ASports Illustrated, March 13, 1972 - Page 22
The Big Burden Boris Bears by Robert Byrne
When Bobby Fischer sits down opposite Boris Spassky next June to settle the question of whether an American has truly overtaken a Russian as the world's best chess player, it will mark a new high in awareness of the game in this country. But Fischer's smashing victories en route to the finals against the world champion may have lulled casual U.S. observers into thinking the rest of the way will be easy too. Not so. What has gone before has no more bearing on the championship matches than a runaway pennant race has to do with the outcome of a World Series.
Fischer's opponent, in a sense, is the Soviet Union itself. In addition to the spurs of personal pride and competitiveness that will be driving Spassky, he will also be out to uphold his nation's honor in a field it has dominated for a
quarter century. He is well trained to uphold it, and even now is undergoing intensive preparation with the top chess theoreticians in the world—all of whom share his dedication to continued Soviet preeminence in chess.
Consequently, Spassky is under heavy pressure, and he is showing it. Some of the pressure comes from the Soviet Ministry of Physical Culture and Sport, which for a generation convinced the rest of the world that chess supremacy was a Russian prerogative. Last December in Moscow, Spassky's flagging spirits were conspicuously in evidence. The 35-year-old champion was competing in the month-long Alekhine Memorial Tournament along with 18 high-ranking contenders, including Tigran Petrosian, who had just returned from being clobbered by Fischer at Buenos Aires (SI, November 8, 1971). A world champion is not expected to take first place every time he enters a tournament of this class, but it was not a good moment for Spassky to finish in a tie for sixth. Another bad omen was his resounding defeat by Petrosian. My own game with Spassky was drawn (I finished half a point behind him in the final standings) and it seemed to me there was a lackluster, uncertain quality to his play that had not characterized it in the past. His performance legitimately stirs some interesting speculation.
What sort of man is the champion? Spassky is not a simple person; no superior chess player is. He is a green-eyed, broad-shouldered man with reddish-brown hair who dresses with an air of studied elegance. He is 5' 10", weighs 176 pounds, has a trim figure and gives an impression, at a first meeting, of being a superior physical athlete, say a tennis or soccer player. Indeed, tennis and soccer are two of his favorite sports, but he also goes in for swimming, running and skiing.
Spassky and his second wide Larissa and their 4-year-old son live on the fifth floor of Moscow's newest and largest apartment building. He is one of the few Russians who drive a foreign car, a bright-red Volvo he bought after Russia won the 1970 International Team Tournament in West Germany. By Soviet standards he has a good income, something in excess of 500 rubles ($560) a month, which is five times more than the average worker gets. He could easily augment this with exhibitions and lectures, but he does not have the slightest inclination to do so, and he rarely writes on chess, although he has a degree in journalism from the University of Leningrad.
Underneath his easygoing, good-natured manner, Spassky is tough and determined. Talking with him in Moscow last December I remarked that he seemed a natural competitor. He demurred. “No,” he said, “my profession makes me so.” But he knows the need for the enormous competitive effort required in top-level chess. During his first try for the world championship in 1966, when he was defeated by Petrosian (four losses, three wins and 17 draws), Spassky lost 15 pounds. In their second match in 1969, when Spassky came back to take the title (six wins, four losses and 13 draws), he lost five pounds. After that victory his wife offered reporters a glimpse of life with a champion. “I would not like our son to play chess,
because the nervous strain is too great,” she said. “It was very difficult to watch all this happening.”
Spassky moved into the Leningradskaya Hotel by himself for the Alekhine tournament. In the past, after his tournament games he often played bridge with his chess opponents. “We used to play every night,” he said, “and my chess game did not suffer.” But he did not play bridge this time.
The good wishes Spassky gets from rivals and friends in Moscow for his match with Fischer are little comfort to him. At best these sound like the sort of encouragement Columbus received before he set out on his voyage in 1492. Or, more like it, the kind the Pittsburgh Pirates would get it they were suddenly meeting a favored foreign team—say the Tokyo Giants—in the World Series for the first time. Ever since 1948, when Mikhail Botvinnik first brought the world championship to the Soviet Union after the death of Alexander Alekhine, one Soviet star after another has kept the title there. During the intervening 24 years even the challengers have come from the Soviet Union. In the circumstances, the government could well afford to remain neutral about the fate of the champion. Indeed, a periodic turnover of the championship was welcomed, so long as it was turned over to another Soviet player. Such a turnover, in the eyes of the government, demonstrated the superiority of Soviet players as a class. In international terms, the underlying idea was to use chess as a showcase in which the superiority of the Communist system could be displayed.
Chess domination by the Soviet Union is not an accidental phenomenon. Russian youth is led into the game and schooled in its subtleties much as American youngsters learn about baseball. The Russian youth competes in local chess clubs instead of Little League. He may also join a team at school, where the game is offered as part of the regular curriculum. Gifted youngsters get further encouragement through larger clubs and by entering tough regional tournaments. Eventually, such a youth might enter a chess institute for advanced players—the graduate schools of Russian chess— where he gets special instruction from the world's best players.
Even after a player has achieved international recognition he may still occasionally return to the institute for refresher courses, as an American touring golfer might seek out his teaching pro when his game goes sour. Yuri Balashov, who finished fourth in the last Soviet championship, returned to his chess institute for further work after making a poor showing in last year's Alekhine tournament.
A primary incentive to the Soviet chess player is money. A good player, even though hardly in Spassky's class, earns a state salary well above that of the average worker, and his schedule is arranged to avoid physical or mental strain. Such are the perquisites of a national institution.
But Fischer's victories may be changing everything—including, apparently, the tractability of the Soviet Chess Federation, which had been making an unprecedented fuss over the match site. Spassky is going into battle not as a lone combatant confronting his foremost rival, but as a towering rampart defending Soviet tradition. Bearing the standard of his country's national sport would be an oppressive psychological burden for anyone. But when added to the normal anxieties preceding a championship match, the pressure could be overwhelming.
Nor is this the only cause of Spassky's gloom these days. Fischer won the right to challenge him in a fashion so spectacular as to unnerve any opponent—six straight wins against the U.S.S.R.'s formidable Mar Taimanov, six straight against Bent Larsen of Denmark, and at Buenos Aires four straight closing wins against Petrosian. Thus, his qualifying tournament record stands at 17 wins, one loss and three draws. (Spassky, on his way to the championship in 1968 against Geller, Larsen and Korchnoi, scored 11 wins, 13 draws and one loss.)
Spassky has no intention of becoming the scapegoat in a Russian catastrophe, however. He is extraordinarily resilient, never so dangerous as in the next game after a loss. Closely related to this is his delayed-action style of chess. Unlike Fischer, who comes out at the sound of the bell ready to flatten his opponent with the first punch, Spassky is often slow to take the initiative. He does not reach full power until early in the middle game. This pattern of play has a deceptive effect, lulling his opponent into a false sense of security just when the explosion is all set to go off.
“I'm lazy,” Spassky once said. “I'm like a Russian bear—calm, slow, and finding it an effort to get up.” Compared to Fischer, who seems to spend every waking hour studying and analyzing, Spassky devotes no more than three or four hours a day to chess analysis. But Fischer works alone, while Spassky has a marvelous team to carry on for him.
Presiding over the group is Igor Bondarevsky, 58, a former Soviet champion who has been Spassky's coach for the past decade. Bondarevsky came into Spassky's life at a low point in his career. In the world student championship in Leningrad in 1960, playing first board, Spassky was decisively beaten by William Lombardy of the U.S. in only 29 moves, a loss that won the tournament for the American team. Spassky was blamed for the Soviet defeat. He also quarreled with his coach, the brilliant but domineering Alexander Tolush, and the pressures of divorce proceedings from his first wife further disconcerted him. Finally he was so out of favor with Soviet chess authorities that he was forbidden to play abroad for three years. “Bondarevsky did a lot not only for my chess knowledge but for my character,” Spassky once said. “He has a very happy family life, and he is a man of strong character.”
Spassky is unwilling to disclose the separate functions of the members of his advisory team, but Bondarevsky seems to be in charge of overall match strategy and, in particular, the task of determining what type of formation is best adapted to countering the individual psychology of each opponent. It was said in Moscow that Bondarevsky was responsible for Spassky's brilliant use of the ancient Tarrasch Defense when he won the championship from Petrosian in 1969. Certainly Spassky has been extraordinarily skillful at playing on his rivals' weaknesses. But what will Bondarevsky suggest for the games against Fischer, who does not seem to have any obvious weakness?
Another member of Spassky's group is Nikolai Krogius, 41, a mild-mannered, scholarly statistical psychologist, and a frequent opponent of Spassky's in his early career. Krogius has been cast in a Svengalian role by some, but his real function seems far more mundane. Spassky once was asked exactly what Krogius did on his team. “He gives homey
advice and platitudes,” answered the champion, “to which the rest of us listen with rapt attention.”
For analysis of openings and end games during adjustments, Spassky has acquired the services of Yefim Geller (also once coached by Bondarevsky) and Geller's assistant, Ivo Nei. During the 1962 International Team Championship at Varna, in the first meeting between Botvinnik and Bobby Fischer, the game was adjourned with Botvinnik in a difficult position. When the adjournment was played off, Botvinnik escaped with a draw, and he gave Geller the credit for having discovered in overnight analysis the way to equalize the game. Between them, Geller and Nei have an enormous amount of expertise on a broad spectrum of openings.
Bondarevsky says that Spassky will beat Fischer. But most Soviet experts are skeptical or noncommittal. Botvinnik has said that however the match turns out, Fischer and Spassky will continue to have seesaw battles for a decade. A Yugoslav journalist found Petrosian playing a slot machine at the Moscow Writers' Club after his lopsided loss to Fischer and asked him the obvious question. “The world waits for a new king on the chess throne,” Petrosian replied, “I cannot say who this will be, nor am I able to forecast the future … Is Fischer really a chess genius? I am absolutely sure he is not.”
Viktor Korchnoi says that Fischer will win because Spassky is lazy. Spassky's most ebullient supporter is the former world champion Mikhail Tal, who says “Bobby won't have it so easy against Spassky.”
In spite of the underlying Soviet pessimism, Spassky's fears and Fischer's fabulous feats, Tal is right. With Spassky's dogged defense and formidable attacking power, Fischer could not find a tougher opponent. Spassky and Fischer have played five tournament games in the past. Spassky won three, and two were drawn, but all were played before Fischer's sensational winning streak began. Long ago Spassky remarked that one thing that made him less vulnerable than Fischer was his ability to accept defeat. When asked how he avoided being discouraged and could snap back after a bad beating in a given game, he replied that this was his secret and he was going to keep it. The secret is something Fischer must bear in mind. END
