Why? Because you can't stand the Dutch flag being rotated 90 degrees, compared to the French flag?
Because you can't stand the only French WCh being beaten by a Dutchman? 

Quote:



Who gives a flaming frig who is a Communist?  This board is about chess; clear out of here with your McCarthyite crap.

Oh, and that's a load of baloney about the CPSU being responsible for no match in 1975.  Basically no one, apart from a few American crypto-fascists, thinks that Fischer's terms for the match were remotely fair.  Soviet chess would have loved for Karpov to play Fischer, who hadn't played a game of serious chess since leaving Reykjavik.

Ok TJ & Smyslov-fan. I did manage to find something which verifies what i read in the papers bout Karpov being a commie.

you can find it at http://chess-now.com/clashofthetitans.htm

The excerpt of that article i paste below:

• On his relationship with Anatoly Karpov, Boris said it has vastly improved and that Anatoly and he are very close. He felt it was possibly the fact that their best days of chess are over and that they are both doing similar things about promoting chess around the world.
   Boris also said he pleaded with Karpov to make sure there was a match in 1975. He felt for the good of the game that chess needed the continuity in the World Championship cycle and he felt if a match had taken place that Fischer would have won because Karpov did not have the experience necessary to compete at that level. Since Karpov was a loyal communist party member, and Boris never was, Karpov took the party line which was that the Soviets wanted the title back very seriously and therefore could not agree to all the terms that Fischer wanted for the match. What a loss to chess history that was.

conclusion : They were both commies

Ehlvest's The Story of a Chess Player p 37, also indicate that Garry was a commie member:

Some players did become Communists-most notably, Garry Kasparov and Alexander Beliavsky. I believe, however, that in Kasparov's case there was not much choice in becoming a member[...]

Since he doesn't mention Karpov after 'most notably' I suppose Smyslov_Fan is right here too, though I was also under the impression that Karpov was a member - after all, if Garry was forced to become one, why wouldn't they do the same to the World Champ?

Woofwoof,

I love to argue as much as the next guy, and probably a whole lot more.  8)

However, there just isn't a point in arguing over something that can be looked up.  It's like, well, arguing over facts.

Kasparov did indeed join the Party in part because he was an outsider and Karpov, who gained all the benefits of being the ultimate insider, never had to join.  When you find websites that show otherwise, let me know.

In the mean time, I may boither to look it up in any of a number of different sources.

I consulted Jeff Sonas site www.chessmetrics.com to find an answer.

Euwe has to lowest average peak rating for all time spans (1,2,3,4,5,10, 15 and 20 years) of all World Champions. Spassky has the second lowest except for 20 years where Tal is second lowest and Spassky third lowest.

On the other hand Spassky has lowest number of months ranked as number 1 in the world: 5 months in 1966. Euwe was ranked no. 1 for 8 months in 1936 and 6 months in 1937.

So maybe its a tie between Euwe and Spassky.

Steinitz has got 35% of the votes. I don't understand how the voters reasoned considering that Steinitz was the dominating player in the world during 1870's and 1880's, winning most tournaments and beating all rivals. Unlike Lasker he didn't avoid the strongest opponents.

Quote:


???

Wow!  Well that clears that up.  And here I was thinking I had a chance of beating the consensus weakest champion...

We may be playing with Cleopatra's nose a little bit here, but history is very relevant and rather interesting.  It probably doesn't make me a better player, but I do like to know about chess history, and these kinds of musings can make for pleasant diversions from all the Fritz-generated variations on all the other discussion threads.