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TIME: Almanac 1995
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TIME Almanac 1995.iso
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1993-04-15
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<text id=90TT3107>
<link 93HT0708>
<title>
Nov. 19, 1990: Beauty, Truth And Hitchcock
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
Nov. 19, 1990 The Untouchables
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
SPORT, Page 104
Beauty, Truth and Hitchcock
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
</p>
<p> While the rest of the sporting world was distracted with
sideshows--the World Series, the Douglas-Holyfield fight--the main event was being played out in utter silence at the
Hudson Theater on Broadway, where the two best players in the
world, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, were fighting it out
for the championship of chess. (After 12 games, the match is
tied.)
</p>
<p> Now, mention chess and most people's eyes glaze over. They
think of two old geezers, one of whom has died but no one has
noticed, in overstuffed armchairs at the Diogenes Club. Know how
chess crowds do the wave? guffawed a CBS newsreader. With their
eyebrows.
</p>
<p> Ho, ho. What the benighted don't understand is that modern
chess is played not just against an opponent but against a
clock. It thus produces a heart-stopping equivalent of
football's two-minute drill. At Move 32 of Game 8, for example,
challenger Karpov, losing, was forced to make nine moves in less
than three minutes. He executed them in a dazzling flurry that
didn't just leave him winning; it left the crowd stunned and
silent. Except, that is, for one patron who, unnerved by
Karpov's preposterous escape, let out a loud, shocking laugh.
</p>
<p> Moreover, the place to watch world-championship chess is
not in the theater but five floors up, in the analysis room.
There the action is frenzied. One TV monitor shows the players
and the running time clocks. The other shows the latest board
position. Scattered about are a score of the greatest players in
the world, a couple of whom are standing at the front trying
dozens of follow-on combinations on a large demonstration board.
The result is a tumult of lightning analysis, inspired
second-guessing, withering criticism, contemptuous asides,
suggestions and refutations as the pros search for the best
possible "lines" into the future.
</p>
<p> During Game 8, I found myself in a room with the U.S. chess
champion (Lev Alburt), four grand masters and one legend, former
World Champion Mikhail Tal. It was like watching the World
Series with five Hall of Famers parsing every pitch and Cy Young
correcting them. On Karpov's 23rd move the parsing got slightly
crazy: If Kasparov does A then Karpov must do B. If Kasparov
then tries C and Karpov answers with D, look out: E, F and G
follow. But if Kasparov does Z, then...
</p>
<p> Some of these lines were harmony, variations on the main
theme of the game. Some were jazz riffs, freestyle and
whimsical. Some were just fanciful trills, exotic and
occasionally atonal. They all went up on the board fast and
furious, as patzers--plodding amateurs--like me struggled to
follow the logic.
</p>
<p> Then Karpov did the unexpected: he advanced a pawn,
unbalancing the position and not a few grand masters. Instantly
all the heretofore examined lines, entire symphonies of
hypothetical variation, vanished into the ether. "Unheard
melodies," murmured the yellow-tied patzer sitting near me. His
tone was wry and regretful.
</p>
<p> The move done, the grand masters wiped the slate clean and
began composing fresh music, speculating on what might follow
next. This greatly disturbed the dapper young Yugoslav grand
master Ljubomir Ljubojevic. Shaking his head in disapproval,
Ljubo strode up to the board, took down all the moves now being
assayed and brought the position back not to Move 23 but to Move
22. If Karpov had pushed the pawn in Move 22 instead of first
delivering that ridiculous check, the now animated Ljubo
insisted, it would have been a triumph. He then gave a long
demonstration of the truth of his analysis.
</p>
<p> Of course by then it was irrelevant. Karpov had played the
check first. Enough of history, said the others, impatient to
get on with analyzing the world as it now existed. Ljubo
insisted on analyzing the world as it should exist. As the
groans grew louder, Ljubo's retort was indignant: "Let's find
some truth here."
</p>
<p> The yellow-tied patzer had come for beauty, but Ljubo had
come for truth. In chess, that means finding not just a good
move or even a harmonious move but the perfect move. God's move.
</p>
<p> Playing chess with divinity can be dangerous, however. The
great Steinitz, who once claimed to have played against God and
won (he neglected to leave a record of the game), went quite
mad. The last great practitioner of truth, Bobby Fischer, after
winning the world championship in 1972, disappeared into some
apocalyptic sect in California and had the fillings in his teeth
removed to stop the KGB transmissions.
</p>
<p> Melodies you can get in any record store. But truth? Where
else can you find truth? The next day I saw Ljubo again. It was
12 hours later and he was still shaking his head.
</p>
<p> Down on the Hudson stage, however, the protagonists were
engaged not so much in truth seeking as in attempted murder.
Kasparov, who calls Karpov "a creature of darkness," had
declared his intent not just to defeat Karpov but to destroy
him. Accordingly, Kasparov played the opening games with the
confident, reckless belligerence of a young Ali. Karpov, though,
was fully Frazier's equal. The result was mayhem rarely seen at
that level of play. It was like a title fight with 10 knockdowns
by Round 3 or, for the more delicate, like a ballet performed
not on a stage but on a trampoline.
</p>
<p> Even the exalted were amazed by the innovations, the
sacrifices, the speculative attacks, the kind of stuff a patzer
like me tries out in Washington's Lafayette Square, not the kind
world champions play with $1.7 million at stake. I asked the
great and wizened Tal what he thought of the opening games of
the match. "Hitchcock movies," he replied with a grin.
</p>
<p> Beauty, truth and Hitchcock. Now, that's entertainment.
Benjamin Franklin, when ambassador to France, was known to spend
most of his time at the Cafe de la Regence playing chess. Why
did he so rarely go to the Paris opera? "I call this my opera,"
explained Franklin. He'd have camped at the Hudson.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>