David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

Boris Spassky insists that he worked and worked hard. Ivo Nei agrees but adds, not enough. Spassky maintained then and maintains now that he operates best with a clear mind, that physical fitness was crucial. Hence the tennis, skiing, and swimming. It is also true that the champion, in Mikhail Beilin’s warm assessment, “loved life, loved to relax, to talk and spend time with friends, to repose. He wasn’t like Korchnoi, for instance, grinding away for eight hours.” A typical day would begin with Spassky regaling his team over breakfast with the Greek myths he had read the night before and would later include his ration of sport, leisurely meals—and five hours for chess.

“The main deficiency in our schedule was Spassky’s flippant attitude,” says Krogius. “He believed that he understood Fischer well, and that he, Spassky, would ‘find the key’ to Bobby’s chess during the match. He was encouraged to hold this view by those leading Soviet chess players who had written accounts of Fischer’s and Spassky’s styles of play. Keres, Smyslov, Petrosian, Tal, and also Botvinnik (who expressed his views orally) unanimously dismissed the possibility of any fundamental changes in the American’s game, especially in the opening. Only Korchnoi identified fresh features in Fischer’s chess evolution. But since Korchnoi’s opinion was directed at Spassky in personal and harsh terms, Boris did not pay it much attention.”

In May, when another grandmaster, Isaac Boleslavskii, came to assist, the work rate was stepped up. Spassky’s play, it was reported back to Ivonin, was becoming more imaginative as well as more accurate. This coincided with the date being fixed for the match—no doubt concentrating the title holder’s mind. On a visit, Baturinskii noted the improvement: “Each day, six to seven hours are dedicated to chess analysis, and three hours to physical training (tennis and swimming in the pool).”

Whatever the regime, Vera Tikhomirova was struck by the good health radiated by the champion and his team. “I remember when they visited me in my office for a photograph, they looked so healthy and so ‘plume-y’—bright eyed and bushy tailed—that I asked myself, ‘Did they really work or just enjoy themselves?’”

Spassky’s troubled relationships, the negotiations over the match, the aggravation over his apartment, his incapacity for hard grind—these combined to ensure that he arrived in Reykjavik in less than a settled state and underprepared. But his conviction that there would be a feast of chess in Reykjavik and that he would win at the table in a historic victory was undiminished. “He really wanted to go down in history,” says Mikhail Beilin. “He always denies it: I’ve asked him that ten times, and he always says, ‘What do you mean?’ But I’m confident he really wanted to go down in history.” And he did—his name forever being associated with the staging of an extraordinary event in a small island state in the North Atlantic.

Fischer had already made his views on Iceland devastatingly clear. For the U.S. forces, it qualified as a “hardship posting,” he claimed, and GIs had to be paid a special extra allowance to compensate them for serving there. This was untrue. It was also unfair. Upon arrival in 874 C.E., the Norwegian Ingolfur Arnarson, the first settler in what is now the nation’s capital, must have gasped at the spectacular scenery: in the distance a towering snow-capped volcano, in the foreground white steam blowing off the shore. He named this area Reykjavik, meaning “Smoky Bay.” The land runs alongside a sea inlet, bordered on three sides by water. There is a whiff of sulfur in the air.

This bleak, windy, isolated island has a magnificent, if austere, beauty. It is a country of glaciers and geysers, of marsh and wild, hardy grass. In winter, night lasts all day; in summer, day lasts all night. Appropriately for the match, this volcanic country sits across a great subterranean divide, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

In 1972, Iceland was inhabited by only 210,775 people and had barely fifty miles of paved road outside the capital (nowadays, the most common vehicle is a four-wheel drive). Nearly half the population lived in Reykjavik.

In support of Fischer’s prejudice, the city’s modern urban planners certainly had a great deal to answer for. Despite its stunning landscape, Reykjavik has been transformed into an aesthetic shambles. Part of the explanation is too rapid expansion. At the end of World War II, the city was barely more than a fishing village. In the subsequent quarter of a century, it grew dramatically but in an ad hoc fashion, with housing developments dotted haphazardly around the grandly desolate landscape. The shops and office buildings were often in gray concrete, while the houses were white with brightly colored roofs. In 1972, there were few modern hotels, and communication with the outside world was poor. Then as now, there were almost no imposing buildings to dignify the capital’s center.

At first sight, Iceland did not seem a plausible candidate to host a match that was arousing worldwide interest. Could this remote island cope logistically? The country had no history of putting on events of this scale; indeed, it had never bothered to compete in such international auctions.

How did the World Chess Championship arrive in Reyjkavik?

Fischer had played all three of his Candidates matches in the Americas, at Vancouver, Denver, and Buenos Aires. He proposed to Max Euwe, via Ed Edmondson, that the final be held in the United States—even though playing on American soil would have given him a clear advantage. He flatly refused to consider the USSR as an option. Among other things, he feared for his safety there. Spassky, for his part, had security concerns about the United States. But nor did he want the match to be held in the USSR: he suspected some of his colleagues would support Fischer, and that would unsettle him.

If not the United States or the USSR, then where? At the start of the process, FIDE had announced that any city in the world could bid to host the championship, their sealed envelopes to be received by 1 January 1972. Several would tender sums that, for a chess match, were unprecedented.

When Spassky beat Tigran Petrosian in Moscow in 1969, the prize was $1,400. This time, from the outset, the award was to be of a different magnitude. Belgrade, the capital of chess-mad Yugoslavia, offered a hundred times more, an astounding $152,000. A second Yugoslav city, Sarajevo, sealed a bid of $120,000. Buenos Aires proposed $100,000, as did a third Yugoslav city, Bled. There were bids from the Netherlands, Rio de Janeiro, Montreal, Zagreb (the fourth Yugoslav city), Zurich, Athens, Dortmund, Paris, Bogotá, and Chicago (this last being disqualified for late arrival). Reykjavik pledged $125,000, the equivalent of fifty cents for every man, woman, and child in Iceland, the entire amount to be underwritten by the government, although the organizers hoped to more than recoup the outlay through the sale of TV rights.

Gudmundur Thorarinsson, president of the Icelandic Chess Federation (ICF), coordinated the bid. Gudmundur had been elected to the ICF post (in his absence) two years earlier: the nomination had come from his brother, Johann, a much better player, one of the best in Iceland. Johann also first suggested the Icelanders tender for the match. Thorarinsson says he only reluctantly agreed to spearhead the effort: after all, he had a full-time job as a consultant civil engineer. But he also nursed political ambitions, and the campaign was one way to be noticed. It helped that he belonged to the center-left Progressive Party, then in the coalition government, and was on good terms with Prime Minister Olafur Johannesson.