He had committed the sort of gross mistake all chess players, duffers and masters alike, have experienced at least once in their careers; realization dawns and the heart sinks at the very moment the fingers relinquish the moved piece. Chess is the most unforgiving of sports; there is no comeback, no second chance, from such a careless gaffe.
Icelanders are not an expressive people; equanimity is a national trait in which they take pride. But now the crowd erupted, breaking into a rhythmic chant: “Bobby! Bobby!” They stamped their feet and clapped their hands. In the canteen, the predominantly north European audience had a Greek moment, hurling plates and glasses into the air. With the match level at 2.5 points each, suddenly the talk was of the pressure on Spassky. Fischer left the auditorium looking smug. The American camp began to brief the media: The Russian was on the edge of a breakdown. He was clinging by his fingertips to sanity. By now, Viktor Ivonin had returned to Moscow and was present at a review of the match in the office of the sports minister, Sergei Pavlov. Present were three former world champions, Petrosian, Smyslov, and Tal, and at least four other first-rate grandmasters, Keres, Korchnoi, Semion Furman, and Leonid Stein. “Why on earth did Spassky permit the Nimzo-Indian in game five?” Petrosian wanted to know. The champion was hopeless in Nimzo-Indian-type positions, both as white and black. Their meeting, they understood, was futile. There was little they could do to assist Spassky several thousand miles away and at this late stage. Anyway, they could not tell him what to do. But the apparatchiks wanted to be kept abreast of the 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 zugswang—a term referring to an unusual position where a player would prefer not to have to move, since all possible moves will only make his position worse. Black’s resignation position was quite pitiful, the king humiliatingly exposed to the world, like a naked man caught in the shower after the rest of his house has collapsed about him. The packed auditorium rose as one; a bemused, crushed Spassky joined in the applause, clapping for his opponent in recognition of the artistic creation to which he had fallen victim. Fischer had seized the lead. Outside, even the grandmasters were whispering in hushed tones about the possibility that Spassky was a broken man; his chess might never recover. In chess such a thing can happen.
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.