David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

With the match now rescued, chess fans could look forward to a titanic struggle at the board.

The first phase of the match had ended with a fearful outcome for the champion. In Karpov’s judgment, Spassky’s confidence had been smashed.

Game four was played out in the main auditorium, now a camera-free zone. Thorarinsson hinted, tantalizingly, that the camera saga might soon be resolved since there was “one solution [Fischer] will accept”—however, he gave no details. The game itself was a desperately tense encounter. In a display of admirable, even bold, self-assurance, Spassky opted for the Sicilian Defense, a counterpunching opening seen routinely on the grandmaster circuit, but one he himself rarely played; Fischer knew it better than anyone on earth because he had relied on it countless times with the black pieces. Now Spassky was deploying Fischer’s trustiest tool against its master: a bravura psychological stroke.

The opening, a specialty of the seventeenth-century Sicilian named Gioacchino Greco, is mentioned in the 1925 Soviet movie Chess Fever, which actually featured the real-life world champion José Capablanca. A marriage is on the rocks because of the husband’s obsession with chess. Eventually the couple do find happiness, through the wife coming to recognize the charms of the game. Her last line, just before the closing kiss, is, “Darling… let’s try the Sicilian Defense.”

On move sixteen, Fischer unwisely accepted the sacrifice of a pawn—after which Spassky’s two bishops grandly commandeered the board, gaining between them a sweeping control of the long diagonals. Had the champion in the complex middle game found room for an apparently wasteful rook move, he could have forced white (Fischer) to advance a pawn. This pawn would subsequently have blocked the maneuver by which Fischer escaped. In the end, Fischer was lucky to crawl out with a draw. Later, the experts all concurred that Spassky had chosen the wrong order of moves and thrown victory away. Spassky and his coaches had plotted the development of the game right up to move nineteen. However, Fischer’s responses were so quick that as the game wore on, Spassky was increasingly tormented by the idea that there had been a leak and that his rehearsed line had somehow been conveyed to the American. Believing in any case that he had found a stronger continuation, at the nineteenth move he deviated from his team’s homework.

Off the board, even though several of Fischer’s grievances had been resolved, the American camp was still unsatisfied. But their next attack, launched before the following game, was a public relations disaster. Fred Cramer issued a list of fourteen fresh demands on Fischer’s behalf, a list that mysteriously found its way to the press. The outrageous nature of some of the items made Cramer look foolish and Fischer seem more than ever the prima donna. He, Fischer, wanted: a different car (something superior to the two-year-old Mercedes he had been allocated), exclusive use of the hotel swimming pool, smaller squares on the board, more pocket money ($10 a day did not suffice), another hotel room, and a wider choice of magazines in his hotel. Since several of the points mentioned concerned the Loftleidir, the manager issued a sharp statement: “Mr. Fischer is a treasured guest, but he does not own the hotel.” Cramer was furious that the debate went public—“I have been stabbed in the back,” he moaned.

Game five took place on Thursday, 20 July.

Pawn to queen four, knight to king’s bishop three, pawn to queen’s bishop four, pawn to king three, knight to queen’s bishop three, bishop to knight five—the Nimzo-Indian, an opening in which black develops his pieces quickly and often exchanges bishop for knight. It frequently results in highly unbalanced positions. Spassky proceeded slowly—taking an hour and three-quarters for the first twenty moves, leaving him barely two minutes a move for the rest of the session. On move eleven, Fischer found an ingenious and unorthodox knight maneuver that most players would have rejected without a second glance, for on its new square the knight can be captured, leading to the kind of unsightly, disjointed pawn configuration beginners are warned to avoid. Pawns tend to be at their most robust, most difficult to pick off, and most useful as a defensive shield, when they are adjacent and can reinforce one another. In the Napoleonic wars, the British infantry usually fought in line abreast, the French in deep columns; in pawn terms, the British strategy is far superior. But Fischer had seen deep into the position and suddenly went on the offensive, his “weak pawns” transmogrifying into a potent force.

Although the challenger now had the better of the position, the widespread expectation was that to convert it into victory, to capitalize on his small advantage, he had a long slog ahead, two dozen more moves, a few hours’ more concentration. And even if he played with great precision, the outcome was by no means a foregone conclusion.

In the event, no such chess toil was required. On move twenty-six, Fischer attacked Spassky’s queen with his knight. The Russian had several safe and honorable retreats. He chose none of them. Instead, disastrously, he withdrew his queen a single square. It was a catastrophic error. Fischer whipped off a pawn with his bishop—and the game was simultaneously over. Spassky recognized immediately that Fischer’s bishop was immune from capture, thanks to a simple trap.

He had committed the sort of gross mistake all chess players, duffers and masters alike, have experienced at least once in their careers; realization dawns and the heart sinks at the very moment the fingers relinquish the moved piece. Chess is the most unforgiving of sports; there is no comeback, no second chance, from such a careless gaffe.

Icelanders are not an expressive people; equanimity is a national trait in which they take pride. But now the crowd erupted, breaking into a rhythmic chant: “Bobby! Bobby!” They stamped their feet and clapped their hands. In the canteen, the predominantly north European audience had a Greek moment, hurling plates and glasses into the air. With the match level at 2.5 points each, suddenly the talk was of the pressure on Spassky. Fischer left the auditorium looking smug. The American camp began to brief the media: The Russian was on the edge of a breakdown. He was clinging by his fingertips to sanity. By now, Viktor Ivonin had returned to Moscow and was present at a review of the match in the office of the sports minister, Sergei Pavlov. Present were three former world champions, Petrosian, Smyslov, and Tal, and at least four other first-rate grandmasters, Keres, Korchnoi, Semion Furman, and Leonid Stein. “Why on earth did Spassky permit the Nimzo-Indian in game five?” Petrosian wanted to know. The champion was hopeless in Nimzo-Indian-type positions, both as white and black. Their meeting, they understood, was futile. There was little they could do to assist Spassky several thousand miles away and at this late stage. Anyway, they could not tell him what to do. But the apparatchiks wanted to be kept abreast of the opinions of the experts—as a prime minister would want expert military opinion on the progress of a distant campaign.

Meanwhile in Reykjavik, daily discussions about the cameras continued among the ICF, Fred Cramer, and the television executives. The Icelanders’ budget had assumed major profits from television. Given the sums involved, the organizers and TV producers wanted and needed to believe that Fischer could still be brought round. But in an effort to circumvent Fischer’s antipathy to Fox, the American network ABC was brought in.