Surprise & Confusion

Chess is the sort of game that mathematicians consider their own particular pumpkin pie. Many are the learned cybernetics treatises arguing that the world's best chess player may one day be a computing machine instead of a human (indeed, International Business Machines is even now perfecting a chess-playing computer). But in Moscow last week, there seemed dramatic evidence that chess is at least as much psychological as logical--and that the machine is unlikely to triumph over the mind.

In the midst of a tense, 24-game match for the world's chess championship were Mikhail Botvinnik, 48, who has held the title since 1948 with one year's lapse and Challenger Mikhail Tal, 23. As the competition developed, the conflict of their personalities became more important than their technical skills.

By profession, Botvinnik is an electrical engineer, and one of the Soviet Union's best (he helped design the turbines for a giant hydroelectric plant on the Volga). He brings an engineering mind to the chessboard: steeped in the classical traditions and theories of chess, he sizes up his opponent, selects his form of attack and, pondering each move to the limit of allowed time, develops it with ruthless precision.

Brash, hawk-nosed Challenger Tal is Botvinnik's exact opposite. A graduate of the philology department at the Latvian State University in Riga, he has made chess his profession; when he is not playing the game he is writing about "it in a Riga chess journal, which he edits. During a game, he makes his moves swiftly. Between moves, he circles endlessly around the table. Then, as though in response to an electric brain-flash, he stops in his tracks, hovers over the board, and, when his turn comes, swoops down like a hawk on the piece he intends to move.

Tal's game is unorthodox, often appearing to the chess purist to fly in the face of reason. Against Botvinnik, he several times seemed to sacrifice a piece without apparent advantage. But he also achieved his primarily psychological purpose: that of confusing and spoiling the precise calculations of his opponent. Time and again, unexpected Tal moves forced Botvinnik to hesitate so long that he ran into trouble with his time limit, then rushed into making weak moves. Last weekend, with 13 games left to play, Tal led by 6 1/2 to 4 1/2-And in the ninth game of the match, Botvinnik won only by adopting Tal's tactics: he sacrificed a pawn without apparent reason--and thereby surprised and confused the challenger who specializes in surprise arid confusion.

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