3911A (right): White mates in five moves (by Fritz Giegold, Munchner Presse 1929). Virtually a single line of play ... Illustration: The Guardian
More than half a century on, the Bobby Fischer v Boris Spassky series at Reykjavik in 1972 remains the most famous of all world championship matches. It triggered a global chess boom, not least in Britain where, for a brief period, a galaxy of talent made England the No 2 chess nation behind the Soviet Union.
On Friday, the annual Reykjavik Open starts at the Harpa conference centre in the heart of the city with a full complement of 420 players, ranging from elite grandmasters to ordinary amateurs, nearly a tenth of them British. The excursion on the tournament’s free morning includes a visit to Fischer’s grave. It is also 60 years since the first Reykjavik Open in 1964 was won by Mikhail Tal, who along with Spassky was Fischer’s great contemporary rival, with a stunning 12.5/13 total.
Reykjavik’s top seed for 2024 is Bogdan-Daniel Deac, who is in proven form this week – the Romanian won Titled Tuesday. The No 2 seed is the Ukrainian Vasyl Ivanchuk. England’s contingent is led by the national No 9, GM Daniel Fernandez, 29, and includes IM Matthew Wadsworth, 23, seeking his second GM norm, FM Sohum Lohia, 14 and in search of the IM title, plus the 9-year-old girl Bodhana Sivanandan, who, with a 2088 rating, needs just a dozen points to qualify as a Woman Fide Master, her next step on the long road to the international top.
Sivanandan lost in 60 moves in Friday’s first round to Prraneeth Vuppala, 17, one of India’s youngest grandmasters, rated 2506 and the No 17 seed at Reykjavik, after conceding a pawn early on. The pairing system matches losers with other losers, so she is likely to recover in the next few rounds. There are nine rounds in total.
Questions remain about the events of July 1972, when the match was twice close to collapse at its very start. First, when Fischer remained in New York on its starting date, and flew to Reykjavik only when the English investment banker Jim Slater doubled the prize fund to $250,000; and then again when, after losing the first game due to a Bxh2 blunder and defaulting the second after a dispute over TV cameras, the American prepared to fly home.
Fischer’s prevarications broke the match rules, and Spassky resisted pressure from Moscow to return home. In a 2016 interview replete with little known offbeat anecdotes, he said that that decision was a mistake and alleges that one of his team, livo Nei, who later collaborated with Robert Byrne of the New York Times in a book about the match, betrayed him.
The general verdict is that game three, when Fischer was persuaded to play in a small back room away from the cameras, and won for his first lifetime victory over Spassky, was the turning point of the match. However, that left Spassky still effectively two points up, as he retained the title in the event of a tied series, and game four was a clear success for him, as his well-prepared formation as Black drew the fangs from Fischer’s favourite Bc4 system against the Sicilian, which never reappeared in the match.
Arguably, the real turning point was game five, at 27 moves the shortest of the match, White in a Nimzo-Indian 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4, Spassky avoided the Leningrad 4 Bg5, with which he had never lost, and instead chose a blocked pawn chain where Fischer, whose reputation was in classical open play, adopted a subtle positional style a la Nimzowitsch with finesses at moves 11, 16, and 20. A long grind seemed in prospect until Spassky made a one-move blunder at move 27, which set off his disastrous match deciding run of one point in six games.
At age 87, Spassky survives despite two incapacitating strokes. As the interview above shows, he is still lucid and alert despite damage to his left side. His son, also named Boris, talked about his father last year in an interview for the World Chess Hall of Fame in St Louis, focusing on Spassky’s later life where he emigrated to France for several decades before returning to Moscow in 2012.
The enormous publicity for chess triggered by Fischer v Spassky, plus Slater’s prizes for the first five British grandmasters, sparked a golden age for English chess. The number of GMs went from zero to several dozen. In the Olympiads of 1984, 1986 and 1988, England won silver medals behind Soviet gold.
How was this achieved? The young talents came largely from grammar and public day schools, where St Paul’s produced four GMs and Bolton two. Frequent strong weekend opens had hundreds of competitors, low entry fees, high prizes, and a national Grand Prix. Clubs like Centymca and Richmond played their part. Dozens of juniors were invited to play in simuls against star GMs, right up to Spassky, Karpov and Kasparov, or received financial help to play at Lloyds Bank, Hastings, and other major events.
Dubai 1986 was close to the supreme achievement of gold ahead of a USSR team headed by Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. With four rounds of 13 left, England had won eight matches and drawn 2-2 with the Soviets, whose team they led by two points. The Guardian even had an editorial prepared, praising England’s victory. Then came an ugly episode where England’s Spanish opponents appeared to get advice from USSR trainers during play, England lost the match badly, and at the end the Soviet team edged gold by just half a game point.
The last hurrah of the English chess boom came when Nigel Short defeated Anatoly Karpov, the then world No 2, 6-4 in their 1992 Candidates semi-final. They were level at 3.5-3.5 before Short took control in game eight.
In the 1993 world championship match against Kasparov Short spoilt some good chances as White but was outclassed as Black. His misfortune was that he was born Kasparov’s contemporary rather than at a different period. The standard of play he showed against Karpov would have been enough for even chances against many of the other world champions of the Soviet era – Mikhail Botvinnik, Tigran Petrosian, Vassily Smyslov or Spassky.
Realistically, the chances for a new golden age of English chess are remote, even with the welcome backing of government money which could have made the difference had it been available in the 1970s and 1980s. The 2020s are likely to be the era of India, Uzbekistan, and the US, where Fabiano Caruana, the world No 2 and the favourite for next month’s Candidates in Toronto, is currently leading this week’s $250,000 American Cup.
The 11-minute chess film “War is Over!” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the Oscars on 10 March. The game on which it was based, where a check was met by an immediate checkmate reply, was played at Southsea 1950, which was also where the 10-time British champion Jonathan Penrose, then 16, made his name by beating GMs Efim Bogolyubov and Savielly Tartakower.
3911: 1...Rg5! (threat 2...Rh5+! 3 Kxh5 Qg5 mate) 2 Kh3 Rh5+ 3 Rh4 Rxh4+ 4 Kxh4 h5! 5 Rg2 Qxg2 6 Kxh5 Qg5 mate.
3911(A): 1 Bd8! Ke3 2 c7 Kd2 3 c8N! Ke3 4 Nd6! and 4...Kd2 5 Nc4 mate or 4...exd6 5 Bxg5 mate.
