AThe Berkshire Eagle Pittsfield, Massachusetts Wednesday, October 27, 1971 - Page 24
Fischer To Contest World Chess Title
From News Services — Buenos Aires —Bobby Fischer of the United States defeated Tigran Petrosian of the Soviet Union last night in the ninth game to take their 12-game chess match to determine a challenger for the world title.
The victory, Fischer's fourth straight, came after 46 moves of a French Defense. It brought him $7,500.
With his victory over Petrosian, the 28-year-old Brooklyn high school dropout becomes the first American to reach the final step in the elimination series for the world championship.
That final hurdle is the world champion, Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. The two will meet in a 24-game title match next spring.
The procedure for picking the site will probably be the same as that for the Fischer-Petrosian match: the highest bidder among neutral countries will win, with the consent of the United States Chess Foundation and the Soviet Chess Federation.
For 10 years, Fischer, a lanky bachelor with time for little else than chess, has considered himself the best player in the world. But until recently he had refused to prove it in the long and grinding rounds of elimination tournaments.
During the elimination matches he maintained a winning streak that reached 20 games and included two 6-to-0 victories over grandmasters — a record that had never before been recorded in modern high-level match and tournament play.
The daring and flash of his board game — he often attempts to win with the black, or defensive, pieces — gained him idolizing fans among the approximately 60 million chess players in the world. Even in the Soviet Union, where he once was regarded as overly brash, he has become a hero.
The elimination series was established in 1948 to sort out a scramble for the title following the death of the then world champion, Alexander Alekhine of the Soviet Union.
Couldn't Get Match
Many of the great names in American chess, such as Emmanuel Lasker and Frank J. Marshall, played before the competition was formalized. The most famous of all, Paul Morphy of New Orleans, who died in 1884, is generally conceded to have been the best of his time, but he was never able to get his British arch-rival, Howard Staunton, to agree to a match.
Fischer defeated the 42 year old Petrosian, who held the world title six years before it was taken away by Spassky, in a tail-end winning streak. He posted the decisive 6½ points by winning the first, losing the second, drawing the third, fourth and fifth, and then winning four straight in the scheduled 12-game match.
The match touched off an epidemic of chess fever in Buenos Aires. In recent days it has been difficult to buy a chess set in the city's shops, despite the inflated price of $1.50 at the cheapest.
Outside the vast hall of the San Martin Theater on Avenida Corrientes, as many as 3,500 spectators began lining up at the box office at 9 a.m. for the 5 p.m. game.
During the games, the canvas floor was packed with fans who sat for hours in tense silence, almost without moving. Many followed the game on their own miniature boards. A faint murmur followed each significant move and this in turn was followed by the flashing on an extra “Silence” sign in addition to the eight or so already displayed on the wood-paneled walls.
Gripped His Head
Fischer lounged in a swivel chair, occasionally leaning forward as if he might lunge at the board after a move. Petrosian tucked his feet primly under his chrome and yellow-plastic chair and showed the tension only by suddenly gripping his head in both hands.
Occasionally, Fischer would clutch the side of his head or tap his foot. A glass of fresh orange juice was always at his side. During a game he would break for something to eat — his favorite snack being a grilled-kidney sandwich.
Petrosian would interrupt play to step behind a screen, for a sip of coffee from a vacuum flask prepared by his wife. A small, round woman, she watched her husband from the fourth row, which is actually the first because of Fischer's request that the first three be kept empty.
Following the eighth game won by Fischer, a huge throng awaited him outside, but he slipped out a back entrance to take a taxi for a meal at a Japanese restaurant. When Petrosian walked out the front entrance, smiling rather wanly, most of the crowed pretended not to recognize him, but one man, a fellow Armenian, went up to him and shook hands warmly.
