Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

10

The Champion

TO KEEP BOBBY FISCHER HAPPY, the American Chess Foundation provided him with a room at the Henry Hudson Hotel in early 1972. As Fischer goes, so goes the chess nation, organizers believed. Also, since he was preparing to play Boris Spassky for the World Championship, his lawyers and U.S. Chess Federation officials needed to know where he was at all times. Questions arose almost daily about such details as the prize money, the schedule, and the venue. Decisions had to be made.

Up to that point, much of Bobby’s life had been nomadic because he spent so much time traveling from one competition to another. Whenever he returned to Brooklyn to prepare for the next tournament or match, he tended to sequester himself in his apartment. He’d often disconnect the telephone and render himself incommunicado—sometimes for weeks. This modus operandi wouldn’t have been workable as officials scurried to arrange a host of details for the World Championship match. So the Henry Hudson Hotel made sense, and it had the right atmospherics. It was where Bobby had won several United States Championships, and should he grow lonely in his room or want to play or talk chess, all he need do was take the elevator down a few floors and enter the Manhattan Chess Club. As its most eminent member, he was always given the red carpet treatment whenever he entered.

So it was that one night, shortly after taking up residence at the hotel, Bobby found himself stretched out on his bed, his heels locked over the edge, unself-consciously talking with two of his closest friends. The 1970s were the years of Nixon’s visit to China, the advent of Transcendental Meditation, cigarette advertising being banned from the airwaves, and fast-food chains multiplying. But none of those topics interested the three men in the room that evening. They were there to talk about chess and the anxiety Bobby was feeling.

Sam Sloan was a reed-thin stockbroker, with a slight Virginian drawl. A year younger than Bobby, his notable accomplishment wasn’t in chess—he was a tournament player but not of championship caliber—but in law. Aided by an eidetic memory, he was the last non-lawyer to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court—a case he won. Bobby trusted him.

The other man in the room that night was Bernard Zuckerman, only twenty-two days younger than Bobby, a fellow Brooklynite, and an international master. He was called “Zuck the Book” because he was considered by many—including Fischer—to have studied the literature on chess so thoroughly (“booked up,” as it is known in chess circles) that he was the most up-to-date opening theoretician in the country. However, he claimed that Fischer knew more. Zuckerman had soulful eyes, immensely long lashes, and shoulder-length hair, a residue of the ’60s. At tournaments he often arrived a half hour late for games, played rapidly, and usually offered a draw, which was invariably accepted. Bobby respected him. Both Sloan and Zuckerman were intensely interested in chess, Bobby, and women—interests that Bobby resoundingly shared in the first two cases and peripherally in the third.

That night the two men were being true friends and trying to calm down Bobby about his impending match. Although he’d just accomplished one of the greatest feats in the annals of chess by defeating Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian with a combined score of 18 ½–2½, Fischer was concerned about the strength of Spassky, who, he believed, had a “dynamic, individual style.” Bobby had never beaten him, and he revealed to his friends that he thought he might have trouble. “Why don’t you think you can beat him easily?” asked Zuckerman gently, pointing out that Spassky was no better than Petrosian, for example. “Spassky is better,” said Bobby somewhat woefully. “Not much better, but better.” Little did he know that Spassky, comparing his own performance to Bobby’s in 1971, judged Bobby the stronger player.

So much was at stake in the upcoming match that conflict was almost bound to result. Eventually, internecine warfare erupted between the United States and Soviet Chess federations and FIDE. The Soviets spared no energy in maneuvering for every advantage they could. They’d held the World Championship title for thirty-four years and had no intention of handing it to an American, especially an “uneducated” American. There were financial considerations as well. The six-figure purse that was being discussed would be the richest prize ever for a head-to-head confrontation in any sport other than boxing.

When Iceland submitted a bid to host the match, Bobby flew to its capital city, Reykjavik, to inspect the site. He was encouraged to play there by Freysteinn Thorbergsson, an Icelandic player in his early forties who’d drawn with Bobby in a tournament in Reykjavik in 1960. But the president of the Icelandic Chess Federation, thirty-two-year-old Gudmundur Thorarinsson, a soft-spoken engineer and Shakespearean scholar, was wary of Bobby. A man who carried a big stick and had political ambitions (eventually, he became a member of parliament), Thorarinsson wanted the match in his country but had a low tolerance for Fischer’s shenanigans.

While negotiations as to the venue and the prize fund continued, both players went to the mountains to train. Spassky ensconced himself in the Caucasus while Fischer settled in the Catskills, more than seven thousand miles away. Grossinger’s, a mammoth hotel complex in Ferndale, New York, the heart of the “Borscht Belt” where much of the New York City Jewish population had been vacationing for more than half a century, served as Fischer’s training camp for the four months preceding the match. Since Fischer’s Worldwide Church of God faith observed the same dietary and many of the Sabbath laws as the Judaic tradition, Grossinger’s was an ideal selection. There was no pork served in the dining room, and from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, the devout observed a sabbatical decorum.

Grossinger’s removed Bobby from the pressures of New York City, where he was just a ten-cent telephone call away from anyone who wanted to reach him, and it prevented people from dropping in for a casual visit and disturbing his concentration and study. The hotel was also renowned for catering to famous guests. Bobby loved being there and was in a perpetually good mood, with thoughts of growing rich from the impending match. He was saving money from his book royalties, tournament winnings, and exhibitions, and he informed his mother that he was doing “real well financially.”

At that time it looked as though the match with Spassky would have a total prize fund of $138,000, the highest amount ever for a chess match. Bobby was trying to not get too excited about the money that would be coming his way. In spite of all the money and acclaim, he wrote with a certain humility that he was doing his best “not to forget who I really am, and to keep my mind on the eternal values.”

He was also happy to learn that Regina had passed the examination that would allow her to practice medicine in the United States, and he was hoping that she would consider moving back from Europe.

To prepare for the strenuousness of the World Championship match, Fischer trained his body as well as his mind, with workouts in the hotel gym, fast laps in the pool, and a few games of tennis each day. He seemed to dominate the tennis court while he was at Grossinger’s, and other than his games with the resident pro, Fischer usually won all of his matches. His serve was graceful and forcibly delivered, as were his return volleys. While waiting for his opponent to serve, he rapidly twisted the racket, bounced from foot to foot, and swayed his body, always ready to move to either side of the court. Walking back to his cottage or off to the swimming pool, he often swung the racket at an invisible tennis ball, just as he did as a boy when he’d swing an imaginary baseball bat while gamboling along Flatbush Avenue. All this physical activity kept him in great shape. He wrote to his mother that he was feeling “real fine” and that everyone was saying that he looked good because of his daily training.

Only after hours of exercise would he sit down at his chessboard. In the evenings, in a state of quiet contemplation, he began his exhaustive inspection of Spassky’s games. This microscopic analysis often continued until the early hours of the morning. The reference text he consulted most frequently was what journalists were quick to describe as the “Big Red Book”—number 27 of the excellent Weltgeschichte des Schachs series—the games of champions—containing 355 games of Spassky’s, conveniently typeset with a diagram at every fifth move. Bobby never let the book out of his sight and carried it everywhere. It contained his own notes on Spassky’s games, jotted in pencil, with comments and question marks designating poor moves, exclamation marks designating good ones. Almost as a parlor trick, he would often ask someone to pick a game at random from the book, tell him who played it against Spassky and where the game was played, and he would then recite the game move by move. He had memorized more than 14,000 moves!

Although Bobby said in his letter to his mother that he was “studying a bit” for the match, in reality he was spending as much as twelve hours a day, seven days a week, going over such issues as what openings he would or wouldn’t play against Spassky and what kinds of games he felt Spassky was most uncomfortable playing. He was buoyed when he played over Spassky’s games in the recently concluded Alekhine Memorial tournament in Moscow. Bobby told an interviewer: “They were atrocious games. He was really lost in half the games in that tournament; really bad games on his part.”

While Spassky was supported by a small army of helpers, Fischer basically toiled alone. A British player, Robert Wade, supplied Bobby with a detailed analysis of Spassky’s openings in two loose-leaf books, one marked “Spassky: White” and the other “Spassky: Black.” Other than that, Bobby relied on his own efforts. To the press, however, he displayed nothing but confidence. “I’m not worried,” he said. And in a Muhammad Ali–type quote, destined to be picked up by the press, he added: “The odds should be twenty to one [that I will win].”

During the months Fischer spent in training at Grossinger’s, he was visited by several other players, but while chess was the topic du jour, no one really contributed to Fischer’s preparatory efforts. Larry Evans and then Bernard Zuckerman visited, helping Bobby in any way they could, but even though he respected them, he sometimes asked them to sit away from the board so he could think things through himself.

Later, Lombardy fought the notion of Fischer as a player who was totally self-sufficient, an island unto himself. “It’s true that he works alone, but he is learning from the games of other players all the time,” he said. “To say that Bobby Fischer developed his talent all by himself is like saying that Beethoven or Mozart developed without the benefit of the music … that came before them. If other chess players had never existed for Bobby Fischer to learn from, then there would be no Bobby Fischer today.”

Since Bobby’s suite had two bedrooms, he liked to have guests from time to time. Jackie Beers was his most frequent visitor. Bobby had known Jackie since childhood and they were an odd pair. Jackie was a rated expert, an excellent speed player, but he was always finding himself in trouble at chess clubs, usually because of his ferocious temper. Once, a fight at the Manhattan Chess Club resulted in a lawsuit against him that was eventually settled out of court, and there were stories of his chasing people in the street or their chasing him because of altercations. With Bobby, Jackie acted meekly and respectfully. He often stayed overnight in the Fischer apartment in Brooklyn and later was Bobby’s houseguest when Fischer lived in California. Jackie was no sycophant or whipping boy, as he’s been described by other writers. He recognized that Bobby was the “chief” of their friendship, but he wasn’t afraid to speak up and disagree. While Bobby knew of Jackie’s reputation for truculence and tolerated him nevertheless, he was careful not to include him in all areas of his life, knowing instinctively when Beers wouldn’t be welcomed by others.

At the beginning of May, Bobby’s Iceland acquaintance Freysteinn Thorbergsson made the journey from Iceland to America and checked in at Grossinger’s. At first, Bobby was a little reserved with him, but as they talked—for about seven hours—he warmed up. Though Bobby had always pushed for Belgrade as the site of the championship match, a tentative understanding seemed to have been worked out to at least split the match between Belgrade and Reykjavik. Thorbergsson clearly favored the idea of all the games being staged in Iceland. Going back to Bobby’s chalet, the two analyzed some games, and Thorbergsson continued his volley of subtle arguments for why Bobby should play exclusively in Iceland.

A gentle man, Thorbergsson had lived in Russia and was a rabid anti-Communist. He saw Bobby’s playing for the World Championship as a political act as much as a cultural one; and he used that line of reasoning with Bobby, maintaining that it would be morally wrong to allow the championship to be played within the Soviets’ sphere of influence. In an essay, he’d later write: “The Russians have for decades enslaved other nations and their own nationals. They use their victories in various sports, chess and in other fields to fool people and make them believe their system is the best.” He added that a Fischer victory would “strike at the uplifted propaganda fists of the Communists.”

By the time the Icelander left Grossinger’s the next morning, he felt that Bobby was on the verge of agreeing to play exclusively in Reykjavik.

As the date of the championship match grew closer, Bobby quit Grossinger’s and, assisted by one of his lawyers, Andrew Davis, a Yale University alumnus, checked into the Yale Club in midtown Manhattan, where he stayed for a few weeks.

As summer approached, the reality of the match caused such heightened curiosity that it seemed like Fischer’s every remark, his every action, was recorded around the globe. Even at Grossinger’s, far removed from the business of Manhattan, he’d been besieged by calls, cables, and visits suggesting schemes to make him—and their originators—rich. A “Bobby Fischer Chess Set” was suggested. Endorsements were sought. One Wall Street broker even tried convincing Bobby to become a “corporation,” like the Beatles, so that shares of “Bobby Fischer” could be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Fischer went his own way, agreeing to little and signing nothing.

Chess players were beginning to regard the forthcoming Fischer-Spassky duel as the most important match ever played by an American. Time magazine was just one of many media outlets beating the geopolitical drum. It dubbed the contest “The Russian Bear vs. the Brooklyn Wolf.” Spassky’s defense of his title became, symbolically, a defense of the Soviet Union, and the Russian’s millstone was a heavy weight to bear. Fischer, completely aware of the encounter’s political and cultural implications, accepted the extra layer of significance as his own responsibility. “I now feel a sense of mission to win the championship,” he declared. Asked if the bout would be a grudge match, he replied: “In a sense. But not personally between me and Spassky … it’s against the Russians.”

The challenger in any contest often has a special advantage in that he’s forced to play “up” in order to win; he’s motivated to compete harder because he must prove that he’s better than the champion. The title holder, secure in the knowledge of his superiority, frequently plays on his own “normal” level, falsely assuming that because he is the champion, the proven quality of his past play is sufficient for current victory. One advantage Spassky enjoyed, though, was a rule stipulation called “draw odds.” If he could draw every game, giving him 12 points, Spassky would retain his title without winning a game. Fischer needed 12 ½ points to dethrone Spassky.

Iceland, the westernmost and one of the smallest countries in Europe, sitting remotely in the North Atlantic just below the Arctic Circle, may have seemed a curious venue for a World Chess Championship. Largely uninhabited except around the coast, the island is a physical contradiction, partly covered with vast ice fields yet home to several active volcanoes that rise in flames from both the land and the sea around it. Virtually treeless, it features frosted picture-book mountains that are interspersed with rugged, lava-strewn terrain, giving the landscape an unnatural, almost lunar appearance: American astronauts trained there before their voyages to the moon. In 1972 the average income for an Icelander was barely $2,000 a year. But it is a spirited country, is pollution-free, and has no urban slums and virtually no crime.

So what made Iceland the ideal country to stage the Fischer-Spassky match? Undoubtedly it was the resoluteness, pride, and enthusiasm of its people, and their love of the game as an intellectual and cultural pursuit. Icelanders are among the most literate in the world and the Icelandic sagas rate among the greatest in literature. Icelanders read more books per capita than any other people on the globe, and—like the Russians—they almost all play chess. In the winter months when there is almost twenty-four hours of darkness, what better way to spend an evening or a weekend than to stay at home or visit a comfortably heated club, play chess for hours, and avoid the chill of the Atlantic winter with its gales, thunderstorms, and biting rain.

Over the years, Icelanders have sponsored many international tournaments and matches, and the possibility of holding what was being billed as the Match of the Century was more than exhilarating to chess players throughout the country. As it developed, the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match was one of the most expertly organized World Championship matches ever conducted, intoxicating for Icelanders as well as the tourists and members of the international press who descended on the capital city of Reykjavik. Photographic blowups of Fischer and Spassky adorned the windows of almost every shop, with black-and-white checkered displays serving as backdrops for huge papier-mâché chess pieces.

Most of the residents started out wishing for Fischer’s victory, but after the numerous false starts, threats, and general difficulties Bobby caused, sympathy began to swing to the gentlemanly Spassky. Fischer wasn’t satisfied with the financial arrangements. The winner was to receive $78,125 and the loser $46,875. Beyond that, each was to be given 30 percent of all television and film rights. Fischer, though, demanded 30 percent of the gate receipts in addition, arguing that paid admissions might amount to $250,000 and that he and Spassky should receive a share.

The Icelandic chess officials—who weren’t at all sure how they were going to fill the three-thousand-seat Laugardalshöll, the site of the match, game after game for as many as twenty-four sessions, not counting adjournments—argued that gate-receipt income should go entirely to them to cover their outlay for the stakes and the arrangements.

Fischer canceled his flight to Iceland at the last minute, on the evening of June 25. The airline had reserved a full row of seats just for him and had stocked the plane’s refrigerator with oranges so that Fischer could have fresh juice “squeezed in front of him,” as he’d requested, during the four-hour trip across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, talks continued between Bobby’s lawyers, Paul Marshall and Andrew Davis, and the Icelandic Chess Federation concerning the matter of the gate receipts. Both sides stood firm. During the ensuing week, additional flights were booked and then canceled by Fischer as headlines began to question whether he’d appear at all. Icelandic papers were asking HVENAER KEMUR HINN DULARFULLI FISCHER? (“WHEN COMETH THE MYSTERIOUS FISCHER?”) A few days after Fischer’s first flight was changed, Bobby and Davis drove to John F. Kennedy International Airport, apparently to board a Pan American flight. But, strangely, Fischer paused to buy an alarm clock and was seen by reporters and photographers (there were more than a hundred members of the press waiting to interview and photograph him). He fled the airline terminal and missed the flight. Later, he was observed at a nearby Howard Johnson’s restaurant, having dinner. When, indeed, would Bobby goeth to Iceland?

Although money was the focal point of the controversy, it wasn’t just about dollars (or kroners); rather, it was about Bobby getting his way. In this case, he was pretty confident he could receive what he demanded. As an editorial in The New York Times suggested: “If he plays in Reykjavik and wins—as he has an excellent chance of doing—his prospective earnings would make the amount he is arguing about now seem infinitesimal.” Fischer knew that. He also knew that the world was clamoring for the match and that if he held out a little longer, more money might be forthcoming.

The world press was, to say the least, not amused. Foreign papers reflected the outrage of their readership. RUSSIANS DISDAIN FISCHER FOR CONCERN WITH MONEY, blared a headline in The New York Times, and Tass, the Soviet press agency, editorialized: “Whenever the matter concerns Fischer, money comes first while sports motives are relegated to the background. Characteristically, his confidants are not chessplayers, but lawyers to whom he [entrusts] all his chess affairs.” The leading German Sunday newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, reported: “Fischer has dragged chess down to the level of a wrestling match. We’ve never known of such arrogance and snobbism.” The London Daily Mail stated: “Bobby Fischer is quite certainly the most ill-mannered, temperamental and neurotic brat ever to be reared in Brooklyn. As far as the international prestige battle goes, the Soviet Union has won the opening round 10 to 0.” What the press—and seemingly everyone else—failed to understand was that it was Bobby’s shrewdness in protecting his financial interests, rather than temper tantrums or neuroses, that was making him hesitate. He knew instinctively that the longer he waited, the more swollen the prize fund would become.

Bobby felt that journalists weren’t really interested in how or why he moved the chess pieces, but rather in the scandal, tragedy, and comedy of his life. To him, the press was a puzzle that he could never quite solve. He felt that he couldn’t lie if asked a direct question, and yet if he simply refused to answer, the assumption was that he was hiding something crucial.

Whispers had been bandied about as far back as 1958, when he played at Portorož, that he was an anti-Semite, but privately, he categorically denied it when playing at Netanya, Israel, in 1968. One of Bobby’s closest friends, Anthony Saidy, said that he never heard Fischer make an anti-Semitic remark until at some point after the 1972 championship.

During the match, Bobby didn’t issue any statements that were either anti-Semitic or anti-American—on the contrary, he appeared deeply patriotic and included many Jews among his friends, lawyers, and colleagues. But Wilfrid Sheed, an American novelist and essayist, penned a comment just before the match ended that many would later regard as prescient. In his The New York Times Book Review of a work by Ezra Pound, Sheed likened Bobby to Pound, the infamous anti-Semite and anti-American who was indicted for treason by the United States for his fascist broadcasts. Sheed wrote: “Of Ezra Pound, as of Bobby Fischer, all that can be decently said is that his colleagues admire him. There is no reason for anyone else to.”

By the time the opening ceremonies took place at Iceland’s National Theatre on Saturday evening, July 1, less than twenty-four hours before the beginning of the scheduled first game, reporters and spectators were making reservations to return home, in the belief that Fischer wouldn’t appear. Bobby had moved from the Yale Club to the home of Anthony Saidy, who lived with his parents in a large Tudor house in Douglaston, Queens. As Saidy later related, the house was subjected to an unending media barrage. Fischer was besieged with calls and cables, and photographers and journalists staked out the grounds in hopes of just a glimpse of him. Fischer headlines dominated the front pages of newspapers all over the world, crowding off such “secondary” news items as the 1972 United States presidential nominations.

Saidy suggested that there was an actual plot to keep Fischer from becoming World Champion, and this involved the wiretapping of his parents’ phone. “At one point, when Bobby was talking to Davis, who was in Iceland,” Saidy said, “Bobby made a reference to one of the Icelandic Chess Federation officials as being ‘stupid.’ Suddenly, he heard a woman’s voice cutting through the line saying: ‘He said: “He’s stupid.” ’ The line was obviously tapped.” Saidy added that Fischer also believed that the line was tapped.

Anything is possible, of course. There was a theory prevalent among a number of Americans, such as Fred Cramer, who was on Bobby’s team, that the Icelanders were underhandedly working with the Russians to repel Fischer’s assault on Soviet chess hegemony. Aside from the personal dislike for Fischer that a number of the Icelandic chess officials, such as Thorarinsson, openly felt, though, not one instance emerged suggesting that they did anything to hinder Fischer’s World Championship bid. Indeed, some of the Icelandic officials were convinced that Spassky was the better player and that he was going to defeat Fischer rather easily anyway. At the commencement of the match, they were privately expecting to see Fischer humiliated on the board.

The drawing for colors for the first game didn’t take place during the opening ceremonies, which failed to develop strictly according to schedule. Spassky was seated in the first row, elegantly attired in a gray-checked vested suit. Meanwhile, an empty seat, also in the front row, which Fischer was to have occupied, remained conspicuously vacant. While speeches were made in English, Russian, and Icelandic, the audience fidgeted, craning their necks to the side entrance, half expecting—hoping—that at any moment Fischer would make a grand entrance. It didn’t happen.

Dr. Max Euwe, representing FIDE, allowed Fischer a two-day postponement. “But if he does not show up by Tuesday at twelve noon, at the drawing of lots, he loses all of his rights as challenger,” Euwe said.

Fischer remained apparently unmoved: He wanted 30 percent of the gate receipts and was not traveling to Iceland unless his demands were met. The ICF received hundreds of cancellations of tickets and reservations. People who’d traveled from all over Iceland to see the first game, and who hadn’t heard that it had been canceled, were sadly turned away from the hall. Then a rumor spread through the press corps (there were now about two hundred accredited reporters and photographers) that Fischer was already on the island, that he’d arrived in a navy submarine to avoid the press and was hiding out somewhere in the countryside. Even though it was a rumor, several newspapers and agencies—including the eminent gray lady, The New York Times—published it as at least a possibility.

The Soviet Chess Federation lodged a biting protest with FIDE against the forty-eight-hour postponement, saying that Fischer actually warranted “unconditional disqualification.” Charging Dr. Euwe as the responsible agent, the federation warned him that it would consider the match “wrecked” if Fischer did not appear in Reykjavik by noon on July 4, Euwe’s deadline. Finally, two unexpected phone calls were placed, one from England, the other from Washington, D.C. The calls saved the match.

Journalist Leonard Barden phoned the Icelandic organizers to tell them that British financier James Derrick Slater, a chess devotee and investment banker, was willing to donate $125,000 to double the existing prize fund—if Fischer would agree to play. Slater, a millionaire, stated: “The money is mine. I like chess and have played it for years. Many want to see this match and everything was arranged. If Fischer does not go to Iceland, many will be disappointed. I want to remove the problem of money from Fischer and see if he has any other problems.”

Fischer’s first reaction was immensely positive. “It’s stupendous,” he said. “I have to accept it.” Later, he told a newsman that though he hadn’t studied the offer in detail, he’d decided to play the match because “there’s an awful lot of prestige of the country at stake.” Yet he still needed one more nudge to propel him to the board.

The second call proved to be that needed nudge. Saidy answered the phone for what seemed to be the twentieth time that day, thinking it was yet another request for Bobby to make a statement or grant an interview. Instead, it was the personal secretary of Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s national security advisor (and later, secretary of state), wanting to set up a telephone conversation with Bobby. Bobby dragged himself to the phone, and Kissinger started off in his deep, German-accented voice, “This is the worst chess player in the world calling the best chess player in the world.” Kissinger told Bobby that he should go to Iceland and beat the Russians at their own game. “The United States government wishes you well and I wish you well.”

After this ten-minute conversation, Bobby said he was going to play “no matter what,” and that the interests of the United States were greater than his personal interests. It was at this point that Bobby saw himself not just as a chess player, but as a Cold War warrior in defense of his country.

After months of disenchanting negotiations, the millionaire Slater, backed by the diplomat Kissinger, had accomplished the impossible. What made Bobby run—in this case, to Iceland? Three elements apparently: pride, money, and patriotism.

To avoid being spotted by either reporters or the public, Fischer was smuggled onto a Loftleidir (Icelandic Airlines) flight. He made the overnight trip with William Lombardy, whom he’d announced as his official second that same day. Lombardy, the large, pale, and intense Roman Catholic priest, was perhaps the chief supporting actor in the drama at Reykjavik. Thirty-five years old, six years older than Fischer, he was the first chess master of international importance connected with the Catholic Church since Ruy Lopez (sixteenth century) and Domenico Ponziani (eighteenth century) made their imprints on the game.

The drawing of the lots to determine who’d play what color, scheduled for noon at the Hotel Esja, attracted hundreds of journalists, officials of the ICF, and members of both the American and Russian sides. When Spassky arrived, he was told that Fischer was still sleeping and had sent Lombardy to draw for him. Unnerved, Spassky refused to draw and left the hotel in a huff. At lunch, shortly afterward, he told a newsman that he was “not abandoning the match,” but Fischer had acted improperly. “I still want to play,” he said, “but I will decide when.” He then issued the following statement, possibly written for him in Moscow:

Soviet public opinion and I, personally, are full with indignation at Fischer’s behavior. According to concepts common to all people, he has completely disqualified himself.

Therefore he has, in my opinion, called in doubt his moral rights to play the match.

If there now is to be any hope for conducting the match, Fischer must be subjected to just penalty. Only after that I can return to the question whether it is possible to conduct the match.

Boris Spassky

World Champion

The penalty the Soviets required was a forfeit of the first game. The Soviet Delegation also said:

Robert Fischer must apologize.

The President of FIDE has to condemn the behavior of the challenger.

The President of FIDE has to admit that this two-day postponement violated FIDE rules.

Euwe, again rising to the occasion, said in a touching display of humility that since two of the conditions concerned him, he’d be happy to compose a statement right there, admitting that he’d broken the rules and condemning Fischer “not only in the last two days but all through the negotiations.” After working on his statement for about ten minutes, while the audience—in uncomfortable sympathy—sat waiting, Euwe read his confession aloud, signed it, and handed it to Efim Geller, Spassky’s second. It stated: “1. The FIDE condemns the behavior of the challenger in not arriving on time, thus leaving the entire delegation and others in doubt about the realization of the match, and causing many troubles. 2. The President of FIDE admits that we had to postpone the match for two days; we violated the FIDE rules. I think it’s for special reasons, and on the basis of some presumptions which proved to be wrong afterwards. I declare that the FIDE rules and match agreements approved by FIDE shall be strictly observed in the future.” Euwe’s face was flushed by the chastisement and he was on the verge of tears. The Soviets claimed that, according to the rules, Fischer should have lost the match when he failed to appear on opening day; and only through their benevolence was the contest continuing. It was now up to Fischer to make the next move.

That night, Fischer composed an elegant apology to Spassky. One reporter, Brad Darrach of Life, contended that in the first draft of the letter, Fischer had renounced any share in the prize money and had said he was willing to play for nothing but the love of chess. Though one can imagine Bobby, on the spur of the moment, proclaiming: “I’ll prove to the world that I love chess more than the Russians!” it’s easy to understand that his poor Brooklyn roots ultimately spoke to him of the need for pragmatism. He still wanted a paycheck, but the desire to prove himself over the board was his strongest motivation for trying to heal the rift.

In the end, a second letter was composed, and it was this version that was finally presented to Spassky. Fischer drove to the Saga Hotel early on the morning of July 6 and accompanied the bellboy to Spassky’s room to watch him slide the apology under the door. The text:

Dear Boris:

Please accept my sincerest apology for my disrespectful behavior in not attending the opening ceremony. I simply became carried away by my petty dispute over money with the Icelandic chess organizers. I have offended you and your country, the Soviet Union, where chess has a prestigious position. Also, I would like to apologize to Dr. Max Euwe, President of FIDE, to the Match Organizers in Iceland, to the thousands of chess fans around the world and especially to the millions of fans and the many friends I have in the United States.

After I did not show up for the first game, Dr. Euwe announced that the first game would be postponed without prejudice to me. At that time you made no protest. Now I am informed that the Russian chess federation is demanding that the first game be forfeited to you. The timing of this demand seems to place in doubt the motives for your federation’s not insisting at first for a forfeit on the first game.

If this forfeit demand were respected, it would place me at a tremendous handicap. Even without this handicap, you will have an advantage to begin with of needing twelve points out of twenty four to retain your title, whereas I will need twelve and a half to win the title. If this demand were granted, you would need only eleven points out of twenty three but I would still need twelve and a half out of my twenty three. In other words I must win three! games without losses, just to obtain the position you would have at the beginning of the match and I don’t believe that the world’s champion desires such an advantage in order to play me.

I know you to be a sportsman and a gentleman, and I am looking forward to some exciting chess games with you.

Sincerely,

Bobby Fischer

Reykjavik, July 6, 1972

One obstacle remained and that was the Soviet Union itself. A Russian minister, Sergei Pavlov, head of the State Sports Committee, had cabled Spassky, furiously insisting that he return home to Moscow. Pavlov said that Fischer’s “tantrums” were an insult to the World Champion, who had every legal and moral right to refuse to meet Fischer. Normally, such a “recommendation” had the force of law, but Spassky refused, as politely and diplomatically as possible. He replied to Pavlov that he could not debase his own standards of sportsmanship and would see the match through despite Fischer’s outrageous conduct. It was a courageous act, and one that called for much finesse and force of will on Spassky’s part.

Fischer arrived twenty minutes late for the drawing of colors, and he and Spassky met backstage. After shaking hands, Spassky humorously tested Fischer’s biceps, as though they were two boxers “weighing in.” They then sequestered themselves for a few minutes to discuss the schedule. Spassky wanted a short postponement before the start of the match. Fischer agreed if Spassky would drop the demand for a forfeit. They came to terms, and a moment later they walked to the stage, applauded by the journalists and well-wishers who’d been waiting patiently. Fischer, spying the chess table, galumphed to the center of the stage and immediately lifted the white queen, testing its weight. Then, one hand in his pocket, he tested all the other white pieces and sat down, stretching his legs under the Scandinavian-designed mahogany table. Spassky also sat.

After introducing both challenger and champion, and their respective seconds and aides, FIDE representative Harry Golombek, an international master from the UK, announced that Geller wanted to make a statement before the drawing of the lots took place. Speaking in Russian, Geller said:

The challenger apologized in writing and the President of FIDE has declared that the match rules of FIDE will be strictly observed in the future. Taking into consideration the efforts made by the Icelandic organizers of the match, and the desire of millions of chess admirers all over the world to see the match, the world champion has decided to play with Robert Fischer.

Though the statement was mild enough, there was growing irritation in Fischer as he listened to the translation, and by the time it was completed, he was pale with indignation at the phrase “the world champion has decided to play with Robert Fischer,” as if Spassky were doing him a favor. Bobby was mortified. For one very brief second, he considered walking off the stage and out of the match forever. He felt he’d complied with the wishes of the Soviets by making the apology to Spassky, writing it by hand and personally delivering it, and he’d just agreed to go along with Spassky’s postponement. For Bobby, the Geller statement had soiled the first official ceremony of the match. The Russians were censuring his behavior in front of his friends and the world press. Somehow, Bobby maintained his composure. Fortunately, the drawing of colors quickly followed, leaving no opportunity to reflect further on the incident.

Lothar Schmid, the elegant German referee, handed each man a blank envelope, and Spassky chose the one that indicated he’d hold the pieces. Spassky concealed a black pawn and a white pawn behind his back in the time-honored fashion and then brought his closed hands forward across the board. Fischer, without hesitation, tapped Spassky’s right hand—and Spassky opened it to reveal the black pawn. Fischer didn’t change his expression.

Several hours later, coming home from bowling in the early hours of the morning, before returning to the hotel, Bobby sneaked into the playing hall to check out the conditions. After an eighty-minute inspection, he had a number of complaints: He thought the lighting should be brighter; the pieces of the chess set were too small for the squares of the custom-built board; the board itself was not quite right—it was made of stone, and he thought wood would be preferable. Finally, he thought that the two cameras hidden in burlap-covered towers might be distracting when he began to play, and the towers themselves, looming over the stage like medieval battering rams, were disconcerting.

The organizers started working on the problems immediately. They wanted everything perfect before the first pawn was moved on opening day.

When Fischer finally awoke on the afternoon of July 11, 1972, and it slowly began to permeate his consciousness that he was actually in Iceland about to play his first game for the championship of the world, he was nervous. After years and years of tribulation and controversy, and the brouhaha about the match, Fischer had arrived at the threshold of his lifelong goal. Laugardalshöll was to be his universe for the next two months.

All details had been checked and double-checked in the playing hall to ensure maximum comfort for the players. Laugardalshöll was a cavernous, dome-shaped stadium (someone described it as a large Icelandic mushroom), with white-covered sound baffles on the ceiling that resembled mammoth albino bats. The entire first floor was covered with carpeting to muffle the noise made by spectators, and the folding seats had been replaced with upholstered and consequently “soundless” chairs. The two film towers had been pushed back, at Fischer’s request, and the lighting intensity on stage increased. A handsome Eames-designed executive swivel chair, an exact duplicate of the one Fischer had sat in while playing Petrosian in Buenos Aires, was flown in from the United States.

Fischer rushed through the backstage corridor onto the subtly flower-bedecked stage and was greeted by the polite applause of an audience of twenty-three hundred. Spassky had made his first move precisely at five, and Schmid had started Fischer’s clock. Fischer, dressed in a white shirt and blue business suit, sped to the table; the two opponents shook hands while Fischer kept his eyes on the board. Then he sat down in his black leather chair, considered his move for ninety-five seconds, and played his knight to his king bishop’s third square.

It was a unique moment in the life of a charismatic prodigy in that, to arrive where he was, he’d somehow overcome his objections to how he’d been treated by the Soviets over the years. Everyone knew it, not only in Laugardalshöll but all over the world. As grandmaster Isaac Kashdan said: “It was the single most important chess event [ever].” A lone American from Brooklyn, equipped with just a single stone—his brilliance—was about to fling it against the hegemony of the Soviet Union.

Fischer left the stage twice during the game (pre-adjournment), once complaining that the orange juice left in his dressing room backstage wasn’t cold enough. Ice cubes were provided. He also asked for a bottle of cold water and a dish of skyr, an Icelandic yogurt-type dessert. This last request caused confusion in the stadium’s cafeteria, as they were unable to supply the skyr. Fortunately, a local restaurant could, and did.

As moves were made on the board, they were simultaneously shown on forty closed-circuit television monitors, in all points of the stadium. In the cafeteria, where spectators wolfed down the local variety of lamb-based hot dogs and gurgled bottles of 2 percent Icelandic beer, the action on the stage was discussed vociferously. In the basement, Icelandic masters more quietly explained and analyzed the moves on a demonstration board, while in the press rooms, lordly grandmasters surveyed the television screens and analyzed in their heads, to the confusion and awe of most of the journalists. In the playing hall itself, decorum and quiet reigned. When it didn’t, Lothar Schmid would activate a white electrical sign that commanded, in both English and Icelandic:

THÖGN!

SILENCE!

As the first game progressed, most experts began predicting a draw. And then, on the twenty-ninth move, with the position equal, Fischer engaged in one of the most dangerous gambles of his career. Without consuming much time on his clock (he’d equalized on the seventeenth move and was now ahead of Spassky on time), Fischer sacrificed his bishop for two pawns in a move that thoroughly electrified the audience and sent Spassky’s eyebrows arching. The trade of pieces looked like a schoolboy’s blunder. Grandmaster Edmar Mednis said in retrospect: “I couldn’t believe that Fischer was capable of such an error. How is such an error possible from a top master, or from any master?”

At first impression, it appeared that Fischer, overly eager to gain the psychological momentum of winning the first game, had overextended himself. But on closer inspection, the game still looked as though it could possibly end in a draw. Next, Fischer complained to Schmid that one of the cameras, which was poking through a hole in the blue-and-white FIDE sign located at the back of the stage, was disturbing him. No change was made, however.

On his forty-first move Spassky decided to adjourn the game: This would enable him to take advantage of overnight analysis. Since five hours—the official adjournment time—hadn’t yet been reached, he took a loss of thirty-five minutes on his clock. Spassky had a bishop and three pawns against Fischer’s five pawns. He sealed his move and handed the large brown envelope to Schmid.

Fischer analyzed the position through the night and appeared at the hall looking tired and worried, just two minutes before Schmid opened the sealed-move envelope. Following FIDE tradition, Schmid made Spassky’s adjourned move for him on the board, showed Fischer the score sheet so he could check that the correct move had been made, and activated Fischer’s clock. Fischer responded within seconds, prepared by his night-long study of the game, and a few moves were exchanged.

Fischer then pointed to the camera aperture he’d complained about the previous day, and quickly left the stage with his clock running. Backstage, he vehemently complained about the camera and said he wanted it dismantled before he continued. ICF officials quickly conferred with Chester Fox, owner of the film and television rights, who agreed to remove the camera. All of this took time, and Fischer’s clock continued running while the dismantling went on. When Fischer returned to the stage, thirty-five minutes had elapsed on his clock.

Fischer began fighting for a draw, but Spassky’s moves were a study in precision and his position got stronger. Eventually, it became clear that Spassky could queen a pawn. Instead of making his fifty-sixth move, Fischer stopped the clock and offered his hand in resignation. He wasn’t smiling. Spassky didn’t look him in the eye as they shook hands—rather, he continued to study the position. Fischer signed his score sheet, made a helpless gesture as if to say “What am I supposed to do now?” and left the stage. It wasn’t difficult to guess his emotional state.

Though there have been a number of World Championship matches in which the loser of the first game went on to win, there’s no question that Fischer considered the loss of the first game almost tantamount to losing the match itself. Not only had he lost, but he’d been unable to prove to himself—and the public—that he could win a single game against Spassky. Their lifetime record against each other now stood at four wins for Spassky, two draws, and no wins for Fischer. In the next several hours Bobby descended into self-doubt and uncertainty, but eventually his psyche shifted to rationalization: Since there could be no defect in his calculation and no question of his being the lesser player, the distracting camera was to blame for the loss.

The next morning, Thursday, July 13, the American delegation announced that Fischer wouldn’t play the next game unless all cameras were removed from the hall. Fischer insisted—and rightly so—that only he could say what disturbed him. But he refused to go to the hall to inspect the new conditions and decide whether they’d been sufficiently improved.

Schmid declared that the second game would start at five p.m., and if Fischer didn’t appear after one hour of official play had elapsed, he’d be forfeited. To complicate matters, one of the Soviets leaked to the press that if Fischer failed to come for the second game, Spassky would probably return to Moscow.

Spassky appeared on stage at two minutes to five, to a round of applause. At precisely 5:00, Schmid started Fischer’s clock, since Bobby was to play the white pieces. Back at the Hotel Loftleidir, Lombardy and officials of the U.S. Chess Federation futilely appealed to Fischer to go to the hall. A police car, with its motor running, was stationed outside the hotel to whisk him down Suderlansbraut Boulevard to the hall, should he change his mind. At 5:30 p.m., with Fischer’s clock still running, Chester Fox’s lawyer in Reykjavik agreed to the suggestion that the cameras be removed just for the one game, pending further discussion. When this solution was relayed to Fischer, he demanded that his clock be set back to its original time. Schmid wouldn’t agree, claiming that there had to be some limits. Fischer, in his underwear, sat in his hotel room, the door bolted and telephone unplugged, a picture in stony resistance. His mind was made up: “If I ask for one thing and they don’t give it to me, I don’t play.”

The spectators continued to gaze hypnotically at the two empty chairs (Spassky had retreated to his dressing room backstage) and a chessboard of thirty-two pieces, none of which had been moved. The only motion was the minute hand and the agitated red star-shaped time indicator on Fischer’s clock. It was a lonely tableau.

At exactly 6:00 p.m., Schmid stopped the clock, walked to the front of the stage, and announced the first forfeiture of any game in World Championship history. “Ladies and gentlemen, according to Rule 5 of the regulations, Robert Fischer has lost the game. He has not turned up within the stipulated hour of time.”

Spassky was given a standing ovation. He said to Schmid, “It’s a pity,” while someone from the audience, angry at Fischer, yelled: “Send him back to the United States!”

Fischer lodged a formal protest less than six hours after the forfeiture. It was overruled by the match committee on the grounds that he’d failed to appear at the game. The committee upheld the forfeit, but not without some trepidation and soul-searching. Everyone knew that Fischer wouldn’t accept it lightly. And he didn’t. His instant reaction was to make a reservation to fly home immediately. He was dissuaded by Lombardy, but it seemed likely that he’d refuse to continue the match unless the forfeit was removed. Schmid himself voiced his sincere concern regarding the danger to Fischer’s career if he walked out of the match: “What will happen to Bobby? What city would ever host a match for him?”

Bobby had his supporters, though. Grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric suggested that the cameras, staring constantly at him, may have signified human eyes peering at Bobby and distracted his attention. Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who’d written The Defense (about a genius who lives only for chess), also spoke up for Bobby, saying that he was “quite right” in objecting to the use of cameras in the match: “He can’t be subject to the clicks and flashes of those machines [on their tall tripods] above him.”

Notified of the decision and realizing its implications, Dr. Euwe, who’d returned to the Netherlands, cabled his own decision to Schmid in case Fischer refused to appear at the next game:

IN CASE OF NON-APPEARANCE OF FISCHER IN THIRD GAME, PRESIDENT OF FIDE DECLARES IF FISCHER NOT IN THE FOURTH GAME, MATCH WILL BE CONCLUDED AND SPASSKY WILL BE PROCLAIMED WORLD CHAMPION.

Fischer began receiving thousands of letters and cables urging him to continue the match, and Henry Kissinger called him once again, this time from California, to appeal to his patriotism. The New York Times even issued an open plea urging Fischer to continue his challenge. In an editorial entitled “Bobby Fischer’s Tragedy,” the paper wrote:

The possibility seems strong that his temper tantrums will turn the present world championship match into a non-event in which Spassky will retain his crown because of Fischer’s refusal to play.

The tragedy in all this is particularly great because for nearly a decade, there has been strong reason to suppose that Fischer could demonstrate his supremacy convincingly if only given the opportunity to do so.…

Is it too much to hope that even at this late state he will regain his balance and fulfill his obligation to the chess world by trying to play Spassky without histrionics? Consequential as is the two-game lead the Soviet champion now enjoys, the board is still set for a duel that could rank among the most brilliant in this ancient game’s annals.

Perhaps as a result of Kissinger’s interest in the match and his two conversations with Bobby, President Nixon also relayed an invitation to Fischer, through Life’s photographer Harry Benson, to visit the White House after the match was over, win or lose. Nixon said that he liked Bobby “because he is a fighter.”

In an effort to ease the situation and encourage Fischer to continue the match, Schmid announced that according to the rules, he had the right to move the match from the stage of the hall to a backstage room. Speaking privately to Spassky, Schmid appealed to him “as a sportsman” to agree to this new attempt to enable the match to continue. Spassky, ever a gentleman, was willing. By the time Fischer was notified of the new arrangement, he’d already made reservations on all three flights going back to New York on the day of the third game. He took a few hours to consider the offer, and ninety minutes before the start of play he said he’d be willing to give it a try if he was assured complete privacy and no cameras.

Why did Fischer continue to play? Probably a combination of genuine nationalism, faith in his ability to overcome the odds of a two-point deficit, a desire to get paid (even if he lost the match, he was to receive $91,875 in prize money, in addition to an estimated $30,000 from television and movie rights), and an overwhelming need to do what he’d always vowed to do, almost from his first official match: prove that he was the most gifted chess player on earth.

Spassky appeared on time at the backstage location; at first he sat in Fischer’s chair and, perhaps unaware that he was on camera, smiled and swiveled around several times as a child might do. Then he moved to his own chair, and waited. Fischer arrived eight minutes late, looking very pale, and the two men shook hands. Spassky, playing white, made his first move and Fischer replied. Suddenly, Fischer pointed to a camera and began shouting.

Spassky was now on his feet. “I am leaving!” he announced curtly, with the bearing of a Russian count, informing Fischer and Schmid that he was going to the stage to play the game there.

Schmid recalled later that “for a second, I didn’t know what to do. Then I stopped Spassky’s clock, breaking the rules. But somehow I had to get that incredible situation under control.”

The men continued talking, but their voices became subdued. Schmid put his arms around Spassky’s shoulders, saying: “Boris, you promised me you would play this game here. Are you breaking that promise?” Then turning to Fischer, Schmid said: “Bobby, please be kind.”

Spassky gaped for about ten seconds, thinking about what to do, and finally sat down. Fischer was told that it was just a closed-circuit, noiseless camera that was projecting the game onto a large screen on the stage. No copy would be kept. He somehow accepted it.

Fischer apologized for his hasty words, and both men finally got down to business. They played one of the best games of the match. After Fischer’s seventh move (fifteen minutes had elapsed on his clock, to Spassky’s five), he briefly left the room. As he walked past Schmid, the referee noted that he appeared intensely grave. “He looked like death,” Schmid said afterward. Yes, and also incensed, indignant, and thoroughly, almost maniacally, determined.

When the game was adjourned on the forty-first move, Fischer’s powerful position was irresistible. The game was resumed the next day and Bobby, feeling ebullient because he was in a winning position, agreed to play on the main stage. At the start of play Spassky took one fleeting glimpse at Fischer’s sealed move, which won by force, meaning that there was no ambiguity to the position: Bobby had a clear win that was demonstrable and resolute. Spassky stopped his clock, signaling his resignation.

Tardy as usual, Fischer dashed onto the stage fifteen minutes late, out of breath. Spassky was already en route to his hotel. “What happened?” he asked, and Schmid said: “Mr. Spassky has resigned.” Fischer signed his score sheet and left the stage without another word. By the time he reached the backstage exit, he could no longer resist smiling at the well-wishers waiting there.

Though it seems ludicrous to suggest that the outcome of the Fischer-Spassky match was predictable after only two games had been completed, one point going to each player, the case can be made. The fact is, Fischer’s first win over Spassky was more than a narrowing of the gap. It was the creation of the gestalt Bobby needed to prove to himself that he was capable of dominance. A drawn game would have had no significance. He’d demonstrated in the past that he could, though admittedly infrequently, draw with Spassky. By winning, Bobby not only extracted the first drop of his opponent’s blood, he ensured that the wound would not soon close up.

Even as Bobby was waging a secondary battle against cameras in Reykjavik, cameras in New York were televising his epic struggle on the board. A thirty-five-year-old sociology professor, Shelby Lyman, a master who’d been ranked high among players in the United States, conducted a five-hour program almost every day on public television, discussing the games, move by move, as information and color commentary was phoned in to him by the PBS reporter in Iceland. He showed each new move on a demonstration board and attempted to predict what Fischer’s or Spassky’s next move might be. In a primitive form of interactive programming, members of the television audience phoned the studio to offer their suggested next move. Grandmasters were often guests on the show, evaluating the audience’s suggestions and discussing the win-loss possibilities of the contestants.

Lyman was eloquent in a homespun way, and in addition to his analysis of the match, he added explanations so that the analysis would be understandable to chess novices. For example, he once said: “It’s not enough to have respect for bishops in the abstract, you gotta watch out for them!” After the first few broadcasts, there were more than a million viewers following the games, and after two months Lyman became a star himself, with people stopping him on the street and asking for his autograph. So popular was the show that it crowded out the baseball and tennis coverage normally seen in sports bars in New York, and when the channel was covering the Democratic National Convention in Washington, the station was flooded with thousands of calls asking to have the chess match put back on. Station officials gave in to their viewers’ demands, dropped the convention, and went back to broadcasting the match.

Fischer’s quest and charisma transformed the image and status of chess in the United States and other countries, as well. In New York, intense demand quickly made chess sets an out-of-stock item at department stores such as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. Nor could the publishers of Bobby’s two books, My 60 Memorable Games and Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, easily keep up with demand for the chess star’s perspective. Chess clubs everywhere saw memberships swell; during the match, the Marshall Chess Club’s roster doubled to six hundred, and the United States Chess Federation added tens of thousands to the fold. For the first time in their lives, chess masters could make a decent living giving lessons because they had so many new students. People were playing chess at work, during their lunch hour, in restaurants, on their front stoops, and in their backyards. There’s no reliable statistic documenting how many people embraced the game as a result of the publicity surrounding the Fischer-Spassky match, but some estimates put the number in the millions.

Off-the-board pressures were undoubtedly placing Spassky (who was less inured than Bobby to being at the center of a storm) under great stress. And that might, in turn, have affected the sharpness of his thinking, because in the fifth game, after committing perhaps the worst blunder of his career on the twenty-seventh move, he resigned, ending one of the shortest decisive encounters in World Championship history.

Grandmaster Miguel Najdorf, seated on the sidelines, likened the next game, the sixth, to a Mozart symphony. Fischer built a crushing attack and enveloped Spassky in a mating net, forcing his capitulation. Fischer later implied that this was his favorite game of the match, and many grandmasters, such as Larry Evans, have indicated that the game was so beautifully executed that it became the match’s turning point.

Fischer began telling friends that he thought the match would be over in his favor in two weeks. He was becoming convivial and even made attempts at dry, almost British humor. At the beginning of August, while gazing out the picture window of his hotel room at the northern void during a gray, raw day, he quipped: “Iceland is a nice place. I must come back here in the summertime.”

Although it’s never been revealed before, Regina Fischer, disguised in a blond wig and stylish clothing, flew in from England and visited Bobby at the Loftleidir to wish him good cheer and congratulate him on what appeared to be the certainty of his winning the championship. She didn’t want to be recognized. Journalists’ curiosity about her would simply take away, she felt, from her son’s shining moment. She slept in Bobby’s suite overnight but didn’t go to the Laugardalshöll to see him play. Instead, she flew back to the UK the next day.

In many ways, “unlucky thirteen” was the pivotal game of the Fischer-Spassky championship encounter. It was a nine-and-a-half-hour marathon in which Fischer, even though a pawn ahead, had a difficult position right up to adjournment. He could find no improvement with overnight analysis, and upon resumption he was forced to continue seeking what looked like a draw. On the sixty-ninth move, obviously exhausted, Spassky blundered. When he realized his mistake, he could barely look at the board, turning his head away several times in humiliation and frustration. Fischer, after moving to collect Spassky’s gift, sat back in his chair, grimly, staring at the Russian—studying him. For a long, long moment, he didn’t take his eyes off Spassky. There was just a bit of compassion in Fischer’s eyes, which turned the episode into a true Aristotelian tragedy: Spassky’s terror combined with Fischer’s pity. Spassky finally moved, but resigned on the seventy-fourth move.

At that point in the match, Fischer stopped taking the chances that are often necessary to win a game. Because of his unusual caution, the following seven games, numbers fourteen to twenty, were all draws. After the match, Fischer explained that he hadn’t been playing for draws but realized that his three-point lead was enough to win the title, as long as he could prevent Spassky from winning a game.

After twenty games, the score stood at 11½–8½ in favor of Fischer. He needed just two draws or one win out of the remaining four games to wrest the title from the Russian, and from Russia. Fischer’s future was manifest.

Shortly before the concluding week of the match, the Soviet delegation, by way of a long and preposterous statement, made an accusation that Fischer might be “influencing” the World Champion’s behavior by “chemical substances if not by electronic means.” Incredibly, an investigation was launched by the Reykjavik Police Department and Icelandic scientists. They field-stripped Spassky’s chair, x-rayed it, took scrapings of all the surroundings, and even examined the air on the stage. The image of a burly policeman traipsing across the stage with an empty plastic bag, attempting to “capture” the air, was the stuff of Chaplinesque comedy. One object was found in Spassky’s chair that was not in Fischer’s otherwise identical chair! But the secret weapon turned out to be a blob of wood filler, placed there by the manufacturer. Fischer guffawed when he heard of it and said that he’d been expecting rougher tactics from the Russians.

Donald Schultz, part of Fischer’s team, was there when the wood from the chair was x-rayed, and he saw the X-ray itself. He also saw a second X-ray and noticed that the blob was no longer there. He couldn’t help wondering if one of the Russians had planted something in the chair to embarrass Bobby but on second thought had somehow removed it so that the Soviets themselves wouldn’t be embarrassed if it could be proven they’d put it there in the first place.

The Russians insisted that a lighting fixture above the stage be taken apart to see if there was an electronic device hidden there that might be affecting Spassky’s play. As a policeman began to unscrew the globe, he yelled down from the ladder that there was something in there. The Russians and the Americans ran to the base of the ladder as the policeman descended with his discovery: “Two dead flies!”

The case was embarrassingly closed, it having become clear that the Soviets, stunned at the probable loss of “their” title, were searching for an alibi, one that would sully Bobby’s achievement. The London Times summed up the chess circus in humorous, though pointed, fashion: “It started out as a farce by Beckett—Waiting for Godot. Then it turned into a Kafka tragedy. Now it’s beyond Kafka. Perhaps Strindberg could do it justice.”

The twenty-first game commenced on August 31, and Fischer, playing black, conducted the endgame in stellar fashion; at adjournment it looked as though he could win. If that were to occur, the twenty-first game would be Bobby’s last. To conquer Spassky and become World Champion, he’d always needed to collect 12½ points, and a win would get him to that magic number.

The next day, Harry Benson, a Scotsman who was a key photographer for Time Life, met Spassky at the Saga Hotel. “There’s a new champion,” Spassky said. “I’m not sad. It’s a sporting event and I lost. Bobby’s the new champion. Now I must take a walk and get some fresh air.”

Benson immediately drove to the Hotel Loftleidir and called Bobby on the house phone. “Are you sure it’s official?” Fischer asked. Told that it was, he said: “Well, thanks.”

At 2:47 p.m., Fischer appeared on stage at Laugardalshöll to sign his score sheet. Schmid made the official announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Spassky has resigned by telephone at 12:50. This is a traditional and legal way of resignation. Mr. Fischer has won this game, number twenty-one, and he is the winner of the match.”

The spectators went wild. Fischer smiled when Schmid shook his hand, then he nodded awkwardly at the audience, appeared uncomfortable, and started to go. Just before leaving, he paused ever so briefly and looked out into the crowd, as though he might be about to say something or perhaps wave. Then he quickly disappeared backstage and left the building. A mob swarmed around his car, which was driven by Saemi Palsson, his bodyguard. Television and radio reporters poked microphones and cameras at the closed windows. Lombardy sat in the backseat, and the three men drove off. Only after they were under way did Fischer allow himself to break into a big, boyish grin. He was the World Chess Champion.

Two days after Fischer won the championship, a lavish banquet was held in his honor at Laugardalshöll. Boris Spassky attended, as did the arbiter Lothar Schmid and FIDE’s president Dr. Max Euwe, who officiated. The event had been planned for weeks and was sold out long before the match was over. More than one thousand people attended (scalpers obtained $75 to $100 for a $22 ticket), and everyone feasted on lamb and suckling pig grilled over charcoal braziers, served by waiters in Viking helmets. The “Vikings” kept goblets filled with something called “Viking’s Blood,” a powerful concoction of red wine and cognac. On the same stage where Fischer and Spassky had fought it out for two months, an orchestra now played, but the music was a pleasant potpourri from The Tales of Hoffmann and La Traviata. The whole evening radiated an Old World ambience, as though the event were taking place in 1872, in a huge European beer garden, rather than 1972, in a covered Icelandic arena.

But where was Bobby Fischer? The clucks and whispers spread throughout the hall: “He isn’t coming!” “He has to come … even his sister is here!” “He wouldn’t do this to Spassky!” “He still has to collect his check!” “He’s already back in Brooklyn!” “He won’t come!”

After an hour had passed with no sign of the champion and with revelers already deep into their goblets of Viking’s Blood, Dr. Euwe lumbered up onto the stage, while the orchestra played the anthem of FIDE: “Gens Una Sumus.” Then suddenly, wearing a maroon corduroy suit that he’d had custom made in Reykjavik, Bobby appeared. Without waiting for the music to stop, he walked to the head table and sat. Spassky was two seats away, and eventually Bobby stretched his hand across and they shook. Euwe called Fischer to the stage, draped a large laurel wreath over his shoulders, and proclaimed him Champion of the World. Then he presented him with a gold medal and a certificate. The coronation was over in a blink.

Examining the medal, Bobby whispered to Euwe, “But my name is not on it.” Euwe smiled and replied, “We didn’t know if you were going to be the winner!” Without speaking further, Bobby returned to his table. Euwe continued to talk and mentioned that the rules would have to be changed for future World Championships, in large part because of Bobby Fischer, who’d brought so much attention to the game.

As Euwe continued with his remarks, Bobby appeared bored and lonely, perhaps because more than a thousand people were looking up regularly to stare at him. But even those who knew him well seemed afraid to approach. Two burly Icelanders, the size of restaurant refrigerators—both chess players—sat guard near his table, and whenever anyone came near Bobby to get an autograph, or a kiss, or just to offer their felicitations, they were not so gently steered away.

At his seat Bobby studied the stage from the audience’s perspective, seeing it as they must have seen it for two months, when they’d watched the combatants in profile. He was lost in a reverie, and one can only guess at his thoughts. Did he mentally replay some of his games with Spassky? Did he consider lines that he should have pursued—weigh whether he could have performed better? Did he admonish himself for all of the disquiet he’d caused—all of the disputes over money and cameras and lighting?

Some yearning for the comfort of old habits must have seized him, because, finally, he pulled out his leather pocket chess set and started going over the last game of the match. Spassky had moved to the seat next to him and was listening to Bobby’s analysis. The dialogue seemed natural, almost as if they were still playing. “I should have played here as my sealed move,” said Spassky, moving a little plastic piece and trying to demonstrate how he might have held on to the game. “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Bobby responded. He then showed the Russian all of the variations he’d worked out during the adjournment. Soon, grandmasters Efim Geller and Robert Byrne jumped into the fray. There was a blur of hands as the four men made moves on a chess set hardly larger than an index card. At that moment Offenbach’s “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” filtered down from the stage. But the chess players seemed not to notice.

Eventually, Fischer was given his two prize checks, one from the Icelandic Chess Federation and the other from James Slater, the millionaire whose eleventh-hour financial offer had saved the match. Bobby’s winnings came to $153,240. He was also given a collector’s item, a huge leather-bound, slipcased book on the history of Iceland. Guthmundur Thorarinsson privately complained—but not to Bobby—that the Icelandic Chess Federation had lost $50,000 on the match, because there was no money from television or film rights.

When Bobby had had enough of the party, he slipped out the back door with his friend, the Argentinean player Miguel Quinteros, and went off into the night to frolic with Icelandic girls whom they hoped to pick up. So anxious was he to leave the party, he forgot to take his commemorative Icelandic book, and it was never found.

Just before Spassky left Reykjavik, Bobby had delivered to the Russian at his hotel an amiable letter and a gift-wrapped camera as a token of friendship. Spassky seemed to have no animosity for the man who’d defeated him, although he knew he was going to face difficult times when he returned home to Moscow. His last comment about Bobby was “Fischer is a man of art, but he is a rare human being in the everyday life of this century. I like Fischer and I think I understand him.”

Mayor Lindsay’s limousine was waiting for Bobby when he touched down in New York. Bobby’s retinue included his bodyguard Saemi Palsson and Palsson’s wife, as well as Quinteros. “It’s great to be back in America” was Fischer’s only comment to the waiting reporters. The mayor had offered Bobby a ticker-tape parade down the “Canyon of Heroes” on Broadway in lower Manhattan, a rare honor given in the past to such luminaries as Charles Lindbergh, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Apollo astronauts, but Bobby wasn’t much excited by the idea. Friends and advisors reminded him that if he accepted, he’d be the only chess player ever to have a ticker-tape parade, and probably there’d never be another chess player receiving the distinction. He was unmoved: “No, I don’t want it,” he decided. He would, however, agree to a “small” ceremony on the steps of City Hall.

He received hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams, but the one that he was most proud of was as follows:

Dear Bobby,

Your convincing victory at Reykjavik is eloquent witness to your complete mastery of the world’s most difficult and challenging game. The Championship you have won is a great personal triumph for you and I am pleased to join countless of your fellow-citizens in extending my heartiest congratulations and best wishes.

Sincerely yours,

Richard Nixon

The “small” ceremony turned out to be “Bobby Fischer Day” in New York City. More than one thousand well-wishers gathered at the steps of City Hall as Mayor Lindsay awarded Bobby with a gold medal (and not the key to the city as has been incorrectly reported) and proclaimed him “the grandest master of them all.” Many of Bobby’s friends were there, such as Jack and Ethel Collins, Edmar Mednis, Paul Marshall (Bobby’s lawyer) and his wife Betty, and Sam Sloan. This time Bobby gave a speech: “I want to deny a vicious rumor that’s been going around. I think it was started by Moscow. It is not true that Henry Kissinger phoned me during the night to tell me the moves.” The audience roared. “I never thought I’d see the day when chess would be all over the front pages here, but confined only to one paragraph in Pravda.” That day, Bobby was not the old curmudgeonly Bobby: He was gracious, humorous, and willing to sign countless autographs. The New York Times in a mammoth editorial summed up what he’d managed to achieve:

Fischer has done more, however, than simply win the world title he has so long, even obsessively, considered his right. He has transformed the image and status of chess in the minds of millions, suddenly multiplying manifold both the audience for chess as a sport and the number of people actually playing the game.… From a wider perspective, the Fischer-Spassky match has a unique political importance.… The result was an atmosphere that, for all its tenseness, contributed to improving the broader ambience of Soviet-American relations.

Fischer, the Cold War hero, traveled to New Jersey and became the temporary houseguest of his lawyer Paul Marshall. So besieged was Bobby by the media that for a while Marshall had to have a bodyguard stationed in front of his palatial home to keep the press hordes at bay.