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Chess With Sam Laird 02 Nov 1960, Wed Courier-Post (Camden, New Jersey) Newspapers.com
U.S. Russian Teams In Olympics Finals
As expected, the United States and the Soviet Union teams have reached the finals of the chess Olympics at Leipzig.
The American team of Fischer, Lombardy, Byrne, Bisguier, Weinstein and Rossolimo finished with a score of 29-7 to capture first place in Section 4 of the preliminary round. Russia's team had an even better score of 32-4 in Section 2.
Bulgaria triumphed in Section 1, with England and Czechoslovakia tying for the lead in Section 3. These five teams, plus seven others—three from each section—will compete in the round-robin finals.
Each of the Americans helped creditably in reaching the finals. Bobby Fischer was involved in one of the big upsets in the matches when he lost his second-round game to Munoz of Ecuador. Subsequently he made up for this disappointment and finished in the final round with a brilliant queen sacrifice that gave him a 55-move victory over Wolfgang Unzicker of West Germany. Unzicker had gone through the tournament undefeated to that point.
The country is probably lucky that we were able to send a team to Leipzig at all. Our State Department was not enthusiastic about our competing, since Leipzig is in Russian-dominated East Germany.
The cost of sending our six players, plus non-playing captain Irving Kashdan, is about $6,000. Not until the very last minute were the American Chess Foundation, U.S. Chess Federation, and People-to-People Sports Committee able to get together and decide to send the team, hoping that American chess enthusiasts will contribute enough to repay them. In view of American chess fans' reaction to similar appeals in the past, the sponsors are obviously congenital optimists.
The 24-game return match for the world's championship between champion Mikhail Tal and the man he dethroned this year, Mikhail Botvinnik, now has been scheduled to begin in Moscow in February. It will consist of 24 games unless one contestant wins 12½ points earlier. Tal, who was injured in an auto accident going to the Leipzig Olympics, recovered quickly and played for the Soviet team there.
