ANew York Times, New York, New York, Tuesday, July 11, 1972 - Page 32
Chess Champions Poised for Match by Harold C. Schonberg
Reykjavik, Iceland, July 10—Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, like two high-strung athletes—which in a way they are—tapered off their training today and are ready to face each other tomorrow for the chess championship of the world.
The match is to begin at 5 P.M.—1 P.M. New York time—in Exhibition Hall. Spassky, the titleholder, will play white, and thus has the first move in the first game.
The 35-year-old Soviet star, who has been world champion since 1969, played tennis this morning and then disappeared from public view. His 29-year-old American challenger swam last night and, as is his custom, slept through most of the day.
Spassky was reported tense but confident. He is more volatile than Fischer, and it was said that he was undergoing a last-minute bout of nerves. Fischer was reported relaxed and happy.
In a way the match resembles a prizefight. Each player has long been in training for the event, which carries a purse of $250,000, the winner to get five-eighths, and both are surrounded by trainers and advisers.
Russians Visit Arena
The two sides have also been disputing for months about contractual agreements, with negotiations that were settled only last week. And both will make money from film and television coverage.
The match is being held in a sports arena and Lloyd's of London has established betting odds on the match, making Fischer an odds-on favorite.
It is a match that has attracted worldwide interest, and it has international overtones. Neither player is politically oriented‐Spassky is not even a member of the Communist party—but the match nevertheless has developed into something of a Russian-American confrontation.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has held the chess championship since 1948, when Mikhail Botvinnik won the title, and has politicized chess as much as it has politicized drama, art and music. The Soviet public has been told that Soviet chess is supreme because it reflects Marxist-Leninist ideals. Thus to the Russians more is at stake than a mere chess match—a Fischer victory would strike at a basic claim of Soviet cultural ideology.
Some work still remains to be done at Exhibition Hall before the players face each other. The Russian delegation visited the arena yesterday afternoon and said everything was satisfactory except the chess board, which has been made of marble squares and inlaid into a specially constructed table. The squares, 2 5/8 inches, are too large in relation to the chess pieces. Fischer visited the hall at 1 A.M., and he, too, found the board too large.
The board is the third one made in the last several weeks by Sigudur Helgason, who, when the world chess titles are not at stake, makes his living cutting gravestones.
The first one Mr. Helgason made was found to have too much glare. The second did not have enough contrast between the light and dark squares. And now the contenders have found the third to be out of proportion.
Mr. Helgason and his workmen were busy cutting light gray Italian marble and green slate with a wet saw today. The new squares will be 2 1/4 inches on the sides.
The board was not the only thing that troubled Fischer in his late hour visit to the hall. He also complained about the lighting and about the distance between the players' table and the audience. It was too close, he said.
Fischer's Chair Arrives
The distance was measured and it was 40 feet from the edge of the chess board, exactly what Fischer's contract called for. Electricians are working on the lighting.
Fischer's chair has arrived from New York. It is a large swivel chair of black leather, with arm rests and chrome-steel trim. Originally it was reported used when he conquered Spassky's compatriot, Tigran Petrosian, in Buenos Aires, thereby winning the right to meet Spassky. It is, however, not that chair but a duplicate.
Because of the protests, postponements and other incidents that made the match an uncertainty, ticket sales are low. The Icelandic Chess Federation, which yesterday was saying that the hall would be nearly sold out for the first game, now admits to being overly exuberant. Ticket sales have picked up a bit, but the 2,300 seat hall may be more than half empty.
Although Iceland is a nation of chess enthusiasts, it seems that not many around the country were interested in coming to Reykjavik for a match that might not have come off. ([Who but the Soviets and their network of worldwide subversive press have tried, up till this point, every trick in the book to poison the well and derail the match?])
The tourist bureau, however, reported a “reasonable increase” in tourism. After it became known that the match would go on, the tourist office and the Icelandic Chess Federation began receiving dozens of telegrams every day for accommodations.
Hotels are Filled
But accommodations are hard to find. This city of fewer than 80,000 people does not have many hotels and is trying to divert chess enthusiasts into private homes. It is the height of the normal tourist season and all hotels have been booked for months. Some prospective visitors for the match have canceled their plans because they wanted a hotel room and could not get one.
The delay of the match, which had been scheduled to start on July 2, has imposed hardships on some visitors. They had made arrangements months in advance to spent their two or three weeks on a chess vacation, and now nine days have gone by without a game.
These visitors are chess enthusiasts who can reel off Fischer's or Spassky's record, or play through entire games from memory. Without blaming one side or the other, they are unhappy about the negotiations that made them miss several games.
These specialists, and many of the grandmasters present, have been having long, speculative discussions about what moves Spassky will use in his opening against Fischer tomorrow.
The consensus among amateurs and grandmasters is that he will adopt a Queen's Pawn Opening and that Fischer will go into a Grunfeld Defense. Grandmasters Dragoliub Janosevic and Svetozar Gligoric of Yugoslavia base this opinion on past performance.
The last two Spassky-Fischer encounters, they point out, were won by Spassky, and in both of those games Fischer went into the Grunfeld. One orthodox configuration of this opening, named after an Austrian grandmaster who died in 1962, is:
1. P-Q4 N-KB3
2. P-QB4 P-KN3
3. N-QB3 P-Q4
4. N-KB3 B-N2
The idea is for black to exert pressure on white's center pawns.
Robert Byrne, an American grandmaster, also said he thought that Spassky, because of his success against Fischer with the Queen's Pawn Opening, would use it again. he said he believed that Fischer would jump at the chance to try some new ideas against Spassky in the Grunfeld.
But, Byrne said, it is possible that Spassky will defiantly open with Fischer's favorite move, P-K4. If he does that, he will in effect be saying to Fischer, who knows the king's pawn openings better than any player who has ever lived, “Come on out and fight.” In that case there will be some wild, exhilarating chess in the offing.
