FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE SAVOY

Dominic Lawson reveals the psychological, physical

and emotional tension at the heart of the forthcoming World Chess Championship between Nigel Short and Garri Kasparov

I FIND it hard to pinpoint the exact moment when Nigel Short first began to loathe Garri Kasparov. Probably it was during their game in a tournament in Andalucia in the spring of 1991. Short played a new move against one of the world champion's favourite openings. It was an idea of startling originality: Nigel advanced the pawn which defended his own king's position, in deliberate contra- vention of the most basic of chess princi- ples. Kasparov, who at that time was experimenting with spec- tacles, stared wide-eyed at the miscreant pawn, whipped out his glasses, and ostentatiously peered through them at the board. Then he opened his mouth. And laughed. Other grand- masters immediately gathered round, as per- haps the world champion had intended, to see the move which had pro- voked such mirth.

It is the sort of behaviour which one might — in a bad neigh- bourhood — expect from an arrogant local champion condescend- ingly playing a game against the club duffer.

But Kasparov is the Godapp,-- world champion, a figure

who, Short protested to me after the game, `should behave with dignity and decorum at the board no matter who he is playing'. And the 28-year-old Short is not a duffer, even by Kasparov's stellar standards. He is the strongest British player in the long his- tory of chess. He is the only Briton ever to qualify as the official challenger for the world chess championship, and, with the ephemeral exception of Bobby Fischer, the only non-Russian to contest such a match for almost 60 years. When a man like Short plays a new move in a familiar opening and against the world champion, he will have invested enormous intellectual effort and pride in the discovery; to have it instantly dismissed by mocking laughter is an unimaginable insult, a slight which cannot be forgotten, and has not been forgiven.

In other, more recent games, the world champion has persistently fixed Short with long, cold stares from his khaki-grey eyes, and, during his opponent's thinking time, has paced up and down in the English- man's line of vision — 'deliberately . like a baboon', Nigel would complain to me. But perhaps it is precisely because Kasparov has long been aware that Short was a potential threat to his supremacy, rather than a figure of fun, that he has reg- ularly sought to humiliate him. At the very highest level, chess is as much psychology as skill, and this world champion, more than any of his predecessors, sets great store by the undermining of the opponent's ego through psychic intimidation.

Kasparov, now 30, has for many years brooded over the idea that he would, one day, face a challenge from the apparently diffident and taciturn Lancastrian, long before other commentators took Short's chances seriously. In his autobiography, written immediately after he became world champion in 1985, Kasparov wrote:

Nigel Short is destined, in my opinion, to become the leading grandmaster in the West .. . In fact his career has closely paral- leled my own, beating a grandmaster at the age of 12, becoming national champion at 13, and, at 18, becoming one of the few foreign- ers ever to win a tournament on Soviet soil. All that now seems to stand between Nigel and the prospect of the world crown is the unfortunate fact that fate brought him into this world only two years after Kasparov.

Short himself was quick to see the back- handedness and ego- tism of this apparent compliment, when I asked him to write a review of Kasparov's autobiography for The Spectator. Quoting Kas- parov's self-portrait 'many a player who becomes world champi- on realises that he can go no higher and begins to descend . . . I see no danger of this . for myself. I see only new peaks before me and no descent' — Nigel wrote:

Unashamed conceit runs like a connecting thread throughout the book. We have repeat- ed references to Kasparov's brilliant memory, which he imagines knows no limits. My own experience is different. I witnessed a game between Kasparov and ex-world champion Boris Spassky, where the younger man tried and failed miserably to recall his own previ- ous analysis ... Another facet of Kasparov's personality is his ability to manipulate a set of circumstances into a simplistic theory to suit his own emotional needs. Of course, this defence mechanism is present in us all, but in Kasparov it seems to be in permanent over- drive.

Kasparov, concluded The Spectator's occa- sional book reviewer, was 'a grandmaster of self-delusion'.

Cynics — and the chess world consists of little else — have seen in Short's verbal attacks on the world champion a vicarious attempt to score the points he has miser- ably failed to achieve over the chess board. Nigel has only beaten Kasparov once in fully-fledged tournament play, and that was in 1986. Kasparov described that result as `a fluke', and since then has beaten the Englishman eight times, usually in crushing style. This record is the main reason why there are few grandmasters who give Short much of a chance in his forthcoming match against Kasparov for The Times World Chess Championship and a prize of £1.7 million.

The second reason is that Kasparov is the strongest chess player of all time. His rating, on a universally recognised scale of measurement, is higher than Bobby Fisch- er's at the American's peak. He regularly takes on entire national sides in simultane- ous multi-board displays. In recent years the Argentine, American and German chess teams have experienced such national humiliations at the hands of this one man. There are times when Kasparov seems to believe that he is unchallengeable by mere human opponents (one of whom, defeated, described him as a 'monster with a hun- dred eyes') and has taken to playing match- es against Deep Thought, the world's most powerful chess-playing computer, which is capable of analysing over 2 million posi- tions a second (Kasparov won). During his most recent defence of his title, against the former world champion Anatoly Karpov in 1990, Kasparov pronounced, 'I want the best, best, best. I'm not playing against Karpov. I'm playing against God.'

There is a third facet to Kasparov's suc- cess and it is the one which most terrifies other players. He has an extraordinary, almost animal energy. To meet the man, let alone play chess against him, is an intimi- dating experience. He seems to be in a state of perpetual motion. Even when he is sitting down he gives the impression of hovering a few inches above the chair, like a human humming-bird. His nails are bit- ten almost to the quick, and his face tends to break out into bright red pustules, as if the sudden surges of energy have no other means of release. Kasparov's opponents, seated toe to toe against the world champi- on, find these waves of energy and aggres- sion every bit as difficult to cope with as the play of the champion on the board. Indeed, his opponents' terror makes the champion's moves even more destructive than they need be, and it is this, rather than any unbridgeable gulf in chess talent, which has in the past prevented Nigel Short from showing his true mettle against Kasparov.

When I spoke to Nigel just after he had qualified for the match against Kasparov, which itself involved three years of tourna- ment and match victories over all other contenders, he wearily conceded, 'At the moment I would be utterly crushed if I played Kasparov. Not a chance. I have to build up my inner strength. It's like a mus- cle. You have to exercise it the whole time.' This is what Nigel has been doing for the past few months, through a mixture of intense study of the champion's games, meditation, and — for almost the first time in his 28-year-long life — regular physical exercise.

Last week I visited Short at his pre- match safe-house, the Fenja Hotel in Chelsea. Although I had seen him several times in the interim, I was still amazed by the transformation from the pale and exhausted survivor of the three-year world championship eliminating cycle. He was serenely confident. We sat up until late talking and drinking, until, looking at my watch, I asked him whether or not he ought to be doing some work, since it was only a week before the match was to start. 'No. I've done all the work I need to. If I'm not ready now I never will be. I feel good.'

Physical well-being, ultimately, could decide the contest between two mighty intellects. The match is scheduled for 24 games over eight weeks. Ferocious concen- tration over such a long period places as much a strain on the body as it does on the mind. As Kawabata wrote of the similarly interminable struggle for the supreme title in the Japanese chess equivalent, Go: 'The required concentration cannot be main- tained or the tension endured for whole months. It means something akin to a whit- tling away of the player's physical being.'

Generally, the contestants in world chess championship matches lose about ten per cent of their body weight, through a mix- ture of extreme stress and calorie burn-up. It is, quite literally, the survival of the fittest, and explains why, to the mystifica- tion of some members of the public, the peak age for a chess player is not much older than the peak age of an athlete.

Pictures published in the Sunday Express last week showed Kasparov lifting 100-kilo- gram weights at his training camp in Croat- ia, under the careful attention of his The bad news is that I think you've got cancer. The good news is that I've been wrong before . . full-time 'fitness instructors', Alexander Kosik and Yevgeny Borisov. When, a few weeks ago, I went to a gymnasium with Nigel, the British challenger was instead concentrating on exercises which demand- ed endurance rather than explosive physi- cal strength. These choices reflect the players' differing approach to the game itself. We can expect Kasparov to mount massive attacks right from the opening and to go for quick, concussive knock-outs. Short, however, if his semi-final win against the former world champion Karpov is any guide, will try to absorb the shock of the initial attack, and hope to take strategic control of the game during the fourth hour of play, the time when most games between well-matched grandmasters reach a crisis.

The games will start at 3.30 in the after- noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Satur- days: the Savoy Theatre, the match venue, will never have seen a matinee perfor- mance like it. If any game is not decided after six hours' play — as frequently is the case — then one player will 'seal' his next move, and the game will be adjourned until the following day. It is at this point that other, no less specialised, brains come into play. Both champion and candidate have analytical teams, who, if necessary, will stay up throughout the night, attempting to crack the mysteries of the adjourned posi- tion.

This is yet another facet of the game at which Kasparov, with a little help from his friends, has excelled. Originally financed by the Communist Party in his home state of Azerbaijan, and more recently by his own considerable retained earnings, Kasparov has always had at his beck and call a num- ber of Soviet, now ex-Soviet, grandmasters — 'lackeys and slaves' Short calls them. In return for the wonderful gift of foreign cur- rency they have given him the very best of their ideas, in the opening, in the middle game, and in the endgame. Sometimes they have been described collectively as 'Team Kasparov'.

For the world championship in London, Team Kasparov, apart from the champion himself, will consist of grandmasters Zurab Azmaiparashvili, Sergei Makarichev and Alexander Beliaysky. There might be oth- ers, but those were the only names that Short had been able to uncover before the start of the match. These three gentlemen will have spent much of their months secluded with Kasparov in Croatia sepa- rately and collectively analysing Short's games for every possible weakness and point of vulnerability.

Although Short himself has relatively small sums at his disposal and has never received a penny from the British govern- ment, an endowment from the insurance company Eagle Star has enabled him to take on as coach Lubomir Kavalek, the Czech chess champion who defected to the United States after the crushing of the Prague Spring by Soviet tanks. in 1968. In 1972 Kavalek got sweet revenge as Bobby Fischer's second during the American's capture of the world chess championship from Boris Spassky, and would dearly love to make it a double. Lubomir — `Lubosh' to his friends — regards it as a pleasure as well as a duty to humiliate the mighty ex- Soviet chess machine, and likes to point out that while Spassky, at least, was never a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Garri Kasparov most cer- tainly was. Three weeks ago, Nigel com- pleted his team by hiring Dr Robert Hubner, the German champion, as his chief analyst. Dr Hiibner, a friend of Short, is the most thoroughbred logician in the chess world, and the last man to have defeated Kasparov in tournament play.

But, if Nigel does get into difficulties during the first game in the Savoy Theatre next Tuesday, it will not be to Kavalek or Hubner that his eyes will turn. Instead, Nigel's wife, Rea Karageorgiou, a Greek psychotherapist seven years his senior, will be seated firmly in his line of vision, as she has been throughout all his world champi- onship eliminating matches over the past three years. And after the game, if things go badly, it will be with Rea, a woman of enormous strength and intuitive common- sense, that Nigel will exorcise his defeat.

Kasparov has, if it is possible, an even more symbiotic relationship with a woman than Nigel has with Rea. That woman is not his wife, Masha. She will remain in Moscow. The woman in question is the champion's mother, Klara Kasparova. She has been the dominant figure in Garri's life since his father died when the future world chess champion was seven. Since then she has 'devoted herself entirely to my chess career', as her only child gratefully wrote in his autobiography. And he has reciprocated with an extraordinary closeness to her. During the games she will sit in the Savoy Theatre with her strong, handsome fea- tures etched with suffering, feeling the struggle with an intensity which in turn transmits itself to her son and nourishes him in his attempt to bring the maximum mental pressure to bear upon his oppo- nent. I have seen this happen in other of Kasparov's world championship matches. It is frightening, even from the relative safety of the dress circle.

`I can safely say,' Kasparov pronounced when Short became the official challenger for the World Chess Championship, 'that my match with Nigel Short will not be much of a contest. He is not even the sec- ond best player in the world.' But, the champion then grudgingly conceded, 'Short is the best fighter.' Indeed he is, which is why he has beaten higher-rated players than himself to get this far. I have been with Nigel Short at various times in all his world championship matches, and I have never ceased to be surprised by his appetite for the struggle. He very rarely seems to be cast down by even the most comprehensive defeat, but is only made the keener to fight his opponent on the next day. He is almost devoid of self-pity, and it is this, allied to a natural Northern toughness, which makes him a match player of rare resilience.

Nigel will need all of that toughness and

`Yes, I'm absolutely positive this is 2 Laburnum Drive.'

resilience against Garri Kasparov. As the champion himself has said: 'In long match- es — and I have already played five world championship matches — I feel if you have any weakness inside you, you are in major trouble. Even if your opponent is not expe- rienced enough to see it, it will be shown in your moves, because your hand will not be as steady as before . .

In all sports, confidence is the key to suc- cess. When that goes, often for no very obvious reason, everything else collapses. The top tennis player double-faults on set point, the international cricketer bowls a series of no-balls, the golfing superstar gets the yips, the £5 million footballer misses a penalty. But in chess, a game which, unlike all the others, is entirely in the mind, with no limbs trained to take over when the brain is in crisis, a collapse of confidence is terminal. Above all, across the board the opponent can sense this mental bleeding, as clearly as a boxer can see blood oozing from his adversary's head. Ultimately, the contest between Nigel Short and Garri Kasparov, the culmination of a decade's arm's length rivalry, will be decided by the balance of confidence and fear at the time of greatest crisis. It could not be otherwise in such a battle of wills.

Fear itself is not, pace Roosevelt, the only thing that Nigel Short has to fear, but it is the most important. Perhaps he should take his courage from the example of a Dutchman called Max Euwe, who in 1935 became — to date —the last European to win the world championship. His oppo- nent, Alexander Alekhine, was the greatest of all Russian world champions, with an intimidating and destructive way of playing chess which Kasparov has consciously imi- tated. Against all expectations, Euwe won. He wrote afterwards:

Before tackling Alekhine I had to forget the contrast between our general records, or I should have been frightened. Earnest study of Alekhine's games had taught me that many of his most beautiful conceptions are based on his opponents' exhibiting traces of nervousness at the critical moment. So I knew already, before the match started, that only by fearlessness could I succeed .. .

I do not know if Short has managed to conquer his fear of Kasparov, but I am not afraid for Nigel. Kasparov has more than once said that 'in chess, if you beat your opponent, you destroy his ego'. This holds true for the author of the remark, whose monstrous ego could not withstand the loss of his title. Nigel, however, will be the same modest yet proud man, whether he wins or loses. That is what makes him a proper British sporting hero.

Dominic Lawson is to take a two-month leave of absence from The Spectator in order to write a book on the World Chess Championship, Endgame, which will ' be published by Macmillan in December. In his absence The Spectator will be edited by Simon Heller.