by Frank Brady
After introducing both challenger and champion, and their respective seconds and aides, FIDE representative Harry Golombek, an international master from the UK, announced that Geller wanted to make a statement before the drawing of the lots took place. Speaking in Russian, Geller said:
The challenger apologized in writing and the President of FIDE has declared that the match rules of FIDE will be strictly observed in the future. Taking into consideration the efforts made by the Icelandic organizers of the match, and the desire of millions of chess admirers all over the world to see the match, the world champion has decided to play with Robert Fischer.
Though the statement was mild enough, there was growing irritation in Fischer as he listened to the translation, and by the time it was completed, he was pale with indignation at the phrase “the world champion has decided to play with Robert Fischer,” as if Spassky were doing him a favor. Bobby was mortified. For one very brief second, he considered walking off the stage and out of the match forever. He felt he’d complied with the wishes of the Soviets by making the apology to Spassky, writing it by hand and personally delivering it, and he’d just agreed to go along with Spassky’s postponement. For Bobby, the Geller statement had soiled the first official ceremony of the match. The Russians were censuring his behavior in front of his friends and the world press. Somehow, Bobby maintained his composure. Fortunately, the drawing of colors quickly followed, leaving no opportunity to reflect further on the incident.
Lothar Schmid, the elegant German referee, handed each man a blank envelope, and Spassky chose the one that indicated he’d hold the pieces. Spassky concealed a black pawn and a white pawn behind his back in the time-honored fashion and then brought his closed hands forward across the board. Fischer, without hesitation, tapped Spassky’s right hand—and Spassky opened it to reveal the black pawn. Fischer didn’t change his expression.
Several hours later, coming home from bowling in the early hours of the morning, before returning to the hotel, Bobby sneaked into the playing hall to check out the conditions. After an eighty-minute inspection, he had a number of complaints: He thought the lighting should be brighter; the pieces of the chess set were too small for the squares of the custom-built board; the board itself was not quite right—it was made of stone, and he thought wood would be preferable. Finally, he thought that the two cameras hidden in burlap-covered towers might be distracting when he began to play, and the towers themselves, looming over the stage like medieval battering rams, were disconcerting.
The organizers started working on the problems immediately. They wanted everything perfect before the first pawn was moved on opening day.
When Fischer finally awoke on the afternoon of July 11, 1972, and it slowly began to permeate his consciousness that he was actually in Iceland about to play his first game for the championship of the world, he was nervous. After years and years of tribulation and controversy, and the brouhaha about the match, Fischer had arrived at the threshold of his lifelong goal. Laugardalshöll was to be his universe for the next two months.
All details had been checked and double-checked in the playing hall to ensure maximum comfort for the players. Laugardalshöll was a cavernous, dome-shaped stadium (someone described it as a large Icelandic mushroom), with white-covered sound baffles on the ceiling that resembled mammoth albino bats. The entire first floor was covered with carpeting to muffle the noise made by spectators, and the folding seats had been replaced with upholstered and consequently “soundless” chairs. The two film towers had been pushed back, at Fischer’s request, and the lighting intensity on stage increased. A handsome Eames-designed executive swivel chair, an exact duplicate of the one Fischer had sat in while playing Petrosian in Buenos Aires, was flown in from the United States.
Fischer rushed through the backstage corridor onto the subtly flower-bedecked stage and was greeted by the polite applause of an audience of twenty-three hundred. Spassky had made his first move precisely at five, and Schmid had started Fischer’s clock. Fischer, dressed in a white shirt and blue business suit, sped to the table; the two opponents shook hands while Fischer kept his eyes on the board. Then he sat down in his black leather chair, considered his move for ninety-five seconds, and played his knight to his king bishop’s third square.
It was a unique moment in the life of a charismatic prodigy in that, to arrive where he was, he’d somehow overcome his objections to how he’d been treated by the Soviets over the years. Everyone knew it, not only in Laugardalshöll but all over the world. As grandmaster Isaac Kashdan said: “It was the single most important chess event [ever].” A lone American from Brooklyn, equipped with just a single stone—his brilliance—was about to fling it against the hegemony of the Soviet Union.
Fischer left the stage twice during the game (pre-adjournment), once complaining that the orange juice left in his dressing room backstage wasn’t cold enough. Ice cubes were provided. He also asked for a bottle of cold water and a dish of skyr, an Icelandic yogurt-type dessert. This last request caused confusion in the stadium’s cafeteria, as they were unable to supply the skyr. Fortunately, a local restaurant could, and did.
As moves were made on the board, they were simultaneously shown on forty closed-circuit television monitors, in all points of the stadium. In the cafeteria, where spectators wolfed down the local variety of lamb-based hot dogs and gurgled bottles of 2 percent Icelandic beer, the action on the stage was discussed vociferously. In the basement, Icelandic masters more quietly explained and analyzed the moves on a demonstration board, while in the press rooms, lordly grandmasters surveyed the television screens and analyzed in their heads, to the confusion and awe of most of the journalists. In the playing hall itself, decorum and quiet reigned. When it didn’t, Lothar Schmid would activate a white electrical sign that commanded, in both English and Icelandic:
THÖGN!
SILENCE!
As the first game progressed, most experts began predicting a draw. And then, on the twenty-ninth move, with the position equal, Fischer engaged in one of the most dangerous gambles of his career. Without consuming much time on his clock (he’d equalized on the seventeenth move and was now ahead of Spassky on time), Fischer sacrificed his bishop for two pawns in a move that thoroughly electrified the audience and sent Spassky’s eyebrows arching. The trade of pieces looked like a schoolboy’s blunder. Grandmaster Edmar Mednis said in retrospect: “I couldn’t believe that Fischer was capable of such an error. How is such an error possible from a top master, or from any master?”
At first impression, it appeared that Fischer, overly eager to gain the psychological momentum of winning the first game, had overextended himself. But on closer inspection, the game still looked as though it could possibly end in a draw. Next, Fischer complained to Schmid that one of the cameras, which was poking through a hole in the blue-and-white FIDE sign located at the back of the stage, was disturbing him. No change was made, however.
On his forty-first move Spassky decided to adjourn the game: This would enable him to take advantage of overnight analysis. Since five hours—the official adjournment time—hadn’t yet been reached, he took a loss of thirty-five minutes on his clock. Spassky had a bishop and three pawns against Fischer’s five pawns. He sealed his move and handed the large brown envelope to Schmid.
Fischer analyzed the position through the night and appeared at the hall looking tired and worried, just two minutes before Schmid opened the sealed-move envelope. Following FIDE tradition, Schmid made Spassky’s adjourned move for him on the board, showed Fischer the score sheet so he could check that the correct move had been made, and activated Fischer’s clock. Fischer responded within seconds, prepared by his night-long study of the game, and a few moves were exchanged.
Fischer then pointed to the camera aperture he’d complained about the previous day, and quickly left the stage with his clock running. Backstage, he vehemently complained about the camera and said he wanted it dismantled before he continued. ICF officials quickly c
onferred with Chester Fox, owner of the film and television rights, who agreed to remove the camera. All of this took time, and Fischer’s clock continued running while the dismantling went on. When Fischer returned to the stage, thirty-five minutes had elapsed on his clock.
Fischer began fighting for a draw, but Spassky’s moves were a study in precision and his position got stronger. Eventually, it became clear that Spassky could queen a pawn. Instead of making his fifty-sixth move, Fischer stopped the clock and offered his hand in resignation. He wasn’t smiling. Spassky didn’t look him in the eye as they shook hands—rather, he continued to study the position. Fischer signed his score sheet, made a helpless gesture as if to say “What am I supposed to do now?” and left the stage. It wasn’t difficult to guess his emotional state.
Though there have been a number of World Championship matches in which the loser of the first game went on to win, there’s no question that Fischer considered the loss of the first game almost tantamount to losing the match itself. Not only had he lost, but he’d been unable to prove to himself—and the public—that he could win a single game against Spassky. Their lifetime record against each other now stood at four wins for Spassky, two draws, and no wins for Fischer. In the next several hours Bobby descended into self-doubt and uncertainty, but eventually his psyche shifted to rationalization: Since there could be no defect in his calculation and no question of his being the lesser player, the distracting camera was to blame for the loss.
The next morning, Thursday, July 13, the American delegation announced that Fischer wouldn’t play the next game unless all cameras were removed from the hall. Fischer insisted—and rightly so—that only he could say what disturbed him. But he refused to go to the hall to inspect the new conditions and decide whether they’d been sufficiently improved.
Schmid declared that the second game would start at five p.m., and if Fischer didn’t appear after one hour of official play had elapsed, he’d be forfeited. To complicate matters, one of the Soviets leaked to the press that if Fischer failed to come for the second game, Spassky would probably return to Moscow.
Spassky appeared on stage at two minutes to five, to a round of applause. At precisely 5:00, Schmid started Fischer’s clock, since Bobby was to play the white pieces. Back at the Hotel Loftleidir, Lombardy and officials of the U.S. Chess Federation futilely appealed to Fischer to go to the hall. A police car, with its motor running, was stationed outside the hotel to whisk him down Suderlansbraut Boulevard to the hall, should he change his mind. At 5:30 p.m., with Fischer’s clock still running, Chester Fox’s lawyer in Reykjavik agreed to the suggestion that the cameras be removed just for the one game, pending further discussion. When this solution was relayed to Fischer, he demanded that his clock be set back to its original time. Schmid wouldn’t agree, claiming that there had to be some limits. Fischer, in his underwear, sat in his hotel room, the door bolted and telephone unplugged, a picture in stony resistance. His mind was made up: “If I ask for one thing and they don’t give it to me, I don’t play.”
The spectators continued to gaze hypnotically at the two empty chairs (Spassky had retreated to his dressing room backstage) and a chessboard of thirty-two pieces, none of which had been moved. The only motion was the minute hand and the agitated red star-shaped time indicator on Fischer’s clock. It was a lonely tableau.
At exactly 6:00 p.m., Schmid stopped the clock, walked to the front of the stage, and announced the first forfeiture of any game in World Championship history. “Ladies and gentlemen, according to Rule 5 of the regulations, Robert Fischer has lost the game. He has not turned up within the stipulated hour of time.”
Spassky was given a standing ovation. He said to Schmid, “It’s a pity,” while someone from the audience, angry at Fischer, yelled: “Send him back to the United States!”
Fischer lodged a formal protest less than six hours after the forfeiture. It was overruled by the match committee on the grounds that he’d failed to appear at the game. The committee upheld the forfeit, but not without some trepidation and soul-searching. Everyone knew that Fischer wouldn’t accept it lightly. And he didn’t. His instant reaction was to make a reservation to fly home immediately. He was dissuaded by Lombardy, but it seemed likely that he’d refuse to continue the match unless the forfeit was removed. Schmid himself voiced his sincere concern regarding the danger to Fischer’s career if he walked out of the match: “What will happen to Bobby? What city would ever host a match for him?”
Bobby had his supporters, though. Grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric suggested that the cameras, staring constantly at him, may have signified human eyes peering at Bobby and distracted his attention. Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who’d written The Defense (about a genius who lives only for chess), also spoke up for Bobby, saying that he was “quite right” in objecting to the use of cameras in the match: “He can’t be subject to the clicks and flashes of those machines [on their tall tripods] above him.”
Notified of the decision and realizing its implications, Dr. Euwe, who’d returned to the Netherlands, cabled his own decision to Schmid in case Fischer refused to appear at the next game:
IN CASE OF NON-APPEARANCE OF FISCHER IN THIRD GAME, PRESIDENT OF FIDE DECLARES IF FISCHER NOT IN THE FOURTH GAME, MATCH WILL BE CONCLUDED AND SPASSKY WILL BE PROCLAIMED WORLD CHAMPION.
Fischer began receiving thousands of letters and cables urging him to continue the match, and Henry Kissinger called him once again, this time from California, to appeal to his patriotism. The New York Times even issued an open plea urging Fischer to continue his challenge. In an editorial entitled “Bobby Fischer’s Tragedy,” the paper wrote:
The possibility seems strong that his temper tantrums will turn the present world championship match into a non-event in which Spassky will retain his crown because of Fischer’s refusal to play.
The tragedy in all this is particularly great because for nearly a decade, there has been strong reason to suppose that Fischer could demonstrate his supremacy convincingly if only given the opportunity to do so.…
Is it too much to hope that even at this late state he will regain his balance and fulfill his obligation to the chess world by trying to play Spassky without histrionics? Consequential as is the two-game lead the Soviet champion now enjoys, the board is still set for a duel that could rank among the most brilliant in this ancient game’s annals.
Perhaps as a result of Kissinger’s interest in the match and his two conversations with Bobby, President Nixon also relayed an invitation to Fischer, through Life’s photographer Harry Benson, to visit the White House after the match was over, win or lose. Nixon said that he liked Bobby “because he is a fighter.”
In an effort to ease the situation and encourage Fischer to continue the match, Schmid announced that according to the rules, he had the right to move the match from the stage of the hall to a backstage room. Speaking privately to Spassky, Schmid appealed to him “as a sportsman” to agree to this new attempt to enable the match to continue. Spassky, ever a gentleman, was willing. By the time Fischer was notified of the new arrangement, he’d already made reservations on all three flights going back to New York on the day of the third game. He took a few hours to consider the offer, and ninety minutes before the start of play he said he’d be willing to give it a try if he was assured complete privacy and no cameras.
Why did Fischer continue to play? Probably a combination of genuine nationalism, faith in his ability to overcome the odds of a two-point deficit, a desire to get paid (even if he lost the match, he was to receive $91,875 in prize money, in addition to an estimated $30,000 from television and movie rights), and an overwhelming need to do what he’d always vowed to do, almost from his first official match: prove that he was the most gifted chess player on earth.
Spassky appeared on time at the backstage location; at first he sat in Fischer’s chair and, perhaps unaware that he was on camera, smiled and swiveled around several times as a child might do. Then he moved to his
own chair, and waited. Fischer arrived eight minutes late, looking very pale, and the two men shook hands. Spassky, playing white, made his first move and Fischer replied. Suddenly, Fischer pointed to a camera and began shouting.
Spassky was now on his feet. “I am leaving!” he announced curtly, with the bearing of a Russian count, informing Fischer and Schmid that he was going to the stage to play the game there.
Schmid recalled later that “for a second, I didn’t know what to do. Then I stopped Spassky’s clock, breaking the rules. But somehow I had to get that incredible situation under control.”
The men continued talking, but their voices became subdued. Schmid put his arms around Spassky’s shoulders, saying: “Boris, you promised me you would play this game here. Are you breaking that promise?” Then turning to Fischer, Schmid said: “Bobby, please be kind.”
Spassky gaped for about ten seconds, thinking about what to do, and finally sat down. Fischer was told that it was just a closed-circuit, noiseless camera that was projecting the game onto a large screen on the stage. No copy would be kept. He somehow accepted it.
Fischer apologized for his hasty words, and both men finally got down to business. They played one of the best games of the match. After Fischer’s seventh move (fifteen minutes had elapsed on his clock, to Spassky’s five), he briefly left the room. As he walked past Schmid, the referee noted that he appeared intensely grave. “He looked like death,” Schmid said afterward. Yes, and also incensed, indignant, and thoroughly, almost maniacally, determined.
When the game was adjourned on the forty-first move, Fischer’s powerful position was irresistible. The game was resumed the next day and Bobby, feeling ebullient because he was in a winning position, agreed to play on the main stage. At the start of play Spassky took one fleeting glimpse at Fischer’s sealed move, which won by force, meaning that there was no ambiguity to the position: Bobby had a clear win that was demonstrable and resolute. Spassky stopped his clock, signaling his resignation.