Fischer—and chess—on top

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32977, 25 July 1972, Page 12

Fischer—and chess—on top

Although he lost the first game and forfeited the second, Robert Fischer now leads the defending world chess champion, Boris Spassky, by 3 J games to 2J. Of the five games that have been played in this challenge, Fischer has won three and Spassky only one; the brash American has now established a psychological advantage which must daunt even a world champion. Before the challenge began the psychological advantage lay with Spassky, who had beaten Fischer four times without suffering a reverse in their previous encounters. Perhaps Fischer’s ascendancy has been established as much by gamesmanship as by his undoubted skill; Spassky’s uncharacteristic errors in most of the games at Reykjavik can be explained only by nerves frayed to breaking-point by the suspense created by Fischer’s wrangles with the chess authorities over money and by the almost daily uncertainty whether the American would take his place at the board. Chess enthusiasts all over the world, who have deplored Fischer’s greed and bad sportsmanship, must nevertheless concede him an achievement unparalleled in any other game or pastime. He has put the world chess championship, which until this year could claim only an obscure line or two in the more discerning newspapers, on the front page of virtually every newspaper in the w’orld.