Soldiers of Cold War
Aditya Rishi

Logic can be patient, for it is eternal. — Oliver Heaviside

IN a chess competition on the Internet, about 20 child geniuses and double the number of adults, including several Grandmasters and International Masters, lose the title to a person playing under a fake name. This player does not reveal his identity, even though doing so would make him richer by millions of dollars. Another time, another big tournament on the Internet and the ghost strikes again. After several tournaments and countless victories, the fame of the phantom player spreads worldwide. Who could this person be? A Russian named Boris Spassky recognises the master from his brushstroke.

The phantom warrior is Bobby Fischer, the crazy, unschooled Brooklyn teenager who toppled the might of the Soviet chess system before his 30th birthday. He is the only American World Champion and the only non-Soviet or non-Russian title-holder since World War II.

Fischer took the World Championship from Boris Spassky in 1972. Inexplicably, Fischer renounced chess totally and did not play a single competitive game for 20 years. He did not even visit a chess club or chess event as a spectator until his return match with Spassky in September 1992.

Spassky recalls how Fischer’s World Championship match with him was characterised by his detailed demands and near refusal to play. However, once Fischer had agreed to play, events took a miraculous turn. He began to play magnificent chess, backed up with pressure tactics like protesting about the playing conditions and the board. The Russians retaliated by having the hall swept for electronic and chemical equipment and X-raying the players’ chairs. The match ended in a crushing victory for Fischer, but it traumatised both players. Spassky, after this, disappeared into a shell and Fischer into a self-imposed exile, like that of Paul Morphy, an earlier American genius. This contest popularised chess so much that the prize money was increased to millions in every currency.

The memory of the defeat brings a smile on Spassky's face. The cyberspace, peeking through the screen of his computer, contains an empty interactive chess board, with a dialog box ready to accept the name of the next person to challenge the phantom warrior. Amused, Spassky risks the adventure. He enters his introduction: "My crazy American black pawn, I am your friend, white pawn, from Russia." There is no response from the other side; then, instead of the 32 regular chess pieces, two pawns, one black and one white, appear on the board.

Words from Fischer appear letter by letter in the window: "You may move the pawns in turn to the neighbouring empty squares of the chessboard using vertical and horizontal moves. Arrange the moves, so that, every possible position of the two pawns will appear on the chessboard only once." When two pawns battle, there can be only one king. Spassky plays the entire game in his mind and, when checkmated, resigns without making a single move on the board. Fischer enters: "Sorry, I beat you again, but you know, I am crazy and in no mood to apologise for my earlier behaviour. However, you could have won." How? Write at The Tribune or adityarishi99@yahoo.co.in.