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

9. BIG CONTEST, LITTLE ISLAND

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.

Both Spassky and Fischer were asked to list their preferences. At this stage, Spassky’s two chief desires were to play on neutral ground and not to split the match between two cities. He was also anxious about the weather. Holland was his preference. The Icelanders could point out that Reykjavik had a climate similar to Spassky’s home city, Leningrad.

The climate, in contrast, never seemed to trouble Fischer much. “Money, money, money,” was what he cared about, or so he said. His preference was always likely to be the highest bidder, Belgrade, where he had been widely admired since competing in the Interzonal in Yugoslavia as a fifteen-year-old. This admiration for Fischer was an obvious drawback for Spassky.

How, then, to decide? For the Soviets, the necessity of thrashing out a deal, of seeking the middle ground, was the beginning of a painful awakening. They had held a monopoly of the championship since the war. Details of any squabbling remained behind closed doors. Behind those doors they had been able to determine the site, the conditions, the prize. Now the authorities had to learn the art of compromise and to do so in doubly difficult circumstances, dealing with the Americans and dealing with Spassky.

Disarray and vacillation reigned. The possibility of playing half in the United States and half in Leningrad was canvassed. When this idea was abandoned, the list of preferences became Amsterdam, Iceland, Bled—or, if not in Europe, then Argentina. Later the order read Reykjavik, Dortmund, Paris, and Amsterdam. There was a further shuffling before the final list was produced. Interestingly, the money on offer seems to have been irrelevant to the Soviets’ decision-making process.

Small wonder, then, that in this confused atmosphere the first major row between the Soviets and FIDE occurred through what might have been a simple misunderstanding over the deadline for submitting lists of preferences. This had initially been set for 31 January 1972, but the Soviets believed Euwe had then brought it forward to 27 January: he maintained that the new date had merely been a FIDE request to speed the process along. The Soviets handed in their list on 27 January. The Americans handed in theirs four days later, when, to Moscow’s great annoyance and consternation, Euwe accepted it as arriving in time.

The price Euwe paid for his management of the location issue was that the Soviets would never again fully trust him to be impartial. Internal Soviet documents impugn his integrity, accusing him of being “indulgent” toward Fischer. The Soviets were further incensed when, during a trip to the United States, Euwe publicly predicted that Fischer would be victorious. In Euwe’s defense, it should perhaps be said that rather than being on Fischer’s side, he was on the side of the match taking place—but for the Soviets, in the light of Fischer’s behavior, this amounted to much the same thing.

Fischer and Spassky eventually submitted four locations each. The Americans chose Belgrade, Sarajevo, Buenos Aires, and Montreal; the Soviets chose Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Dortmund, and Paris. Thus the Soviets’ favorite city was capitalist, the Americans’ communist (though Yugoslavia was not within the Soviet sphere of influence). To put it another way, for both contestants, climate and cash superseded politics.

Negotiations stretched out over the next two months. On 7 February, Edmondson arrived in Moscow to hammer out a deal. He was both liked and respected there, knowing how to get on with his hosts (for instance, confiding in them his reservations on Fischer’s personality and behavior). Because there was little between the financial inducements offered by Belgrade and Reykjavik (especially given an explicit commitment from Iceland to pay the players 30 percent of the TV revenue), and because Spassky was adamant that he would find a Yugoslav summer insufferable, Edmondson signed an agreement for the match to be staged in Iceland.

Euwe’s sigh of relief had barely been exhaled before he received the news that Fischer, holed up in New York, was refusing to acknowledge the Moscow pact. He repeated that he wanted to compete in Belgrade or on American soil.

Desperately, the FIDE president sought a way out. On 14 February, he offered a compromise: to stage the first half of the match in Belgrade, the second in Reykjavik. It was a middle way that suited neither city. In Belgrade, there was resentment that Iceland would host the climax of the match. In Reykjavik, the concern was that one player might secure such a commanding lead in Yugoslavia that by the time the championship moved to Iceland, it would be as good as over. Fischer accepted the compromise. In Moscow, anger and frustration had erupted again. Ivonin described the atmosphere there as a madhouse. In his diary, he noted, “Protest to the very end.”

However, in his talks with the Soviets, Euwe had a major advantage: The world champion was impatient for the match to go ahead. At some point between 2 and 5 March, Spassky decided to let the two-city verdict stand, insisting that all the arrangements must be laid out in a comprehensive contract. The Soviets couched their face-saving retreat in altruistic terms. They would reconsider their attitude, they wrote in a letter to FIDE dated 5 March, for the sake of the millions of chess fans around the world and in view of their friendly relations with the Yugoslav chess authorities.

To finalize the details, representatives of the United States, USSR, Icelandic, and Yugoslav Chess Federations were summoned to a meeting in Amsterdam in late March. Euwe must have been confident that the imbroglio had been resolved, for he was off on a goodwill tour of chess federations in the Far East; the deputy president of FIDE, N. Rabell Mendez, a Puerto Rican, stood in for him. Euwe was surprised and hurt by Soviet criticism of his absence.

In spite of Fischer’s rejection of his last undertaking, Ed Edmondson acted as Fischer’s delegate. Negotiations lasted a few days. By 20 March, every aspect of the conduct of the match had been hammered out; the final session lasted until three in the morning. The rules were designed to cover all the minutiae, from the drawing of lots to determine who would begin with the white pieces to the question of exactly how late a player had to be (one hour) before the game was forfeited. The process was long and tiresome, but the atmosphere was relatively amicable. It appeared to be all wrapped up.

With Fischer, things could never be that simple. Two days later, the occupant of room G6 in upstate New York’s Grossinger’s resort hotel fired off a telegram.

Littered with spelling and typing errors, it was addressed to the head of the Yugoslav Chess Federation and to his Icelandic counterpart, Gudmundur Thorarinsson. In ninety words, Fischer repudiated Edmondson’s agreement and threatened not to appear unless the financial arrangements were changed so that all the income from the match, less expenses, went to the players.

To his credit, the Icelandic official sent back a courageously curt, handwritten reply: “Re your cable 22 Marz [sic]: any changes of the financial agreement in Amsterdam are out of the question. G. Thorarinsson.” From Grossinger’s there came a one-line response. Fischer refused to play at all in Iceland. The conditions were “unexceptable [sic].”

For the Yugoslavs, the match was becoming too much of a gamble. They now refused to host it unless they received a deposit of $35,000 from the United States and USSR Chess Federations as surety against the match not going ahead. The Soviets unwillingly agreed, even though they thought Spassky was allowing himself to be humiliated. The Americans—for whom this constituted a far greater risk—did not agree.

Perhaps Fischer understood that for Euwe an ultimatum was, in the American writer Ambrose Bierce’s phrase, the last warning before making concessions. Nevertheless, FIDE sent Fischer an ultimatum: He must confirm by 4 April that he was prepared to play under the Amsterdam conditions. Back from the U.S. Chess Federation came the soothing—if confusing—response that “Mr. Fischer is prepared to play at the agreed times and venues. Paul Marshal] will finalize negotiations in friendly fashion on our federation’s behalf.”

Working for Fischer now was a Manhattan-based show business attorney, Paul Marshall. Marshall had first met Fischer in 1971 through a client, the British entertainer David Frost, and over the next few months would be active on the challenger’s behalf at critical turns in the story. As a highly successful lawyer, he was used to getting his own way, though the combination of Fischer, FIDE, and the Soviets was a challenge for which no amount of time in Hollywood could have prepared him.

In the absence of an American financial guarantee, the Yugoslavs dropped out, leaving FIDE’s two-city arrangement in tatters. Once again, Gudmundur Thorarinsson seized the opportunity—offering to host the entire match if the opening could be delayed until 1 July. Acting unilaterally, Euwe agreed: If Fischer failed to show up in Iceland, later in the year Spassky would play for the title in Moscow with Tigran Petrosian, the losing finalist in the Candidates match.

Although Euwe was now advocating Spassky’s preferred location, the Soviets were nonetheless seething at what they perceived to be the FIDE president’s bias. Fischer had effectively ignored the 4 April ultimatum, yet Euwe had continued to seek a solution, one acceptable to Fischer. A secret document—with serial number 14279, dated 29 April 1972, drawn up for the Central Committee of the Communist Party—alleged that Max Euwe was “under the thumb of the American grandmaster.” “The pretender sets a precedent and is followed by the president,” was the bitter summary by the Soviet news agency TASS.

On 8 May, Euwe received a telegram that finally appeared to resolve matters: “Bobby Fischer agrees to play in Iceland according to the program sent to him—but under protest.” The signatures on the telegram were those of Edmondson and Marshall. According to Euwe, the text was drafted by these two and read to Fischer over the telephone. Only when he agreed to it in their hearing was the telegram sent.

Fischer himself had signed nothing. However, Edmondson sought to reassure Euwe that the absence of Fischer’s signature had nothing to do with his intention to play. But what did the phrase under protest imply?