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White to move and mate in two #415 - Bobby Fischer Goes to War [1]

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Date: 2023-10-08  

Match of the Century

It is five o'clock on the evening of Tuesday, 11 July 1972. The seats filling the arena of the sports hall, the Laugardalsholl, in Reykjavik's featureless leisure complex are sold out. On the platform, the world chess champion, thirty-five-year-old Boris Spassky, sits alone at the chessboard. He is playing white. Precisely on the hour, the German chief arbiter, Lothar Schmid, starts the clock. Spassky picks up his queen's pawn and moves it forward two squares. The Soviet Union's king of chess has begun the defense of the title that has been his since 1969, and his country's without interruption since World War II. He glances up at the other side of the board. The expensive, low slung, black leather swivel chair, specially provided for his opponent, is empty.

Six minutes later the American challenger, Bobby Fischer, arrives. A communal sigh of relief gusts through the hall. Because of his refusal to leave New York in time for the match's opening, the first game has already been postponed and many feared that he might not appear at all; with Fischer, one can never be sure. Now a large hand reaches across the chessboard, plucks up the black king's knight, and places it on f6.

In the provincial and normally tranquil Iceland capital, what is already being called "the Match of the Century" is at last under way.

-- From the opening chapter of Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time, published in 2004

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