The 1978 World Chess Championship

Viktor Korchnoi was said to be the best grandmaster never to have won the Chess Championship. He won the Soviet Championship 4 times, the European Championship give times and a couple of Interzonal tournaments and Candidates tournament.

In 1976, “Viktor the Terrible” was the first Russian grandmaster to defect from the Soviet Union and two years later at the age of 47, he earned the right to fight the 27-year-old Anatoly Karpov for the 13th world chess championship title.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos offered the City of Baguio as the site of the championship. This was how Sports Illustrated’s J.D. Reed described Baguio then: "It resembles a resort town in the Catskills as much as the Asian one it is. There are cool breezes and pine-scented air, and one can also find a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor and an Orange Julius stand on Main Street. But along with a Sear outlet and a movie house showing the NBA playoffs, there are native rice and fish stories. With the arrival of the contestants, the town took on the atmosphere of a heavyweight championship fight site.”

Not everyone agreed. The UK's Independent titled the article by Raymund Keene, Korchoi’s second, as “Chess in a Ghost Town.” He said that millions of people were following the matches but no one dared go to Baguio. But still, like Thrilla in Manila, the championship made Baguio memorable to chess addicts. These are the top 10 reasons why:

1. The prize money. The winner took home $350,000 while the loser got $200,000. At that time, it was the highest ever in chess. Fischer’s pot in 1972 was half that of the Baguio victor. Marcos, of course, bankrolled almost all of it. Korchnoi and his team stayed at the grand old Pines Hotel while Karpov and his All-Soviet entourage stayed at Hyatt Terraces Baguio. Then there are the chess journalists. The championship went on till October so it was safe to say it was your parents who paid for all these.
2. Baguio Convention Center. Some local papers would tell you that BCC was constructed in 1974 by GSIS and you would see it repeated over and over. The truth is, like the Cultural Center and the Manila Film Palace, the BCC was rushed for the event. More than 300 workers constructed what the New York Times called a pyramid-like building (actually it was based on the traditional Cordillera grain storehouse called agamang) just in time for its inauguration on July 17, 1978. It can seat 1,000 people comfortably and it was described by chess journalists as the best chess room they have ever seen. It was sound-proofed, air conditioned and well-lighted. The cost: US$4 million in 1978 dollars.
3. The bragging rights. The Soviets wanted to win this championship which they held for 24 years (until Fischer got it in 1972 and then decided not to defend it) and now they have to fight a defector. They were evenly matched; Karpov won seven and lost six in their matches prior to Baguio. Karpov‘s FIDE rating then was 2725 while Korchnoi had 2665. “He was only four when I became grandmaster,” Korchnoi boasted. “I will beat the little boy,” he said later, “and prove once and for all the Soviet System produces only robots.” Mikhael Tal, one of Karpov’s seconds later told Korchnoi, “There, in Baguio, we were all afraid of you – if you had won the match, you could have been physically eliminated. Everything had been prepared for this.”
4. The promoter. There was nobody like Florencio Campomanes. There was no one else who promoted chess in the Philippines more than him. His connection with Marcos served him well. He was able to bring Fischer to the Philippines but when he was sane until he was not. The world chess championship was held in Manila in 1975 with $5 million prize fund and then the Chess Olympiad in 1992. He held the FIDE chairmanship for so long (1982 to 1995) that he was even accused as a KGB asset. It was a pity that his chess memorabilia were all burned in Baguio Country Club (except some saved by his friend Des Bautista) in 1990. Campomanes died in 2010.
5. Flags. After defecting from the Soviet Union, Korchnoi was a man without a country. During the 1977 Candidates semifinal match, he asked to play under the Dutch flag as he was living in the Netherlands and recently won the national championship. The organizer denied the request as Korchnoi had not been living in the Netherlands for a full year. In September of the same year, Korchnoi was granted permission to live in Switzerland. A month before the title match, Korchnoi indicated that if he could not play under the Swiss flag, he wanted a white flag marked "Stateless." The Soviets objected to the Swiss flag, but agreed to a white flag marked 'Stateless'. The jury decided that no flags would be allowed on the playing table, but that flags of the USSR, the Philippines, and FIDE would be present on the stage.
6. Sunglasses. Chess players love to outstare their opponents and Karpov is one of the best in that department. Korchnoi wore mirror sunglasses throughout the games. for the first game and continued to wear them during some of the following games. Karpov wrote, '[The sunglasses] were like two mirrors, and whenever Korchnoi raised his head the light from the numerous lamps on the stage was reflected into my eyes.’
7. Chairs also contributed to the match tension. In pre-match discussions, Korchnoi declared his intention to bring his own chair, a dark green Stollgiroflex worth $1,300 with a hydraulic lift that would make him higher than Karpov, and stipulated that the chairs "may not turn but may move only to the front and back." Karpov's chair was furnished by the organizers. He needed a small cushion to raise him to Korchnoi's level. Karpov requested that Korchnoi's chair be examined for 'extraneous objects or prohibited devices'. A few days before the first game, the chair was dismantled, X-rayed at the Baguio General Hospital, and cleared. During Game 14 Korchnoi complained that Karpov was swiveling in his chair. Karpov swiveled again during Game 15 and Korchnoi complained. Karpov said, "I'll stop swiveling if he takes off his glasses." The jury decided the next day that "swiveling of one's chair or standing behind it is not to be allowed." Karpov stopped swiveling during Korchnoi's move for Game 16. Later in 1981, Korchnoi again warned Karpov, “get off me you, detestable worm,” when he swiveled his chair.
8. Yogurt. The “Korchnoi’s complaint” started on the 25th move of Game 2 when a waiter delivered a tray with a glass of violet-colored yogurt to Karpov. Korchnoi’s team complained: "It is clear that a cunningly arranged distribution of edible items to one player during the game, emanating from one delegation or the other, could convey a kind of code message." The organizers decided that yogurt can be brought anytime, as long as it is violet or blueberry.
9. Zukhar, Dada and Didi. Both grandmasters brought their own parapsychologists but no one was as menacing as Karpov’s Vladimir Zukhar “with eyes supposedly like burning coals, and planted him in the first few rows of spectators,” as New York Times’s Robert Byrne described him. “ What powers this Dracula-clone was supposed to possess never came to light, but he drove Korchnoi into a rage. Just knowing that Karpov had put Zukhar there to upset him was enough to set Korchnoi off,” Byrne said. According to some reports, Korchnoi felt these thoughts entering his brain: You should not fight Karpov. You are a traitor to the Soviet Union and you must lose now.” Gari Kasparov in his new book, How Life Imitates Chess, said that this whole paranormal thing can be cased under the lesson, Don’t Get Distracted While Trying to Distract. “I often wonder how much better Korchnoi would have done if he haven’t invested so much energy responding to Karpov’s provocations,” Kasparov said.
10. The alleged murderers. Korchnoi got Steven Dwyer and Victoria Shepherd, two Ananda Marga members who were actually wanted for stabbing an Indian diplomat in the country that February. The duo, renamed as Dada and Didi, started attending the 18th game and disturbing Zukhar. They also taught Korchnoi transcendental meditation. It was the Soviet’s turn to panic, asking Campomanes to let the couple in white garments and saffron robes to get near them. Didi and Dada clearly rattled Karpov as the match was leveled 5-5 after leading by 5-2. In the 32nd match, which turned out to be the last, Zukhar was on the first row and Didi and Dada were not around.

The match was played three times a week but it turned out to be the longest championship ever. The fifth game at 124 moves was the longest in chess championship history. But it was Karpov who rattled Korchnoi in the 8th game when he refused to shake Korchnoi’s hand, even exclaiming “Never!” Karpov got the first point.

He surged to an early lead, 5-2, and needed only one victory to clinch the championship. But Karpov suffered a near collapse and by Game 28, Korchnoi clawed back (like a lion, as Kasparov described it) and was able to level, 5-5.

Korchnoi was actually playing a more interesting game but was beset with time constraints and committed more blunders. Karpov, one of the best endgame players, was more calculating. As far as the quality of the games, many experts were unimpressed, saying that the action outside the board must have consumed the two grandmasters.

Game 32 was the clincher; it was adjourned, with Korchnoi at a clear disadvantage.

“I don't resume the 32nd game but I am not going to sign the score sheet of the game because it has been played under absolutely illegal conditions. I don't consider the game valid. The match is not finished. I reserve the right to complain to FIDE on the intolerable Soviets' behavior, a hostility of the organizers, a lack of activity of the arbiters,” Korchnoi wrote to Campomanes the next day.

He left Baguio without getting his consolation money. Campomanes said that he can encash it if he acknowledges that the match is finished.

Korchnoi never did.

Muffaletta

Duchamp

"I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." - Marcel Duchamp Photo: Max Kauffman, 1966 The chess pieces were designed by Max Ernst.

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The Windhover

To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
     dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

    No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Giza Project at Harvard University

http://giza.fas.harvard.edu/

The Time of Death of Alexander the Great: 11 June 323 B.C. (–322), ca. 4:00–5:00 PM

Por-Bajin

Brackett's Star Wars sequel screenplay

A trip to the field of Waterloo immediately succeeding the battle, 1815

Holograph journal kept by an unnamed traveler journeying from Ramsgate to Brussels with a friend, Henry Hargrave. The author describes the journey in detail, including his impressions of the scenery, the voyage, meals and table manners among the Belgians, and extensive comments on church architecture and Roman Catholic ceremonies he observed in the cities.

On approaching the field of Waterloo, he questions British and Prussian soldiers and Belgians for information on the battle and their parts in it, but notes that the Belgians were "unaccustomed to freedom of sentiment" and did not seem to confide their real opinions of "their old friend Napoleon." the journal ends shortly after the travelers' arrival in Brussels.

Concluding text of the journal is crosswritten on the opening pages in contrasting ink.

https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3873482

Apollo 11 on a baseball field

Intruder in the Dust

Wordsworth's French Daughter

Dragon Quest Builders 2: If you build it, they will farm.

Marianne Moore throwing the first pitch of the 1968 baseball season opener at Yankee Stadium

Kyffhäuserdenkmal

Is your favourite tequila made with a diffuser?

Le Samourai

The language of life and death: The transformation of experience in oral narrative

Euhemerus (circa 330-260 BC)

Euhemerus saw myth as a history in disguise, where the gods being worshiped were originally living men, elated in this way because of some great feat of theirs, or their shiny virtue, perhaps sometimes simply because of all the power they had when alive. Men who had been glorified when alive, had by later generations been deified.

This theory was adopted and applied by numerous scholars during all of the Christian era, well into our days, more or less closely similar to how its originator had used it.

The most elaborate presentation of Euhemerus is in Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History, from the first century BC, when discussing what different theories the ancients had regarding the gods:

Certain of the gods, they say, are eternal and imperishable, such as the sun and the moon and the other stars of the heavens, and the winds as well and whatever else possesses a nature similar to theirs; for of each of these the genesis and duration are from everlasting to everlasting. But the other gods, we are told, were terrestrial beings who attained to immortal honor and fame because of their benefactions to mankind, such as Heracles, Dionysus, Aristaeus, and the others who were like them. Regarding these terrestrial gods many and varying accounts have been handed down by the writers of history and of mythology; of the historians, Euhemerus, who composed the Sacred History, has written a special treatise about them, while, of the writers of myths, Homer and Hesiod and Orpheus and the others of their kind have invented rather monstrous stories about the gods.

Diodorus goes on to present Euhemerus as a friend of king Cassander, first ruler of Macedonia after the death of Alexander, himself to remain on the throne no more than four years until his death. It was Cassander, though, who sent Euhemerus to sea on international errands, going southward from Arabia for a number of days, before carried to shore on the island of Panchaea. On this island he saw pious inhabitants worship their gods with magnificent sacrifices, and he found a temple to Zeus, in which there was a writing telling the deeds of Uranus, Cronus and Zeus - when they were men who walked the earth.

Euhemerus goes on to say that Uranus was the first to be king, that he was an honorable man and beneficent, who was versed in the movement of the stars, and that he was also the first to honor the gods of the heavens with sacrifices, whence he was called Uranus, or "Heaven". There were born to him by his wife Hestia two sons, Titan and Cronus, and two daughters, Rhea and Demeter. Cronus became king after Uranus, and marrying Rhea he begat Zeus and Hera and Poseidon. And Zeus, on succeeding to the kingship, married Hera and Demeter and Themis, and by them he had children, the Curetes by the first named, Persephone by the second, and Athena by the third. And going to Babylon he was entertained by Belus, and after that he went to the island of Panchaea, which lies in the ocean, and here he set up an altar to Uranus, the founder of his family.

Thus, the whole Olympian community began as a family matter. Euhemerus further tells of Zeus conquering Cilicia and visiting many other nations, "all of which paid honor to him and publicly proclaimed him a god." It is generally assumed that the island of Panchea, as well as the rest of what Euhemerus accounts, is more or less fiction of his. Yet, this approach to mythology, seeing behind it some distant historical facts did not therefore lose their credibility. Myths, also those involving the gods, even the very genesis of them as well as the whole world, tend to be mingled also with the affairs of men. In this, Homer is certainly a good example, having gods and men interact to the extent that they become difficult to tell apart at all.

To the Christian thinkers, the ideas of Euhemerus had that advantage, too, of doing away with the heathen ingredient in the Greek myths, without having to do away with the myths altogether. The stories of old could be nourished and retold, with an interpretation doing pretty much the reverse of what Euhemerus said once had taken place, so that men having been turned into gods could be turned back into men.

Still life

The tenses of verbs

Tate's last poem

Blue

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Epitaph on a Tyrant W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum by Pozzo, Andrea, 1642-1709

I am a Cat

The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, Revised R. Burchfield

Dmitriy Fedorovich. On Shermans

I remember’ interview of Dmitriy Loza, Hero of the Soviet Union, pertaining to the Emchas.


Dmitriy Fedorovich, on which American tanks did you fight?

On Shermans. We called them “Emchas”, from M4 [in Russian, em chetyrye]. Initially they had the short main gun, and later they began to arrive with the long gun and muzzle brake. On the front slope armor there was a travel lock for securing the barrel during road marches. The main gun was quite long. Overall, this was a good vehicle but, as with any tank, it had its pluses and minuses. When someone says to me that this was a bad tank, I respond, “Excuse me!” One cannot say that this was a bad tank. Bad as compared to what?


Dmitriy Fedorovich, did you have just American tanks in your unit?

Our 6th Guards Tank Army (yes, we had six of them) fought in Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. We ended the war for us in Czechoslovakia. Then they rushed us to the Far East and we fought against Japan. I briefly remind you that the army consisted of two corps: 5th Guards Tank Stalingrad Corps on our own T-34s and 5th Mechanized Corps, in which I fought. For the first time this corps had British Matildas, Valentines, and Churchills.


They delivered the Churchill later.

Yes, a bit later. After 1943 we largely declined British tanks because they had significant deficiencies. In particular, they had 12-14 h.p. per ton of weight at a time when good tanks had 18-20 h.p. per ton. Of these three British tanks, the best was the Valentine produced in Canada. Its armor was streamlined but more importantly, it featured a long-barreled 57mm main gun. My unit switched over to American Shermans at the end of 1943. After the Kishinev Operation our corps became the 9th Guards Mechanized Corps. I missed to tell you that every corps consisted of four brigades. Our mechanized corps had three mechanized brigades and one tank brigade, in which I fought. A tank corps had three tank brigades and one mechanized brigade. Yes, we had Shermans in our brigade at the end of 1943.


But the British tanks were not withdrawn from service, so they fought until they were gone. Wasn’t there a period when your corps had a mixture of tanks, both American and British? Were there any problems associated with the presence of such a broad variety of vehicles from different countries? For example, with supply and maintenance?

Well, there were always problems. In general, the Matilda was an unbelievably worthless tank! I will tell you about one of the Matilda’s deficiencies that caused us a great deal of trouble. Some fool in the General Staff planned an operation and sent our corps to the area of Yelnya, Smolensk, and Roslavl. The terrain there was forested swamp. The Matilda had skirts along the sides. The tank was developed primarily for operations in the desert. These skirts worked well in the desert-the sand passed through the rectangular slots in them. But in the forested swamps of Russia the mud packed into the space between the tracks and these side skirts. The Matilda transmission had a servomechanism for ease of shifting. In our conditions this component was weak, constantly overheated, and then failed. This was fine for the British. By 1943 they had developed a replacement unit that could be installed simply by unscrewing four mounting bolts, pulling out the old unit, and installing the new unit. It did not always work this way for us. In my battalion we had Senior Sergeant (Starshina) Nesterov, a former kolkhoz tractor driver (Kolkhoz is sort of farm – Valeri), in the position of battalion mechanic. In general each of our tank companies had a mechanic and Nesterov was it for the battalion. At our corps level we had a representative (whose name I have forgotten) of the British firm that produced these tanks. At one time I had it written down, but when my tank was hit everything I had in it burned up -photographs, documents, and notebook. We were forbidden to keep notes at the front, but I did it on the sly. Anyway, this British representative constantly interfered with our efforts to repair separate components of the tank. He said, “This has a factory seal. You should not tinker with it!” We were supposed to take out a component and install a new one. Nesterov made a simple repair to all these transmissions. One time the British representative came up to Nesterov and asked him, “At which university did you study?” And Nesterov replied, “At the kolkhoz!”

History Respawned