opinions of the experts—as a prime minister would want expert military opinion on the progress of a distant campaign.
Meanwhile in Reykjavik, daily discussions about the cameras continued among the ICF, Fred Cramer, and the television executives. The Icelanders’ budget had assumed major profits from television. Given the sums involved, the organizers and TV producers wanted and needed to believe that Fischer could still be brought round. But in an effort to circumvent Fischer’s antipathy to Fox, the American network ABC was brought in.
The network sent a thirty-six-year-old, Chet Forte, to salvage a deal, even though he was supposed to be overseeing their coverage of the Munich Olympics in September. He was a celebrated sportsman in his own right: only five feet seven, he had nonetheless been a basketball star for Columbia University.
In Fischer’s hotel room, the challenger told Forte, “I definitely want it filmed, but I cannot have it filmed when it bothers me.” Chet Forte was emollient. Later he told the press, “Bobby is immature about a lot of facts of life… but once you sit down with him, you can change your opinion of him.” On Saturday night, 22 July, they spent over two hours together in the auditorium with Forte patiently explaining how they would ensure the cameras were noiseless and invisible.
The stand-off lasted two weeks. At one point Fischer demanded Fox’s expulsion from Iceland (he remained). Fox himself responded furiously to rumors that he had been sidelined, pointing out (rightly) that he still owned the exclusive rights. “I am not out of it,” he said. Thorarinsson was sympathetic to Fox’s plight. “This is not a question of money. There are principles involved. We are fed up with Fischer making impossible demands. This farce cannot continue.” Another ABC executive, Lome Hassan, became involved. After more talks with Fischer’s lawyers, Hassan believed permission had been granted to place one camera discreetly on the main floor of the exhibition hall, right at the back, and two more at the side.
The very first move of game six on Sunday, 23 July, stunned the chess world: Fischer advanced his queen’s bishop’s pawn two squares. Known as the “English” (historically, its first recorded use was in 1843, when it was adopted by an Englishman, Howard Staunton), it ran counter to Fischer’s direct style and formed no part of his supposedly narrow opening repertoire: he had used it only twice before. That confident remark of Spassky’s about Fischer, “He plays one kind of opening, and he [will] not be able to find another,” had returned to haunt him. The scale of such a surprise is difficult to exaggerate. It was as if a normally right-handed boxer suddenly switched to southpaw, leading with his right hand and not his left, as his opponent expected.
Krogius insists he had labored on detailed contingency plans in case Fischer deviated from the opening habits of a lifetime. Fischer had played only a few professional games with the white pieces in which he had not opened with e4, the two-square push of the king’s pawn. “Spassky did not want to spend time studying the material that I had prepared. When, in particular, Spassky was asked what he would like to get ready in reply to 1. c4 or 1. d4, he told me: ‘Don’t spend time on this nonsense—Fischer would never play that.’”
The game itself was majestic, by far the best to date. Harry Golombek described it as “a masterpiece through and through.” Fischer was able to create and then remorselessly exploit vulnerable spots in Spassky’s barricade, prizing his defenses apart before battering him with the rooks and queen, and without once leaving his own position at risk. Spassky was virtually in
Throughout this period, Spassky’s team dutifully reported back to the Sports Ministry that the champion’s problems arose from his departing from carefully worked-out plans. In Moscow, the grandmasters were also critical of Spassky’s theoretical unreadiness and of his improvisation. Nevertheless, they felt that all was not yet lost. Ivonin, it will be recalled, had thought Spassky was put at a disadvantage by having to sit in an upright chair while Fischer swooped and twisted in his fancy black leather executive model. Game seven saw that disparity corrected. The audience filing early into the hall caught sight of two apparently indistinguishable swivel chairs. At least the championship was proving to be profitable for Herman Miller, the Michigan furnishings manufacturer; the Soviets, through the ICF, had ordered another of his chairs. Cramer protested—though he had no real justification for doing so—and had to be physically restrained by the exhibition hall staff from removing the imported item.
This was not the only change. Fischer had been at work again, asserting control, dictating the playing conditions. Now the table and the board were altered. Fischer had objected to the dimensions of the table—too wide; this made reaching for the pieces awkward. As for the lovingly prepared marble board, there was insufficient contrast between the light and dark squares. So a simple wooden board was put in its place, as in the back room in game three.
Swiveling seemed to suit Spassky. The seventh game began promisingly, with the champion taking an early initiative. Fischer had steered the opening down a sharp line of the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian Defense. In this line, the black queen captures a white pawn (the “poisoned pawn”) deep in enemy territory—“poisoned” because of the risks associated with the foray. Black has to extricate his queen before it is surrounded and captured.
Fischer, however, successfully soaked up the pressure, retaining his extra pawn. Spassky, now rocking gently to and fro in his chair, ended up clinging to an embattled draw after rescuing the game with a saving move just before the adjournment. It had taken him forty-five minutes to work out his response. (According to the Western press, help with overnight analysis had even come from a mysterious hot line to two former champions, who were watching developments thousands of miles away: Mikhail Tal in Latvia and Tigran Petrosian in Armenia.) Lovers of chess curiosities noted that Fischer’s king’s rook had remained on its home square throughout.
For Spassky, the draw proved only a temporary respite. Before the next encounter, game eight, Fischer had declared that he was still unhappy with the shading of the squares—worse than the marble board, he thought. But when, with only an hour to go before the game, Spassky was told about this, he refused to have it changed back. The rule was that any alteration in the equipment had to be sanctioned by both sides.
The Soviet’s newfound resolution did not sharpen his concentration. In game eight, he made another blunder. It occurred early, on move fifteen, when Spassky overlooked Fischer’s none-too-subtle bishop move targeting the champion’s rook, which had nowhere to run. The champion thus lost a rook and got only a bishop in return. The repercussions were not as serious as the colossal howler of game five, but as an illustration of so-called chess blindness, this lapse was even starker—for he had missed not a combination of moves, but one simple move.
Normally priding himself on his inscrutability, the champion began to display signs of psychological wear; he clenched his hands between his knees, flickers of worry crossed his face. On move nineteen, he made another terrible mistake, a retreat of the knight, allowing white a neat little combination (Larry Evans called it “witty”) that simultaneously gained a pawn and forced the exchange of queens. The ending was never in doubt. After his resignation, Spassky remained sitting for a few minutes, staring at the board, punch-drunk. Grandmaster Gligoric described this as the worst game of his career.
Fischer had been unaware that during this game his movements were being captured on film. Believing ABC had finally been granted permission, Lorne Hassan had shot the match from cameras surreptitiously placed far back on the balcony. When Fischer subsequently found this out—from a radio news report—he fell into a rage. He had been deceived. How dare they? He wanted apologies, lots of apologies, apologies all around. He wanted a daily veto power on the use of cameras.
Hollywood film producer Jerry Weintraub and the U.S. promoter of the Beatles, Sid Bernstein, had arrived in Iceland to try, among other things, to buy the TV rights, but Fischer refused to see them. Chester Fox was also reported to be holding out for $250,000. Exasperated, now even ABC threw in the towel. ABC president Roone Arledge sent a telegram announcing the company’s withdrawal: “Obviously the cameras must have been unobtrusive since there had not been an objection either during or immediately after the game, and we are sorry that you were unaware of their placement.” From this moment, not a single move would be filmed until the final day, when the Yugoslav journalist Dimitri Bjelica would sneak a camera into his bag and secretly shoot some
