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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, May 26, 1959
Strictly Personal
Chess the Most Underpaid Intellectual Profession
By Sydney Harris
LITTLE BOBBY Fischer, the 16-year-old chess champion, nearly walked out of an international tournament in Chile last month, when he learned that the prize money had been cut in half. “More trophies don't interest me,” he grunted.
If Bobby had read a few histories of the royal game, he would have been neither disappointed nor surprised. Chess is probably the most underpaid intellectual profession known to man, and the total annual earnings of the greatest masters wouldn't keep a Hollywood starlet in brassieres.
In the melancholy history of chess, most masters have died in poverty, Steinitz, the finest player of the 19th century, ended his life as a charity case. The man who took the crown away from him, Emmanuel Lasker, was so embittered by his meager chess earnings that, in 1930's, he applied to Ely Culbertson for a diploma as a bridge teacher.
AND THE most brilliant player of our time, Alekhine, spent his declining years in playing games for coffee and cigaret money in seedy, sour-smelling clubs.
Only two world's champion's within memory have been able to live with a modicum of prosperity. Capablanca was at an early age given a diplomatic post by his Cuban government, for which he did little except play chess and build up nebulous “good will” for his country.
And in Russia, Botvinnik for years was given a handsome government salary as an engineer, although most of his engineering was performed over the chess-board.
ONE REASON for Russia's latter-day pre-eminence in chess is that it supports its fine players the way we support baseball and football figures, who are not supposed to do anything but contribute to the greater glory of the sport.
Most of the first-rate American players have been so busy scrounging for a living that they have had neither the time nor the energy to prepare fully for championship tournaments. The Russians beat us not by brains, but by subsidy.
I hope little Bobby has more sense than to try to make a career out of chess in this country. It simply cannot be done. Americans look upon chess as a freakish activity, not deserving the awesome respect we accord to baseball, hockey, football and six-day bike races. We are willing to pay anything but a display of brains.
