If amid all these events, Fischer-Spassky found its way on to the front pages, it was not just because of the challenger’s personality, the chess itself, or the off-board antics. In the United States there was much more to it than that. The country was undergoing a fit of cultural pessimism, mainly because of Vietnam, but also because of social and racial cleavages at home. Now, in the words of George M. Cohan’s bouncy lyrics, here was “a real live nephew of [his] Uncle Sam, the kid with all the candy”—in other words, here was an undisputed, unalloyed world-class player who (once he started to play) appeared to be a kick-ass winner. When Americans bought into chess, they were affirming the American way. Fischer appeared to be a guarantee that can-do America could do it at a time when it was profoundly in need of that reassurance.
19. TO THE BITTER END
In a contest for the nicest guy in chess, Bobby Fischer would finish out of the money. But he is definitely the best chess player in the world.
The match was following a path familiar from Fischer’s blitzkrieg to the final. Spassky appeared to be crushed. And experience told that once down, Fischer’s opponents never bounced back. The challenger was the master of the kill. In the face of weakness or injury, while others might ease up, he only raised the pressure.
Would history be a guide to this match?
Fischer opened the fourteenth game, again with the English. The realization must surely have dawned on Spassky that much of his opening preparation—such as it was—had been wasted. But the champion’s demeanor had improved. Maybe it was the arrival of Larisa that lifted his spirits, maybe leaving the hotel for its dachalike annex in which they could enjoy family life.
His more positive state of mind became evident in this game. On move fourteen he played a knight retreat (Ne7), turning down the opportunity to simplify the position and exchange knights. Chess books on the match give Ne7 an exclamation mark, meaning it is strong (a weak move is branded with a question mark). Perhaps taken aback, Fischer gave away a pawn. Six moves later, Spassky blundered disastrously in return, pawn to f6 (double question mark), in what should have been a hard but ultimately won ending.
Now it was down to rook, bishop, knight, and five pawns against rook, bishop, knight, and five pawns. The knights and bishops were soon exchanged, and the game petered out to a draw.
The players were no doubt still both fatigued by the exertions of game thirteen. The grandmasters in the audience, while admiring Spassky’s doughty character, were unimpressed by the quality of play. Referring to a hangover-inducing Icelandic schnapps, one joked, “It’s like they’re playing on brennivin.”
Fischer’s only complaint in the game came after move one, when he objected to the lack of lighting. It was followed up later by a telegram to Euwe from Cramer in which the arbiter and the Icelandic Chess Federation were slated for being both “arrogant and inconsiderate.” Fischer’s demand to empty the front of the auditorium did not go away. The Icelanders, who had already lost the television revenue, pointed out to Cramer that vacating the first seven rows would halve the downstairs capacity to 475, seriously denting box office returns.
Harry Golombek described game fifteen, on 17 August, as “one of the most thrilling I have ever seen in a world championship match.” It was a Sicilian opening, and Fischer was offered the chance of taking it down the poisoned pawn variation, the same line in which he had been so humiliated in game eleven. Would he rise to the challenge, show that he had not been cowed, seek his revenge? In other words, would he bring his queen out to b6? The clock ticked on: in the analysis room they were willing him on. He had had nearly a fortnight to work on improvements and identify where it had gone so wrong before.
The queen stayed on its square. Fischer moved his king’s bishop one diagonal, to e7. He had played this several times in his career, but for Spassky it still represented a minor psychological triumph. It seemed to put the Russian in an optimistic frame of mind: he prematurely advanced a pawn on move twenty-five, setting Fischer a simple trap, into which the challenger was never likely to tread. Byrne and Nei call Spassky’s idea “a silly stunt.” Then the champion confidently picked off one pawn and then another, but his rapacity only left most of the attacking possibilities to Fischer. In the end, after the adjournment, they settled for a draw—with black finding nothing better than to repeat moves with the same checks on the white king. So quickly were the postadjournment moves made that those manning the display board became confused, losing track of the position.
That day, Fischer’s complaint to Schmid was couched more personally. Referring again to the noise, Cramer fumed that Schmid must “do something better than piously wave [his] hands from time to time.” The Americans reiterated their demand that several more rows of seats be emptied. The riposte from the Icelanders was that the gap between the dais and the first row of spectators was already greater than at any previous chess match.
Game sixteen was played on a Sunday and witnessed by a full house. By move nine, the middle game had already been bypassed with the exchange of queens and they were into an endgame.
For several moves, Spassky maintained triple isolated pawns—three pawns on the same column with no pawn on either side. This is a most unusual chess formation, and to a chess player its strange architectural structure has a visceral ugliness. Eventually, all three of these defenseless pieces were lost, and by move thirty-two the position had become lifeless, devoid of genuinely alternative strategies. It did not end there. Perhaps pure stubbornness kept them going for another thirty futile moves, when ordinarily they would have settled on a draw far earlier. Was Spassky exacting his revenge on Fischer, forcing him to stay put at the board? Did Fischer see offering a draw as a humiliation? Whatever the reason, they carried on until move sixty, in what Larry Evans and Ken Smith in their match book, Fischer-Spassky Move By Move, describe as “a marathon of nonsense.” The audience became restless. Golombek wrote, “It is a sad confession to make but the last thirty moves… bored me to tears.” Byrne and Nei are equally dismissive: watching these two geniuses in such an elementary position was like observing Frank Lloyd Wright “playing in a sandbox.”
Fischer might not be on the attack over the board, but he showed no compassion to the officials away from it. With his demand to remove the first seven rows ignored, he delivered an ultimatum. He would withdraw from the match unless conditions were improved. “I do not intend to tolerate them further.” From the seventeenth game onward, he said, the match would have to be played behind closed doors in a private room until the venue had been altered “completely to my satisfaction.” Cramer, naturally, backed him up; the sixteenth game, he said, was played in a hall “as noisy as a ball game in Milwaukee.”
Cramer met Thorarinsson over lunch on 22 August, the day of game seventeen. The Icelander agreed to clear three rows of seats from the front; two were added at the back. This increased the distance between the players and audience by seven or eight yards, to a total of twenty yards. “To save the match, we shall remove some rows of seats, although it is with a bleeding heart, because we will lose revenue,” said Thorarinsson. The consent of the world champion and his team was not even sought.