The following article from Sports Illustrated is propaganda against chess, which was an ideological weapon used to show that communist were intelectually superior to the decadent West. Thus this was written disparaging chess. Nonetheless, shortly after this Bobby Fischer became the world chess champion wrestling the crown from the Russians.

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A 1958 Sports Illustrated Article:

June 30, 1958

The Plain Truth About Chess

The real game, revealed in the hard, clear light of world play, is neither ponderous nor mysterious and you needn't be a genius to play it

Sydney J. Harris

Last month in Moscow, when the Russian Mikhail Botvinnik regained his world chess championship, the display of ill temper and poor sportsmanship by the conquered defender, Vassily Smyslov, caused hardly a stir. What matter that Smyslov let spectators stand in line for hours for the final match before offering a draw to Botvinnik in a curt telephone call? What matter, too, that he gave no apology or even congratulated Botvinnik? The game was chess, and in chess, the championship variety anyway, contrary to the popular impression, there is nothing quite so ordinary as a breach of good manners.

This comes as a shock perhaps to those—and they comprise a majority of the people in the world—who consider chess a never-never land of decorum and model behavior. It isn't, any more than it is an exclusive fraternity for great minds. The popular conception of the anything-but-average chess player conjures up a picture of a strange and gifted creature, who is at once the possessor of infinite patience, courtly manners, a profound capacity for concentration, a phenomenal mastery of mathematics and a sweeping command of strategy that would rank favorably with the generalship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The man never existed, nor did the game which he is supposed to have played. According to the widely held misconception, chess is immensely difficult to learn. Each single contest takes many hours to play, with interminable pauses between moves; and months after an ordinary game, both players can recall the exact sequence of moves.

Wrong again. No chess player, living or dead, would recognize this portrait as anything but a vulgar travesty of the game as it is actually played. Its correspondence to reality is about as faint as that of a Hollywood musical film to collegiate life. But where the gay parody of college attracts young people, the solemn caricature of chess unfortunately repels them.

Real chess differs in at least 10 important ways from the mythological game most people mistakenly believe in. Here, not necessarily in order of importance, are the facts.

1) Chess is, on the whole, a young man's game.

Larry Evans and Arthur Bisguier both won the U.S. Open championship by the age of 20. William Lombardy, world junior champion, is only 19. Max Euwe was the leading Dutch player at 20. And Wilhelm Steinitz represented Austria in the international tournament in London when he was 26.

Chess, on the other hand, is not the game of prodigies it is thought to be. There have been only a few in the last 100 years: Paul Morphy, the American Master, who began trouncing tournament players when he was 12; José Capablanca, who won the Cuban championship at the same age; Samuel Reshevsky, who toured Europe at the age of 8, beating as many as 18 opponents out of 20 in simultaneous exhibitions; Bobby Fischer, the 15-year-old U.S. champion, who evokes memories of both Capablanca and Morphy; and now 5-year-old Ernest Kim of Tashkent, U.S.S.R. (SI, June 9).

A LIMITATION OF GIFTS

2) Most chess experts are not especially gifted in other areas.

Of the four greatest players in the last hundred years—Morphy was a failure as a lawyer; Steinitz, the world champion for 28 years, died as a charity patient in the hospital on Wards Island, N.Y.; Capablanca was subsidized by the government of Cuba and did little but flirt and shoot pool when he was not playing chess; and Dr. Alexandre Alekhine, only 15 days before his death, said: "I am completely out of money and I have to make some to buy my cigarets."

Writing in the London Daily Mail 50 years ago, J. Mortimer, the chess editor, remarked: "It will be cheering to know that many people are skillful chess players, though in many instances their brains, in a general way, compare unfavorably with the cogitative faculties of a rabbit."

Several decades later a psychological study of a group of chess players, made by Professor A. F. Cleveland, showed that "a considerable degree of chess skill is possible to one who is mentally deficient in almost any other line."

3) Many chess matches are marred by nervousness and haste.

The temperaments of master chess players vary as widely as those of any other group of people. Far from possessing infinite patience, some of the finest players have lost important games because of fidgeting, haste, impulsiveness and emotional flaws.

Alekhine, considered by many to have been the greatest player of the 20th century, would fidget incessantly at the chess table, smoking a full pack of cigarets during an average game, drinking tea and coffee and eating chocolate. Upon losing a game—which happened rarely—he would sometimes pick up his king and hurl it across the room.

In the world championship match between Steinitz and the German Dr. Emanuel Lasker, the latter demanded a separate table during the 15th game, because Steinitz' noisy sipping of lemonade irritated him. And it is said that Lasker lost a crucial game to Dus-Chotimirsky at St. Petersburg because he was upset at his opponent's pretending to be engrossed in a book of philosophy while the game was in progress.

4) Sportsmanship and good manners are rare in chess tournaments.

We have already noted Smyslov's behavior. Only modern tennis champions seem to be more petulant, vain and childish than the masters of chess.

When Lasker was the world champion, Capablanca issued a challenge for a match, but the terms set by Lasker were so stringent and so favorable to himself that it took the Cuban 10 years before he was able to play Lasker on anything like equal terms.

Later, however, Capablanca (although in private life a fun-loving and chivalrous gentleman) meted out the same treatment to his most serious challenger, Alekhine. True to chess form, when Alekhine finally met and whipped Capablanca, he in turn refused to agree to a re-match.

Chess books are embarrassingly replete with expressions of egocentricity and poor sportsmanship. After Tarrasch lost to Lasker, he filled his books with "proof" that he should have won.

Most shocking of all, recent research has shown that Alekhine sometimes tampered with the scores of games in his books, to make his showing seem more brilliant.

THE BLACK AND THE WHITE

Asked whether he preferred the white or black pieces, Bogoljubow replied: "I have no preference. When I play white, I win because I have the first move. When I play black, I win because I am Bogoljubow!" And the eccentric Dane Nimzowitsch once jumped on a table, shouting: "Why must I lose to this idiot!"

5) Most chess experts have no special mathematical prowess.

Few chess champions have been mathematicians of any exceptional power, although Lasker did advance research in the theory of relativity and Botvinnik today is a highly respected engineer. Extensive studies of leading players have shown that "intuitive insight," or vision, is the key to good chess, rather than the strictly logical deduction demanded in mathematics.

The game of bridge, for instance, requires more mathematical aptitude than does chess—yet, speaking of the great Alekhine, Fred Reinfeld in The Human Side of Chess says that: "There is a general agreement that he was abominable at bridge." Moreover, professional mathematicians and logicians in universities show no superiority in chess over their colleagues in other departments. All of which leads to the next point.

6) Memory and foresight play a smaller part than is believed.

In his exhaustive study called The Chess Mind, Gerald Abrahams concludes that "it is hardly possible for a good chess player to be reliant upon memory in more than the slightest degree."

In the 1925 Moscow Tournament, all the top players were tested in a psychological laboratory—where it was found that they had no better memory or power of concentration than the average person. Nor did they think faster than any other group chosen at random.

Richard Réti, a Grand Master and a leader of the "modern" school of chess, was once asked how far ahead he had to calculate in a serious game. "Only two moves," he answered. This was perhaps an exaggeration, but he was indicating the importance of creative grasp as against book knowledge of the game. The two world champions, Lasker and Capablanca, rarely looked at chess books.

Because memory and rote are less important than originality and vision, the age of the chess robot is not seriously feared by players. According to Norbert Wiener, in his book Cybernetics, the electronic chess-playing machine "would probably win over a stupid or careless chess player but would almost certainly lose to a careful player of any considerable degree of proficiency."

7) Chess strategy is only superficially similar to war.

Because the march of pieces up the board seems to resemble a military advance, it is commonly thought that chess is a harmless form of warfare.

In his historical analysis in The Adventure of Chess, Edward Lasker makes the definitive distinction between chess and war: "When we see a great general play bad chess, we must remember that military strategy and chess strategy are related only in a superficial sense. Both are guided by the same general strategic principles, but their application produces entirely different conclusions.... The fighting units and the final aim are of a totally different character."

8) Each game does not take a long time to play.

The average game of chess is ended well under an hour—about the same length of time it takes to play a single rubber of bridge and less than it generally takes to conclude a game of Scrabble. Generally speaking, the poorer the players, the longer the game—which is as true for bridge.

The beginner deliberates for an unduly long time because he is not aware that certain replies are forced, and he is bewildered by an apparent multiplicity of possible moves. But, as the fog lifts, he begins to see that, in many positions, only one correct move is possible—and he saves his deliberations for truly difficult positions. Unlike the beginner, who will play on doggedly despite his helpless position, the advanced player will resign when he sees that his position is clearly lost, preferring to play a new game.

NO TIME-CONSUMING BORE

9) Tournament chess is not a long-drawn-out affair.

Since the introduction of the double-face time clock around 1880, most tournament players must make an average of one move every three or four minutes, or from 15 to 20 moves an hour. These moves may be saved, however, so that a player may make six rapid moves and then deliberate for 10 minutes on a complex line of play. Like the bridge expert, the chess master plays automatically much of the time—and, again like the bridge expert who spreads the hand and claims the rest of the tricks, the chess master will quickly announce "mate" in three or four moves, to save time.

Among the famous quickie games since 1890 are World Champion Lasker's loss in 14 moves to Caro at Berlin. Tartakower, a Grand Master who has written a score of books on chess, was checkmated by Réti in 10 moves.

10) Chess is not a difficult game to learn.

If this statement, which is generally received with snorts of derisive disbelief, is true, why then does chess seem so difficult to the observer?

Try taking a foreigner to a baseball game, and the reason will become evident. He is bewildered, and he should be. Nobody teaches a child to play baseball by putting him on third base in a full-dress game. A boy is first taken out to the yard and taught to throw and catch a ball with only one other person. Then he is taught how to swing a bat—and only after he has mastered the rudiments of throwing, catching and batting is he permitted to enter a game.

Chess has earned its dreadful reputation as a difficult game almost wholly because it is badly taught. As long ago as 1901, H. G. Wells pointed out in an essay, "Concerning Chess": "Chess is taught the wrong way round. People put out the board before the learner with all the men in battle array, 16 to a side, with six different kinds of moves, and the poor wretch is simply crushed and appalled.... But clearly this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can understand the beginning of the game, he must surely understand the end; how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for? It is like starting athletes on a race and leaving them to find out where the winning-post is hidden."

Most people's reaction to chess depends primarily on their initial introduction to the game. Many potential players have probably been ruined by overzealous parents and teachers who wanted their charge to progress too fast and succeeded only in turning the game into a chore or, even worse, a bore. It, of course, needn't be—unless you happen to meet that elderly gentleman with the graying beard and bifocals, sitting in his stodgy club, sipping on brandy and acting out his part as the profound thinker, the master of mathematics and the supreme strategist, all rolled into one. It is then you must stop to remember he is only a myth.

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