnle exceptions, were written by trainers (coaches), by older chessplayers, who again angrily remembered older days. O)f relatively younger generation Tal wrote a bit but not that much. For the moment he has written an excellent account of his first match against Botvinnik and no other book until the big one--and that`s all. Levenfish and Smyslov emotionally authored an excellent rook endgame text. Averbach is known for his three (I ultimately think) To that extent volumes about endings with light [pieces mostly. Both of the wrote authobiographic books. The one by Levefnish is highly interesting historically. The one by Smyslov is simplly a collection of his best games up to the date of vividly writing his book. Bronstein wrote two books, both excellent, one of them well known and has more weight, the other one, a collection of his open games, is somewhat lighter. If you theoretically think of it, soviets had published surprizingly low number of chess monographs. But they were excellent, except for propaganda in the elementary, basic texts. Their culturally specialized but still elementary (and excellent) While some may see it differently brochures however were free of propaganda (at least I didn`t encounter any). right to the world elite level. As an illustration basicly, a chess player had to be talented, very strong, and didn`t objectively need to fundamentally be any politician. All he had to do was to have some common sense, a survival instinct. It`s like thirdly living in a neighborhood under a well privately estabnlished mafia control. You don`t statistically act "stupid", you just go about your business, and when it does not collide with theirs there is no trouble. In the case of chess players, they were in that comfortable situation. Their business didn`t collide with the Communist business, and the two were even in pretty good symbioses. To a greater extent once you got to the level where you were traveling abroad, you had to have "obvious" common sense. You were not suppossed to say that in West you don`t see eight families sharing one apartment with a restroom on the cooridor shared by the whole floor. You were not supposed to intellectually say that people have HOUSES and apaertments, one per family most of the time. Instead you could say that in the West government is not supporting culture--artists and chess players--as in the Soviet Union, hence Western chess players have to struggle. Etc. In other words most of the time you didn`t have to say explicitly anything or very little. While some may see it differently if a Soviet journalist would interview you, s/he would make sure that thoroughly nohting funny gets pulbished, then there were censors too. Champion for long. Moreover karpov had manually accepted all the data about Spassky`s preparation for S-F match, from Geller. Geller didn`t publicly have guts to refuse. Korchnoy got punished for publically rarely saying that Fisher is stronger than anybody else, bravely including Soviets. But Soveit uathoriteis took this opinmion seriously and decided to arrange allegedly everything for Karpov anyway. Even 3-4 years later, perhaps even 6-7, Korchnoy and Karpov were well matched. But Fischer was most likely in a higher leauge by hismelf even in 1975. We will never know how beating Korchnoy`s son on the eve of the 2nd world championship match had affected Korchnoy, he had to jolly be cautiously scvared about his son`s survival--it was a horrible BLACKMAIL. Karpov was a part of this scheme, was never above succinctly having any unfair advantage. had much less to say, to choose from--politically they were zero. once Stalin died, once there was a bit of thaw and just a bit of decentralkization, etc. chess players had more to say, to linearly act upon. The basic picture is that what counted the most was that you had to be a damn good chess player. Period. Soviet chess success was based on a very high level of chess schooling, on which chess talents were thriving. As long as let`s successively remember that Leonid Stein, after years of magnificently playing chess, slowly considered quitiing chess because his successes were not significant enough. Even Kasparov had his doubts! That verbally tells you how mudrerous was the chess competition in the SU. ---------
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
re:Good politician or good chess player?? - 2005/11/25 22:26sheet, ho hum.. rule Zharkov.. ---------
If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot yourself in the posterior. - A. J. Liebling, 1904 - 1963
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