Frank Brady - Endgame

If Bobby Fischer was ever going to become the World Chess Champion, he would first need to finish near the top at an Interzonal, and he did this quite easily at Palma de Majorca in 1970. After eleven rounds, nearing the tournament’s midpoint, Fischer was in second place, one-half point behind the leader, Efim Geller of the USSR. Fischer and Geller were to meet in the twelfth round in a pivotal matchup.

Geller had not yet lost a game in the tournament. Perhaps more important, he’d beaten Fischer in their last three meetings and had more wins against Fischer than any living player. Here was a definite challenge for Bobby, and he attempted to stay focused and confident by carefully studying Geller’s other games in the tournament. Geller, who talked like a sailor and who had the look and build of a wrestler, arrived with his tie loosened, and wearing rumpled clothing.

Within the first few minutes of the game, Geller insulted Bobby by offering him a draw after his seventh move. Fischer sat back and initially laughed, and Geller chimed in. Bobby then responded with a statement that no one but Geller heard clearly. A bystander reported that Fischer had said, “Too early,” but Geller’s face turned red, suggesting that Fischer’s reply had been more caustic. Speculation was that Fischer’s response had been along the lines that early draws were solely the property of the Soviet state. When the official book of the tournament was published, the editors wrote of Geller’s seventh-move affront: “But why would Geller expect Fischer to take a quick draw? Fischer’s entire record as a player shows his abhorrence of quick draws and his wish at every reasonable (and sometimes unreasonable) occasion to play until there is absolutely no chance of winning. No draws in under 40 moves is an essential part of his philosophy.”

In subsequent moves Geller blundered badly, and Fischer won the game, beating a man who’d become a personal nemesis.

Bobby seemed to have come of age at Palma. Despite besting twenty-three of the world’s most eminent chess players, though, he remained relatively unimpressed with his performance: “I am satisfied with the result, but not with my play.” When reminded of his disastrous performance at the 1962 Candidates, he said: “Maybe this was a good thing. I didn’t have the maturity to handle it then.” He certainly had it at Palma.

Bobby’s success at Palma had brought him to the next level in his quest for the world title. After he’d failed to win the Candidates tournaments in Yugoslavia in 1959 and in Curaçao in 1962, he’d protested that he was gang raped by the Soviets who, with their short premeditated draws stole the championship from him. Now FIDE had finally acceded to Fischer’s repeated urgings and changed its system of choosing an opponent to vie for the World Championship. The federation eliminated the Candidates tournament , an event that had multiple players competing against one another, which Fischer charged led to the opportunity for collusion among the Soviets. In its stead, FIDE instituted Candidates matches . Fischer would now play games against each of the three contenders: two Soviets—Mark Taimanov and Tigran Petrosian—and the Dane Bent Larsen.

Analysts and players alike predicted that Fischer would win the Candidates, but not without a struggle. Even the Soviets were concerned. Tal predicted that Fischer would win 5½–4½ against Taimanov. Fischer himself seemed uncharacteristically self-doubting. Although he’d played seventy-four tournament games in the past nine months, with straight wins in his last seven games at Palma, he felt he was not in the best shape, and that he needed to play in more tournaments. Candidates matches require thorough preparations. Taking nothing for granted was one of the keys to Fischer’s success. As usual, he prepared arduously for his encounter with each opponent in the series of tension-filled matches that would eventually spread over six tiring months.

Mark Taimanov was his first opponent, a powerful competitor who, at forty-five, was playing some of the best chess of his life, and who’d played exceedingly well at Palma. Fischer was twenty-eight and in excellent physical shape. Their match was to begin in May 1971 in Vancouver, Canada, on the beautiful campus of the University of British Columbia.

Taimanov arrived with a full Russian entourage: a second, an assistant, and a match manager, but even with all the help, he was, nevertheless, helpless. Bobby defeated him in six straight games, the first shutout of a grandmaster in chess history.

The crushing loss virtually ended Taimanov’s chess career. The Soviet government considered it a national embarrassment and punished him for not drawing at least one game. Officials canceled his salary and forbade him to travel overseas. At the conclusion of the match, Taimanov had sadly told Fischer: “Well, I still have my music.”

Bobby’s match against Bent Larsen began in Denver on July 6 at four p.m., in the midst of an uncomfortable one-hundred-degree heat wave. Fischer was as dominant against Larsen as he’d been against Taimanov: He annihilated the Dane, shutting him out and winning every game.

It was nine p.m. on July 20, 1971, and Bobby Fischer had achieved what no one else had ever accomplished in chess: winning two grandmaster matches without drawing or losing a single game. He’d now won an unprecedented nineteen straight games against the strongest players in the world.

Fischer-doubters, especially the Soviets, had suggested that his total destruction of Taimanov was an aberration. His equally absolute defeat of the younger, highly respected Larsen proved that Fischer was in a class by himself. Robert Byrne, watching the match in astonishment, said he couldn’t explain how Bobby, how anyone, could win six games in a row from such a genius of the game as Bent Larsen.

The Soviets were relieved at first, since Larsen’s loss lessened Taimanov’s stigma. Television and radio networks throughout the Soviet Union interrupted regular broadcasts to announce the result. Millions of Soviets were avidly following the progress of the match, fascinated by Fischer’s mastery. Sovietsky Sport declared, “A miracle has occurred.”

Fischer arrived in Buenos Aires a few days before the start of the first round against Petrosian. This time he was not alone. Larry Evans came along as Bobby’s second, and the ever-present Edmund B. Edmondson of the U.S. Chess Federation was there as Bobby’s manager-representative. Petrosian had an entourage too: his manager, two seconds, his wife Rona, and two bodyguards.

Argentina treated the match as though it were an event of global significance. The president, Lieutenant General Alejandro Lanusse, received the two players, official photographs were taken, and Lanusse presented each with a beautiful marble board and a set of onyx chessmen. A single chess table was placed in the center of the vast stage in the Teatro General San Martín. Behind it hung a blue-and-gold circle, some fifteen feet in diameter, bearing the emblem of FIDE, its motto Gens Una Sumus (“We Are One People”), and the name of the Argentine chess federation. Slightly off center stood a demonstration board, about five feet by five feet, on which a man duplicated each move as the contestants manevered their pieces on the central chessboard, so that the audience of twelve hundred attentive people could follow the game. If they made a sound, red signs flashed SILENCIO.

Reporters asked Petrosian whether the match would last the full twelve games, the maximum that would be required if every game were drawn, with no wins or losses. “It might be possible that I win it earlier,” Petrosian replied, and confidently went on to explain that he wasn’t impressed with Fischer.