![]() ![]() ![]() Fischer had acquired a similarly irrational reputation for "inflicting financial and career damage on himself on failing to win concessions". Fischer's idiosyncratic and asocial behaviour marked him as un-American for many of his compatriots."īut were some of Fischer's histrionics a deliberate tactic? Not long before the match, Richard Nixon explained his Madman Theory: the best way to get the North Vietnamese to negotiate was to convince them that he, the man with his finger on the nuclear button, was so obsessed with communism that he would do anything to stop the war. Spassky was not a patriot - and he made no secret of it. Far from conforming to national stereotypes, the players "had in common their sheer unsuitability to represent their countries' political systems. The true story, as this gripping book reveals, was just as dramatic but far less black and white. The media delighted in this simplistic morality play. ![]() Here was the High Noon of chess, coming to you from a concrete auditorium in Iceland." The board became "a Cold War arena where the champion of the free world fought for democracy against the apparatchiks of the Soviet socialist machine. When Bobby Fischer came face to face with Boris Spassky in 1972, write David Edmonds and John Eidinow, many Westerners saw him as "a lone American star challenging the long Soviet grip on the world title". ![]()
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