The Battle of the Brains

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accusations" create a "spirit of ill will and suspicion in the noble sports competition." His play is something else: not since Pianist Van Cliburn has an American been so widely renowned in the Soviet Union for his talents. Of late, though, the fascination with "Booo-bee" has been tinged with concern. "At home they don't understand," says one Soviet grand master of Fischer's success. "They think it means that there is something wrong with our culture."

In the U.S., chess ranks somewhere between mumblety-peg and logrolling in fan interest. Or at least it did until Fischer, the celebrated recluse, became a media happening. The scenes blur: Bobby swinging away in a sports-celebrity tennis tournament, Bobby receiving a letter of support from President Nixon, Bobby jetting to Bermuda for lunch with David Frost and the beautiful people, Bobby making the rounds of the talk shows (Dick Cavett: Do you honestly think that you are probably the world's greatest player? Bobby: Yeah, right.) There is even a new record called The Ballad of Bobby Fischer, a twangy ditty sung by Joe Glazer and the Fianchettoed Bishops: "He was born in nineteen forty-three/ And right away I knew he'd make history/ 'Cause he opened his mouth on the day he was born/ And instead of crying he said, 'Move that pawn.' " The song goes on to depict Spassky as already defeated and hustled off to Siberia.

The tempo of reality is a little more measured. The championship match, a best-of-24-game series, will likely go on for two months or more. According to the ground rules, three games will be played each week. Each player has 21 hours to complete 40 moves. A dual-faced, pushbutton clock times only the player who is "on move." If either player fails to complete 40 moves in the allotted time, he forfeits the game. If the game is not finished after 40 moves, it is adjourned (unless both players agree to continue) and resumed the next day in another session. One point is awarded for a win, ½ for a draw. Fischer needs 121 points to win the match; Spassky needs 12 to retain his title.

Whether played at the summit by grand masters or at the Y.M.C.A. by nine-year-olds, the game of chess offers both intricacy and infinite variety. As did Shakespeare's Cleopatra, it leaves hungry where most it satisfies. It has been calculated that if every man, woman and child in the world were to spend every waking hour playing at the superhuman rate of a game a minute, it would take 217 billion years to exhaust all the variations on the first ten moves. Chess is an endless labyrinth that can both mesmerize and anesthetize. Alone, perhaps, among the games of civilized man, its depths have never been fully plumbed, its possibilities calculated and codified. To Benjamin Franklin it taught "foresight, circumspection, caution and the habit of not being discouraged by our present affairs." For Lenin it was "the gymnasium of the mind," for Einstein a demon "that holds its master in its own bonds, fetters and in some ways shapes his spirit." Said H.G. Wells: "You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you want to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable. But teach him, inoculate him with chess. It annihilates a man."

Vital Juices. The annihilation theme is