REYKJAVIK, Jan 18: Chess legend Bobby Fischer’s victory in the 1972 “match of the century” with Soviet world champion Boris Spassky elevated the game into a Cold War weapon and turned the eccentric young American into a national hero.

Fischer, who died on Thursday, became the first US world chess champion ever when he beat Spassky in the six-week match that became a symbol for the Cold War standoff, pitting an “individualistic” American against a “collectivist” Russian. Already considered eccentric at the time, Fischer flustered organisers in Reykjavik when he initially failed to turn up for the match.

An increasingly nervous Spassky was seen pacing and chain-smoking in his hotel lobby, waiting for his opponent, before the match could finally open on July 11, 1972, after Fischer had settled a last-minute financial claim.

Spassky won the first game without too much difficulty, and Fischer didn’t show up for the second, losing him a second point. Just as an anti-climax seemed to set in, Fischer returned to the chess board and brilliantly won the third game.

Suddenly the encounter was hot news again, and even media never concerned with chess before started treating the Reykjavik match as a top story.

The two men drew the third game, and Fischer won the next two, setting him up to take the chess crown, which he did with a final score of 12-1/2 to 8-1/12 points after a total of 21 games, many of which still feature in chess textbooks. “Bobby Fischer is greater than chess,” trumpeted one American newspaper headline after the victory, “King Bobby — finally” another.

The chess world went into overdrive. Within a few weeks, paperbacks analysing the encounter sold tens of thousands of copies, a first in chess history.

The American Chess Association went from 33,000 members to 100,000 straight after the match and chess sets became standard presents for children from their parents.

Fischer himself became a superstar. Russian grandmaster Mikhail Tal called the American “the greatest genius to have descended from the sky.” The Soviet establishment found it hard to deal with Spassky’s defeat, and blamed him for straying from the Soviet school methods of chess. Russian chess players talked about Fischer’s “hypnotic glare” which they said was the American’s most formidable weapon.

But Spassky was more gracious: “He was already better than I. He won normally,” he acknowledged later.—AFP