Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, Sunday, March 29, 1987 - Page 62
Modern Game Complicates Masters' Lives
Former World Champion Anatoly Karpov once pointed out that with the ascendancy of Bobby Fischer, the chess life of a contending grandmaster had become much more complicated. It was now necessary, Karpov said, not only to play chess but to simultaneously be a diplomat, a public relations specialist and a legal expert.
It seemed that Karpov considered Fischer responsible for the new complexities. But what had simply happened was that world championship chess had become a big-time spectator sport.
When Fischer played Boris Spassky in 1972, journalists were outraged at the decision of the Icelandic Chess Federation to sell the rights for move-by-move TV coverage. But gradually there was acceptance of the principle that chess moves could be sold.
In the United States, successful TV chess coverage by New York's Channel 13 was carried by only a handful of PBS stations in the Northeast until IBM intervened as a sponsor and paid for the wider broadcast rights needed for the show to go national.
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Karpov was right. Chess life clearly is more complex.