ANew York Times New York, New York, Tuesday, July 18, 1972 - Page 21
Spassky Resigns Without Resuming Play in 3d Game by Harold C. Schonberg
Reykjavik, Iceland, July 17—Bobby Fischer today won the third game of the world championship chess match without even being there. It was his first victory in the match and the first time he had ever defeated Boris Spassky.
Spassky, the champion, went to Exhibition Hall ready to play off yesterday's adjourned game, took one look at the 41st move Fischer had sealed — it was bishop to queen 6 check — and resigned almost immediately.
The score is now 2 to 1 in favor of Spassky, although only two games have actually been played. Fischer lost the first game when it was played off last Wednesday and the second by forfeit when he failed to show up Thursday.
After the forfeit, Fischer said he would not continue the match if the ruling was not wiped off the books. But the forfeit has been upheld and Fischer obviously changed his mind.
However, he was not in the hall when Lothar Schmid, the referee, said to the small audience: “I am sorry. The game is over, Mr. Spassky resigns.”
The audience quietly left. At 5:15 Fischer rushed onto the stage, out of breath. “What happened?” he asked. Schmid told him that Spassky had resigned.
Without a word, Fischer scribbled his name on his score sheet, handed it to the referee and rushed out.
In the fourth game, scheduled to start at 5 P.M. tomorrow, Fischer will have the white pieces and, therefore, the advantage of the first move.
Strictly speaking, Fischer did not have to be present while Spassky made his move today. Fischer had written his 41st move on a slip of paper at the end of yesterday's game and had handed it, in a sealed envelope, to Schmid.
At that time he still had 10 minutes of his allotted 2½ hours remaining on his clock, and he was entitled to another hour for his next 16 moves.
There was something forlorn about Spassky, alone on the stage today, as Schmid opened the sealed move and then as Spassky looked at it and at his hopelessly lost position.
Today's game, if such it can be called was played not in the private table-tennis room used yesterday, but on the stage of the 2,300-seat Exhibition Hall. Last night Spassky notified Schmid in a personal letter, rather than in an official protest, that the upstairs room was unsatisfactory. There was too much noise from vehicular traffic, children could be heard playing, and the air-conditioning system created a racket, he said.
Fischer then agreed to play downstairs, provided the adjourned game was not filmed ([by disruptive camera men]). During the last few days Fischer has made an issue of the ([disruptive men hired to disruptively operate]) cameras in the hall, asserting that they distracted him. For today's playoff all cameras except the one for the closed circuit television were removed. Fischer has not objected to the closed-circuit equipment. ([And why, because the closed-circuit equipment is automated, just as Chester Fox, Inc. and the Soviet-Icelandic organizers misled Fischer to believe other cameras in the main auditorium would be also.])
Gudmundur Thorarinsson, president of the Icelandic Chess Federation, said today that the decision to have the cameras removed had been a difficult one and that it imposed considerable financial hardship on the sponsors of the match.
“But this is a chess match,” he said. “The filming is not the first priority. If this is the only way the match can go on, then we must take it.” ([as planned, for the Soviets intended months earlier to achieve a blackout on all media coverage of the tournament, and shuffling disruptive teams of camera men from all angles around Fischer on stage, to blow his concentration, achieved his demand the cameras be removed, which was no mere coincidence. Events played out precisely as the Soviet calculated they would.])
The Icelandic Chess Federation is trying to work out a solution to the problem. It has a contract with Chester Fox, Inc., for exclusive television and film rights, and Mr. Thorarinsson said there could not be a contract with any other film maker. The Icelandic Chess Federation, Fox and the American delegation should be able, he said, to work out some kind of agreement satisfactory to all sides. The Soviet delegation has made no objection to the cameras.
At least general happiness was expressed at the kind of chess Fischer played yesterday. It was the consensus that this game, his sixth over-the-board encounter with Spassky, was one of his most brilliant creations.
Initiative Seized
Playing the black side—normally the defensive side—of a Benoni Counter Gambit, he wrested the initiative away from Spassky early in the game and, from then on, posed problem after problem for the champion. All Spassky could do was hold on, hoping for a slip. But Fischer's play was absolutely precise, and at adjournment Spassky was in a completely lost position.
Fischer took about five minutes for his sealed move.
Professional and amateur analysts worked on it all right — all except Fischer. He and his second, the Rev. William Lombardy, it is reported, analyzed the position for only 25 minutes and then went off to the bowling alleys at the Air Force base. The Russians worked on the position all night.
Of course, only Fischer and Lombardy knew the sealed move. Analysts decided that it had to be bishop to queen 6 check, and so it was. Any other move would have given Spassky some counterplay, though not enough to win. The only reason Spassky went to the playoff was to see if Fischer had indeed made the most accurate move. Fischer had, and Spassky, not wishing to go through the humiliation of a series of forced moves leading to an easy victory for Fischer, stopped his clock in surrender.
