Taylor Kingston wrote:

My Google search failed to unearth any contrary evidence,
so, like Sam Sloan, I grabbed the ball and ran with it.

Helpbot has found his ideal.


Actually, my ideal would be to have a perfect, infallible
source from which to extract perfect, infallible information,
which answers -- perfectly -- the precise questions asked
by the original poster, and then goes on to add valuable
insights to them. (Hey -- you brought it up, not me.)

The truth is, I thought Google would be more than sufficient
in view of the vast archives, but instead I got a swing and a
miss.

Here is one of the responses which prompted me to do
this search in the first place, for it lacked anything of real
substance and seemed to imply that the idea of Benko
having received any money was way off base:

---------
"Checking "Pal Benko: My Life, Games and Compositions," I don't see
anything to substantiate the claim of $1500. That Benko did cede his
place to Fischer is acknowledged at least twice in his autobiography,
on page xiii by Susan Polgar, and by Benko himself on page 426. He says
"I was sure Bobby would advance to the Candidates Matches and beat the
Russians. My own career was nearing its end, so why shouldn't I give
Fischer a chance to embrace his fate?" But I see no mention of payment
of any kind.
The claim of $1500 in RvF seems to come from Petrosian. It seems
unlikely he would know firsthand, and no real source is given. It's
sometimes said that Benko was given his regular endgame column in Chess
Life as a reward, but I've never seen any real verification of that
story either."
---------

That reply was written by someone who, like me, lacked
sufficient resources (or perhaps, time) to come up with a definitive
answer to the poster's questions and instead took a shot in the
dark, missing.


It goes
without saying that if I had more time, I could have waded through my old
issues of Chess Life for a report giving such info as the exact dates,
as requested by the original poster.

Benko himself says nothing about this Edmonson arrangement in his
autobiography.

Are you denying that EE made the arrangements for
GM Fischer's participation in the 1970 interzonal?


He was quite busy with his own tournament activity in
1970-71 and would have had to break this off to work for Fischer. He
does say this:

"In 1971 Fischer was at the Grossinger Hotel in the Catskills
preparing for his match with Spassky. He invited me to work with him,
but at that time I had already accepted an invitation to a European
tournament and had (rather sadly) to decline, though I did come up with
one counter 'variation': I offered to withdraw from the tournament and
help him out if he also hired me to be his second in Iceland.
Unfortunately he couldn't make up his mind,

Here is a revealing quote! The man who allegedly was strong on
"principle" is described as being *unable* to make up his mind.
This observation goes a long way toward explaining what many
would like to attribute to Mr. Fischer "having principles".


so I had to walk away from
this possibility as well (he eventually chose Lombardy)." -- "Pal
Benko: My Life, Games and Compositions," page 274.

It looks like GM Fischer wanted the help of three men:
GM Evans, GM Benko, and GM Lombardy, but was perhaps
limited (at the time) by money. How sad, for once he attained
the world championship title money was no longer an issue.
In fact, he repeatedly declined lucrative offers.

What struck me as funny were the "hits" I got which described
the "fistfight" incident between the man EE said was the "only
option", and GM Fischer. Very odd to have him as a second after
such an incident, IMO.

That was years earlier, at Curaçao 1962. By 1971 they had long since
gotten over that. And it was not a "fistfight" -- though under
considerable provocation, Benko hit Fischer only once. He felt very
sorry about it later. In fact, Benko says "I became so guilt-ridden for
punching someone I genuinely cared about that I could never play well
against him again."

Same here. When young Fischer first learned the moves,
I used to draw him all the time. But afterwards, when he
began to play legal chess, I got into it with him over a small
piece of chewing gum and had to rip it from his tiny hands.
Ever after, I never so much as drew a game, despite his
generous offers of Queen odds. It's not that he was any
good, mind you; it's on account of the psychological
aspect. Were it not for this horrible handicap, I would of
course have beaten him like a carrot -- just like GM Benko.


Had they really had a fight, Fischer would likely have been the
loser. Benko was quite strong.

One of the hits described it as a "slapping incident",
while others called it a fistfight. GM Evans (among
others) has pointed out it was a single blow, delivered
by GM Benko, many times. This is why I used the
quotation marks.

-- help bot