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ANOTHER TABOO TOPIC

"Someone once quipped that if Russian and American chess officials
changed places, nobody would notice the difference." -- GM Larry Evans
in THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS

Just for the record, I am that someone who made the quip about the
Russian and American chess officials. Here is the referenced column
in its entirety that was published on the USA Today Sportsline online
chess site (now defunct). Note that I wrote this in 1988, so it's
rather dated:



============================================
THE CHESS SCENE
by Mike Petersen

"Coming Up"
January 15, 1988

We have just completed a rather exciting year in chess in 1987, capped
off
with what ended up being the most exciting finish in the history of
World
Championship match play. But what about 1988? What will happen this
year?

Well, I've been wondering about that myself, so I decided to do
something
about it! For your information, I have contacted a top psychic, who
has been
kind enough to give us (albiet incognito) some predictions about what
is
coming up in chess in 1988!

* Karpov and Kasparov will play a secret match starting in June and
ending in
December. However, just before the match ends, the media will find
out
about it. When asked about the reason for such a marathon match, both
K's
will say that they had gotten in the habit of playing each other and
didn't
want to stop. The score of the match? That is a little fuzzy, says
our
Secret Psychic, which may indicate a drawn match...57.5 to 57.5
perhaps?

* The entire USCF and USSR Chess Federations will swap administrative
personnel, but the switch will not be noticed by either country.

* Bobby Fischer will come out of retirement and play a match with
former
champion Muhammed Ali. When asked why Ali, Bobby will say that he is
the
only champion of anything who would consent to play him.

* Larry D. Evans will reveal that the "D" in his name DOES stand for d-
other.

* Larry Parr will become the editor of Time Magazine. When asked if
he thinks
that being editor of Chess Life had been helpful in obtaining his new
position, says our Psychic Prognosticator, he will reply, "Chess been
bery,
bery good to me."

* Yasser Seirawan will reveal how to pronounce his name.

* A. Petrosian will reveal his first name.

* Since this is the year of the Leap Second, a new rule will be
proposed by
FIDE that all GM's skip the use of seconds in match play. It will
only be
narrowly defeated, says our Felicitous Fortune Teller.

* Fantastically, a forced win for White will be discovered by an
unknown
Afghanistan youth. However, he will be killed in a pitched battle
between
the Rebels and the Occupation Forces, and the secret will die with
him.
According to our Super Soothsayer, this has happened not less than 23
times
before.

* Susan Polgar's rating will go over the 2600 mark, and FIDE will be
forced to
raise the rating of every woman player by another 300 rating points to
catch
up. This will cause the next Super Interzonal Swiss, to which the
highest
100 rated players in the world are seeded, to be contested entirely by
women.

* The "In Search Of..." program will be brought back to television,
and the
first program will be about chess and be titled "In Search
of...Ricardo
Calvo". They won't find him, says our Caissic Psychic.

* Instant replay cameras will come into use in important matches.
This will
assist the arbiter in matters relating to the number of moves made
before
time control, whether the flag fell during the mating move or after
the
player's hand quit the piece, etc. Our Hidden Predictor repeated this
several times very quickly.

* Chess will be enjoyed by many, many people in 1988.

Amen to that, brother.

=============================================

Regards to All...Mike Petersen