A question concerning the 78 world championship match.

[MJMcCready]

Hi there. I am watching the documentary Closing Gambit again, but this time round it has thrown up things I feel compelled to look into. This one I cannot get an answer for online, despite looking as much as I can.

The prize money for the 78 match is both reported as $500,000 and $560,000. Irrespective of which figure is correct, where did that money come from and why was the prize fund so high? It also said in the documentary that Bjorg won Wimbledon that year and got only £19,000 for that. A comparatively small amount. I looked into other sporting events that year and it appears that when Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at St.Andrews he only got £12,000. Why was chess paying much more than those sports that year? Did it come from the President of the Philippines?

I am aware the prize fund was greater than the Fischer - Spassky match but did it really have the prestige and publicity to justify that? Was it already FIDE policy to steadily increase prize funds by then?

[IM Jack Rudd]

Bear in mind that the World Chess Championship is for two competitors and the All England Tennis Championships is for quite a lot more than that (128 in each of the men's and women's singles, plus however many people there are in the subsidiary events). If you quote the total prize fund for the latter rather than the first prize, you'll probably have a better basis of comparison.

[Kevin Greenacre]

Hi all

An online search shows the total prize money of the 1978 All England Tennis Championships was just over £279,000 and £125,000 for the Open Golf Championship.

[IM Jack Rudd]

And I think the answer is that tennis and golf rely on money from spectators, TV rights and commercial sponsorship, and the amounts those sources are prepared to give you will vary within reasonably narrow parameters. Chess gets a lot more of its money from philanthropic donations, and those can be very variable.

[MJMcCready]

And I think the answer is that tennis and golf rely on money from spectators, TV rights and commercial sponsorship, and the amounts those sources are prepared to give you will vary within reasonably narrow parameters. Chess gets a lot more of its money from philanthropic donations, and those can be very variable.

Yes you certainly have a point there but it still stands that Korchnoi and Karpov made a lot more money than the top sportsman in the world that year. I am assuming that money came rom the president of the Philippines who saw it as an opportunity to promote his country or something I would imagine.

[Matt Mackenzie]

One question re 1978 I have never seen a reliable answer to is - who actually was Dr Zukhar and what details are known of his life more generally?

[MJMcCready]

One question re 1978 I have never seen a reliable answer to is - who actually was Dr Zukhar and what details are known of his life more generally?

I just watched Closing Gambit and in that they said he was some kind of psychologist/parapsychologist and employed by the government and Korchnoi used to use him before he defected, so he knew all of Korchnoi;s problems! No wonder it pissed him off.

[Geoff Chandler]

Lev Alburt mentions Dr. Zukhar in Chess Life (March 1985) writing about the Moscow Marathon.

'It is the enigmatic figure of Dr. Vladimir Zukhar which links the Baguio experience with the current Karpov-Kasparov match. At Baguio, he often sat in the audience because his personality annoyed Korchnoi. In the West, he was treated as a parapsychologist. In fact, he is a leading Soviet expert on drugs. He prescribed a regimen of drugs for Soviet cosmonauts to aid them in staying alert during their space missions, and at Baguio he developed a schedule for Karpov.

In Moscow, we find him popping up again - this time in Kasparov's camp! Zukhar knows that Karpov has been conditioned for a short match, a Blitzkrieg. He knows that Karpov will collapse if the match lasts long enough - regardless of the length of the games.

[Roger de Coverly]

In Moscow, we find him popping up again - this time in Kasparov's camp! Zukhar knows that Karpov has been conditioned for a short match, a Blitzkrieg. He knows that Karpov will collapse if the match lasts long enough - regardless of the length of the games.

In 1992 he was back in Karpov's camp. He's mentioned in Dominic Lawson's book as sitting in the audience diring the match with Nigel. I think Dominic investigates the threat by sitting next to him, only to find that he was practicing his English with regard to chatting up Nigel's daughter's nanny.