Kingsport Times-News Kingsport, Tennessee Sunday, July 16, 1972 - Page 29
Chess - Isolation May Save Match
Reykjavik (UPI) — In a final attempt to get Bobby Fischer to return to the chess board, the world championship match committee proposed Saturday that Sunday's game in his contest with Russia's Boris Spassky be played private with only the players and judges present.
That way the American challenger would escape the TV cameras in the chess hall. He refused to play the second game Thursday because the organizers would not remove the cameras ([and disruptive crews of men disruptively operating the cameras]) which he said distracted him.
But arbiter Lothar Schmid of West Germany and other chess officials said they were still pessimistic about the possibility of continuing the match, in which Spassky leads, 2-0, after beating the American in the first game and winning the second by default.
They said Fischer would presumably refuse to turn up for the third game Sunday because the match committee rejected his protest against Schmid's ([illegal, since formal protests had been officially declared before the deadline]) decision to give the second game to the Russian world champion when Fischer refused to play.
At a closed door meeting Saturday Fischer's lawyers proposed to the match committee that Sunday's game be designated the second game while the American Chess Federation appeals the decision to give Thursday's game to Spassky to the International Chess Federation (FIDE) Congress at Skopje, Yugoslavia.
Depending on FIDE's decision that game could then be replayed or decided at the end of the 24-game world title series, Fischer's lawyer said.
The match committee rejected the proposal, chess sources said, and reiterated that the clock will be started at 5 p.m. (1 p.m. EDT) Sunday for the third game regardless of whether Fischer turns up.
Schmid said the match rules allow him to move the match, “at least temporarily to give Fischer a chance to calm down,” from the 3,000 seat chess hall to a closed backstage room.
The rules say that any player can request such a move if he is distracted by noise and has more than 20 minutes of his original two and a half hours playing time left on the clock.
The Icelandic Chess Federation, which stands to lose about $100,000 or more if the $250,000 match is called off, ([what? No money actually tucked away “in escrow”?? like legitimate sports organizers would do before offering an $125,000 prize pot?]) said it was prepared to discuss the complete removal of all cameras if no other solution was possible. ([And that's precisely what should have been done when Fischer first raised the issue, “Under agreed RULES of the match, [Fischer] had the RIGHT TO OBJECT and TO DEMAND REMOVAL of the cameras if they disturbed him.” -Edmondson, USCF])
