July 1965 'On the Cover'

What? No cover for Chess Life? Like the April 1965 'On the Cover', the cover of CL looks more like the first page of a newspaper. Including front and back covers, the issue had only 20 pages, of which three and a half were 'How the Chess Openings Got Their Names' by John W. Collins.

Left: 'Tal, Larsen Win'
Right: 'Fischer Returns'

Chess Life

Only three of the original eight challengers are still in the running for a match with World Champion Tigran Petrosian. Ex-champion Mikhail Tal and Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen have won their quarter-final matches and will soon play one another to determine which of them will advance to the final match of the Candidates' series -- against Boris Spassky.

Chess Review

Robert J. Fischer played 21 United Nations Chess Club members and 5 other experts in a simultaneous in June at the U.N. [...] On the cover, Fischer is interviewed by Joan Parr of CBS-TV.

'The Unknown Bobby Fischer' by IM John Donaldson & IM Eric Tangborn (International Chess Enterprises, 1999) has more about the U.N. event.

Simul at the United Nations, 1965 One of Bobby's more unusual exhibitions was held at the Church Center of the United Nations on May 21, 1965. Results for the event are contradictory. Chess Review has Bobby facing 26 players with a score of 23 wins plus losses to Vladimir Vakula of the USSR and club secretary Luis Loayza of Peru and a draw with Evgeny Zhukov of the USSR. Chess Life and Zhukov have it +18=1-2. Neither of these may be right, as the two games from the event which have surfaced are both draws! It doesn't make things any clearer to know that Chess Life gives Ivan Grischenko, not Vakula, as a winner.

The event was sponsored by games manufacturer TAG, Inc., and its newly designed Manchurian chess tables and chessmen were used. From the look of the photo published on page 196 of the July 1965 issue of Chess Review, Bobby must have finished the exhibition with an aching back: the tables were less than two feet off the ground! His eyes might also have been sore -- the Manchurian pieces were definitely not based on the Staunton design.

Re 'Fischer Returns', had he left?