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Korchnoi in Toronto, 1985
June 7, 2016
My friend Dale Brandreth would come up to Toronto from Delaware every year. He had done his post-doc in Chemical Engineering at U of T (1965) and he would visit old friends and, at least on one day of his vacation, we would get together and talk about chess books, collecting and publishing.
When he was here in 1985, he told me that Viktor Korchnoi was playing in a tournament over at Trinity College at U of T, so we walked over to Devonshire Place to see the tournament.
I have tried to look up details for that tournament and found them rather sparse. Fortunately, there was a write-up in the Toronto Star.
On Sunday July 28, 1985 on page A12 there is a photo with this caption:
Check or mate – Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton offers chess advice to legendary grandmaster Victor Korchnoi (right) during a match against Montreal’s Kevin Spraggett, the highest-ranked Canadian ever in international competition. The financially troubled Toronto International Chess Championship, which opened yesterday at U of T’s Trinity College, has attracted 350 competitors.
I give the main article as a piece of nostalgia:
Costs dampen Metro’s chess future
By Walter Stefaniuk
One of the most intense games at the Toronto International Chess Championship – finding financing for future tournaments – is being played off the boards.
The outcome could decide the future of world-class chess in metro and perhaps Canada.
“We can’t afford to do anything like this again,” said chess promoter David Lavin, organizer of the week-long tournament sanctioned by the international chess federation, FIDE.
“We are trying to enlist corporations.” Without that, “this is the last international tournament,” Lavin told The Star yesterday after the matches opened at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College.
World Players – In a move to boost prestige and attract sponsorship, organizers brought in legendary grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi the Soviet defector now living in Switzerland and three times a challenger for the world chess championship.
But grandmasters cost money, and the tournament’s financial problems are coming at a time when Canada is beginning to step on to the world board in a major way.
Kevin Spraggett, 30, of Montreal, the highest-ranked Canadian ever internationally will be designated a grandmaster – chess’s official equivalent of a baseball or football superstar – at the international federation’s congress in Austria next month.
And Canadian champion Igor Ivanov, a Soviet émigré, has become the most successful player in North America. An international master, one rank below grandmaster he is the only player representing Canada to defeat a reigning world champion, defeating Anatoly Karpov in 1970.
“For the first time, a Canadian (Spraggett) has qualified as a world championship candidate, but to give him an equal chance, we have to have people like Korchnoi to play him,” Lavin said.
High costs – “The cost of bringing international superstars to play the best of Canadians is beyond the reach of chess enthusiasts without corporate help,” Lavin said.
“We can’t afford to bring in more than one star,” he said.
He doubts that private groups would step into the void. “No one else is foolish enough,” he said.
An official international title tournament, with the three required grandmasters entered, would cost about $50,000, Lavin estimated.
This year’s week-long tournament – which includes only two grandmasters, Korchnoi and grandmaster-designate Spraggett – cost $11,500 in prize money and $20,000 in other expenses.
Three grandmasters must be entered before a competition can qualify as a title tournament in the official series leading to a shot at the world championship. A Yugoslav grandmaster, who would have completed the necessary title troika, cancelled out at the last moment.
Three of the top 10 U.S. players – John Fedorowicz, Maxim Dlugy and Joel Benjamin, all of New York City – are entered as well as top Canadians.
But although the three young Americans have defeated many of the world’s grandmasters (They’re ranked second, third and fourth after Korchnoi in the Toronto event), top ranking has eluded them because of the scarcity of international-calibre tournaments in North America.
“There’s not the chess education or chess awareness (in North American) like Europe has,” Spraggett said. In Europe, chess is “a tradition going back thousands of years.”
“The grandmaster designation," said Spraggett who gave up an engineering career for chess, means “more invitations in Europe and it’ll make it a little bit easier for me to make a living.”
Internationally sanctioned tournaments keep dreams alive for players further down the scale such as Andrei Moffat, 19 of Packard Blvd, Scarborough, Paul Burgess, 16, of Ottawa, and Charles Adelman, 20, of Hillsdale, N.J. – three of the 350 players entered here.
(to be concluded)
June 7, 2016
My friend Dale Brandreth would come up to Toronto from Delaware every year. He had done his post-doc in Chemical Engineering at U of T (1965) and he would visit old friends and, at least on one day of his vacation, we would get together and talk about chess books, collecting and publishing.
When he was here in 1985, he told me that Viktor Korchnoi was playing in a tournament over at Trinity College at U of T, so we walked over to Devonshire Place to see the tournament.
I have tried to look up details for that tournament and found them rather sparse. Fortunately, there was a write-up in the Toronto Star.
On Sunday July 28, 1985 on page A12 there is a photo with this caption:
Check or mate – Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton offers chess advice to legendary grandmaster Victor Korchnoi (right) during a match against Montreal’s Kevin Spraggett, the highest-ranked Canadian ever in international competition. The financially troubled Toronto International Chess Championship, which opened yesterday at U of T’s Trinity College, has attracted 350 competitors.
I give the main article as a piece of nostalgia:
Costs dampen Metro’s chess future
By Walter Stefaniuk
One of the most intense games at the Toronto International Chess Championship – finding financing for future tournaments – is being played off the boards.
The outcome could decide the future of world-class chess in metro and perhaps Canada.
“We can’t afford to do anything like this again,” said chess promoter David Lavin, organizer of the week-long tournament sanctioned by the international chess federation, FIDE.
“We are trying to enlist corporations.” Without that, “this is the last international tournament,” Lavin told The Star yesterday after the matches opened at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College.
World Players – In a move to boost prestige and attract sponsorship, organizers brought in legendary grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi the Soviet defector now living in Switzerland and three times a challenger for the world chess championship.
But grandmasters cost money, and the tournament’s financial problems are coming at a time when Canada is beginning to step on to the world board in a major way.
Kevin Spraggett, 30, of Montreal, the highest-ranked Canadian ever internationally will be designated a grandmaster – chess’s official equivalent of a baseball or football superstar – at the international federation’s congress in Austria next month.
And Canadian champion Igor Ivanov, a Soviet émigré, has become the most successful player in North America. An international master, one rank below grandmaster he is the only player representing Canada to defeat a reigning world champion, defeating Anatoly Karpov in 1970.
“For the first time, a Canadian (Spraggett) has qualified as a world championship candidate, but to give him an equal chance, we have to have people like Korchnoi to play him,” Lavin said.
High costs – “The cost of bringing international superstars to play the best of Canadians is beyond the reach of chess enthusiasts without corporate help,” Lavin said.
“We can’t afford to bring in more than one star,” he said.
He doubts that private groups would step into the void. “No one else is foolish enough,” he said.
An official international title tournament, with the three required grandmasters entered, would cost about $50,000, Lavin estimated.
This year’s week-long tournament – which includes only two grandmasters, Korchnoi and grandmaster-designate Spraggett – cost $11,500 in prize money and $20,000 in other expenses.
Three grandmasters must be entered before a competition can qualify as a title tournament in the official series leading to a shot at the world championship. A Yugoslav grandmaster, who would have completed the necessary title troika, cancelled out at the last moment.
Three of the top 10 U.S. players – John Fedorowicz, Maxim Dlugy and Joel Benjamin, all of New York City – are entered as well as top Canadians.
But although the three young Americans have defeated many of the world’s grandmasters (They’re ranked second, third and fourth after Korchnoi in the Toronto event), top ranking has eluded them because of the scarcity of international-calibre tournaments in North America.
“There’s not the chess education or chess awareness (in North American) like Europe has,” Spraggett said. In Europe, chess is “a tradition going back thousands of years.”
“The grandmaster designation," said Spraggett who gave up an engineering career for chess, means “more invitations in Europe and it’ll make it a little bit easier for me to make a living.”
Internationally sanctioned tournaments keep dreams alive for players further down the scale such as Andrei Moffat, 19 of Packard Blvd, Scarborough, Paul Burgess, 16, of Ottawa, and Charles Adelman, 20, of Hillsdale, N.J. – three of the 350 players entered here.
(to be concluded)
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