The Winona Daily News Winona, Minnesota Sunday, July 23, 1972 - Page 17
World Chess Contest Now Match of Nerves
By Julie Flint
Reykjavik, Iceland (AP) — Grand masters gathered here for the sixth game in the world championship chess match today say the real contest now is one of nerves rather than know-how.
Argentinian grandmaster Miguel Najdorf, a good friend of Bobby Fischer, said the American challenger told him Saturday he was edgy. “Of course I'm nervous,” Fischer said. “My game is my life.”
Fischer and world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union are tied at 2½ points each in the 24-game match.
Fischer aides insisted that Spassky was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of the blunder that cost him the fifth game. The Russians denied it.
If Spassky was worried, he was not showing it. Which Fischer secluded himself in his hotel room on the Saturday Sabbath of the Church of God, to which he belongs, Spassky played tennis.
Najdorf expressed the view that Spassky was still very much in the game, even though he scored only half a point of a possible three points in the last three games.
“If you have a girl that you love and you lose here, you go and find another,” the Argentinian said. “It is the same with chess. The important game is the one after a defeat.”
Despite his nerves, Fischer apparently was maintaining his confidence. Najdorf said, “He believes that when he's 60 he will still be world champion.”
Asked about Thursday's defeat, Spassky told a reporter his slip-up had been “quite normal.”
The Russian went out with his racket and his second, Ivo Nei, for a game of tennis. They laughed with a group of boys kicking a football near the tennis court.
The Americans had passed the word that Spassky had fled his hotel, panic stricken, for an out of town penthouse.
Nikolai Krogius, a psychology professor and Spassky's second, said the champion was “quite well, here in his Hotel Saga with me.”
