Rutland Daily Herald Rutland, Vermont Saturday, July 22, 1972 - Page 2
Clucking Heard at Moscow Chess Club by Theodore Shabad
Moscow—“You're asking about the blunder?” the young Russian chess fan said. “I think the biggest blunder Spassky ever made was to sit down opposite Fischer to play chess.”
The blond Russian had stepped out into the cool air on the balcony of the Central Chess Club and was commenting on the uproar stirred abroad by the defeat of Boris Spassky, the Soviet champion, in the fifth game of the world title match against Bobby Fischer of the United States.
The comment was typical of many Russian chess players who never though Spassky had much of a chance against the American and who were therefore taking Thursday's defeat of the Russian in Reykjavik in stride. The score is now even at 2.5 to 2.5.
Inside the sweltering playing rooms of the chess club, others were huddled in groups around boards and were running through the moves of the fifth game on the basis of reports in the evening papers.
Players moved the pieces over the board more rapidly than a novice could follow and then suddenly slowed as they approached the 26th move, in which Spassky shifted the white bishop in what Tass, the official press agency, termed a “strange maneuver.”
The agency attributed the error to a lack of time for thinking and “maybe to fatigue caused by strenuous playing.” ([Or better, the strain of Moscow breathing down Spassky's back]) Spassky, by the 20th move, had taken 50 more minutes for his game than Fischer.
The young Russians looked in puzzlement at the fateful 27th move, in which Spassky committed his blunder by moving back his white queen.
“My God, he overlooked the bishop,” one of the players murmured, referring to the black piece that was promptly moved by Fischer to set the stage for inevitable defeat.
In the officially controlled media, chess commentators were equally puzzled by Spassky's error, but no one engaged in personal recriminations as sometimes happens when Soviet players lose.
Nikolai Dymarsky, a radio-television commentator who is covering the match for Soviet media in Reykjavik, said “Only five games have been played and 19 are still ahead, so that anything can happen, both pleasant and disappointing.”
Yevgeny Vasyukov, writing in the evening paper, Vechernyaya Moskava, said “Quite unexpectedly the world champion committed a gross oversight and, after Fischer's reply promptly resigned.”
“A sad finish,” Vasyukov added. “Such oversights are extremely rare in Spassky's games.”
In the regular nightly television analysis of the Reykjavik games, Yakov Damsky termed the error an “incomprehensible oversight,” adding that Spassky had committed such an error only once before in his career.
