Chess

Pawn to king

John James

Writing during the seventh game of the Spassky-Fischer chess match I said that unless Spassky settled soon he would win no more games. In the event he won one more; Fischer won another four and went on to take the title by the margin of 12i-8i.

For Fischer there was the achievement of a lifetime's ambition though with a lawsuit pending from the disappointed holder of the film rights there may eventually be a substantial dent in his prize money. On the credit side too, chess both as a pastime and as an international competition has received more publicity and aroused more world-wide achievement than ever before. Sales of chess sets have, I understand, boomed and I am sure it was no coincidence that the Eleventh Edition of Modern Chess Openings came out during the match. Indeed, already the first book on the match is on the bookstalls. Fischer, as a chess player, American, and above all as a temperamental prima donna has created this interest.

And yet despite the excellence of Fischer's overall achievement I found the second half of the match disappointing. It was not just because the majority of matches were drawn; many a draw is more exciting than a ground-out win, and some of those draws certainly were. It was simply that Fischer, by then in a com manding position in the match, played throughout the second half with the primary objective of preventing Spassky from winning. He deadened the games and turned them into exercises in frustration and containment. I feel that he Could have taken more chances and played to win games rather than the match. With a world-wide audience (not to mention a winner's purse which works out at around £3,000 a game), he should have tried to give us something more memorable.

This, I admit, is the view of a club Player rather than of the assembled grand masters and masters who, with the obvious exception of the Russians, have found Plenty to enthuse about. Yet in the long run the test of a great game is the length Of time it survives in the textbooks and the anthologies, and I feel it would be an ex

tremely fat anthology which found room for any of the games after the thirteenth, and perhaps the only games which deserve a place in a selection of fine wins are the third and sixth.

A number of games might well appear in the textbooks in a less flattering role, With the student being invited to find the strong move missed by Spassky or Fischer or to identify the blunder. In the thirteenth game Spassky played weakly at a crucial stage of the game, thereby allowing Fischer to regroup his pieces and win. In the four

teenth Spassky blundered when he should have had a win, albeit not an easy one, and in the fifteenth game it was Fischer's turn to blunder, again missing a possible win.

As for the seventeenth game I may have missed the point somewhere but I doubt if Spassky really intended to draw by repitition of moves; if he did not then it was a blunder unparalleled by those which came before. And finally, perhaps predictably, the final outcome of the match was settled by a Spassky blunder in the twenty-first game when he played 30 P-KKn4 thereby losing a safe draw.

The eleventh game should find its own niche in history for a different reason. In it, as he had done in the seventh, Fischer with the black pieces played the 'poisoned pawn' variation of the Sicilian Defence. In the seventh he obtained a draw against a strong attack by Spassky, but in the eleventh Spassky obtained a win which was probably good for chess as well as for his own morale. The move by black 8 . QxKnP grabs a pawn advantage but isolates the Queen in a poor position in the corner of the board and may (as in this case) make her an object of attack. To win in chess one tries to place one's pieces where they have most effect either singly or in combination with one another on the various tension points in the play at any one time. In this move, however, black does exactly the opposite. The move ought not to work and perhaps after this game it will drop into disuse again—as it rightly should.

I noticed, incidentally, that several times when Fischer played a particular opening a second time Spassky generally did better against it than he did on the first occasion. In addition to the two poisoned pawn games, where Spassky drew the first and won the second, the point also emerges from the two Alekhine's defence games (13 and 19) and the two Ruy Lopez games (10 and 16); in each case Spassky lost the first and drew the second. Doubtless Spassky's second did some homework between the games.

The other curious feature that caught my attention was that Spassky, having had little success after opening 1 P-Q4 in his first three games with the white pieces, switched thereafter to 1 P-K4 which he played for his remaining eight games with the white pieces. Fischer on the other hand who before the match always opened 1 P4(4, rang the changes between this move and 1 P-QB4 much more frequently and thus made it much harder for Spassky to prepare.

So much for the match.

Where does Fischer go from here? There is talk of a rethatch between him and Spassky, from which Heaven preserve us for as long as possible. In two or three years another Candidates Tournament will have produced a new challenger, perhaps Spassky again, perhaps not. At the present time there does not appear to be a single grandmaster who could hold Fischer when he is in full cry and until some new star emerges the only possibility of the world championship changing hands lies in Fischer's temperamental vulnerability.

It is was difficult to get him to Reykjavik for the match with Spassky; it may be even more difficult to persuade him to appear for the defence of his title. In the first place if he did not allow filming of the match he might not be offered sufficient prize money. When he did turn up, say two or three weeks late, there would be no grovelling apology as there was this time, and his demands of the organisers would doubtless reflect his status as champion, not challenger. But all this is based on the assumption that he would find sufficient incentive in the duty of defending his title. Some previous holders have lost the title as abruptly as they won it.

Probably Fischer will find the incentive sufficient. He has been curiously content to win the United States Championship year after year, and, as I have remarked before, he has been equally content to rely on a narrow range of openings. If his experience in this match opening P-QB4, and thereby entering a totally different kind of game from the king's pawn openings, did give him enjoyment he may derive continuing satisfaction from the further exploration of this side of the board, At the same time I hope for the sake of international goodwill that he also learns something about life away from either side of the chessboard. Fischer, on his own admission, has no interest outside chess; his concentration on this one interest has been so complete that his education and the development of any other interests that might have strengthened his emotional resources have been totally neglected. He said when he gave up school for chess that he was putting his education aside until he had won the world championship. I imagine that when he resumes attendance at High School he will still fit in the odd simultaneous bindfold display against his classmates during the mid-morning break. However the school authorities will have to be very strict and make him leave his pocket chess set outside the classroom during lessons.