The Times San Mateo, California Saturday, April 15, 1972 - Page 36
Chessboard Is Nation's Field of Honor
At last it has been settled.
Bobby Fischer will play Boris Vasilyevich Spassky for the chess championship of the would. The match will begin on June 22 and when it is over many experts think there will be a new champion.
The chess world is holding its breath. For, if he wins the title, he will be the first non-Russian to hold the championship in 35 years and he would be the first American ever to win it.
Many consider Fischer a cinch but he has never beaten Spassky even though they have met on only a few occasions. Further, Spassky did not get to he chess champion of the World by being a pushover.
In may ways Fischer and Spassky are alike, although Spassky lost both of his parents at the siege of Leningrad and was orphaned at the age of five. Both players are totally dedicated to chess and have almost no other interest.
Spassky was only about six years old, so the story goes, when he played the then world champion Mikhail Botvinnik in an exhibition. He supposedly beat Botvinnik and the champion predicted “This boy will become world champion.”
Spassky has studied and analyzed tens of thousands of variations upon variations of moves. He has few close friends and lives for chess. In the Soviet Union he gets a lot of help because in Russia the government subsidizes such things as chess champions.
Fischer will go into the match all alone with only his own ability and wits to guide him. But Spassky will have with him a veritable “brain trust.” Officially, at the moment, he will have Igor Bondarevsky, his coach; Ivor Nei, an international master and advisor; Yefim Geller, Soviet grandmaster; and finally, Nikolai, a psychologist.
Spassky will also have whole nation united behind him. Chess is Russia's pride.
Each player will indeed have the prestige of his country riding on his skill. Duels between Russians and Americans always seem to work out that way.
