The World Chess Championship is going on in New York City (?) and they're into overtime :o .
I have not kept up on the World Chess Championship over the years, but there was a time that I did. The whole world did. That time would have been a long time ago, 1972. For pageviewers under 44 years of age that may be hard to imagine, like 2015 is hard for me to imagine.
1972 was a Cold War year and, like this year, a presidential election year, ergo, Americans were more insane than usual, and pitted Cold Warrior incumbent Richard Nixon against the prairie populist George McGovern.
While that election was heating up the summer of '72 saw two Cold War proxy wars break out. In September was the Summit Series, named for era head of state meetings. That was in hockey and was between America's proxy Canada and the Soviet Union. As bitter and as intense ("We were playing for our way of life"-Phil Esposito) as the Summit Series was it was still between Canada and the USSR.
The World Chess Championship in mid-July through August however was between the erratic, brilliant American Bobby Fischer, the challenger, and the stoic, professorial holder Boris Spassky, a genu-eyne Rooski with bushy eyebrows and everything. "Just like Brezhnev, see!"
I didn't know a frigging rook from a pawn in June, 1972. Well, by August, I was castling and en passant-ing like all get out. All of America was. As I type these words, it is embarrassingly laughable.
The media coverage was intense.
Shortly after 2 p.m. on August 8, 1972, WNET/Channel 13 in the New York metropolitan area was swamped with phone calls protesting the station's programming. Irate viewers repeatedly asked the television producers to drop the coverage of the Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington so that they could resume watching the play-by play of a World Chess Championship game.
I have not kept up on the World Chess Championship over the years, but there was a time that I did. The whole world did. That time would have been a long time ago, 1972. For pageviewers under 44 years of age that may be hard to imagine, like 2015 is hard for me to imagine.
1972 was a Cold War year and, like this year, a presidential election year, ergo, Americans were more insane than usual, and pitted Cold Warrior incumbent Richard Nixon against the prairie populist George McGovern.
While that election was heating up the summer of '72 saw two Cold War proxy wars break out. In September was the Summit Series, named for era head of state meetings. That was in hockey and was between America's proxy Canada and the Soviet Union. As bitter and as intense ("We were playing for our way of life"-Phil Esposito) as the Summit Series was it was still between Canada and the USSR.
The World Chess Championship in mid-July through August however was between the erratic, brilliant American Bobby Fischer, the challenger, and the stoic, professorial holder Boris Spassky, a genu-eyne Rooski with bushy eyebrows and everything. "Just like Brezhnev, see!"
I didn't know a frigging rook from a pawn in June, 1972. Well, by August, I was castling and en passant-ing like all get out. All of America was. As I type these words, it is embarrassingly laughable.
The media coverage was intense.
Good likeness of Abraham Lincoln.
Shortly after 2 p.m. on August 8, 1972, WNET/Channel 13 in the New York metropolitan area was swamped with phone calls protesting the station's programming. Irate viewers repeatedly asked the television producers to drop the coverage of the Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington so that they could resume watching the play-by play of a World Chess Championship game.
Do NOT switch that dial.
...
In 1972, the national edition of the New York Times, the major newspaper that most consistently deals with chess coverage, published 241 articles that dealt specifically with the game.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/05/how-america-forgot-about-chess/257049/
Bobby Fischer became a rock star.
The American (and Canadian) way of life triumphed in the summer of '72. Spassky resigned on September 1, Team Soviet Union succumbed to Team Canada on September 28. Bobby Fischer died in 2008 at age 65. Fischer's erratic behavior got worse with time and his later years were marked by, in the words of a biographer, "a mind completely cut off from reality."
Bobby Fischer became a rock star.
The American (and Canadian) way of life triumphed in the summer of '72. Spassky resigned on September 1, Team Soviet Union succumbed to Team Canada on September 28. Bobby Fischer died in 2008 at age 65. Fischer's erratic behavior got worse with time and his later years were marked by, in the words of a biographer, "a mind completely cut off from reality."
Boris Spassky is still alive and kickin'.
I continued to read those New York Times chess articles occasionally for many years; bought a book, The Art of Chess, by James Mason, but have rarely played since. Nobody to play with. After the 1972 frisson nobody I know played chess regularly. (I sucked anyway.) Chess, somebody once said, is too serious to be a game, and too much a game to be taken seriously.
Today the Cold War is long gone (especially with Premier Trump) and the World Chess Championship is being played by, as I understand it, a Norwegian, and a Ukrainian born in Crimea who is now a Russian loyalist. As if. The fate of the Norwegian way of life is now in "overtime." If the matter is not settled there they go to a "sudden death" game of rock-paper-scissors-shoot. As I understand it.
