I remember the summer of 1972 and Bobby Fischer’s historic chess match with Boris Spassky. Every day, the newspapers had extensive coverage from Reykjavik, Iceland.
At the time, this contest was bigger than Watergate, and the break-in had just happened in June. The chess match went from July to September.
I had played chess, but I had never heard of the Benoni Defense, the Sicilian Defense, the Poisoned Pawn and Queen’s Gambit Declined. I just knew which way the pieces moved. Now everyone was talking chess jargon.
American champion. Fischer lost the first two games to Spassky, the defending world champion from the Soviet Union. But then, after it appeared Fischer might quit and go home, the match resumed. Of the next 19 games, 11 were a draw. Fischer lost once more, but he also won seven, giving him the match.
An American had captured the world chess championship for the first time ever.
Fischer was fairly strange even then, always threatening to pull out of matches, and finally finishing that 1972 championship in a back room away from cameras. Later, he grew weirder, making many ugly comments laced with anti-Semitism, especially surprising from a man whose mother was Jewish.
He could play chess. He just couldn’t play nice.
Bobby Fischer is dead at age 64. He died yesterday in Reykjavik.
Frank Warner
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