Following the blitz games with Azmaiparashvili, Garry and all the trainers, besides Shakarov, sat at the dinner table playing poker before bed. Shakarov remained in front of the computer screen, searching for problems on the horizon. Klara sat a few feet away from her son, knitting and nodding to some secret tune. After an hour or so, when Masha guessed that her husband was nearly finished, she came down the stairs and watched the men with an earnest expression. The snow was still falling and the mansion beside the park felt warm and sleepy.
On many off-days, Garry played blitz games with his trainers or with visiting grandmasters. He was reveling in chess. One night, when all the trainers were off to a movie, he began to analyze a position with two elderly friends from Moscow. The white side appeared to be winning, but the advantage was elusive. The game was a remarkable puzzle. The two men, lifelong students of chess, were caught in its enigma, but not as absolutely as Kasparov. As the hours passed, the men moved off from the table and came back, but Kasparov never moved from the board. He murmured over moves, smiled lovingly at times. Watching this, I felt the game of chess as a powerful river with no beginning, no end. A lover of the game might travel on it for a lifetime. A great one, like Kasparov, would change its direction a little, but the river remained essentially the same. Around midnight, when the two old men finally left the mansion, Garry hardly noticed. The world champion was alone, his lips moving through the variations, as though consorting with a companion.
Although Manny Topol was hooked on chess, his editors back in New York were more reserved. “Manny, we hope you’re not calling in with another tension-packed draw,” was a greeting he received more than once when he dialed the office. Always a tad insecure about his chess analysis, hoping for page one but suspecting that his story would be relegated to the bottom of a page in the middle of the book, Manny would respond, “This is really big,” before beginning to dictate. But Manny knew all too well that Kasparov’s subtle control of the dark squares was not page one material. He was always on the prowl for something explosive, or at the least, something tasty with which to hook the average Newsday reader. Alas, during a long sports season, fans of the nineties had come to expect sex and corruption to go along with bunts and home runs. But game 19 offered little promise for sex and corruption. The opening was a lullaby. Kasparov had decided against the aggressive variation in the King’s Indian, in the end heeding his trainers and choosing a more solid and slow developing line. After seventeen moves, there were no exchanges of pieces, and the tight picket lines of pawns indicated that there were no fireworks on the near horizon. The two grandmasters appeared to be settling into a game of subtle and intricate probes and maneuvers. Manny knew that his editor would not be enthusiastic about this opening.
Grandmaster Anatoly Lein sat at a nearby table, analyzing the opening with another eminent grandmaster, Yefim Geller, one of the few players in history to hold a winning record against Bobby Fischer. Though Lein was almost sixty, he was still a formidable opponent at international events. Most evenings, Lein and Geller sat alone, poring over the moves, making it scathingly clear that they didn’t want strangers peering over their shoulders. Occasionally, when Lein would rise from the table, Manny, or myself or some other journalist, would approach the grandmaster, who had lived in America since 1976, to ask his opinion about the position. Lein was rarely forthcoming, and sometimes answered with a withering stare.
When Manny asked Lein his opinion about the opening of game 19, the grandmaster’s response was even more offputting than usual. “I have no idea,” he said, with a smug expression. Manny, the old sleuth, decided that Lein was keeping secrets.
In truth, Lein had perfected the art of the secret. I had known him for years, but on some days the grandmaster would look at me and walk past as though we were complete strangers. On other days, he would rush over as though we were special friends. He would drape a muscular arm across my shoulder and guide me to a secluded corner of the room. After looking around to make sure that no one was listening, he would begin to whisper urgently in his Russian accent, and soon I would be making furtive glances at anyone who might come within earshot, though the subject matter might be the difficult life of an American grandmaster, or even the gloomy weather outside.
If Anatoly Lein had a suspicious side, which might be said of a number of expatriate Soviet grandmasters, there was good reason. He had made his mark in the Russian chess world in the sixties and early seventies, at a time when the Party controlled the chess lives of its stars, and when a player, particularly if he was outspoken, had to concern himself with the KGB as well as the variations of his opponents. In the summer of 1992, the world was appalled to learn that East Germans had fed steroids to their adolescent swimmers to reap gold medals in past Olympics. For decades in the USSR, the Party had done much the same to its brightest chess players, trying to prove to the world that communist minds were the best. According to Lev Alburt, who was a top Soviet grandmaster in the seventies, the Soviet chess life was a reflection of the decadence and injustice of the society at large. Grandmasters were expected to do whatever was good for the state, and tactics were employed that were both bizarre and criminal. Alburt recalls that players were sometimes fed stimulants and encouraged to employ hypnotists. Top grandmasters were asked to draw or to lose key games in international events, when it would improve the chances of a countryman to win the event. As mentioned before, many Soviet grandmasters have related stories of KGB officials or chess bureaucrats blackmailing talented players into offering their brightest ideas to Karpov when he was the world champion. Alburt says that, to a lesser extent, grandmasters were coerced to work for Botvinnik and Petrosian, as well, when they were world champions, and that it was very risky for a player to refuse to help when he was asked.
Scores of top Soviet masters emigrated to the United States in the seventies and eighties, Lein among them, desiring political freedom, and concomitantly to free themselves from the intrigues and corruption of the Soviet chess life. They hoped that in the West free enterprise had operative significance in their profession. But arriving here, they soon discovered that the United States was a chess wasteland. Over the years, Lein has become embittered by his inability to make a decent living playing in U.S. chess tournaments. Despite his reputation in the Soviet Union as a prominent coach, it has been nearly impossible for him to find students here. But more, the U.S. chess world, in its spiritual and material misery, has spawned its own sad compromises. It is so difficult for strong masters here to make a living from the game today that, frequently, in the final round of a tournament, the two players vying for first place will agree in advance to draw the game in order to share the first and second place prize monies, and occasionally a down-and-out player will agree to “dump” the critical game and then split the first prize with the winner. Agreeing in advance to draw key games is so widespread in U.S. chess that strong players, as well as organizers, take it for granted, and in off-the-record conversations point out that chess professionals must somehow make a living. Recently I argued with several strong masters, who derided a third master for refusing to enter into such arrangements. “What’s wrong with sharing the top prizes?” said one of them, outraged by the suggestion that prearranging games ripped the sporting heart out of tournament chess.
In Lyon, Anatoly Lein was perhaps more circumspect than usual about his ideas. A half year before, he had developed what he considered to be a very promising novelty. At this point in his life, Lein was more interested in achieving recognition for his ideas than in winning tournaments. He had worked on this idea for a number of weeks, written copious notes. Then he made the mistake of showing it to another top U.S. grandmaster. This man was soon to play in an important international competition abroad, and Lein decided that this tournament would be a perfect showcase for his novelty. “I said to him you can use it, but don’t show it to anybody, don’t analyze with anybody, and give me credit for this.” Weeks later, Lein’s novelty began appearing in
various newspapers and magazines, played by a third grandmaster and credited as the brilliant conception of the grandmaster to whom Lein had loaned it. “There was nothing to be done about it,” said Lein with resignation. He had written letters to various publications, but it was already too late, chess people already thought of the variation as the brainchild of the other man.
In the telling of this story, Lein seemed to be saying, this is the life of an American chess player today, there are too many of us, too little money, too little recognition to go around. In Lyon, with journalists hungry for quotes, it must have been tempting for Lein to give interviews and fill the morning newspapers with his analysis. But he was a proud man, and it seemed to me that while he desired recognition, he could not bear to take the risk of being embarrassed. He knew well that pressroom analysis rarely held up to scrutiny. Sometimes it took weeks or more for a grandmaster to thoroughly understand a deep position of Karpov’s and Kasparov’s. He would let others take the glory or play the fool.
For several hours, game 19 was an exercise in fine tuning. Pieces maneuvered for tiny advantages behind their staunch lines of pawns. On move eighteen, Kasparov slid his bishop to the f4 square, a mildly provocative move. Karpov chased the bishop back with his knight pawn. That was what Kasparov had hoped for. By pushing the knight pawn, Karpov had weakened his kingside a little. But there were no big threats here, nothing that Karpov couldn’t easily defend. Once again, spectators commented that Kasparov looked drained, and afterwards he said that he had felt weary before moving the first piece. His strategy was to try to draw this game, and then to go all-out to win with the white pieces in game 20. What he did not want was for game 19 to drag into an adjournment, so that he would have to play out a demanding position on the rest day. “Psychologically, I wanted to survive game nineteen,” said Garry. “I wanted to survive and play game twenty. And this worked against me.”
“They are like two fighters feeling each other out,” commented Boris Spassky. “They are doing nothing. It is even.” He crossed his forefingers to signal draw, draw, his face registering contempt. For the past few games, Spassky had been telling the press that Karpov and Kasparov were afraid of one another and that their play was feeble.
By the twenty-ninth move of the game, the position had reached a condition of stasis. Neither player was doing much and either might have offered a draw. But on the following move, Kasparov sacrificed a pawn in order to gain a strong queenside square for his knight. “This is a typical Kasparov decision,” commented Maurice Ashley. “He sacked material for dynamic play. Maybe at this point in the game Kasparov knew that the right match strategy was to draw, but he is not the kind of player that can easily do this. He was wavering between planning to draw and craving to win.”
This pawn sacrifice caused havoc in the pressroom. International master Jonathan Tisdall called it a blunder and predicted that Kasparov would lose. But after a few more moves, Tisdall and virtually everyone else had changed their minds. With Kasparov’s rook deep into Karpov’s queenside, and his queen controlling a key file, the world champion now appeared to be winning. “Kasparov’s sacrifices are often more difficult to assess than the sacrifices of other grandmasters,” observed Ashley. “He sees more deeply through the jungle of ideas, and therefore the compensation he gets is not as obvious, because it comes further down the road. When he sacrifices material, it appears that his opponent has many viable responses, but then when you analyze closely, you see that most of those are complete losers. In the pressroom, we watch his games and are inclined to say, look, Kasparov sacrificed a pawn, and he has nothing tangible in return, he has no attack, and there are weaknesses in his position, he must be losing. Then four or five moves later, with Kasparov’s rook penetrating Karpov’s position and another rook poised to deliver the death blow, we can finally see the value of the sacrifice.”
Chess lovers in Lyon were just beginning to understand Kasparov’s unexpected sacrifice and attack, when something odd happened. They observed the world champion and Karpov shaking hands. Many in the theater assumed that Karpov had resigned, but that hardly made sense, the position was bursting with fight. Now the two men began to analyze on stage. This was very strange to watch. They were both smiling, moving the pieces, chatting. They hardly seemed like enemies. I had never seen Kasparov listen so attentively to another player. Suddenly the crowd was rustling and murmuring. Word had spread that Kasparov had offered Karpov a draw. How was this possible? Wasn’t Kasparov’s final position completely winning? The two players continued to analyze together. Neither could bring himself to break off the exchange. This meeting seemed to cut through mountains of enmity, which further heightened the confusion of the audience. Toward the end of it, one could see that Kasparov’s smile was more forced.
In the pressroom, there was bedlam. No one could figure out what Kasparov had done. Manny asked Lein for his comments, and the grandmaster said portentously, “Ask Spassky.” Spassky was standing nearby, talking in Russian to several grandmasters. The former world champion’s face was red and he was gesturing dramatically.
“I am more than disgusted,” said Spassky to Topol. “This is unbelievable. I am shocked.” Spassky was so upset that he lapsed back into Russian for a few sentences, then back into English. “Kasparov had the advantage and he [offered a draw]. I have never seen anything like this in my whole life. . . . I am sick over this. He is a beggar. My only thinking is that there was an agreement before the game.”
Manny couldn’t believe his ears. An agreement before the game! That means fix. The world champion fixing games! Manny couldn’t wait to call his office with the news. His mind was racing. This is like point-shaving. Now I’m in my world. He recalled point-shaving cases he had covered. The last one had been the Boston College scandal in 1981, when the player Rick Kuhn had been sent to jail. Manny was searching for analogies for his Newsday readers. He would never forget the response of Sherman White’s father, after his son had been indicted during the 1951 scandal involving Long Island University and City College players. White’s father had said, “I sent my son to college to become a crook.”
“They must have decided beforehand,” repeated Spassky, who was surrounded by a large group of players and journalists. He was calmer now, with the aspect of a man who had been personally vindicated. He had been telling us for days that there was something strange about how they were playing, and here was the proof. “Why else would such a thing happen? In the end, Kasparov’s position was completely winning,” he reasoned.
But even while Manny listened to Spassky make the case for corruption at the world championship, he began to see the story disappearing in front of him. “I knew almost immediately that it didn’t add up,” he said, with a hint of sadness. “Almost always in point-shaving stories, organized crime is in on it. There is a lot of money to be made. Millions are down on the games, and they use a complicated network of betting. It can’t be too obvious. I’ve written stories on this. But the mob isn’t here in Lyon, booking action on King’s Indians. What would be the gain for Kasparov and Karpov to agree to draw this game in advance? Why do it?”
As Spassky continued to claim fix, Jonathan Tisdall, unshaven, a little portly, and with the I’ve-seen-it-all-before-and-worse manner of a veteran war correspondent, was nearby, bringing some perspective to the scandal. “Boy, is Spassky going to feel badly about this in the morning,” he remarked. “In every world championship I’ve covered, after two or three months the grandmasters on the scene become bored and homesick, and one or another of them begins to talk about a conspiracy or fix. It’s bullshit. Just because a player gets nervous and makes a mistake does not make it a conspiracy.” He explained that it was not unusual for a world-class player in the heat of battle to misjudge a position, to get nervous and offer a draw when he had winning possibilities. “I’ve done it many times,” he added.
Late that night, I was rushing to finish an article on game 19 when Anatoly Lein knocked on the door of my hote
l room. He wanted me to know that he and Geller had been analyzing for hours and had concluded that the final position of the game, promising though it had appeared for Kasparov, was unwinnable. He said that Kasparov’s offer of a draw had been entirely proper and that other grandmasters in Lyon were beginning to come around to their view. It was unusual for Lein to approach a journalist with his opinions and he was very excited. I asked him if I might include his comments in my article and, after a hesitation, he agreed. This was no small decision for Lein, but this time he had decided to take the proper credit for his timely analysis.
The following afternoon, when I visited 17 Boulevard des Bêlges, Masha whispered that Garry had been brooding about game 19 all day. He had not yet heard about Spassky’s remarks, and when I read them to him he appeared shocked. Later in the afternoon, I pressed him for a response. “I remember when I was a boy in the seventies and the Spassky-Fischer match was an issue in the Soviet Union,” he began. “Botvinnik [the ex–world champion who was Kasparov’s mentor] often made comments about the match. During his lectures he said that Spassky sold the match to Fischer, that Spassky lost the world championship because he was bribed by Fischer. I thought that what he was saying was very bad, and I said to him once, ‘It is impossible, Mikhail Moiseyevich.’ But he remained convinced. He is still convinced today.
Mortal Games Page 25