David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

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.

But now came a Soviet bombshell. Spassky’s second, Efim Geller, issued a statement to the press in which he accused the Americans of using “non-chess means of influence” to weaken the champion. Here it is reproduced as written:

The World Chess Championship Match now taking place in Reykjavik arouses a great interest in all parts of the world including the United States. Mr B. Spassky, the other members of our delegation and I have been receiving many letters from various countries. A great number of the letters is devoted to an unknown in the chess history theme, i.e. a possibility to use non-chess means of influence on one of the participants.

It is said that Mr. R. Fischer’s numerous “whims”, his claims to the organizers, his constant late arrivals for the games, his demands to play in the closed-door room, ungrounded protests, etc have been deliberately aimed at exercising pressure on the opponent, unbalancing Mr. B. Spassky and making him lose his fighting spirit.

I consider that Mr. R. Fischer’s behaviour runs counter to the Amsterdam Agreement which provides for gentleman behaviour of the participants. I believe that the arbiters have had enough facts to demand that Mr. R. Fischer should observe the provisions of the match in this respect. Furthermore, it must be done immediately now that the fight is approaching its decisive stage.

We have received letters saying that some electronic devices and chemical substance which can be in the playing hall are being used to influence Mr. B. Spassky. The letters mention, in particular, Mr. R. Fischer’s chair and the influence of the special lighting over the stage installed on the demand of the US side.

All this may seem fantastic, but objective factors in this connection make us think of such seemingly fantastic suppositions.

Why, for instance, does Mr R. Fischer strongly protest against filmshooting even though he suffers financial losses. One of the reasons might be that he is anxious to get rid of the constant objective control over the behaviour and physical state of the participants. The same could be supposed if we take into consideration his repeated demands to conduct the game behind closed doors and to remove the spectators from the first seven rows.

It is surprising that the Americans can be found in the playing hall when the games are not taking place even at night. Mr. F. Cramer’s demand that Mr. R. Fischer should be given “his” particular chair, though both the chairs look identical and are made by the same American firm.

I would also like to note that having known Mr. B. Spassky for many years, it is the first time that I observe such unusual slackening of concentration and display of impulsiveness in his playing which I cannot account for by Mr. R. Fischer’s exclusively impressive playing. On the contrary, in some games the Challenger made technical mistakes and in a number of games he did not grasp the position.