From Belgrade by way of Reuter News Service comes the defiant word of Boris Spassky that he is going to send Bobby Fischer back into obscurity.
Fischer will play his first public match in 20 years next month. "I will put him back where he recently came from - the past," Spassky was quoted by the Daily Vecernje Novosti as saying.Fischer is due to play the former Soviet champion, whom he beat to win the world title in 1972, in a $5 million series starting Sept. 2 on the exclusive Montenegrin resort island of Sveti Stefan.
Fischer, the only American to win the world title, vanished from public view in the early 1970s shortly after defeating Spassky. He refused to defend his title when the International Chess Federation (FIDE, a Soviet-dominated entity) wouldn't meet his demands for a rematch. FIDE gave the crown to Anatoly Karpov when Fischer refused to play.
His return to public competition is being hailed as a sensation in the chess world and a coup for its Belgrade promoters amid United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia.
The newspaper said both grandmasters had arrived at Sveti Stefan. But it added that they had not yet met and any former friendship between them seemed to be at an end.
Yugoslav champion grand-master Svetozar Gligoric told the paper Spassky was determined to get revenge.
"I'm ready. I will put up a major retaliation for the defeat in Reykjavik 20 years ago," he quoted Spassky as saying.
The Belgrade businessman who lured Fischer from his self-imposed exile to play Spassky has denied the match in any way is intended as a boost for the embattled regime of Serbian President Slobodan Milosovic.
"I've got nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with Milosovic," Jezdimir Vasiljevic told Reuter.
He added that it took 10 months to persuade 49-year-old Fischer to return to competition.
"It was very hard to convince him," he said.
Fischer's movements in Yugoslavia have been surrounded by secrecy amid unconfirmed rumors that the slender, neatly groomed young champion of the 1970s now looks like an overgrown hippie.
Journalists who tried to get a view of Fischer at Sveti Stefan last month said the former champion was surrounded by a battalion of security guards who even accompanied him swimming and warned reporters to stay away.
"Any picture that appears in the papers is a problem. Why? I have no idea," Vasiljevic said.
"What he told me was that publicity in the past many times interfered in his private life and there had been many stories which were untrue. That's why he's angry."
- SECOND OPIONION? - Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist in East Hampton, N.Y., wrote a snarling column, in my opinion, denouncing Fischer this past weekend although he did take note of Fischer's skill as a chess player. Here are a couple of paragraphs from his column:
"When I told a journalist friend that Bobby's second coming was scheduled for Belgrade, he replied, `Why didn't he go all the way and make it Sarajevo?' Belgrade is, shall we say, an eccentric choice for a coming out. But in Fischer, eccentricity and genius are hard to separate.
"His genius is undeniable. As a boy he was called the Mozart of chess. At 13 he played a game of such brilliance (against Donald Bryne) that it became known as the `Game of the Century.' At 15, he became the youngest grandmaster in history.
"Twelve years later he turned what is still the most astonishing feat in chess history: In the run-up to the championship, he played a series of matches against the strongest grandmasters in the world. He won 20 straight games. No losses. No draws. (At this level of play, wins are hard to come by. Most grandmaster games end in draws.) It was the equivalent, it has been said, of winning Wimbleton without losing a single game.
"Fischer's legend, however, has as much to do with his eccentricity as his genius. Eccentricity, though, is a mild word. Fischer has walked the line of madness about as closely as any other genius of our time. He is said to have removed the fillings from his teeth so as to prevent enemy radio transmissions. He is seized with conspiracy theories, principally that of a communist-capitalist-Jewish plot to run the world. (Editor's note: Fischer is Jewish.)
"He has the stamp of a man who played chess too long, too hard and too deeply."
- CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SOLVERS! - William DeVroom, Casimiro DeMontelibretti, Ken Frost, Ed Felt, Gordon W. Greene, Steven Ivie, Hal Harmon, David Higley, Steven Jensen, Raeburn Kennard, Nathan Kennard, Steven Kennard, Hal Knight, Frank Night, Richard B. Laney, Kay Lundstrom, Jim Low, James Michelson, Connie Miller, Lincoln McClellan, Gary Neumann, Roger Neumann, Elsa Oldroyd, Ted Pathakis, Knute Petersen, Jim Reed, Ed Richardson, Philip Rodgriguez, Hans Rubner, Edwin O. Smith, Vern Smith, Edward Scherer, Al Schow, Steven L. Baker, Jeff Thelin, Eugene Wagstaff, Werner Young, Steven Anderson, Loile Bailey, Kim Barney, Ramon E. Bassett, Daniel Barlow, Alan E. Brown, O. Kent Berg, Farrell L. Clark, George L. Cavanaugh, Jack Crandall and Bryan Chamberlain.