Bobby Fischer Goes to War

by David Edmonds

  Some preferred to follow developments in the company of fellow enthusiasts, in clubs and other venues. At the Marshall Club, chess expert Edmar Mednis puzzled over the moves on a large demonstration board. He would be wearing the club tie adorned with blue-and-yellow pieces. You had to arrive early to guarantee a seat. Mednis described being in front of that audience as “an electrifying experience; when Bobby won a game, the place would erupt in cheers.”

  In London’s West End, aficionados gathered at Notre Dame Hall just off Leicester Square. The venue seated 200 to 300 people. Moves would be relayed from Iceland over the teleprinter. There were two large magnetic boards, one showing the actual position, the other available for analysis. In Geneva, diplomats at an international conference on disaster relief followed the action in breaks between negotiations.

  BBC editors initially vacillated over whether the match justified its own television slot. Producer Bob Toner recalls, “What sold it as a news story was the cold war. The single U.S. figure pitting himself against the Soviet chess machine.” The corporation eventually decided to broadcast a weekly show from its Birmingham studios in the English West Midlands; like its American counterpart, this rapidly gained popularity, pulling in a million viewers. Leonard Barden was the regular chess expert, although the young and articulate international master Bill Hartston often co-commentated: the BBC regarded him as steady in a crisis (the show went out live on a Sunday night).

  Around the world, the contest captured headlines. The prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, courted popularity by professing a fascination for chess to local journalists. The Bangladesh Observer says he became so absorbed by a game of chess at the National Press Club that he pulled up a chair and began to watch it—there is a photograph to prove it. Egypt’s official paper Al-Ahram reproduced a photograph of Fischer swimming in the pool at his hotel, the Loftleidir. The Yugoslav grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric reported daily for Radio Belgrade. In Belgrade itself, the games were replicated on a large display screen in Republic Square. During the weekend, a thousand people would be there to watch. In the main Argentinean newspaper, Clarin, the match was front-page news for almost two months, until it was superseded by a massacre of political prisoners in a jail in Patagonia. Grandmaster Miguel Najdorf was covering the event for the popular radio show El Fontana.

  In the Italian daily La Stampa, a doctor made a neurological analysis of Fischer’s and Spassky’s brains. The more conservative Milan-based Corriere della Sera carried an exclusive interview with Fischer—after their correspondent had bumped into him at a restaurant. For journalists in Britain, where headline writing had long been turned into an art form, the match provided fertile subject matter. After one Fischer victory, the mass circulation tabloid Daily Mirror bellowed, SPASSKY SMASHKI.

  Chess moved out of dilapidated back rooms to become part of consumer and commercial society. Advertisers and marketing managers called on it as a brand image to add allure to their products. To anyone wanting to identify the match as one between two political systems, the gleeful speed with which capitalist America responded to the business possibilities of the game should have been proof enough.

  In New York, just up the road from the UN, the Metropolitan Museum put on an exhibition of chess pieces collected from all around the world. Department stores like Macy’s placed full-page advertisements in the press for chess courses as well as for chess books. Chess was now in fashion—and, like glamorous models, could be used to sell. An upmarket men’s clothing store encouraged custom with a picture of a board and the slogan YOUR MOVE, GENTLEMEN. The Dime Savings Bank also had a chessboard in its advertisement, this time with the slogan SMART SAVERS MAKE THEIR MOVE TO THE DIME. A sports shop used a picture of chess sets with the headline NOW IT’S AN AMERICAN SPORT!

  And it was. With the transformation in the visibility and appeal of chess, there was a sudden thirst for information on the game—articles appeared on other grandmasters, on former world champions, on chess terminology. There was a bonanza in the sale of chess sets; in Britain, shops sold out of traditional wood sets, and plastic sets had to be imported from abroad. Booksellers reported with astonishment that chess books, once the slowest-selling items in their stores, were now leaving their shelves faster than romantic fiction.

  Across the United States, during lunch breaks and after work, boards would be set up in public squares. The chess epidemic infected all generations and classes: the old played the young, business suits looked across the board at blue collars. An article appeared about two construction workers who had played each lunch break since the Fischer-Spassky match began. A photo shows them concentrating on the game, still wearing their hard hats. African Americans took up the game in increasing numbers—a lasting legacy of Reykjavik. Kibitzing decamped from the obscure club to the park bench: “Come on, patzer, even Fischer would resign in your position.”

  In bars and saloons, people who barely knew the moves began to place bets on the outcome of the Reykjavik games. The bookmakers Ladbrokes of London established official betting odds, with Fischer as favorite at six to four. In Atlanta, the owner of a basement snack bar, Anita Chess, discovered that misled chess fanatics were swamping her café, the Chessboard. A composer of politically inspired songs, Joe Glazer, found he had caught the mood with his seven-minute paean to Robert Fischer. The lyrics, composed well before Reykjavik, opened presciently enough:

  He studied all day

  and played all night.

  But he wouldn’t play a match

  unless things were just right.

  Inevitably, chess metaphors spilled into other items in the news, most particularly into politics. In The New York Times, an opinion piece by Tom Wicker described President Nixon’s decision to choose Spiro Agnew as his vice presidential running mate in the forthcoming election as a sort of “king’s pawn opening.” Why a “king’s pawn opening” as opposed to a “queen’s” or “queen’s bishop’s pawn” was unclear and unexplained.

  Predictably, diplomatic correspondents called on chess to describe negotiations between Washington and Moscow. One such article satirized the recent superpower summit, imagining it as a chess contest between Bobby Nixon and Boris Brezhnev. Far from shunning publicity, à la Fischer, Nixon courted it. “Nixon has insisted from the start that the match be held in as large a place as possible, that television cameras be turned on and kept on well before and after each game, that either he or his second be interviewed daily, and that all games be scheduled between 8 P.M. and 11 P.M., Los Angeles time….”

  In Britain, a broadsheet daily The Guardian wrote, “Getting President Nixon and Mr Brezhnev together [in May 1972] was child’s play compared with the Fischer-Spassky chess summit.” The editorial assumption was that readers on both sides of the Atlantic had followed the chess drama. “Mugs sell mags” is the rule, and the tall, besuited genius made a compelling picture, while his personality and behavior could be relied on for a peg or angle to hook the reader.

  The press attention given to the match was all the more surprising in the light of the competition for space.

  Most important, there was Vietnam. As Kissinger shuttled between Washington, Saigon, and Paris in search of a peace agreement, Nixon pledged that there would be no letup in the bombing of North Vietnam without substantial progress in the negotiations, though he continued to withdraw American troops. Meanwhile, jury selection had begun for the trial of Daniel Ellsberg on charges of conspiracy, theft, and espionage of the top-secret Pentagon Papers, the seven-thousand-page study of America’s involvement with Vietnam.

  The conflict in Southeast Asia was not the only fissile issue preoccupying the president: the election was looming. At 2:30 A.M. on 17 June of that year (Iceland’s Independence Day), five burglars wearing rubber surgical gloves had been arrested at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington’s Watergate complex. The police found they were carrying electronic eavesdropping equipment, cameras for photographing documents, walkie-talkies, and l
arge sums in consecutively numbered $100 bills. As the match went on, two young journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were on the trail, their articles slowly forcing their way from the inside to the front pages.

  Nixon was already involved in attempts to conceal the White House’s role in the break-in and continued to be at the center of the cover-up as summer turned into autumn and his thoughts were occupied with preparations for the Republican convention in late August (he was renominated by 1,347 votes to 1). The Watergate film All the President’s Men has the radio reporting Fischer’s forfeiture of game two as Woodward finds his first message from the secret source “Deep Throat” hidden in his breakfast New York Times. With the growing involvement of Congress and the courts and daily fresh evidence from the press, as the match ground on, Nixon became engaged in his own desperate game of chess, making move after move to save his presidential skin.

  Chile was the scene of increasing anarchy (fueled, as we know now, by the United States) under the divisive and ultimately doomed government of the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende.

  In Northern Ireland, it was a summer of dreadful riots, paramilitary killings, and bombings. The psychopathic ruler of Uganda, Idi Amin, expelled the country’s fifty thousand Asian citizens on 5 August, accusing them of “sabotaging the country”—in fact, the Asian community was at the heart of Uganda’s business and commerce, as the country discovered to its cost after the expellees had grudgingly been given refuge in Britain by the Conservative government.

  Readers seeking relief could turn to the sporting pages. Billie Jean King beat Evonne Goolagong in the Wimbledon women’s final, while Stan Smith defeated Ilie Nastase in the men’s. In golf, Lee Trevino won the British Open, and Belgian cyclist Eddie Merckx took the Tour de France for the fourth time. And as the chess match was drawing to a close, attention was shifting to Munich and the Olympics: Soviet hearts would beat faster when tiny Olga Korbut rippled her way to gymnastic gold. Among other American triumphs, Mark Spitz would capture seven swimming gold medals.

  Munich would be remembered for the spilling of blood. A few days after the closing ceremony in Reykjavik, the Black September Palestinian terrorist group took eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage and then murdered them.

  If amid all these events, Fischer-Spassky found its way on to the front pages, it was not just because of the challenger’s personality, the chess itself, or the off-board antics. In the United States there was much more to it than that. The country was undergoing a fit of cultural pessimism, mainly because of Vietnam, but also because of social and racial cleavages at home. Now, in the words of George M. Cohan’s bouncy lyrics, here was “a real live nephew of [his] Uncle Sam, the kid with all the candy”—in other words, here was an undisputed, unalloyed world-class player who (once he started to play) appeared to be a kick-ass winner. When Americans bought into chess, they were affirming the American way. Fischer appeared to be a guarantee that can-do America could do it at a time when it was profoundly in need of that reassurance.

  19. TO THE BITTER END

  In a contest for the nicest guy in chess, Bobby Fischer would finish out of the money. But he is definitely the best chess player in the world.

  —ISAAC KASHDAN

  The match was following a path familiar from Fischer’s blitzkrieg to the final. Spassky appeared to be crushed. And experience told that once down, Fischer’s opponents never bounced back. The challenger was the master of the kill. In the face of weakness or injury, while others might ease up, he only raised the pressure.

  Would history be a guide to this match?

  Fischer opened the fourteenth game, again with the English. The realization must surely have dawned on Spassky that much of his opening preparation—such as it was—had been wasted. But the champion’s demeanor had improved. Maybe it was the arrival of Larisa that lifted his spirits, maybe leaving the hotel for its dachalike annex in which they could enjoy family life.

  His more positive state of mind became evident in this game. On move fourteen he played a knight retreat (Ne7), turning down the opportunity to simplify the position and exchange knights. Chess books on the match give Ne7 an exclamation mark, meaning it is strong (a weak move is branded with a question mark). Perhaps taken aback, Fischer gave away a pawn. Six moves later, Spassky blundered disastrously in return, pawn to f6 (double question mark), in what should have been a hard but ultimately won ending.

  Now it was down to rook, bishop, knight, and five pawns against rook, bishop, knight, and five pawns. The knights and bishops were soon exchanged, and the game petered out to a draw.

  “Oh, no!” ICELANDIC CHESS FEDERATION

  “Oh, yes!” ICELANDIC CHESS FEDERATION

  The players were no doubt still both fatigued by the exertions of game thirteen. The grandmasters in the audience, while admiring Spassky’s doughty character, were unimpressed by the quality of play. Referring to a hangover-inducing Icelandic schnapps, one joked, “It’s like they’re playing on brennivin.”

  Fischer’s only complaint in the game came after move one, when he objected to the lack of lighting. It was followed up later by a telegram to Euwe from Cramer in which the arbiter and the Icelandic Chess Federation were slated for being both “arrogant and inconsiderate.” Fischer’s demand to empty the front of the auditorium did not go away. The Icelanders, who had already lost the television revenue, pointed out to Cramer that vacating the first seven rows would halve the downstairs capacity to 475, seriously denting box office returns.

  Harry Golombek described game fifteen, on 17 August, as “one of the most thrilling I have ever seen in a world championship match.” It was a Sicilian opening, and Fischer was offered the chance of taking it down the poisoned pawn variation, the same line in which he had been so humiliated in game eleven. Would he rise to the challenge, show that he had not been cowed, seek his revenge? In other words, would he bring his queen out to b6? The clock ticked on: in the analysis room they were willing him on. He had had nearly a fortnight to work on improvements and identify where it had gone so wrong before.

  The queen stayed on its square. Fischer moved his king’s bishop one diagonal, to e7. He had played this several times in his career, but for Spassky it still represented a minor psychological triumph. It seemed to put the Russian in an optimistic frame of mind: he prematurely advanced a pawn on move twenty-five, setting Fischer a simple trap, into which the challenger was never likely to tread. Byrne and Nei call Spassky’s idea “a silly stunt.” Then the champion confidently picked off one pawn and then another, but his rapacity only left most of the attacking possibilities to Fischer. In the end, after the adjournment, they settled for a draw—with black finding nothing better than to repeat moves with the same checks on the white king. So quickly were the postadjournment moves made that those manning the display board became confused, losing track of the position.

  That day, Fischer’s complaint to Schmid was couched more personally. Referring again to the noise, Cramer fumed that Schmid must “do something better than piously wave [his] hands from time to time.” The Americans reiterated their demand that several more rows of seats be emptied. The riposte from the Icelanders was that the gap between the dais and the first row of spectators was already greater than at any previous chess match.

  Game sixteen was played on a Sunday and witnessed by a full house. By move nine, the middle game had already been bypassed with the exchange of queens and they were into an endgame.

  For several moves, Spassky maintained triple isolated pawns—three pawns on the same column with no pawn on either side. This is a most unusual chess formation, and to a chess player its strange architectural structure has a visceral ugliness. Eventually, all three of these defenseless pieces were lost, and by move thirty-two the position had become lifeless, devoid of genuinely alternative strategies. It did not end there. Perhaps pure stubbornness kept them going for another thirty futile moves, when ordinarily they would have settled on a draw far
earlier. Was Spassky exacting his revenge on Fischer, forcing him to stay put at the board? Did Fischer see offering a draw as a humiliation? Whatever the reason, they carried on until move sixty, in what Larry Evans and Ken Smith in their match book, Fischer-Spassky Move By Move, describe as “a marathon of nonsense.” The audience became restless. Golombek wrote, “It is a sad confession to make but the last thirty moves… bored me to tears.” Byrne and Nei are equally dismissive: watching these two geniuses in such an elementary position was like observing Frank Lloyd Wright “playing in a sandbox.”

  Fischer might not be on the attack over the board, but he showed no compassion to the officials away from it. With his demand to remove the first seven rows ignored, he delivered an ultimatum. He would withdraw from the match unless conditions were improved. “I do not intend to tolerate them further.” From the seventeenth game onward, he said, the match would have to be played behind closed doors in a private room until the venue had been altered “completely to my satisfaction.” Cramer, naturally, backed him up; the sixteenth game, he said, was played in a hall “as noisy as a ball game in Milwaukee.”

  Cramer met Thorarinsson over lunch on 22 August, the day of game seventeen. The Icelander agreed to clear three rows of seats from the front; two were added at the back. This increased the distance between the players and audience by seven or eight yards, to a total of twenty yards. “To save the match, we shall remove some rows of seats, although it is with a bleeding heart, because we will lose revenue,” said Thorarinsson. The consent of the world champion and his team was not even sought.