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Fischer, Kasparov, and the Others The Best of CHESSDON and Much More Reviewed by Phil Innes
Fischer, Kasparov, and the Others, the Best of CHESSDON and Much More, a Son of Chessdon sort of book, has already been reviewed and appreciated by 21 people as the back cover attests. I thought there was room for one more opinion of Don Shultz’s book, so decided to write about it like an alien, since my own chess background was in the UK not the USA. My reportage is self-interrupted, as I read the 240 page self-published auto-chess biography, by Dark Thoughts… Don gets going like a James Bond movie: The Manipulator Ilyumzhinov, FIDE’s Chess City in the distant Kalmyk Republic, the KGB are all over the place hardly distinguished from other uncouth Soviets, plus The Terror. I was surprised he didn’t quote Tolkien, “Mordor, in the East where the shadows lie.” This is from the preface alone, and stops immediately when we enter the sunshine of Chess USA in Chapter One by way of a little mention of Fischer, USCF’s larval-stage of pre-history in Greenwich Village, Don’s IBM connections, and all this leading to the creation of USCF’s first Ed. Ed. Edmondson. Don introduces us and the world to the system devised by Professor Arpad Elo and an unintended effect of the widespread adoption of the rating system in the USA. People loved it! So much, in fact, that they stopped attending chess clubs and went to rated Swiss week-end tournaments instead. There is little new about Fischer-Spassky that we don’t know from Bobby Fischer Goes To War, not even about those x-rays! Except that they have now disappeared, and its “what x-rays?” Don does say that while acting as second or third to Fischer he realized then that it would be a miracle if RJF ever finished the match, and knew then that Fischer would never play again.
Dark Thought: I wonder if A. Karpov is quite such the villain of subsequent negotiations as is popularly reported? Were these entirely sham negotiations? Anyway, Don’s chess hero became the iconic Ugly American in Don’s mind, and the subsequent fate of R.J. Fischer is hardly mentioned again. We encounter a young Bill Goichberg introducing distance-play by telephone, but 6 hours for a game proved to be too long. Don becomes increasingly involved with USCF 1976-1978, as well as with FIDE, - he describes not-exactly professional managements at either institution. A first appearance by Campo who hands out “small gifts” and descriptions of FIDE politics at about the intellectual level of distinction of the Country Club parking-lot committee, well-oiled. Dark Thought: No visionaries encountered thus far! No visions neither. Don moves around the States in his job and thence to Paris. He makes connections with future strong players and also chess politicians from around the world. Dark Thought: It’s only the end of Chapter 3 and I am getting bored – why? My own background was as a player, in fact literally playing 12 miles from a kid called Michael Adams, and my conversations were about playing, the psychology art and technique of it. Don hasn’t mentioned any of this stuff yet. Don describes FIDE worldwide activities circa 1980 and the basis of helping those who help themselves by 50/50 contributions to expenses. Don gets involved with UNESCO, and in an attempt to provide Africa with a chess development conference comes into contact with real politics including the Soviet Ambassador. He achieves a $10,000 grant from UNESCO and FIDE immediately sets up a permanent commission to it which never raises another cent. In a strange reversal of current history the 1980 Libyan FIDE Representative claims the US Govt. denied him a visa until the very eve of the FIDE congress, and accused the USA of favoring Israel. USCF blows him off. Hardly needs a Dark Thought, does it?
Campo runs for head of FIDE, Don runs for deputy FIDE President of the Americas. Campo introduces Don to real-politik and the worth of promises, promises! Don fails his attempt, then gets on board as a member-at-large. Kasparov forfeits to Korchnoi in Pasadena. Korchnoi and Campo prevail against villainous Soviets, with the result that Kasparov becomes World Champion in 1985. FIDE introduces world team matches with 10 teams. This is the last mention of this exciting initiative. Dark Thought: Whatever happened to those? Don doesn’t say. He does say he meets various political figures around the world, including… Mrs. Thatcher, and a perhaps unwisely considered exploding chess cake, when Don notices Mrs. T flinch a little. Dark Memory: Another little explosion while I was defending the country and Mrs. T not 100 miles from Don’s location, had my body flat on the ground before either my conscious intention to go there, or my NATO assault rifle hit me on the head. Mrs. T seems to have had rather superior nerves than I had. The Dubai 1984 FIDE Congress rehearses an anti-Israel prejudice similar to the current Libyan event. The PLO becomes a bargaining chip. The US went anyway and defeated the Soviet team. Don doesn’t name a Polish source who says Poles were asked to throw their match to aforementioned evil Soviets. Kasparov forms GMA with support of Bessel Kok. Ludicrous FIDE treatment of S. Polgar who is excluded from receiving 100 rating points, unlike every other woman in the world, thus promoting the Soviet player Chiburdanidze to #1 female player. Don says he was not aware of the unfairness of this issue until he read about it in S. Polgar’s book! He does admit he was “all wet” at the time. Campo stops Kasparov versus Karpov because Karpov is exhausted. Dark Thought: They might be playing still! “6 wins or until the first player dies”. Match conditions designed by Monty Python? Don’s take on this is rather odd, he says, “Campo had pat answers for these questions and should have been able to handle them with ease, but this was not the case at the 1985 US Open. Perhaps he was ill? Too bad, because it was a good opportunity for the FIDE President to improve his deteriorating reputation with USCF leaders”. Dark Thought: What retrospective explanation does Don think USCF needed? Perhaps Campo should have let one of the two Russian players suffer a stroke and thereby avoid having to explaining himself to American chess politicios? At age 51 Don takes early retirement. USCF supports a FIDE ban of Calvo for 5 years for “insulting S. Americans” in his journalism. Don defends USCF position not because of his journalistic record but on election fraud. (Calvo had promised a Kasparov visit.) Don now regrets his action. The KGB mess with people’s heads, take photos of bent, or at least bending chess officials. Even a British team captain looks through Don’s attaché case. Dark Thought: I am on page 124, and it has been 124 pages without mention of actual chess playing life in the USA. Doubtless, mentions of the Kamskys and various exotica like Soviet temptresses will continue for some time yet. I resist skipping 50 pages. In February 1988 Don sues Grandmaster Larry Evans for twenty-one million dollars in Florida court case CL-88-7337-AD, which was eventually dropped in the first typo of the book, seven years earlier in 1981. There follows 10 pages on a place named Fond du Lac in a chapter on Chess Children. Dark Thought: What became of all this promise? At the same time in my own country between 1970 and 2000 there were about 14 home-grown GMs. The US has a population five times greater, so one might expect about 70 GMs to have matured from these cute little kids during this time, instead of the actual number - two. We carry on with a variety of anecdotes featuring many people previously mentioned until 1993 when Garry Kasparov calls the US “The Sleeping Giant of World Chess”, and wants to put all political bickering behind us by agreeing to play plucky-Brit Nigel Short in Los Angeles. Everything goes west! Kasparov and Short play outside of FIDE, and Campo finds a sponsor for Karpov versus Timman, but Campo appears to have been fibbing about any actual money qua money. On page 169 it is 1994, and leg-breaking threats are being bandied at a FIDE Congress in Moscow. Pages and pages of high chess politics and legal wheedling follow; 15 pages later they are still at it, and neither contender Campo nor Koalty emerge at the top, but mysterious billionaire Kirsan Ilyumzhinov emerges instead! Dark Thought: I have just interviewed Grandmaster S. Polgar on her life in chess and her experience of politics in chess, and as a result wrote to London for Ray Keene’s reaction to the interview, “on the record, please Ray”, I asked. “get the politicians out of chess power-hooray!! well done i totally support susan in this aim. i have been fighting this battle for 19 years -its great to have her now say the same.” Ray replied in his usual lower-case. The USCF Presidency allowed Don to celebrate the hiring of a variety of Executive Directors with his usual merlot. At the same time the FIDE President wants Karpov versus Kamsky to take place in Saddam’s Iraq. Don convinces Ilyumzhinov to host it in the US instead, and it was USA all the way to Las Vegas! Don does not mention that very many of the world’s first tier players do not actually take part in the new FIDE ‘lottery’ style World Championship. Dark Thought: Don does not mention what has been happening at USCF either, although I distinctly remember board member Tom Dorsch standing up at a board meeting in New Windsor in May of 1999 and stating that the USCF was losing one million dollars a year. Further embarrassments about FIDE in 1992 took Don by surprise; deals were apparently done elsewhere, and not much changed chez Nous Windsor. Many parties were happening too, and lots of stars say things and attend meetings, Saddam and the Pope are mentioned; Kasparov’s speech at Bled, Yaz the inspirational American player, and moving the office. And nothing continues to happen. Nothing at all until the rude announcement that the party was over, “USCF was in deep trouble. Earlier reports of financial solvency were wrong”. Only Frank Niro of all the people in the book is referred to by his last name alone some dozen times. The book stops just short of what GM Polgar had said three days ago was “the greatest scandal in USCF history”. Perhaps it is well to end the review here, since this is also the end of the book. Although it is traditional to mention a few things that might be in the book but are not. That all USCF’s sponsors had gone away since 2000; the membership is at critically low levels and even the HQ state of New York has just 1,100 members; that USCF had made a very questionable deal with an on-line playing company called USCL, or should I say ‘unquestionable’; that it has outsourced its previously $3,000,000 per year books and equipment business as apparently unprofitable; that it had not exactly kept pace with technology either inside headquarters or with the new-fangled internet. Even one medium-size problem would likely sink it [according to its own report to this year’s 13th of August meeting]. Grandmaster Larry Evans says of this book that “Don hits it right between the eyes” which I think is true. But also true is that Don is wearing very, very padded gloves. Dark Thought: I never wanted a Cramer anyway. Although this review cannot possibly be seen as entirely complimentary, it is not as much an insult to Don Shultz, its author, as to you, dear reader! No leader can go where there is no support, and I think Don has dedicated himself to truly optimizing whatever support and potential there has been around him. He has had to consume a considerable amount of lemonade over the years along with the merlot. Dark Thought: In a country where chess is just a curious past-time and not a passion, the reading of 40 years of federated chess management history and its overall success in exposing the game to the general public in the USA, which is its mission, and in influencing international chess affairs, which is its destiny, are both negligible. Bright Thought: However, the real prospects for energizing chess on this continent have hardly begun. I think it will not emerge from Chess HQ and that anyone who cares about the future of chess in the USA should buy this book, and by reading it will agree with our Last Lion, Mr. Churchill, who warned people to study their history, or else! If Chess HQ can retrench and hang on to its own existence it will benefit from the work of others, work already begun… I will end by agreeing with both Grandmaster Garry Kasparov and Grand Admiral Yamamoto; The American Chess Giant is not yet awake, but it stirs, and it has begun to dream dreams of its own dynamic future. Another
writer will have to record that. # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Fischer, Kasparov and the Others is now on sale directly from Don Schultz: Send check for $12.95 to Don Schultz, 3201 South Ocean Blvd. # 703, Highland Beach , Florida 33487, indicate if you want the book autographed, specify any special wording. # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
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