Manitowoc Herald-Times, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, Wednesday, June 16, 1976 - Page 6
Championship Chess Match Is Surrounded by Antics
Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of chess articles written by Rabbi Abba Leiter of Ansha Poale Zedek Synagogue, Manitowoc. Rabbi Leiter, an avid chess player, wrote the series as a tribute to the chess team of Washington High School, Two Rivers, which recently won the national high school chess championship at Cleveland, Ohio.)
The antics surrounding the championship match, were not the most glorious moments for Fischer or for chess as the attention of the world media was riveted on Rekovik, Iceland.
In the summer of 1972 each game's results were announced as the world followed the confrontation between Fischer and Spassky, between East and West, between capitalism and communism, between Bobby, the individualist par excellence, and the Soviet chess machine, the Russian collective effort exemplified.
After first being down two games to Spassky (one by forfeit), Fischer stopped his shenanigans and started playing chess. He started pulling the surprise moves in the openings, both on offense and defense. He neutralized the Soviet surprise or came up with some nuance of which the collective efforts of the Soviet chess machine did not even anticipate.
He mowed down Spassky game after game with a few draws and a loss interspersed. Toward the end of the match Spassky recovered somewhat to play almost even chess with Fischer, as Fischer coasted in. The final score was 12½-8½!
Fischer had done it. He had dismantled the Russian chess machine. He had single-handedly inflicted an ideological disaster on the Communist Party.
The Russian papers came out with articles saying that their players were becoming lazy, that they needed discipline, that they were getting too many privileges, that they were soft and that they had to return to the rigors of the Soviet work ethic to restore the glory of a quarter-century of world chess championship dominance (1948-1972) to the motherland.
Spassky, the loser, and a very refined individual who extended his personal sympathy to the Czech team at a tourney held shortly after the Russian invasion of that country, took the brunt of the ideological assault. (Spassky himself has never been a member of the Communist Party.)
The myth of Russian supremacy was over. Confusion reigned among the Soviets. So much so that during the match the Russians at one point accused the Americans of using rays and chemical warfare activities to befuddle their champion Spassky. Even the play table and the players' chairs were dismantled.
The result of the Russian investigations were two dead flies found in the chandelier. A Soviet courier flew them to Russia for analysis!
Fischer, had, it looked to us at the time, driven the Russians “batty.” (The Russian charges because more explicable in the light of the fact that we find now that the Russians themselves, have been engaged in aiming deadly cancer-causing rays at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to jam our electronic equipment.)
The more concrete results of the match were that American chess was revitalized. Sales of chess sets, books, etc., took off to unprecedented levels as chess activity reached its zenith in popularity.
The 1975 championship match would be even more significant for chess. So it was thought. Karpov, the new Soviet chess genius, won the mantle of challenger in the interzonal tourneys and matches. Manila was prepared to put up $5 million for the world championship match between Fischer and Karpov.
Fischer then told the FIDE, the international chess body, that certain playing conditions would have to be met. If not, he would not compete.
The Russians led the fight to see to it that their Communist bloc of nations, together with those friendly to them, or antagonistic to the U.S.A., voted down Fischer's suggestions. They knew Fischer would not compromise even if it cost him his title and three million dollars.
Fischer did forfeit his title. Soviet chess got back by politics what it could not accomplished in over the board play. Just a few weeks ago, the new “champion,” Karpov, indicated he would now demand almost the same conditions that had been proposed by Fischer and had not been granted to him by the FIDE.
Fischer, the man whom a former Russian world champion referred to as “the greatest genius to descend from the chess heavens,” is not playing chess. Consequently, the world's chess players are deprived of his artistic creations.
The Russians have, via politics, annexed the chess board. It is now Soviet territory. Bobby Fischer, chess's leading citizen, prefers exile and personal financial loss of millions, rather than compromise with those whose policies are contrary to the good of chess as a sport, as well as which deny individual reward in proportion to individual effort.