YUSUPOV BROKE THE BOYCOTT

Taylor Kingston is right about the number. It
was the ninth Lone Pine Open. On the other side of
the coin, Korchnoi rubbed no salt in any posited wound
that Artur Yusupov supposedly suffered. Korchnoi beat
him in a very good game, but Yusupov did a big, brave
thing when playing Korchnoi and breaking the boycott.

Yusupov was and is no Karprov. Indeed, Yusupov
detested the boycott against Korchnoi and was
delighted to be the man who broke it.

KANE'S VERSION OF HISTORY

Don't get your history from Larry Parr. Refusing
emigration requests for families of defectors has little
do with chess and less to do with Karpov. It was
routine Soviet practice.
Karpov and Korchnoi have
been cordial in later years - hardly
what one would
expect if Karpov had been behind some evil plot. -- David Kane

And so,we have the Kane vein of sporting understanding.

A government that supports one of two
participants in a world title chess match holds
hostage the family of the opponent of their
standardbearer. Nothing unusual about that -- in
Kanethink. More or less acceptable sporting behavior,
and we are not to imagine that Anatoly Karpov, who
toadied and toadied and toadied beyond the call of
even Soviet duty of that period, is to be blamed.

Karpov worked hard for his Order of Lenin,
tendered countless interviews that helped earn
this careerist his privileges, and he finally got his
dinner with Leonid Brezhnev and other bigwigs. We
don't see photos these days of Lenin's visage hanging
on Karpov's chest because those who held power in the
name of one of history's greatest mass murderers fell
from power themselves.

In the second match in 1981, the acceptable
sporting arrangements -- in our Kane's version --
included arresting Korchnoi's son, sending him to a
slave labor camp and announcing on the eve of the
match that the boy had been badly beaten by,
presumably, outraged pro-Soviet slaves.

Yasser Seirawan, who was Korchnoi's aide,
later said that the news
crushed Korchnoi, whose
fighting spirit waned.

As for Korchnoi and Karpov proving to be
friendly in later years, Korchnoi himself said that he
made an enormous mistake ever sitting at a table with
that worm to play a game of bridge.

In Kane world, if the Cuban military kidnaps
Lasker's beloved Martha Lasker on the eve of his match
with Capablanca and lets it be known that she has,
shall we say, been attended to by outraged pro-Cuban
workers, then we have a sporting situation that is
more or less normal. And if Capa later gives
interviews and toadies beyond the call of duty to
those who attended to Martha, then he is later to be
suppported as a normal sportsman. Indeed, it is
Lasker who is to be held in some disrepute for daring
to question Martha's treatment.

Kanester tells us that holding families hostage
was normal practice in Soviet times, so what's the big
deal anyway? Shooting families and sending those not
shot to slave camps was also a common practice, since
under Soviet law families members were responsible for
the actions of other members.

For the Kanester, then, we had essentially a
normal sporting event, and Karpov who toadied
heroically (Spassky never lowered himself as Karpov
did) is to be looked upon as at worst a neutral figure
in terms of sportsmen and, given the canker in the
souls of the likes of Greg and Kane, an admirable
figure in important ways.

Yours, Larry Parr



wrote:
On Apr 28, 10:08?am, " wrote:

THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS by GM Larry Evans (page 100)

The matter did not stop there. The Soviet Union suddenly pulled out
two of her players from the Nineteenth Lone Pine Open in America after
learning Korchnoi was competing.

Either Larry Parr did not copy this correctly from Evans' book, or
Evans made a small mistake.There never was a "Nineteenth Lone Pine
Open." There were only 11, running annually 1971-1981 (see for
example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Pine_International). Evans
is correct that two Soviet players, Tseshkovsky and Romanishin, who
planned to play in 1979, did indeed pull out (or were ordered to pull
out) when it was learned that Korchnoi would play. That was the 9th
Lone Pine Open, so perhaps "nineteenth" is just an inadvertent typo.
At Lone Pine 1981, Korchnoi arrived only at the last minute,
catching the two Soviet GMs Yusupov and Romanishin by suprise. This
time they went ahead and played, and Korchnoi rubbed salt in their
wounds by winning the tournament.