ANew York Times, New York, New York, Saturday, May 06, 1972 - Page 33
Fischer Accepts Match In Iceland
Agrees to Oppose Spassky for World Chess Title by Murray Illson
Bobby Fischer, the American challenger for the world chess championship, agreed yesterday to play the champion, Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, in Reykjavik, Iceland, “or anywhere else in the free world.”
The move by the 29-year-old American grandmaster, made at Grossinger's, in the Catskills, where he has been training, apparently ended a four-month controversy over the site for the match and the division of the prize money.
A spokesman in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for the International Chess Federation, said on Wednesday that Fischer had until this morning to accept the terms proposed by Icelandic Chess Federation for staging the 24-game series in Reykjavik starting July 2. Under the Icelandic bid, the winner would receive $78,125, and the loser the balance of a prize purse of $125,000.
Paul G. Marshall, Fischer's lawyer, said his client had agreed to the match with Spassky “in spite of the continued attempts by the Russian Government to defend a title by chicanery instead of skill.”
Fischer, according to the statement, held that the site of the match should have been chosen in a face-to-face meeting between himself and Spassky but that the Soviet Government would not permit a meeting or allow Spassky to travel freely.
Accusing the International Chess Federation of being “biased,” the statement charged that Fischer's only knowledge of the Icelandic bid came to him from newspaper reports and that he had never been reached personally by the federation.
“While Mr. Fischer expressed admiration for both the people and the country of Iceland,” the statement said, “he noted that the lack of technical facilities there made televised coverage very difficult and severely hampered films or tape recordings of the event.”
Fischer's “chief aim was to see that his friends in the Americas could for the first time see their representative play for the world championship,” the statement said.
