The Boston Globe Boston, Massachusetts Sunday, January 11, 1970 - Page 218
Russians Favorites in Match
It is now definite that the Soviet Union will play a chess match against the West, a euphemism for the rest of the world. The match was proposed by the Yugoslavian Chess Federation and is scheduled as a four-rounder for the first week in April.
Our information is that there will be 12 players on each side. The Yugoslavs have proposed as players from the West, Fischer and Reshevsky of the United States, Portisch of Hungary, Larsen of Denmark, Hort of Czechoslavakia, Gligoric, Ivkov and Matulovich of Yugoslavia, Najdorf of Argentina, Uhlmann and Unzicker of Germany and Mecking of Brazil.
We have a very strong premonition of disaster for the West, for a number of reasons. We think the Soviets are stronger and will have good attendance, as a matter national policy. Also, many of the Western all - stars, such as Fischer, the world's highest rated player under the United States and German rating systems, may show no interest in playing or may have other tournament commitments.
We do not know the Russian team, but just for fun, we made out the following list, which includes three world's champions: Spassky, Petrosian, Botvinnik, Tahl, Geller, Keres, Polugaevsky, Korchnoi, Bronstein, Smyslov, Cholmov and Stein. Then we realized we had left off Taimonov, Lutikov, Suetin, Gipslis, Averbach and Zaitsev.
We are not optimistic about the West's chances, nor is rating expert Arpad Elo, who predicts a victory for the Russians.
Three young players to watch on the world scene are Henrique Mecking, Walter Browne and Julio Kaplan. Mecking is a potential Bobby Fischer. He recently scored very well at Palma de Mallorca, defeating Larsen and Najdorf. Below is a game of considerable beauty by Kaplan against Donner of the Netherlands.