The Kansas City Star Kansas City, Missouri Monday, July 10, 1972 - Page 6
Technicians Take Turn Before First Chess Move
Reykjavik, Iceland (AP)—Sigurdur Helgason cuts up his days into neat marble squares.
A stone mason whose business usually runs to gravestones, Helgason has been in the chess board trade the last few weeks.
Today he's on his fourth chess board, the one on which Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky will play for $300,000 in prizes.
The first board Helgason made was too shiny for Fridrik Olafsson, an Icelandic grandmaster acting as technical adviser to the organizers. The second was considered too light, Helgason said. It lacked the proper contrast. The third seemed all right until yesterday.
Then the Russians came to the 2,500-seat sports hall where the 24-game world championship series will begin tomorrow, and Yefim Geller said the squares were too big.
Bobby Fischer showed up at 1 o'clock this morning to see for himself. The American spent an hour pivoting around in a leather chair in front of the playing table. It was the chair he sat in to beat a Russian, Tigran Petrosian, and gain the right to play the world champion, Spassky, another Russian.
Fischer hunched over the board, waved a long arm and concurred with the Russians. The squares would have to be smaller.
Helgason's workmen today were cutting Italian marble into 2 and 1/4 inch squares with a wet saw. The squares on board No. 3 were 2 and 1/2 inches on each side, a quarter-inch too big for the grandmasters.
“I hope this one is all right,” Helgason said with a worried look. “We haven't got much time.”
Light gray marble will serve for the white squares on the board. Helgason used green Lancashire slate for the black.
Nothing was right for Fischer early today. Overhead lights, which cost $5,500 to install, had to be changed, he said. The mahogany table, which cost another $2,000 had to be shortened by Ragnar Haraldsson, the carpenter who made it.
But despite these last-minute problems—minor compared with the disputes that nearly wrecked the match last week—everything apparently is set for Spassky to make the first move at noon tomorrow (Kansas City time).
