Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time

19. TO THE BITTER END

The match was following a path familiar from Fischer’s blitzkrieg to the final. Spassky appeared to be crushed. And experience told that once down, Fischer’s opponents never bounced back. The challenger was the master of the kill. In the face of weakness or injury, while others might ease up, he only raised the pressure.

Would history be a guide to this match?

Fischer opened the fourteenth game, again with the English. The realization must surely have dawned on Spassky that much of his opening preparation—such as it was—had been wasted. But the champion’s demeanor had improved. Maybe it was the arrival of Larisa that lifted his spirits, maybe leaving the hotel for its dachalike annex in which they could enjoy family life.

His more positive state of mind became evident in this game. On move fourteen he played a knight retreat (Ne7), turning down the opportunity to simplify the position and exchange knights. Chess books on the match give Ne7 an exclamation mark, meaning it is strong (a weak move is branded with a question mark). Perhaps taken aback, Fischer gave away a pawn. Six moves later, Spassky blundered disastrously in return, pawn to f6 (double question mark), in what should have been a hard but ultimately won ending.

Now it was down to rook, bishop, knight, and five pawns against rook, bishop, knight, and five pawns. The knights and bishops were soon exchanged, and the game petered out to a draw.

The players were no doubt still both fatigued by the exertions of game thirteen. The grandmasters in the audience, while admiring Spassky’s doughty character, were unimpressed by the quality of play. Referring to a hangover-inducing Icelandic schnapps, one joked, “It’s like they’re playing on brennivin.”

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:

On 3 August 1972, the next actor to play James Bond had been announced; henceforth Roger Moore would star as the British secret service agent 007, licensed to kill. Iceland might have been his first assignment. There was a gentle wave of sniggering through the audience when the Soviet allegations were publicized. “We will get 007 to investigate the hall,” quipped a member of the Icelandic Chess Federation.

In an explanation of why Reykjavik so ignited the public imagination, the rich stream of chess influence, allusion, and archetype in literature and film must play a part. Democrat against totalitarian, individual against machine, plot and counterplot, the images of chess player as alone and without feeling, insane but brilliant, scheming and utterly devoid of morality—some or all of these shaped (particularly Western) perceptions of the match. No doubt some of the Reykjavik jesters remembered the 1963 James Bond film, From Russia with Love, based on the earlier novel. From Russia with Love takes the plotting theme straight into the cold war. It reinforces our apprehension that the skills needed to control events on the chessboard are transferable—in this case, to a diabolical Soviet plot against the British secret service and its star agent, 007: Bond, James Bond.

The film opens with the final game of an international grandmaster tournament. Kronsteen, all high forehead, heavy eyelids, and intense, unblinking eyes, is competing against a Canadian called MacAdams.

“Kronsteen” is close in sound to “Bronstein,” and the game in the movie is in fact a variation of a brilliant match from Leningrad in 1960 between two Soviet grandmasters, the then world title challenger David Bronstein and Boris Spassky. In the movie, Kronsteen is victorious, having risked defying an order to break off the match and report to the clandestine international criminal organization SPECTRE (Special Executive for Crime Terror Revenge and Extortion), where he is Director of Planning. In real life, Bronstein lost when Spassky made a dazzling rook sacrifice, setting up a spectacular twenty-three-move victory. The other difference is that in the film, two of the pawns have been removed—the speculation is that the director, Terence Young, felt that aesthetically they ruined the shot. Without these pawns, Spassky’s combination would have failed; in cinemas worldwide, chess players shook their heads.

In Reykjavik, chess players shook their heads at Geller’s statement. But if, when the laughter stopped, audience and officiais had read the statement in detail, they would have had an unprecedented glimpse into the tensions within the Soviet camp. Although on the surface the statement was aimed at Fischer, it was also born of a deep frustration with Spassky and what Geller describes as his “impulsiveness,” his “slackening of concentration,” his not taking advantage of the challenger’s “technical mistakes” and failure “to grasp the position.” Then there is Geller’s view that the fight, now at game seventeen, was approaching its decisive stage. Ivo Nei later wrote that game seventeen was for Spassky practically the last chance to change the course of the match. In Moscow, they were saying, “The train has left the station.”

The timing is also curious. The reference in Geller’s statement to Fischer’s “repeated demands” suggests that the real trigger for the letter was Fischer’s latest ultimatum, coupled with the aggrieved feeling that the organizers always surrendered to him.

The chief arbiter said Geller’s allegations would have to be examined. “From the American side, we have had fantastic things, so why not from this side also?” Guards were positioned at the hall around the clock to prevent any nocturnal espionage. The American delegation offered a sophisticated explanation for their insistence that each player retain his own chair; Fischer was four inches taller than Spassky, and his chair had been adjusted accordingly. Cramer called the allegations “garbage. What experts do they want to examine the hall? The KGB?” He was nearer the truth than he knew.

As for the seventeenth game itself, once again Fischer unpacked a shock opening: a Pirc Defense (named after Slovenian grandmaster Vasja Pirc)—Fischer had never used it before in tournament play. In the Pirc, which has always been considered mildly eccentric, black concedes the center in the expectation of eventual counterplay. The main talking point, however, was the manner of the end. A player can claim a draw if the same position is repeated three times. On move forty-five, Fischer summoned Lothar Schmid and they conferred for a short period while examining the score sheet. Then Schmid nodded and the clocks were stopped. If Fischer moved his rook to el, the same position would indeed have occurred three times. Spassky afterward remained in his seat; the draw by repetition appears to have taken him by surprise. He was rook for knight up and was expected to battle on, though whether he could have achieved a breakthrough is unclear.

The game over, the Icelandic organizers approached two local scientists to examine the scarcely veiled charges of electronic and chemical chicanery. One was Dadi Augustin, an electrical engineer; the other was Sigmundur Gudbjarnason, a U.S.-trained professor of chemistry who had returned to his native Iceland from Detroit two years earlier. Augustin would investigate the lights, while it was Gudbjarnason’s job to inspect the chess table and the chairs: “When I returned from America, I brought back with me a state-of-the-art gas Chromatograph. It enabled me to analyze chemicals. We put on disposable gloves and took smear tests by wiping the table and chairs with a special tissue.” He also took samples from the walls and the stage. All were carefully placed in plastic bags marked “Fischer’s chair,” “rear wall,” and so on. They agreed to conduct their investigations gratis. Says Gudbjarnason, “It was our contribution to the match; we wanted to ensure that it would continue.” Had the Soviets known that, they might well have questioned the objectivity of the evaluation.

Gudbjarnason then set about comparing the profile of the chemicals on the one chair with that of the other and examining the surface swabs from both sides of the table. Throughout this period, the chemistry professor refused to answer the question put to him by journalists: Was it indeed possible surreptitiously to infect someone, in the way the Soviets had alleged? In part, he was silent because he did not want to spread alarm, but “I knew it was feasible, and I’m sure the Russians and the Americans knew it could be done. I’m sure they have used this kind of technique in the past.”

The study took several days to complete; they wrote up their findings in a short report, only a few pages in length. This was then handed in to the Icelandic assistant arbiter, Gudmundur Arnlaugsson. The Icelandic Chess Federation said Soviet charges of tampering were unfounded. The bottom line was that Gudbjarnason had found nothing wrong—the chemical composition of the chairs and either side of the table was identical and, as one would expect, consisted mainly of the materials used in polishing. Augustin had more luck—in the huge lighting fixture he found two dead flies, prompting much press hilarity.

However, that did not settle the matter: something unusual was observed. X-rays were taken by the Icelandic Maritime Administration (they routinely took X-rays to check the welding of shipping). The X-ray of Fischer’s chair appeared to show a long, tubelike object with a cylindrical loop at one end. It did not appear in Spassky’s chair. A second X-ray was taken. This time there was nothing. The chair was later dismantled. Inside they found some wood filler, apparently there because of a crack in the plywood seat. Loftily, the organizers took it to be the item seen in the first X-ray (though they never explained why in that case it did not show up in the second).

If game seventeen was seen by the Soviet camp as Spassky’s last chance to alter the course of the match, with his failure to break through defeat now loomed large. Tenaciously, he fought on. However, game eighteen also ended in a draw through repetition. Spassky’s king had been exposed throughout; by contrast, Fischer’s king spent much of the game locked away in a corner, a state of affairs with its own sort of frailty—if attacked, it had nowhere to run. This time, it was Fischer’s willingness to accept a draw that surprised the experts—he was a pawn up. For anybody else in the same position, the draw would have been understandable; with every half point, Fischer was edging closer and closer to victory. But Fischer, as Gligoric put it, “was reputed never to gun for a draw,” whatever the score. Was he now showing a human side? A psychological infirmity? Pragmatism?

The score was Spassky 7.5, Fischer 10.5, leaving the American only two points away from the title.

Prior to the eighteenth game, Geller had issued a protest about the removal of the front rows of seats, for which the Soviets had not granted permission. Schmid now negotiated an ingenious compromise which would have made that consummate deal-maker Henry Kissinger proud. The seats would go back to their original place, but they would be roped off and thus remain empty. Fischer entered the hall for the next game and appeared not even to notice the change. But Schmid’s patience was finally running out. When Cramer reiterated his demand for the removal of the first seven rows, accusing Schmid of bias toward the Soviets, the chief arbiter fired off a barbed letter, its tone entirely out of character. Cramer’s letter, Schmid said, [is] “no doubt meant to be helpful, but if so, then unfortunately is deprived of any opportunity of being useful by its largely inaccurate contents.” It concluded, “If you have any complaints or protests to make, please, and I must underline the importance of this, please make them in accordance with the rules of the match.”

Game nineteen was a clever little game, with both players producing the unexpected. Fischer came up with a startling defense on move twenty-one. Spassky had just sacrificed a piece—when he did so, one grandmaster said, “Hold on to your seat belts.” Brazenly ignoring his opponent’s undefended rook, Fischer forced instead the exchange of queens; it left the American with a drawn game. He was absolutely right: to have taken the rook—indeed, any alternative move—would have spelled disaster. Spassky had brilliantly and daringly taken risks, but to no avail. “That Bobby,” said Gligoric, “he always escapes.”

Before game twenty, the Icelandic Ministry of Finance made a goodwill gesture. It announced that the government had decided to ask Parliament in the next session to make the prize money tax-free. Normally, the winner would have to pay government and local income taxes of $28,000 and the loser about $16,000.

The game itself was a long, tough struggle that lasted through the five-hour session. The advantage moved from one player to another and then back again. At the adjournment, they were well into an ending, but one that was not clear-cut. The following day, when the game resumed, Geller was seen in the audience barely able to stay awake. The night had been spent buried in analysis. Spassky too looked gaunt and fatigued; they had been searching for a win that patently was not there.

It was the seventh draw in a row. There had not been such a consecutive run in the world championship since the marathon contest between Alekhine and Capablanca in 1927. Far from being dull, lazy games, several of these had been desperate, protracted, bare-knuckle brawls, exciting if not always pretty. Fischer, who normally moved much more quickly than his opponent, was now taking just as long on the clock. Spassky prodded and probed and took gambles; Fischer, on untested ground, clung on. While the commentators had predicted a Spassky collapse, the champion had instead dug in, held the line, and, incredibly, fought back. This had required more than just skill and concentration; above all, the champion had had to draw upon cavernous reserves of psychological strength.

The twenty-first game took place on 31 August. Since game eight, not a single move had been filmed. But on this day, the Yugoslav journalist Dimitri Bjelica smuggled a Sony videocamera into the hall and sat in the back row. On one occasion, as the ushers wandered up and down, looking for the slightest disturbance, Bjelica covered up the camera’s hum with a fit of coughing. He realized this could be the last game, and so his last chance to film.

Fischer had 11.5 points and thus needed only one more for the title—a win or two draws. With tickets at a premium, the auditorium was packed for what was potentially the culminating moment. After two months of farce, mystery, and tragedy, of edgy strain and petulant anger, of showbiz and high jinks, of bluff and double bluff, of demands and climb-downs, of genius and blunder, the people of Reykjavik—even those ignorant of the rules of the game—wanted to be there to witness the climax.

As usual, Lothar Schmid started the clock. As usual, Fischer was late. The game opened with a Sicilian. On his second move, Fischer, black, played pawn to e6, yet another new line for him. Spassky was fueling himself with cup after cup of coffee. It may have been the surprise of Fischer’s seventh move—a pawn thrust tried before but considered somewhat dubious—that unsteadied the Russian’s hand, causing him to spill his drink. With his clock ticking, he went in search of a cloth. Fischer watched the cleanup operation as though his opponent were crazed.

The queens came off early, leaving Fischer with the advantage of two bishops against bishop and knight, but with the disadvantage of double isolated pawns. “[When] Fischer obtained an edge,” Spassky said later, “I felt everything was finished.” On move eighteen, the champion sacrificed a rook for a bishop and pawn in a reckless bid to create complications and perhaps winning prospects. Move thirty was the turning point. Rather than retrench, set up an impregnable fortress, and settle for a draw, Spassky pushed his knight pawn two squares to g4, allowing his opponent to create and exploit deadly weaknesses in white’s flailing defense. Fischer played out the ending with unremitting, nerveless accuracy.

Adjournment came at move forty-one. Spassky seemed exhausted. He invested only six minutes’ thinking time on his last move, which was then committed to paper and handed over to Schmid, who carefully sealed it in the adjournment envelope. Fischer signed the flap, a standard security check. Now the audience could relax and chat, and as they rose from their seats, the conversation was of who held the positional edge. Fischer had by now sacrificed back a pawn, so with his rook and two pawns against Spassky’s bishop and four pawns, the combatants were in theory evenly matched. But Spassky’s pieces were tied down, going nowhere. Meanwhile, Fischer’s rook’s pawn was “passed” (that is, it had a clear view to the eighth rank, with no opposition pawns on its file or the adjacent files). Every pawn has the potential to be reincarnated as a higher being, a more powerful piece, normally a queen, but a passed pawn is a particularly potent threat. And Fischer’s rook and king were well stationed to shepherd its advance.

Most amateurs would have rated the prospects for either side as about even. However, the experts realized Spassky’s struggle to retain the title was over; his doughty fight back had collapsed and the grandmasters were predicting a Fischer victory. In Moscow there was already an acceptance that their man had lost: the champion had told Geller that there was no point in fussing over the analysis. Spassky knew he had not sealed the best move.

The following day, there was an audience of 2,500 people, some of whom had arrived early to guarantee a good seat and all of whom had paid $5 in the expectation of witnessing an exciting denouement. Fischer bounded in late, looking confident but, surprising for one who normally took care to appear impeccable, dressed in a hastily selected and still unpressed blood-red suit. For a change, Spassky’s seat was the one empty.

Two hours earlier, at 12:50 P.M., the champion had put in a call to the arbiter Lothar Schmid. He officially informed Schmid of his resignation; he would not go to the adjourned session. Schmid had had to phone Euwe: Could he accept a resignation by telephone? Euwe ruled this was permissible. Fischer was not informed and might not have found out until later, had the Life photographer Harry Benson not bumped into Spassky at the Saga hotel as the now ex-champion was on his way out for a walk. There followed a flurry of calls. Benson rang Fischer, who rang Schmid, insisting that, if true, this resignation must be put in writing. Schmid wrote something out himself but said Fischer would still have to show up at the scheduled hour for the adjourned session.

The match was over.

This was no grand finale, no knockout punch sending the champion to the mat, no winning hit into the stand or breasting of the tape. There were no hats thrown into the air, no stamping or cheering. This was the way the crown passed, not with a bang but a formal announcement. Once Fischer had arrived, Schmid walked to the front of the stage and addressed the hall: “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Spassky has resigned by telephone.” Polite applause broke out around the room. The spectators had seen no action for their entrance fee, but they were witnesses to chess history. The new world champion gave a gawky wave but rejected Schmid’s proposal to take a bow. The Italian daily Corriere della Sera severely disapproved of Spassky’s nonappearance: “He missed the salute he deserved. But he no longer deserves it. One should fight until the end. It is the law of sport, and he has betrayed it.”

Icelandic government cars were parked in front of the hall alongside the U.S. ambassador’s car. Victor Jackovich was also waiting there.

In victory, Fischer was at least magnanimous about his defeated opponent. Spassky was “the best player” he had met. “All the other players I’ve played crumpled at a certain point. I never felt that with Spassky.” President Nixon sent Fischer a telegram of congratulations. Spassky himself gave some interviews. He looked exhausted and said he needed to “sleep and sleep and sleep.”

The New York Times deployed Nietzschean rhetoric in their investigation of what they called “the aura of a killer.” “Basically the Fischer aura is the will to dominate, to humiliate, to take over an opponent’s mind.” It was uncanny, they pointed out, how players defeated by Fischer never fully recovered. A loss to another opponent could be excused away, put down to a bad day or a rare oversight. “But a loss to Fischer somehow diminishes a player. Part of him has been eaten, and he is that much less a whole man.” Fischer was guilty of serial “psychic murder.”

For their part, the Soviets were asking whether Fischer was guilty of other crimes.