AChicago Tribune Chicago, Illinois Sunday, July 02, 1972 - Page 189
Chess: Spassky Psyched and Well Studied for the Onslaught of Bobby Fischer by James Yuenger, Chief of Moscow Bureau
BORIS SPASSKY took a chess-playing psychologist along when he flew to Iceland to complete preparations for defending his world chess championship against Bobby Fischer.
The presence of the psychologist is one indication of the importance the Russians attach to keeping Spassky in top mental shape for the titanic emotional struggle scheduled to open today in Reykjavik's 5,000-seat Sports Palace.
At a press conference in Moscow a couple of weeks ago, Spassky appeared in superb physical condition and was poised almost to the point of blandness as he fielded questions from newsmen. He said he was eager for the long-awaited title match, he felt fine, he was prepared.
Spassky is almost never put on public display as he was then. Many earlier requests for individual interviews had been ignored. And there was something in the atmosphere that led some people to suspect that the press conference had been carefully staged as a ploy to shake Fischer up long-distance.
There was, for instance, Spassky's comment that the 29-year-old American challenger—judging by his insistence that the Russians were trying to avoid him and his thinly-veiled charge that they cheat— had “some sort of persecution complex.”
The fact of the matter is, tho, that many Russians have the uneasy feeling that Spassky will be beaten.
Altho he's only 35 years old, he is widely viewed as a member of the older generation of top Russian players, along with such masters as Mikhail Tal, Mikhail Botvinnik, and Tigran Petrosian. The inference is that he's slightly stale.
They're afraid that Fischer's well-known prickliness over playing conditions, his wrangle over the site and the size of the purse for the upcoming match, his recognized brilliance, and his very youth have all contributed to a psychological aura that Spassky won't be able to handle.
Any serious student of chess knows that there are many ghosts to haunt Spassky—a parentless childhood, a first marriage that went on the rocks, and a series of crushing defeats, beginning when he was a boy, on his way to the world title.
Spassky was nine years and an orphan [his parents had been killed in the siege of Leningrad] when he first visited the chess club at the Leningrad Palace of Young Pioneers. In one of the rooms, Victor Korchnoi, only 15 years old but already bidding for grandmaster status, was giving an exhibition of simultaneous play.
Spassky was pushed into an empty seat, his head barely clearing the table, whereupon Korchnoi announced contemptuously, “I can play this kid blind.”
He was in 22 moves. Young Boris Vassilievich burst into tears and ran home, determined never to return.
Then there was the 25th Russian championship in 1958 when Spassky, then 21, astounded the nation for several days by coming out of left field and beating everyone in sight. Then he blew everything with one stupid move—and again burst into tears.
That, Spassky says now, was the turning point in his career. It began a period of intense introspection during which he developed the iron control that permitted him to withdraw in the late stages of the 1961 championship without cracking and to bounce back from a narrow defeat by Petrosian in the 1866 championship.
What Spassky said about that 1966 match is a good tipoff to the attitude he is taking into the arena against Fischer:
“I want to note without any false modesty that in 1965 I was already a stronger player than Petrosian. But when two players meet in a match, their relative chess strength is relegated to the background.
“The one who is objectively the weaker of the two can win the match, for example, as a result of better preparation and a good knowledge of his adversary as well as of his own weaknesses and strong points.
“In match play the human personality reveals itself in all its diversity. In 1966 Petrosian was superior to me as a personality. He was a mature person who knew his worth. I was inferior to him in many ways. The Germans have a good saying: “You can't entrust a serious matter to a person under 30.” In 1966 I was still under 30. I realized in the course of the match that defeat was inevitable and I was prepared for it. I was disappointed, of course, but I did not make a tragedy out of it.”
For all that, there are still lapses. Last spring Spassky finished far back in the Alekhine Memorial Tournament in Moscow, giving rise to two speculative theories—that he was experimenting in preparation for Fischer, or that he was unwilling to disclose his secrets in open play.
Spassky himself says simply “I played poorly.” To make that admission may have been a sign of maturity, but it could not have set well with the rulers of the Soviet chess world.
Petrosian, whom Spassky finally defeated in 1969 to assume the world title, believes the Russian champion will beat Fischer. He added cautiously, however, that Spassky's chances would be better in an intense and lengthy contest—which may well be the case this time in Reykjavik, given Spassky's penchant to go for a draw when things are not all going his way.
Speaking of Fischer's sensational shutouts of the U.S.S.R.'s Mark Taimanov and Denmark's Bent Larsen in the interzonal matches last year, Petrosian called the young American “an exceptionally dangerous rival for any Chess player.”
Will Spassky succumb to “Fischer - fear?” Robert Byrne, the American grandmaster, isn't sure.
Byrne believes that Fischer will win but he says Spassky's strong point will be his ability to find the key that will unnerve Fischer. “He is a far better psychologist than Fischer, and this quality has never failed him.”
Contrasted with the reams of publicity that Fischer has recently permitted about himself, Spassky has stayed well out of the spotlight. He refuses even to talk about his physical training regimen altho it was clearly an arduous one.
The Russian champion lives quietly in a roomy apartment with his second wife and their son, Vassily—who, he noted, turned five years old last week. He seemed almost to view this as a good luck omen.
The pressure on Spassky is fantastic. It comes not only from the knowledge that Fischer may be the toughest opponent he ever faced, but also from knowing that the entire Soviet Union is depending on him to preserve the national pride.
Russian chess players who make it to the top are subsidized to a fare-thee-well, receiving privileges that most average citizens never have. If Spassky loses, not only will he fall from grace as a national hero, but his whole lifestyle may change. The Russians don't like losers.
One senses, therefore, that he feels a tremendous obligation not only to his own competitive sense but to the motherland. He said as much after winning the world title in 1969.
“What do I feel now? Joy? Happiness? No, I experience a feeling of inner satisfaction. Not because I have become world champion but because I have succeeded in beating Petrosian. I feel I have done my duty.”
For all his competence at the chessboard, and the competitive urge that entails, Spassky insists that he is not combative by nature.
“I am a contemplative person,” he says. “But in chess you have to be a fighter, and of necessity I became one. Chess itself spurs you on to certain actions. In some cases it compels you to be active, and in others to show patience and restraint. In short, chess molds your character. As for me, it made me a fighter.”
The last time they met, in 1970, Spassky beat Fischer in three games and two were drawn. Since then Fischer's rise has been meteoric—and Spassky, playing little in public, has watched him coming on like gangbusters.
Now the world will find out whether the world champion is a sufficiently composed and mature man to withstand Fischer's incandescent assault, or whether that 9-year-old boy sobbing at the Leningrad chess club is still in the background.
Chicago Tribune Press Service
Spassky Psyched and Well Studied for the Onslaught of Bobby Fischer 02 Jul 1972, Sun Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) Newspapers.com
