Pawns and Politics in Baguio City

A bitter battle in the "gymnasium of the mind"

It is 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, were actually intelligence agents. The chief of the Russian group, Victor Baturinsky, an ex-KGB colonel who heads the Soviet Chess Federation, was surely not saying--and would scarcely let Karpov utter a word either. "We are here to play chess, not to talk," he scowled to newsmen. "Even in the Soviet Union, we have to hide him from being bothered."

The 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 him. in a duel that could take two grueling months to play out, is, of all things, a Soviet defector: Victor Korchnoi, 47, a tempestuous, irritable man who narrowly lost to Karpov in a 1974 Moscow match. He blamed his defeat on harassment by Soviet officialdom, and later sought asylum in The Netherlands, leaving behind a wife and child. (He eventually moved to West Germany, then Switzerland.)

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."

During the 1974 match, a 24-game marathon that Karpov won by the slimmest of margins, Korchnoi complained bitterly about Karpov's habit of staring intently at him across the board. By the end of their exhausting nine-week battle, recalled one spectator, "they were like two boxers after 15 rounds, leaning against each other, hardly able to move."

Though they are a generation apart, Korchnoi and Karpov both grew up in Leningrad, and both are products of the vast Soviet chess bureaucracy. The U.S.S.R. promotes the game as "a weapon of intellectual culture." A network of chess clubs has produced, at latest count, 4 million players, among them 608 masters and 38 grand masters.

The two men's playing styles could scarcely be more different. Korchnoi belongs to the stormier tradition of such legendary grand masters as the impulsive Alexander Alekhine, who once resigned a game by hurling his king across the room.

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, the second-youngest world champion ever, is less conservative than he used to be, but still resorts to what one commentator calls "the boa constrictor style," lying in wait for his opponent to err. Spassky describes Karpov as one of a new generation of "realists" in chess: "We followed imagination, often pursuing phantasms, but Karpov will only deal with what is concretely in front of him."

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.

Many experts believe that Korchnoi's game has improved since his defection, and that the frail Karpov could be worn down physically if the match goes on for very long. Still, he is the favorite: he has won 13 of the 16 tournaments he has entered since he became champion, and has lost only six of 187 games.

More than prestige rides on the outcome at Baguio City. Karpov, if he is victorious, would have to turn perhaps half his $350,000 winner's share of prize money over to the Soviet government. But that should not hurt too much, given the amenities made available to him, which include a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. For Korchnoi, who lives modestly in Wohlen, Switzerland, and earns some $3,000 a month from exhibitions and tournaments, the money would come in handy, especially should he lose a $100,000 breach of contract suit being brought against him by his ex-manager.

But his main goal is less political than personal: to avenge his earlier defeat and vindicate himself before the Soviet chess machine that spurned him.

*Fischer has not played at the world class level since 1972. and has most recently been in the news as a result of his involvement with the Worldwide Church of God. a California-based Fundamentalist group.

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