The Cameron Herald Cameron, Texas Monday, June 19, 1972 - Page 2
Chess Championship To Be Played In Iceland
By Thorsteinn Thorarensen
Reuter Correspondent
Reykjavik, Iceland
Iceland is enthusiastically preparing to play host to a world chess championship likely to gain the attention of more people than any other event of its kind ever held.
The contest, opening on July 2, has become one of the most fascinating confrontations in the centuries-old history of chess.
The American challenger Bobby Fischer, poses the biggest threat in many years to the long hold of Soviet players on the title, and has established a reputation as one of the most colorful and enigmatic players ever to reach world status.
Fischer's recent record along is enough to excite chess buffs. When he meets the formidable world champion, Boris Spassky, the 29-year-old Fischer will be riding the crest of an extraordinary string of one-sided victories over top players in the elimination tournament which made him the challenger.
Spassky, 35, will be defending a Soviet hold on the title that has remained unbroken for 24 years - - and the dominant player for two decades before that was a Russian-born chess genius who lived in France, Alexander Alekhine.
Fischer, a former child prodigy who has once thought to have blighted his career by a series of withdrawals, has now emerged as a chess juggernaut.
Experts here are divided on whether he will be able to demolish Spassky the way he did former world champion Tigran Petrosian, also of the Soviet Union, last autumn to gain the right to challenge for the title.
Petrosian is famous for his patient, systematic play, but analysts agreed that Fischer shattered his game. After their Buenos Aires series, one of Petrosian's analysts, Soviet grandmaster Yuri Averbach, said: “His spirit was completely broken after the sixth game of the match.
“There is some strange magnetic influence in Bobby,” Averbach said. “The same happened with his two previous opponents in his march for the world title, Grandmasters Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen. They were also spiritually wrecked after the first couple of games.
But many experts feel Fischer will be up against a different problem in Spassky, who took the world championship from Petrosian in 1969 and has earned broad respect for his attacking flair and deep determination.
