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<p>San Antonio 1972 was either the strongest chess tournament ever played in the history of the United States or, if not the very strongest, then second only to New York 1924.<br>
<br>
The tournament was organized by Bill Church, who had a great deal of money at that time. He had expanded a small fried-chicken chain of only four outlets that he had inherited from his father into a giant operation with more than 400 restaurants.<br>
<br>
He also established what are now called "Grand Prix Points" where grandmasters can tour the country playing in small tournaments and win big prizes awarded to those who collect the most points. These were known as "Chicken Points" and the "King of the Chicken Circuit" became Igor Ivanov, who could be counted on to show up at a tournament somewhere in the country almost every weekend. Ivanov toured the country with an unlimited Greyhound Bus pass.<br>
<br>
Bill Church is still around and the company is still in business. Bill Church made a cash donation to the US Senior Open Championship held earlier this year.<br>
<br>
The organizers of San Antonio 1972 put together a great collection of some of the world's leading grandmasters (back then when the grandmaster title meant something) and combined them with the most promising young players that North America had to offer.<br>
<br>
Four of the top ten rated players in the world participated, including Petrosian, ranked number 3, Portisch, ranked number 6, Karpov ranked number 7 and Larsen, ranked number 10. The main ones in the top ten who did not play were, of course, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, who had just completed their epic chess match for the World Championship two months earlier.<br>
<br>
In addition, every player who came from outside North America was either a former or a future World Chess Champion or had participated or would participate in a candidates tournament of the top eight players in the world to determine the challenger for the next world championship. Petrosian was a former world champion. Karpov was a future world champion. Keres, Larsen and Gligoric had all played in the Candidate's Tournaments. Mecking, Portisch, and Hort were to play in future candidates matches.<br>
<br>
Tigran Petrosian was World Champion from 1966 to 1969. Karpov was to become World Champion from 1974 to 1984.<br>
<br>
Keres had been the number two or number three player in the world (if not number one) since 1938, although he had fallen down recently.<br>
<br>
Combined with this was Walter Browne who was to win the US Championship eight times, Julio Kaplan, who had been World Junior Champion and the exciting Duncan Suttles who had invented his own openings which had become known as the Suttles Systems.<br>
<br>
I knew almost all of the players in the tournament. For example, I had traveled around the country with Duncan Suttles in 1964 sharing rooms with him while playing in chess tournaments, especially during the 1964 US Open in Boston. I had sort of attached myself to him as I recognized early his great talent for chess and his unusual and creative playing style. Unfortunately, although I had often analyzed chess with him, I had never mastered his Suttles System and every time I had tried to play it, I lost.<br>
<br>
I also knew the one player nobody else knew, Mario Campos Lopez. I had spent one college semester at the University of Mexico in Mexico City in the Fall of 1965. Mario Campos Lopez was already regarded as the best player in Mexico. I played him many five minute games. I did not win many of the games, although I am sure I won at least one.<br>
<br>
Mario Campos Lopez had been invited to play in recognition of the fact that the tournament was being held in Texas near to Mexico. Similarly, Ken Smith was invited for being the best player in Texas. I must say that Mario Campos Lopez did a lot better in this tournament than anybody but me expected him to. He later won the Championship of Mexico<br>
<br>
I must add here that some of the players were later to become associated with tragedies. Donald Byrne died in 1976 at the age of 45. The illness that caused his death was never conclusively diagnosed but is believed to have been possibly a form of lupus. Donald Byrne was the nicest man I ever knew who played chess and his early death was a great loss.<br>
<br>
Paul Keres also died in 1976 at the age of 59 and Tigran Petrosian died in 1984 at only 55. The poor quality of the health care system in the Soviet Union may have contributed to their early deaths.<br>
<br>
Henrique Mecking went on to win two Interzonal tournaments and was regarded as one of the strongest players in the world. However, he then became ill and dropped out of chess although he has come back and played some recently.<br>
<br>
The great success of this tournament was Duncan Suttles, who earned the grandmaster title (back when the grandmaster title meant something) in this event by beating Evans, Kaplan, Campos, Saidy and Smith. As I had traveled with Suttles a lot, I knew a lot about the way he played. For example, he often said that the strongest place for the black king knight was at king's bishop two. His Suttles System for black often involved playing an early f6, followed by Nh6 and Nf7.<br>
<br>
This really threw off his opponents, who were used to facing traditional style moves. Suttles played his strange moves based on great strategic concepts he had developed. As a result, Suttles just mopped up anybody rated less than 2300. Lower rated players faced a quick death when meeting Suttles.<br>
<br>
His problem was that the higher rated players could see through his tactics. Anybody rated over 2400 usually beat him. He got into the 1965-1966 US Championship and was almost completely wiped out as he finished last with 2.5 out of 11.<br>
<br>
However, eventually he perfected his Suttles' Systems and started beating grandmasters with it. In San Antonio 1972 he demonstrated that he could hold his own against the higher rated grandmasters while still wiping out the relatively lower rated. This got him the Grandmaster title.<br>
<br>
What makes this book especially great is not merely was it a great tournament with great players, but that the players annotated some of their own games. In this day and age, there are millions of games in the chess databases, but annotated games are increasingly hard to find.<br>
<br>
This book has games annotated by Karpov, Larsen, Hort, Suttles, Mecking, Donald Byrne, Gligoric, Keres, Saidy, Portisch, Kaplan, Evans and Smith. Two games were annotated by both Larsen and Petrosian. In addition, many of the games were annotated by International Master David Levy.<br>
<br>
This book also marks the beginning of a great series of books: the RHM Series. San Antonio 1972 was the first of many high quality chess books published by RHM.<br>
<br>
This RHM Series of high quality chess books was the brain child of Sidney Fried (born 22 June 1919 – died 1 June 1991). Sidney Fried was not a strong player but was an aficionado or big fan of chess.<br>
<br>
Sidney Fried had a lot of money. He had made his fortune in common stock purchase warrants. Then, he made more money writing books and two newsletters about it. His stock market books are still available today, including such works as "Investment and Speculation with Warrants - Options & Convertibles" and "Fortune building in the 70's with common stock warrants and low-price stocks" by Sidney Fried.<br>
<br>
Fried had a number of unusual habits, one of which was that he owned nothing. He put everything he owned into his corporations, R H M Press, a Division of RHM Associates of Delaware, Inc.<br>
<br>
Fried was a member of the Libertarian Party. Since Fried had no assets, this enabled him to get away with not paying any taxes. However, upon his death it was discovered that he had left no will and therefore nothing, including his New York townhouse, his personal home on Long Island, his yacht and his California estate that were owned by his corporations could be inherited.<br>
<br>
This also affected the publication of this book. It appears that all of his RHM books were "Work Made for Hire" books, in which he paid the authors in cash rather than signing standard royalty agreements. This certainly simplified matters. It enabled his books to have numerous authors, translators and editors, and a chief editor, Burt Hochberg (1933-2006). Hochberg wrote, "grandmasters were very well paid to write them." Imagine the difficulties of dividing royalty payments among the many contributors and the even bigger problems of trying to negotiate royalty deals with different people. (For example, "I demand to be paid as much as Petrosian!!!<wbr>")<br>
<br>
Eventually, Sidney Fried lost a lot of money the same way he had made it, gambling on stock market purchase options and warrants. It is not clear whether he died broke or nearly broke, but in any case he left behind a great series of chess books that we can still read today and remember him by.<br>
<br>
This book was originally published in Descriptive Chess Notation. Since that time, Descriptive has become almost obsolete. For that reason, all 120 games in this book have been converted into modern Algebraic Notation and are included in an appendix in the back of the book.<br>
<br>
The games in the back are grouped and sorted alphabetically according to the player of the white pieces. Thus, all games in which Browne played White are first, followed by the games by Byrne, Campos-Lopez, Evans, Gligoric, Hort, Kaplan, Karpov, Keres, Larsen, Mecking, Petrosian, Portisch, Saidy and Smith in that order.<br>
<br>
Sam Sloan<br>
October 11, 2009<br>
<br>
ISBN 4-87187-814-<wbr>7<br>
978-4-87187-<wbr>814-2<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4871878147">http://www.amazon.<wbr>com/exec/<wbr>obidos/ASIN/<wbr>4871878147</a><br>
<a href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?box=9784871878142&pos=-1&EAN=9784871878142">http://search.<wbr>barnesandnoble.<wbr>com/booksearch/<wbr>isbninquiry.<wbr>asp?box=97848718<wbr>78142&pos=<wbr>-1&EAN=978487187<wbr>8142</a><br>
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