‘I began my escape from the communist Czechoslovakia 42 years ago, on Sunday, September 1, 1968. According to Wikipedia, I bought several crates of vodka with my winnings at the Akiba Rubinstein Memorial in the Polish spa of Polanica Zdroj, bribed the border guards and drove to West Germany.’ Thus began an article written by Lubomir Kavalek in the Huffington Post in 2010. How curious to write ‘according to Wikipedia’ about oneself! Was this, I speculate, a gentle hint to the reader that the story might be apocryphal?
The Soviet tanks in Prague were decidedly real. Born on 9 August 1943, ‘Lubosh’ Kavalek had studied journalism, and was the reigning chess champion of Czechoslovakia when he defected. Initially, he went to West Germany, where his father already lived, but by 1970 Kavalek had settled in the United States. In 1972, he shared first place at the US Championship, and later that year attended the fabled Fischer–Spassky match in Reykjavik as a journalist for Voice of America. It is clear that Fischer valued his advice, since in the latter part of the match Kavalek unofficially assumed the seconding duties from Bill Lombardy, another American grandmaster. Kavalek wryly noted that for official purposes, he was listed as Fischer’s ‘bowling coach’.
That same decade saw Kavalek briefly reach the world’s top 10. He won the US Championship on two further occasions, and represented the US in seven Olympiads. In 1979 in Montreal he doubled as a co-organiser and participant at the ‘Tournament of Stars’, where his disastrous 1.5/9 start was eclipsed by a remarkable 6.5/9 in the second half, in which he outshone the likes of Tal, Karpov and Spassky.
Later in his career, Kavalek focused on coaching and writing.
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