COLLAPSE OF SPASSKY NOW MOOTED Fischer leads, favoured to take title

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32977, 25 July 1972, Page 22

COLLAPSE OF SPASSKY NOW MOOTED Fischer leads, favoured to take title

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter—Copyright)

REYKJAVIK (Iceland).

The American challenger, R. Fischer, is now a firm favourite to end the Soviet Union’s 24-year monopoly of the world chess championship after crushing Spassky in their sixth contest, to take the lead in the series for the first time.

No player in the world seems capable of standing up to the temperamental Fischer in his present mood.

Spassky, who has just lost twice, consecutively, may well collapse in the face of the American’s onslaught, just as T. Petrosian, his predecessor as world champion, did in Buenos Aires last year.

Fischer, after his latest win, leads the best of 24-games championship by 3) points to 24, but he has

in fact only lost one played game to Spassky, with the Russian’s other points coming from a game forfeited by Fischer and the drawn fourth game. The 29-year-old American totally dominated play in the sixth game. He emerged from the openin'- with a slight advantage, then piled on pressure on both sides of the board and forced Spassky to allow him to make a winning sacrifice of a rook for a knight. The position then proved hopeless for the champion, who resigned on the fortyfirst move when he was faced with the alternative of being checkmated or losing his queen. Spassky now seems to have no means of combating the numerous and diverse weapons in Fischer’s armoury. Shock opening Once again Fischer surprised the experts from the start, when he opened by moving his white pawn to queen bishop four —the English opening which he has only used twice before in his chess career.

Fischer enters the seventh game, in which Spassky has the white pieces, with the added advantage that his popularity in this chess-mad capital is on the upswing. The record crowd of 2500 spectators gave the United States grandmaster—much criticised for his off-the-board behaviour—a tremendous burst of applause when Spassky resigned.

But Fischer has allowed the Russian no respite in the psychological warfare accompanying the main battle.

As usual, Spassky arrived on time last night but was forced to remain alone on the stage and, since Fischer had first move with the white pieces, could only start up his clock and await the American’s arrival. For Spassky there is only the small consolation that his general behaviour and action in refraining from taking a rest on “medical grounds” after a bad run of play—a frequent practice of previous world champions—has been appreciated here. Off form But grandmasters attending the championship have been astonished at some of Spassky’s chessboard actions in earlier contests, and concluded that they showed the Russian was not fully in form, possibly because of the disputes and troubles which have beset the tournament. The problem confronting Spassky is whether he can now succeed where Fischer’s previous contestants in the earlier rounds have all failed —in making a come-back after an apparently major collapse. A Soviet grandmaster, Y. Averbach, posed the problem confronting Spassky when he said last year: “There is some strange magnetic influence in Bobby.” He said that Fischer had beaten Petrosian in the match which earned him the right to challenge Spassky, by first breaking the .ormer world champion’s spirit in the crucial sixth game. “The same happened with his two previous opponents in his march for the world title — grandmasters M. Taimanov and B. Larsen.

“They were also spiritually wrecked after the first couple of games,” he said.