Fischer helped game come full circle

On Chess: Fischer helped game come full circle
Saturday August 11, 2012 8:25 AM
Shelby Lyman

Chess was introduced to Russia partly by ninth-century Viking merchants who had learned the rules of the game from Arab traders. The Norsemen plied river routes running north from the Black Sea.

Peter the Great (1672-1725) offered a strong endorsement when he urged his nobility to play during the idleness of St. Petersburg winters.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the visiting world champion, Emanuel Lasker, had found Russia to be a “mecca of chess.”

A mass emigration of Russian Jews during that period — especially to New York — carried Russian chess culture to the shores of the United States.

Chess activity abounded at disparate venues such as the coffee shops of the Lower East Side, city parks and the boardwalk of Coney Island as well as elite Manhattan clubs.

In the 1950s, the prodigal Bobby Fischer grew and thrived in an American chess culture in which players of Russian origin had a major role.

Subsequently, his 1972 world-title match in Iceland against Boris Spassky took chess back to its Norse origins.

When Fischer was granted citizenship by Iceland in 2005, the circle was closed. From Viking adventurers to Russia, to America and back to the Norseland, what goes around had come around.

Source: http://www.dispatch.com