We take up our narrative of the Match of the Century after game three. Fischer had lost game one with a very risky move (BxPh2) and had not appeared for game two. He then went on to defeat Spassky with the black pieces in an inspired game three.
A remarkable visitor to the World Championship in 1972 was Lawrence Stevens, who arrived in Reykjavik just before game two and started recording the move times of the games. Here's how he describes this:
The player’s clocks could be seen, from time to time, on the closed-circuit black-and-white TV system in the hall. It served the lobby, the cafeteria, and the playing hall, and displayed a view of what looked like a wallboard with the pieces perfectly aligned, showing the current position. In addition there were other cameras which showed various views of the players and the board. You could read the clock times on some of them. These views sometimes were briefly substituted for the board position on the TV monitors. The result was that you could follow the moves in the lobby, the cafeteria, and the hall at all times, but the clock times were readable only every few moves.
To record the times I used a small 24-game scorebook, which I bought at the hall. The small pamphlet sold for 100 Icelandic Kronur, which was a bit more than one US dollar, at the match. It had the word “Skak” on the cover, which is the Icelandic word for chess.
When the TV did show the clock, I could compute, by totaling the two times, the time of the start of the match. After that, when a player moved, I could figure the total game time from my watch, subtract the time of the opponent, and the difference would be the time of the player who just moved. Then, when the opponent moved a few minutes later, I would repeat the procedure using his opponent’s time, as recorded in my notebook.
When the TV showed the chess clock the next time, I could correct, if necessary, my notes for times taken by the player who was not on the move. After about six moves without seeing the clock, my time for a player might be one minute off, since I did not record minutes and seconds.
If I was one minute too short for a player, and it was six moves since the previous correction, I would add one minute to the three most recent time entries and leave the other three entries alone. In game three, however, I came upon an error, early in the game, of nine minutes for Fischer’s time:
After Spassky’s 8th move, I started to jot down the times, having seen Spassky’s clock on the closed circuit TV. After Fischer’s 18th move, while Spassky was thinking, the TV showed 1:07 on Fischer’s clock, according to my notes. Although my time for Spassky was OK, I was somehow short by 9 minutes on Fischer’s time, which I had recorded as 0:58.
I could not figure out how my 9-minute error occurred, until October 31st, 2008, when I read the excellent posting at Chess Base By Prof. Christian Hesse. It explained that the arbiter had actually started the clock on time and Spassky had immediately played 1.d4. And it was not until 5:09, nine minutes later, that Fischer played his reply, 1... Nf6.
In the hall, we were looking at a stage with nobody there, but watching on the closed circuit TV. I don’t remember seeing anything on the closed circuit TV until just before Fischer sat down, so I assumed the game started late. I probably saw Spassky’s clock time and calculated Fischer’s clock time using my mistaken start time. That is, until I could actually see Fischer’s clock on the TV after his 18th, and saw that my time for Fischer was 9 minutes too short.
Using Prof. Hesse’s information, I have assumed that my mistaken start time was the cause of my 9-minute error, and that the error was made for moves 8-18. In these notes, I have corrected Fischer’s times for these moves. The times for move one are according to the ChessBase article.
Here are the times for games three to five, as recorded by Lawrence Stevens in Reykjavik:
| Game 3, July 16-17, 1972
Spassky Fischer |
Game 4, July 18th, 1972
Fischer Spassky |
Game 5, July 20th, 1972
Spassky Fischer |
The above times were published on the web site The Crack Team, which is a place for a group of friends to make anonymous postings, serious, humorous, or a combination of both, about any topic. More about the contributions to chess and the Reykjavik match in our next installment.
Now to the games in the Spassky-Fischer match. The September issue of Chess Life & Review had a report by GM Robert Byrne, who was on site in Reykjavik and annotated games four and five (as well as games one and three).
GM Robert Byrne, (April 20, 1928 – April 12, 2013), was US Champion in 1972, World Championship Candidate in 1974, nine times member of the US Olympiad team (from 1952 to 1976), university professor and New York Times chess columnist (from 1972 to 2006).
Robert was a good friend whom I (Frederic Friedel) met on a number of occasions. I especially remember a visit to his home in Ossining, New York, where we had dinner and then, over glasses of wine, he spent hours telling me about his 1972 stay in Reykjavik. He showed me games on a chessboard and described what he had experienced at the time. I also got his book on the match, with a nice dedication. Years earlier, in the September 1972 issue of Chess Life & Review he had written:
Spassky got off a surprise Sicilian in the fourth game, for which his analysis team had prepared him well. A brilliant pawn sacrifice at the 16th move gave him a raging attack, but he still could not find a decisive way through the challenger's trenchant defense. The game is still the subject of continuing debate here, no one yet having found a clear conclusion as to what the result should have been. After the players agreed to a draw, the score was 2½-1½ with Spassky still leading.
The following annotations by Robert Byrne appeared on pages 539-540 of the magazine (the pages of CL&R were numbered through for the entire year). They were in English Descriptive Notation, which is not completely trivial to interpret (even if like me you started off with this form of chess moves). For instance a move like RxP is bewildering if the rook can take two pawns. You need to look carefully to recognize that in one case it takes with check, and since this is not given (as RxPch) it has to be the other pawn. It was fun to read and enter these moves. I have kept the orthography from that time, e.g. the capitalizing of all piece names, but translated moves in the text to modern algebraic.
On game five Robert Byrne wrote (CL&R Sept. 1972, p. 537):
In the fifth game, Bobby again chose the Nimzo-Indian, varying with Huebner's 6...BxNch, which dogmatically offers chances to both sides. Once again, as in the third contest, an unexpected and unusual Knight move at Fischer's 11th turn brought down Spassky's ambitious attempt to seize the initiative. Spassky was slowly being pushed back on the defensive, but no immediate win was in sight when the champion blundered under the pressure at his 27th move. Fischer hit him with instant crunch, leveling the match at 2½-2½.
Byrne wrote:
To overcome a two-point deficit against the world champion in only three games is fantastic. But Fischer's play is too sharp for Boris. Fischer's do-it-yourself opening analysis has been vastly superior to what the entire army of Soviet analysts could give Boris. The one time the Russian had a success in the opening, in the fourth game, Fischer's remarkable defensive middle game play denied him the point. When Bobby gets going, the colors do not matter. Spassky will not be able to hang on in this match unless he can find some way of defending against Fischer's defenses. Despite the first two minus points, I am still sticking to my earlier prediction on 12½-8½ for Fischer.
For this dramatic game we also have annotations by IM Sagar Shah, who has been helping us document the match. You can replay them and compare his notes to those above.
And if you haven't enough of the Match of the Century you may want to check Mega Database, which has extensive commentary of all the games.
The June 1972 cover of Chess Life & Review (click to enlarge) had a cartoon by Bob Walker, of Boris Spassky consulting with Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin before the match.
Bobby Fischer in Iceland – 45 years ago (1)
In the final week of June 1972 the chess world was in turmoil. The match between World Champion Boris Spassky and his challenger Bobby Fischer was scheduled to begin, in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, on July 1st. But there was no sign of Fischer. The opening ceremony took place without him, and the first game, scheduled for July 2nd, was postponed. Then finally, in the early hours of July 4th, Fischer arrived. Frederic Friedel narrates.
Bobby Fischer in Iceland – 45 years ago (2)
The legendary Match of the Century between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer was staged in the Laugardalshöllin in Reykjavik. This is Iceland’s largest sporting arena, seating 5,500, but also the site for concerts – Led Zeppelin, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie all played there. 45 years after the Spassky-Fischer spectacle Frederic Friedel visited Laugardalshöllin and discovered some treasures there.
Bobby Fischer in Iceland – 45 years ago (3)
On July 11, 1992 the legendary Match of the Century between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer finally began. Fischer arrived late, due to heavy traffic. To everybody's surprise he played a Nimzo instead of his normal Gruenfeld or King's Indian. The game developed along uninspired lines and most experts were predicting a draw. And then, on move twenty-nine, Fischer engaged in one of the most dangerous gambles of his career. "One move, and we hit every front page in the world!" said a blissful organiser.
Bobby Fischer in Iceland – 45 years ago (4)
7/16/2017 – The challenger, tormented by the cameras installed in the playing hall, traumatically lost the first game of his match against World Champion Boris Spassky. He continued his vigorous protest, and when his demands were not met Fischer did not turn up for game two. He was forfeited and the score was 0-2. Bobby booked a flight back to New York, but practically at the very last moment decided to play game three – in an isolated ping-pong room!
