David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

Nevertheless, even articles praising Fischer’s chess tended to remind Soviet readers of his less laudable characteristics. He caused genuine umbrage in the Soviet official breast. No doubt bound up with this hostility was the Soviet sense of inferiority. In an internal report, the Director of the Central Chess Club, Viktor Baturinskii, complained angrily and inaccurately: “Fischer is provided with considerable moral and material support, and for these purposes the U.S. Chess Federation has received around $200,000 from various organizations.” He went on, “Appearances by Fischer are organized in the press, on the radio and on television, during which he gives assurances that he will become world champion in 1972 and makes insulting remarks about Soviet chess players.”

The pattern of approbation followed by condemnation was repeated in an article by international master Vasili Panov. Comparing Fischer and Spassky, the author noted: “Both are masters of the art of fine maneuvering and of combinational attack, both have the ability to squeeze out the smallest positional advantages, and both have perfect endgame technique… the creativity of Spassky and Fischer represents the culmination of all the achievements of the second half of the twentieth century.” But in the same article, he homed in on another aspect of Fischer’s character, quoting the American: “‘Chess provides me with happiness and money…. I follow what happens to my capital closely. I want to have a magnificent villa and an expensive car of my own….’” Panov seemed horrified. “American patrons of the arts, now paying generously for Fischer’s appearances, do not know much about chess. But they understand success! For them there are only winners and losers. And only success pays!”

Evaluating Fischer as both a man and a player became a high priority. In June, after Taimanov’s defeat, a bruised Taimanov and his now abject team manager, Aleksandr Kotov, gave an assessment of Fischer to the Sports Committee. What was remarkable about Fischer, they said, was his “demonic influence over his opponent when he sits at the table.” The long-held view of Soviet grandmasters that Fischer was a tournament player, not a match player, was inaccurate. Kotov and Taimanov blamed themselves for underestimating Fischer. They were struck by his habit of continuing to study chess even over dinner.

It was not all gloom. They thought their experience showed that Fischer was slow to get into a match; in the first three games he was sweating. A potential Achilles heel for the American was his narrow opening repertoire. Finally, said Taimanov, there was only one player who could beat him: Boris Spassky.

Together with a note from several other Soviet grandmasters, this review of Fischer was passed on to Spassky, though Fischer’s matches against Larsen and Petrosian were still to be played. At the beginning of June, Spassky’s team was assembled. It consisted of three grandmasters: his longtime coach, “Father” Igor Bondarevskii; Nikolai Krogius, a psychologist; and Efim Geller. Krogius had been part of Spassky’s training team, with Bondarevskii, since the autumn of 1967 and was to continue working with him until 1974.

Each had a specific task. Bondarevskii’s job was to study in minute detail 500 of Fischer’s games in an attempt to identify deficiencies and weaknesses. Krogius had developed a technique for appraising players’ psychology and was now applying it to Fischer. He aimed to find the critical positions in his games and assess Fischer’s thought processes, studying also his reaction to defeat. He would carry out the same process on Spassky and compare the two. Geller would concentrate on the openings.

Later, Krogius complained that Spassky had ignored the results of his toil, just as Geller grumbled that Spassky had not followed his openings advice. Ivonin recorded in his diary that Spassky had paid little attention to the notes on Fischer commissioned from other leading Soviet grandmasters such as Tal, Smyslov, and Petrosian, nor had he taken the opportunity to discuss Fischer with them in person. The champion had his reasons, some less respectful than others. “We don’t need general advice from old men,” he opined to Ivonin. And he was determined that these “old men” should not discover any of the new weapons he was developing for use against Fischer. “The most important thing is we won’t be able to tell them anything; we’re scared information may leak.”

It was and remains quite normal for grandmasters to fear that their ingeniously worked-through ideas might seep out to the wider world, but Mikhail Beilin describes this as a Spassky obsession and claims that the champion had been suspicious of others since childhood: “He would keep quiet; it was his nature, and he wouldn’t trust or believe anyone.” The world champion also believed that some grandmasters, Petrosian for one, actively disliked him. He had grounds to be wary. Because foreign travel and the other rewards for success were so dependent on the favor of the authorities, Moscow chess was a wasps’ nest of rivalry, intrigues, and plots.

So for Spassky the formation of a tight, loyal team was vital. To Bondarevskii, Geller, and Krogius, an Estonian player was added. Ivo Nei had captured the USSR Junior Chess Championship in 1948. He was only an international master, a lack of foreign tournament play having cost him the chance of the grandmaster title. Baffled by the choice, some put it down to Nei’s being a close friend of his fellow Estonian Paul Keres, whom Spassky was said to have idolized. Certainly Spassky was an admirer of Keres. But talent with a tennis racket was the primary reason for Nei’s selection. A former Estonian tennis champion, his major role was to keep Spassky physically fit. He was likable and ebullient, and according to Nei, he and Spassky enjoyed a freedom of conversation the champion did not share with the others. Looking back, Spassky says he trusted Nei, and it is probable that he felt more at ease with the unpretentious non-Muscovite than with the other denizens of the Central Chess Club.

However, the Sports Committee felt Nei to be an extremely poor choice. After all, he had little to offer in terms of chess analysis; he was not in the same class as the others, and if Spassky required a physical trainer, then a real expert should have been found. The KGB also objected to the non-Party member Estonian; during the match, doubts about him would take a more menacing turn.

By August 1971, as Petrosian prepared to meet Fischer in the last of the Candidates matches, Spassky discussed the details of his preparation with the Sports Committee. Baturinskii had already informed Ivonin that the world champion had not worked much in the previous year. Ivonin told Spassky he should be playing more in the Soviet Union, where the competitors were stronger and fought more fiercely.

Since becoming world champion, Spassky had played ninety-two games, eighty-eight of them abroad. Ivonin suspected that Spassky did not want tough competition. He appeared to be suffering from post—world championship loss-of-form syndrome.

In July 1971, in a small tournament in the Swedish city of Göteborg, Spassky had managed eight points out of eleven (five wins, six draws). In the Alekhine Memorial tournament in Moscow in November/December 1971, he was placed only joint sixth, below the new prodigy, Anatoli Karpov, and ex-champions Smyslov and Petrosian. He had agreed a series of unimpressive short draws. But he was not the only champion to have avoided tough competition. In a later article in the chess magazine 64, Vasili Panov commented: “Not one of our world champions, with the exception of Botvinnik, played even once in the Championship of the USSR—the strongest contemporary tournament—while they held the title. That is why they lost their feel for hard-fought battles. Even in the competitions in which the world champions were magnanimous enough to appear, they didn’t throw themselves fully into it, didn’t crave first place, and often—oh, how often!—instead of passionately searching for paths to victory were satisfied with modest ‘grandmaster’ draws and now and then conceded first place to a braver and more ambitious competitor.”