AThe Brandon Sun Brandon, Manitoba, Canada Friday, July 07, 1972 - Page 6
World Chess Championship: Play Will Begin Tuesday
Reykjavik, Iceland (CP) — World chess champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union and challenger Bobby Fischer of the United States agreed Thursday night to begin their long-disputed world championship match Tuesday.
The chess match became a reality when the Soviet champion and his American challenger met face to face to draw lots on who should play white in the opening game of the 24-game series.
Spassky won the draw, and will have the first move in the first game.
Tournament officials feared further disaster when the 29-year-old challenger kept the Russian champion waiting for more than a half-hour at the exhibition hall where the draw took place.
The champion arrived 10 minutes before the appointed time and Fischer more than 20 minutes late.
But the Russian appeared in an almost jovial mood as he and Fischer inspected the Icelandic stone chessboard on which the crucial matches will take place.
Fischer looked cool in a powder-green suit despite a harrowing experience on his arrival at the hall when he had to be rescued from reporters and fans who surrounded his car.
The decision to begin play Tuesday rather than Sunday came as a complete surprise.
There was no immediate explanation for the new date. But it was generally thought that Fischer had bowed to a request from Spassky, who is regarded as most likely to have suffered from the uncertainties of the last few days.
Thursday morning, Fischer apologized to Spassky in writing for “disrespectful behavior,” and the Soviet news agency Tass announced Thursday night that “all demands of the Soviet delegation have been satisfied.” ([but no apologies were offered about the Soviet sin of choosing an island which for decades had secret policies with other governments forbidding persons with shades of brown skin on their anti-American, pro-Soviet island. Nor apologizing for the Soviet's anti-Semitic stance, which had often labeled players like Sam Reshevsky who kept the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, the “Reshevsky Problem” along with Fischer whom, in the meantime began practicing the doctrines of a Christian fundamentalist sect around 1962, which kept the same Sabbath. Soviet and Christian Dominated press painted Fischer and Reshevsky as “bizarre”, “eccentric” and “controversial” because one chooses to obey religious customs contrary to the Soviet Union or even Christian Fundamentalist dominated United States which gave not as much as a second thought to those who refused to play a chess tournament on Sunday out of religious devotion to attend to demands of Sunday-worshiping Protestant denominations. That is A LOT of plotting and discrimination swept under the rug! and erased from chess history. Very Troublesome … which led to pushing Reshevsky out of some matches, or in Fischer's case, either play, or forfeit … only then to be maligned in worldwide press by Soviet-sympathetic and Christian-Dominated fundamentalists affiliates in the press as “temperamental”.])
The apology opened the way for the start of the 24-game series, plagued by delay, confusion and bad feeling.
Fischer delayed the opening of the match, which was to have begun last Sunday, in a holdout for more money ([and rightly so, for if the match had been held in Australia before Euwe went back on his word, to offer the first half of matches on a “first come first served” bid basis, Australia was offering to fork up $225,000 and Mexico's bid at $175,000 … but Soviet arm-twisting knocked out the competition, to whittle the figure down to almost HALF the total prize potential. Fischer agreed only to play, “under protest,”]). The stakes then were an official purse of $125,000 and a share of TV and film receipts.
He decided to come—arriving Tuesday—only after British financier James Slater stepped in with a donation of $130,000 to sweeten the prize pot (and re-establish the total prize figures closer to what was legally bid by Australia and Mexico.])
