I still remember those days in the summer of 1972 when everyone was talking chess! There were chess-boards everywhere! It was really cool; here was this board-game making the front pages of newspapers and the nightly news broadcasts.



After lengthy negotiations, the championship tournament between the American challenger Bobby Fischer and the title-holder Boris Spassky, from the Soviet Union, was to be held in Reykjavik, Iceland. Mostly it was about the quirky American challenger, Bobby Fischer,

I still remember those days in the summer of 1972 when everyone was talking chess! There were chess-boards everywhere! It was really cool; here was this board-game making the front pages of newspapers and the nightly news broadcasts.



After lengthy negotiations, the championship tournament between the American challenger Bobby Fischer and the title-holder Boris Spassky, from the Soviet Union, was to be held in Reykjavik, Iceland. Mostly it was about the quirky American challenger, Bobby Fischer, usurping Soviet hegemony of the chess world. But Bobby was definitely a head-case!



Page 271 (my book)

[One writer wrote to the Washington Post] “Fischer is the only American who can make everyone in the U.S. root for the Russians.”



Bobby didn’t show up in Iceland and by default lost the first game. Before, and constantly during the tournament, he had a nonstop list of demands. And stuck in the middle of this was poor Iceland! As the authors make clear this was the biggest event to happen in Iceland – EVER! An epic confrontation of chess, of superpowers, with an erratic American who kept threatening to not play, to not show up, and with a fluctuating list of never-ending requirements. Without Fischer’s presence the tournament was doomed; and all the attention would evaporate – the world’s media would pack up and leave and Iceland would recede back to its isolation in the North Atlantic.



The authors’ suggest that if the tournament had been held in a major centre (one on the list was Amsterdam) Bobby’s petulant demands would not have been met – and Boris Spassky would have retained the championship. Iceland just had too much invested to simply ignore Bobby Fischer.



One aspect the authors do not mention is that the Soviets and East European countries, where chess is much more popular, would groom their prodigies and ensure that they had outside interests besides chess. In other words, they tried to ensure that their chess geniuses would act like “normal” human beings. This didn’t happen to Bobby Fischer – for Fischer chess was not just an obsession, it was everything.



We get really interesting portraits of the chess world – of both Fischer and Spassky – and also of the pressure of being a world class player in the Soviet Union. The authors spoke to many people to write this book including Boris Spassky who was very cooperative (Bobby Fischer refused the authors request, or was unavailable, no surprise there).



We also get a view of chess as a really grueling psychological grind.



Page 286 Boris Spassky



“In a long match, a player goes very deep into himself, like a diver. Then he comes up very fast. Every time, whether I win or lose, I am so depressed I want to die. I cannot get back in touch with other people. I want the other chess player. I miss him. Only after a year will the pain go away. A year.”



Very sadly Fischer never played competitive chess after winning in Reykjavik. He went completely off the rails. Among other stupidities, he became viciously anti-Semitic (despite having Jewish parents) and praised the 9/11 hijackers. He died in 2008 after this book was published. As of this writing Boris Spassky is still around and is 81 years old! He lived in France for several years, but is now living in Moscow.