Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Kentucky, Monday, January 14, 1974 - Page 4
International chess quarter-finals
Soviets' Spassky is favored to win match with Byrne
San Juan, P.R. (AP) — Soviet chess master Boris Spassky is favored to beat American champion Robert Byrne in their match beginning here Monday, according to a widely quoted rating system.
The contest is a quarter-finals match in a global elimination to pick a challenger for world champion Bobby Fischer. Chess fans view it as a major hurdle for Spassky in his quest to regain the world chess title that he lost to Fischer in 1972.
The Elo rating system, named after its developer, Dr. Arpad Elo, ranks players numerically. Statisticians revise it monthly for the United States Chess Federation. The world federation also has used the system since 1970.
Elo said in San Juan that current ratings indicate “Spassky can be expected to score 57 per cent of the time and Byrne 43 per cent of the time.”
The two players have carefully refrained from making any public predictions on the outcome of their match. Both turned up Saturday at the Puerto Rican Engineers Association clubhouse where the match will be held.
They tried out the chairs, checked on the chess table and the lights. Spassky found everything ideal. Byrne pronounced the chess pieces “a little shiny” and said the overhead lighting “could be a little brighter.”
The auditorium furnished for the match drew high praise from E.B. Edmondson, executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation. He said it was smaller but better than accommodations for the 1972 championship match in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Spassky also complimented the height and breadth of the Brazilian rosewood table, noting there was plenty of leg room beneath it.
“I think even Bobby Fischer would be glad to play” at the table, Spassky cracked.
Other quarter-finals matches coming up include those between Henrique Costa Mecking of Brazil and Viktor J. Korchnoi of the Soviet Union on Wednesday in Augusta, Ga.; Anatoly Karpov of the Soviet Union and Lev Polugaevsky of the Soviet Union on Thursday in Moscow; and Tigran Petrosian of the Soviet Union and Lajos Portisch of Hungary in Palm de Mallorca, Spain, on Friday.
Winners go to semifinals starting April 15. These will lead to a final qualification round that will provide the challenger to meet Fischer some time in 1975.
“While all of the quarter-finalists are exceedingly good players,” said Korchnoi in an Augusta news conferences, “in my judgment it really makes no difference because I don't believe Mr. Fischer can be beaten at this time.”
