Word: chess
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Denmark's Bent Larsen, generally considered the second-best chess player in the West, flew into Reykjavik for a first-hand look at the war of nerves between Soviet World Champion Boris Spassky and U.S. Challenger Bobby Fischer. "Spassky has been thrown off balance," Larsen said. "He probably is boiling inside, and that is not good for him. But he is a strong player, and it is too early to count him out." Two days later, Fischer opened the tenth game of the 24-game tournament with his favorite gambit: arriving nine minutes late. Spassky's countergambit: arriving...
...Boris says, "Bobby seems to be thinking about everything but chess...
...Bobby, stripped to his underwear, sits playing chess in his hotel room, the door bolted, the telephone pulled from the wall...
...Vancouver last year. Fischer defeated him in six straight games. Then, last July in Denver, Fischer took on Denmark's Bent Larsen, ranked second only to Bobby in the West, and stunned him by again winning six straight games. The 19 straight victories were without parallel in grand-master chess history. Declared Sovietski Sport: "A miracle has occurred!" Then nine months ago, Fischer tangled with Petrosian again in Buenos Aires and dropped him 61-21 to win the right to meet Spassky. After the Petrosian match, Fischer was reluctant to fly off in a private plane for a brief vacation...
...Moscow's Central Chess Club, however, the reaction was summed up by one player who observed: "Well, we've still got Spassky." Spassky himself is happy that chess has a Bobby. "It would be an awfully dull world without him," he says. Like Fischer, Spassky comes from a broken home and also had a games-playing sister. (Iraida went on to become the Soviet checkers champion.) During World War II, Spassky's parents were separated; he was evacuated from Leningrad and lived for a period in an orphanage in the Kirov Region. He learned the game when he was five...