Short and competent history of the famous 1972 chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. This match--which featured appalling behavior from Fischer and scrupulous sportsmanship from Spassky--not only permanently changed the economics of chess, but it became a metaphor for the cultural and political differences between the Soviet Union and the USA.
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Before getting to the many dramas of the match itself, author George Steiner gives a thumbnail history of chess across the modern era. The reader learns about all the major chess champions of the last century or so--their styles, their idiosyncrasies, their various declines and downfalls.
Fischer's play was as stunning as his behavior was atrocious. Imagine John McEnroe at his absolute worst, add in extra paranoia and greed, and you'll have a sense of Bobby Fischer's comportment leading up to and during this famous 21-game match. Looking back on those days you can't help but be saddened by Fischer's near-disappearance from the world of chess soon afterwards. He acted like a real jerk, but he sure made it interesting.
Steiner strains his writing to the breaking point here and there, see for example when he muses about what actually happens inside the minds of chess masters when they play. But this little book is a good window into an intriguing period of history--media history, chess history and geopolitical history--that's fading from the world's collective memory.
[Readers, my usual friendly warning: the notes that follow are to help me order my thinking and better remember what I read. They're not worth reading, not even the bolded parts! Return to your lives.]
Notes:
Acknowledgments:
"I am in no way a qualified analyst of chess and my own game is, by any serious standard, risible. But like countless other patzers the world over, I was fascinated by the affair at Reykjavik and by the psychological, political, personal aspects of the Fischer-Spassky match."
3 Interesting opening comment here about how Bobby Fischer demanded 30% of the gate receipts, a share of the winner's purse and 30% of global film and television rights of the match. He made them really pay him to play. [Ultimately we learn that Fischer pretty much single-handedly changed the economics of chess: prize money and paydays went way up after this.]
4ff Discussion of Iceland: how it was seen as neutral, and how chess was unbelievably popular there, possibly popular from the beginning of the second millennium. At first part of the tournament was supposed to be held in Belgrade, but Bobby Fischer was acting so erratically and making ridiculous demands leading up the event, so the Yugoslavs responded by demanding a bond be posted ensuring his arrival. Negotiation collapsed, and Reykjavik "found itself saddled with the whole circus."
8ff Bobby Fischer continues his demands on the Reykjavik organizers, and he sounds like a raging twat here: demanding private use of a swimming pool, a personal tennis court, a Mercedes-Benz with automatic drive, etc. He also demanded "a cancellation of the television contract on which the Icelandic authorities had largely based their budget," the author doesn't give a specifics or details here so it wasn't clear what this means exactly. Fischer ends up arriving late, ignoring all the Icelandic VIPs who gathered to welcome him when he landed. [Talk about treating people like equipment!]
9ff The author backs up now to the first chess world title tournament, in 1851 in London, then he discusses Paul Morphy (1837-1884), a famous American chess player from New Orleans, who was sort of the stylistic progenitor of Fischer: they played with similar styles, both had "a real grasp of positional finesse" and both became extremely advanced chess players at very young ages. Morphy came over to England in June 1858 and destroyed everyone; the author cites a famous chess game against two opponents: the Duke of Brunswick (a German noble) and Count Isouard (a French Aristocrat), where he crushes them with a flashy knight sacrifice in the tenth move and quickly wins. [Note that a non chess-playing reader has some googling to do to catch up here, the author writes assuming the reader already knows something of these matches and something of the context of chess tactics.]
11ff Morphy crushes the current world champion, the German Adolf Anderssen, then returns to a hero's welcome in New York in 1859; then he shows yet more parallels to Fischer, becoming a recluse and manifesting paranoia and erratic behavior in the years that followed.
11ff Other chess champions: Louis Paulson a German emigre living in the United States; Wilhelm Steinitz from Prague, who remained acknowledged world champion for 28 years, the longest ever; the author cites also his match against von Bardeleben ("The Battle of Hastings" match) where Steinitz goes from being in deep trouble to produce a 10-move mate.
12ff Next on Dr. Emmanuel Lasker, a German who defeated Steinitz in 1894 to take the title; he held it until 1921 when he lost to Jose Raoul Capablanca. The author cites the 1904 Lasker-Napier match which features all sorts of long moves up and down the board; also on Lasker as a cultured, balanced, well-behaved human being, not a head case like Morphy or an immature spaz like Fischer. The author points out the contrast via a quote from the International Herald Tribune from 1972: "Fischer is almost never still and continually swings around in his special $470 swivel chair while Spassky is deep in thought over his next move. Fischer bites his fingernails, pokes his nose and cleans his ears between moves."
15 On Jose Raoul Capablanca: logical, always made the right move, like a chess-playing computer, and "deadly quiet"; citing here Capablanca's clinical destruction of Lasker in round #10 of their 1921 world championship match.
16ff On champion Alexander Alekhine, born in Moscow in 1892, emigrated to Paris after the Russian Revolution, and became a French citizen; seen as the beginning of Russia's leadership in world chess, although it really wasn't until the late 1940s that Russian players began dominating international chess. The author here writes that "Alekhine was a bitter opponent of the Soviet regime and ended his career as a muddled pro-Nazi," with "sad, sordid episodes accompanying his declining years."
18 On Mikhail Botvinnik, another Soviet chess prodigy who at age 14 beat Capablanca in 1925; he also beat Alekhine two years later, and was a textbook example of the "Soviet school" of chess: its system of training, giving public recognition and material support to the best chess players; in 1948 he won the world title, then defended his title in 1951 and 1954 although both matches ended in draws (in draws the champion retains his title); then in 1957 Vasily Smyslov beat Botvinnik to become champion; then a year later Botvinnik regained his title. "The world championship had now become a Russian carousel."
19ff On Latvian chess prodigy Mikhail Tal, who won the USSR championship in 1957 at age 20 over Botvinnik; Tal and Fischer had matches where they routed each other. He wasn't able to maintain his health to stay at the top. Next he was followed by Tigran Petrosian, an Armenian, his play seen as "boring," aiming for draws; followed by Boris Spassky who Petrosian defeated in 1966, but Spassky won in 1969 after dropping the first game in an attack of nerves.
22ff On Spassky: born in 1937 of Jewish descent (like Fischer); in his teens he would regularly play five hours of chess a day; he became a grandmaster in 1953 at age 16, the youngest grandmaster in the history of the game. But then at age 19 until about age 24 he "entered a period of crisis and acute setbacks" where he had some high-profile losses, he was actually dropped from the Soviet team, got divorced, then broke with his trainer, hiring a chess trainer who was less aggressive in playing style; he then routed Fischer in 1960.
25 Spassy defeats Tal in 1962, has a setback by losing to Petrosian in 1966, but then beats both Petrosian and Fischer in 1966; Spassky remarries in 1967 which strengthened his confidence, as he won the title in 1969; then he begins playing less often and more cautiously; then beats Fischer in 1971 although then came in a disappointing sixth at a tournament in Moscow; he had defeated or drawn with Fischer in all five of their encounters. Spassky as "an individual of great charm and impeccable courtesy": literate, aware. he never joined the Communist party; interesting anecdote where he shook hands with Czech players (who were wearing black armbands after the Soviet invasion in 1968): Spassky was the only Russian to shake hands with them; on Spassky also being prone to bouts of melancholy. [Note also the reference here to Spassky's "Oblomovism," referring to the 1859 Ivan Goncharov novel Oblomov, in which the main character, due to apathy and indolence, barely leaves his bed.] Also on his calmness under pressure: "Spassky's calm at the chessboard, even when he is in bad trouble, is famous. In part, it results from the good manners of a gentleman and from the self-control of a great technician. But it may also reflect an ultimate dispassion toward the game--a realization, perhaps subconscious, that it is not, as Fischer proclaims, 'everything.'"
28ff On Fischer's life, by now "legend"; on Frank Brady's biography of Fischer; on an anxious phone call from Henry Kissinger when it seemed like he would refuse to play the match against Spassky; on how Fischer brought the game to the world and popularized features of it that typically were esoteric; Fischer massively boosted the economics of the chess tournament world and generated chess fever across the United States, all by age 29; on Fischer as a 29-year-old loner with "bad manners" and "indifferences to customary social behavior." Also Fischer's career had ups and downs just as "drastic" as Spassky's.
29ff The author cites certain of Fischer's specific moves and specific games: see for example his 40th move against Attilio de Camillo in 1956, his seventh move against William Addison in 1957, and his 14th move against Arthur Feuerstein in 1957-58 US championship; also on "the most famous game of Fischer's youth" against Donald Byrne in 1956: in the 17th move he forced Byrne to capture his queen, leading to a quick victory. "Only a thorough chess player will be able to picture at all clearly the depth, the imaginative grasp, the sheer reach of calculation involved in Fischer's maneuver." And Fischer was not yet 15! The author waxes poetic here about Fischer's "originality and theoretic penetration." Fischer drops out of school, considering it a "contemptible waste of his time"; he becomes an international grandmaster at age 15; he managed draws with Tal and Petrosian in a tournament in Yugoslavia in 1958; a comment here on how he extracted a huge blunder out of Estonian grandmaster Paul Keres in one match, showing the psychological pressure Fischer put on his opponents; how Fischer was disappointed in his showing in Yugoslavia, he expected to win and thus become the youngest challenger ever.
32ff Also a tournament in Mar del Plata where Fischer performed terribly, and claimed the lighting had been intolerable; then on Fischer defeating Martner Letelier of Chile in a "nearly perfect" game. Then on to 1961 and a spectacular 16-game match between Polish grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky and Fischer: the two men hated each other, but the games they played were a very high quality, the author cites game two as a thing of beauty. Fischer followed this match up with an infamous and "generally insulting" interview for Harper's Magazine.
34ff A 1961 tournament at Bled [then Yugoslavia, now in Slovenia] where Fischer went undefeated, including crushing [Soviet player Efim Petrovich] Geller in just 22 moves. [It's irritating how the author frequently leaves out these guys' full names, as if readers outside of the chess world should know who they were, and especially when the author himself writes that his book "is meant neither for the expert chess player or the professional historian of the game."]; then Fischer's "majestic" performance in Stockholm in 1962, winning the event; followed by a catastrophe at Curacao in 1962 where he lost seven games and finished fourth; the author notes the "irascible eccentricity of his personal conduct during the whole tournament" and writes that Fischer, now only 19, had the maturity of "a raw adolescent" with "hardly the rudiments of an education." Fischer also at this time claimed notoriously (but with valid reasoning) that the Soviets had "fixed" chess, fixing tournaments by scheduling draws with one another to spare them energy to play Fischer. There's actually a debate about whether Fischer was right about this; also the chess federation installed a rule disallowing draws in under 30 minutes, although ironically Fischer was one of the first to violate this rule, saying, "Those rules are for Communist cheaters, not for me." [!!!] "After Curacao began the most unstable, apparently self-destructive years of his life."
36ff In the meantime, however, Fischer was still destroying everyone in the United States during late 1963/early 1964; he didn't even see anyone in the USA as competition; note here the author seems to jump back to 1962 here [although he doesn't give dates, a curious reader can look up this match and find when it happened] where Fischer blows a game against Botvinnik in Varna, Bulgaria after it was adjourned overnight; Botvinnik and Geller worked out a strategy to make it a draw, Fischer was "incensed"; after this Fischer played only from time to time in international chess; at this point he joined the Church of God, a fundamentalist Christian sect and thus would not play on the Sabbath, he started demanding scandalously high appearance fees (or at least they seem scandalous for that time, note that thanks to Fischer pretty much everybody started getting paid a lot more in this world); chess commentator Hans Kmoch said in 1970, "Finally the USA produces its greatest chess genius and he turns out to be just a stubborn boy."
38ff On a famous match where Fischer surprised everyone by agreeing to play in the USSR vs Rest of World challenge in Belgrade in 1970; he even agreed to play second board behind Larsen. Fischer sat down against Petrosian, and "What followed makes for one of the most remarkable pages in the history of chess." [Frustratingly, the author just drops the thread right here and doesn't tell us what actually happened!], apparently Fischer went on to crush everyone in the following weeks; these matches restored Fischer self-confidence. Then a series of matches against Russian player Mark Taimanov, Fischer crushed him in a candidates' match in 1971. And then Fischer badly beat Danish player Bent Larsen.
41ff A famous match between Fischer and Petrosian in Argentina in 1971, the sixth game "may have been the most important of Fischer's whole career." Fischer went on to destroy him in that game and then won the next two games with Petrosian shellshocked. Normally at the senior level chess matches are ranked by fractional points apart, thus a close win would have been a major accomplishment, but instead "Fischer sowed devastation." Russian grandmaster Yuri Averbakh commented "Petrosian's spirit was completely broken after the sixth game of the match" and Fischer "assumed mythical dimensions."
43ff "Unquestionably, however, the Larsen and Petrosian matches of 1971 had secured Fischer's standing among the immortals of the game... Fischer does not merely outplay opponents; he leaves them bodily and mentally gutted." "Fischer himself speaks of the exaltant instant in which he feels 'the ego of the other player crumbling.'" "now, suddenly, the astronomic monetary demands he had been making for some time seemed plausible."
45 "No one bridled at the arrogant discourtesy of the word order when Fischer announced that there was now nothing left for him to do except settle, in straight games, 'this little thing between me and Spassky.'" And then Fischer turns into what I can only call a complete douchebag, making and then canceling flight arrangements to Reykjavik, demanding even higher fees; Fischer didn't show up for the opening ceremonies, and then he infamously refused to appear for the second game, which was awarded to Spassky as a default; he found none of the chessboards that were presented acceptable, he hated all of the chairs presented to him, "...every day brought its new barrage of more or less megalomaniac exigencies from the challenger." The Russian master, Spassky, "behaved throughout with impeccable modesty and scruple."
49ff All of these squabbles were reported ad nauseam in the world press; but the author tells the reader that he wants to understand why--what was Fischer trying to do? He was basically throwing away a chance to show dominance, he was within a hair's breath of having the tournament canceled, which would mean Spassky would win by default. Was Fischer beginning to lose his grip on reality? Was he afraid of Boris Spassky, someone he had never defeated? And then, it turns out that "Hamlet" (as the author describes Fischer) "sauntered" back and won game three "mercilessly."
51ff The author continues asking "why" here, what was behind Fischer's behavior, the authors' (and others') various theories, like Fischer had a persecution complex; in fact it turned out that Fischer hated the Communists, Fischer also thought that the Russians were cheating; comments also here on Fischer's demands for money and control; that Fischer existed in a world entirely his own, that he was poorly educated and borderline illiterate; also a discussion here of how there are plenty of other examples of chess geniuses who had psychological problems, see Morphy, see Steinitz, see Alekhine.
53ff Also an extended, multi-page and borderline unreadable quote here from Vladimir Nabokov on chess [yet another example of how I don't really like Nabokov's writing all that much] here. One tiny excerpt here is sufficient both to give the reader an idea of it and to save fifteen minutes of the reader's life: "The pawn in one's sweating hand withers to mere wood or plastic. A tunnel of inanity yawns, boring and bottomless." [Note also that the author doesn't say where this quote is from: it actually is from Nabokov's 1930 novel The Defense, about a chess prodigy who ultimately commits suicide.]
56ff The author talks here about the complexity of the modern game, how proficiency at the chess master level is a full-time job; on the fact that there are some 20,000 books and monographs in the modern exhaustive chest library; on the list of all the openings and variations that you have to know to play at an elite level; and then a discussion of Fischer's unorthodox knight maneuver in the 11th move of the third game at Reykjavik; a discussion here of the "end game" with an equal infinity of possibilities which requires a lifetime of close study. [It's interesting to think about chess as a much more evolving and recursive environment than you'd normally think: in addition to having command of certain ludic domains like openings and endgames, you have to be flexible and adaptable, and not too predictable in your play.]
58 The author is getting a little purple here in his writing, but I guess I can understand why.
59ff "Nowadays, openings are studied and memorized until deep into the middle game, and new variations are annotated up to the twentieth move."
62ff The author hypothesizes about what it is about chess that makes it a vehicle for so much unusual creativity, and what it is it about chess masters that allow them to show genuine originality at the game, usually before adolescence? Is there something specialized about the brains of these masters, what cerebral processes enable a chess master to see the right answer?
63ff On Claude Shannon and some of the pioneering work on chess programs for computers; the author talks about the failures of chess programs at the time when this book was published (1972), describing how grandmasters tend to have ratings in the 2500 or 2600 range, a world champion could be 2,800, an expert player will be around 2,000, whereas the best computers tend to run around 1500, barely 100 points above amateur status. [This is absolutely not true anymore! Allegedly there are chess programs that have ratings well into the 3000s now, far better than any human player.] Discussion of the failure of brute force, look-ahead chess programs, on how programmers were mistaken in assuming that that's how the human brain worked as well; on the contrary, the human does not scan the board the way a computer would, instead it uses leaps of selective attention, thinking more intuitively about related analogous positions in previous play. Also on the idea that one optimal move is just a crude simplification of any given scenario on the board. Also comments here on self teaching computer chess programs and other developments in chess programs at that time.
66 Interesting comments here on the mnemonic powers used in chess: Fischer supposedly had a distinct recall of the 700 games he played and matches and tournaments; the author also says that the feats of memory involved in simultaneous blindfold play "verge on the incredible." He cites Miguel Najdorf in 1943 playing 40 boards blindfold; also in 1960 George Koltanowski won 50 games, drew 6 and lost none in consecutive blindfold play. "Questioned as to their methods, blindfold masters tend to reply that they do not memorize individual moves and do not visualize each board as a whole. What they commit to memory, in rapid order, our key positions or the crucial zones of a given board." As the author phrases it, they see "fields of force." Also note an interesting commentary by Paul Keres on a game he played at the Tallinn International Tournament in 1971: "During the game I had the feeling that something must be happening around Q5." [The author doesn't talk about this, probably because these studies hadn't been done at the time this book came out, but when chess masters are shown piece arrangements that don't correspond at all to an actual game they remember them just as badly as the rest of us!]
68ff The author ends his extended tangent hypothesizing what goes on in the minds of great chess masters, and returns to the first match of Fischer and Spassky where Fischer blundered in the 29th move of game 1, "visibly nervous and impatient." This is followed by the infamous non-game where Fischer never showed up and was defaulted. Then, game three, where, behind 0-2, "Fischer's genius exploded" and "Spassky played like a man paralyzed." Game 4 was a draw, and game 5 was a "crushing win" for Fischer "after Spassky committed a glaring blunder on his 27th move." The score was now even.
70ff In the sixth game Fischer played so dazzlingly that applause filled the hall, and even Boris Spassky himself applauded. And in the seventh game Spassky played attacking chess while Fischer played a risky strategy and quickly found himself in trouble, but yet Fischer continue to attack and managed to achieve an unexpected draw. And then in the eighth game "the world champion went to pieces." Spassky made a terrible move in the 19th move. Strangely Spassky unexpectedly accepted a draw from Fischer in game 9; and then in game 10 Spassky seem to be playing slowly and without confidence; Fischer won it the next day after 56 moves. [Note that the author is writing here as if people are already familiar with the matches, thus it's a little difficult to follow along]. At this point after 10 games it was 6 1/2 to 3 1/2, but in reality Spassky had only won one game playing, his other win was from Fischer's default in game 2. "Spassky had committed gross blunders in the third, fifth, and eighth games (the last being one of the worst displays of blindness recorded in world class chess)."
73ff Spassky dominates the 11th game, but Fischer fought him until the end, not willing to resign, in fact Fischer didn't even walk away from the table until after Spassky left. And then for the 12th game Fischer "seemed badly out of tune" when he arrived for the game, which ended in a draw; the 13th game took place over two days and involved a fatal blunder from Spassky on the 69th move, he then resigned on the 75th move. The author writes, "I have no doubt that he left the stage on that Friday afternoon knowing he was no longer world champion. But this knowledge was to have liberating consequences."
77ff Fischer starts to become kind of a douchebag all over again, complaining, being legalistic, arguing the crowd was too noisy, there were lawsuits about the TV rights; in spite of all this, the next six games--albeit they were all draws--"produced much of the finest chess in the match." Both players played very well, Fischer knowing he didn't need to take undue risks and Spassky playing with "real technical finesse." He seemed to regain his nerve and his pleasure in the game.
82ff Finally the match is over: Fischer wins 12 1/2 to 8 1/2. Decent quote here: "The rest was anti-climax. Fischer arrived almost an hour late at the awards ceremony on Sunday, September 3. He asked Euwe [Dr. Max Euwe, International Chess Federation president] whether he had the [prize] money. Then he withdrew to a corner and the buzzing homage of his private phalanx. After a time, Boris Spassky walked over to greet him. Soon both men were analyzing and making rapid moves on a pocket chess set. For the first time in almost two months of ferocious intimacy, they spoke to each other. Spassky was smiling."
84ff Finally, the author muses on what drove Spassky's blunders, why he seemingly underperformed. Possibly Fischer's behavior at the start of the tournament affected him, although the author writes "...it remains doubtful whether any other player in the world today could have done even as well as Spassky against Fischer's sheer technical genius and will to victory. The eerie violence and pressure of Fischer's play since his defeat of Petrosian at Belgrade in 1970 are probably without precedent in the records of chess."
86 "'This little thing between me and Spassky' has altered the history and the sociology of chess. Almost overnight, Fischer has transmuted the Byzantine, amateurish economics of the game into very big money....For several months, a totally esoteric, essentially trivial endeavor, associated with pimply, myopic youths and vaguely comical old men on park benches, held the world enthralled."
86 Finally, note the reference here to the 1972 "cod war" between England and Iceland as Icelandic gunboats slipped out of Reykjavik to drive off British fishing trawlers in Icelandic waters, a subject discussed in depth in Mark Kurlansky's unusual book Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World.
To Read:
D. Willard Fiske: Chess in Iceland
Ivan Goncharov: Oblomov
Frank Brady: Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy
Media:
Chess.com
Chessgames.com