Word: baguio
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...just a game, and it is a long way from Moscow. But for the Kremlin, the world chess championship beginning in the Philippine mountain resort of Baguio City this week is a grudge match involving national pride and politics. Philippines President Marcos had spent a fortune providing a new 1,000-seat amphitheater and other facilities for the event. As newsmen and chess aficionados from all over began to gather, much of the early betting was not on who would win but on just how many of the Soviets accompanying Anatoly Karpov, 27, the slim, intense defending champion from Leningrad...
...Soviet skittishness is understandable. Ideologically, the stakes in Baguio City are even higher than they were in Iceland six years ago, when Bobby Fischer came out of Brooklyn to whip Boris Spassky and temporarily break the long Soviet domination of the game that Lenin himself consecrated as "a gymnasium of the mind." Defending the Soviet honor this time is Karpov, a onetime prodigy who inherited the world title in 1975, when Fischer failed to defend it,* and is now a major Soviet hero, complete with membership on the Young Communist League's central committee. But facing...
Tass has blasted him for being "obsessed with vanity." Korchnoi, for his part, has said that he sees Baguio as a "political challenge." and is eager to take on an opponent "who licks the boots of the authorities...
Today, Korchnoi is the Lear of chess: pacing and grimacing, given to lavish tirades and, on occasion, paranoia. During a qualifying match with Spassky earlier this year, he accused his opponent of inducing hallucinations via hypnosis, and even suspected microwaves had been employed to destroy his concentration. In Baguio City last week he demanded the right to bring to the match a fountain pen-sized device designed to detect "X rays, gamma rays and other radiation...
Karpov is also one of the fastest players around, while Korchnoi is very slow; he has lost matches for failing to make the stipulated 40 moves in five hours of play. In Baguio City, the first player to win six games takes the match; since draws are frequent in top-level play, the men will need both ample patience and stamina. To keep in shape, Korchnoi jogs daily; his diet includes health foods and Iranian caviar-of which he has imported enough to last 30 games. Karpov, whom one observer likened to "a Boy Scout," swims, rows and does calisthenics...