Athens, Belgrade, and Buenos Aires all bid for the match. Petrosian wanted to play in Greece, Fischer in Argentina for two reasons—they were offering the most money, and they had the best steak. Lots were drawn to settle it, with Buenos Aires triumphant.
Fischer fever may not yet have circled the globe, but its arrival in Argentina was unquestionable. Buenos Aires was a chess city—host to over sixty clubs. The organizers had offered $7,500 for the winner, $4,500 for the loser. The match would take place in one of the most prominent theaters, the San Martin, at the center of the capital’s cultural life. It was situated on the equivalent of Broadway, the Avenida Corrientes. Chess was now “entertainment.”
Tickets went on sale at nine A.M. (the games began at five P.M.), by which time several thousand people were already lining up. The regular audience was one and a half thousand, a very high number for a game not previously regarded as much of a spectator sport.
Everywhere he went, Fischer was mobbed by adoring, star-struck crowds, from teenage girls to old-age pensioners. They had a very different conception of personal space from the solitary American: they tried to shake his hand, grab him by the arm, or pat him on the back. He would wrench himself away in horror. He got into the habit of slinking out through back doors, walking against walls, hoping to outpace his fans with his huge strides. Buenos Aires foreshadowed the Reykjavik media circus; the local and international press sought out off-board details such as Fischer’s favorite snack (a grilled kidney sandwich).
The opening ceremony was on 29 September. Fischer was tardy, as usual. His opponent was asked, “Do you think that Fischer’s lateness is a battle of nerves?” Petrosian thought not: “It is a question of upbringing.”
In a letter Fischer wrote afterward—it is unclear whether it was ever sent—he admits that he was nervous before the Petrosian match kicked off but claims that he was reassured by how scared the Armenian looked. And, avers Fischer, Petrosian had good reason to be fearful. When world champion, he had been the instrument through which the Soviets lied about Fischer’s character and ability at chess. So Petrosian’s moment of truth had arrived. This accusation was most unfair. The Armenian had been editor of the Moscow chess magazine 64, which had been critical of Fischer, but he had always been respectful of the American’s ability.
Apparently, even Petrosian’s expression was too much for Fischer to live with. The two players had been booked into the same skyscraper hotel, Fischer on the thirteenth floor, Petrosian on the tenth. Fischer soon asked to be moved. He explained to the chief arbiter, the German grandmaster Lothar Schmid, that when he met Petrosian in the elevator, the former world champion’s face was so sad, he could not bear seeing him.
Fischer had laid down a host of conditions about the lighting, the table, the chairs, the clock—none of which unduly disturbed his hosts. Also at Fischer’s request, the first three rows of seats in the theater were kept empty. Rona Petrosian, small and plump, who each match day would prepare a flask of coffee for her husband, had a reserved place in row four.
Although the organizers had done everything they could to satisfy Fischer, this did not stop someone throwing a stink bomb at the back of the hall (the stench did not reach the platform), nor did it prevent the finely calibrated lighting from breaking down. And it did not stop Fischer from complaining to the arbiter about the way Petrosian walked out of view after his moves.
The relative serenity owed much to the presence of both Colonel Edmondson at Fischer’s side and Petrosian’s team leader, Viktor Baturinskii. Additionally, both players knew and trusted the chief arbiter. Lothar Schmid had been plucked from playing in a tournament in Berlin as the only arbiter acceptable to the two sides. He was among the few foreigners ever to be at the receiving end of a grin from Baturinskii, in public an iron-faced archetypical Stalinist. Schmid knew that Russians kissed each other on meeting, so on first seeing Baturinskii, he threw his arms around him; the Soviet former colonel was startled into smiling.
Game one began on 30 September. Halfway through, when Fischer found himself unexpectedly on the defensive, the lights blew. The clocks were stopped and Petrosian left the stage; Fischer, meanwhile, carried on—sitting there and staring at the board. His Soviet opponent complained to the arbiter that Fischer was benefiting from free calculation time—contemplating his next move in the gloom while his clock was not running. Fischer allowed Schmid to restart the clock, while he remained thinking in the darkness.
Fischer won that first game, his twentieth consecutive grandmaster victory. But any expectations that he would dispatch Petrosian in the fashion in which he had destroyed Taimanov and Larsen were to be dashed in game two. Fischer, suffering from a bad cold, played poorly. When he offered his resignation, the audience began loudly to chant Petrosian’s name. Did Fischer at last have a real fight on his hands?
With one win apiece, there followed a series of three draws. Fischer’s fans were in a state of high anxiety. For the American—who sought to win every game—a draw was a semidefeat. For Petrosian, who sought in every game not to lose, the same result was a partial triumph. What Fischer needed was to restore his psychological advantage with a second victory.
Once it came, in game six, Petrosian collapsed. He took a few days off, complaining of exhaustion, and was diagnosed with low blood circulation. Fischer identified this as the moment of his opponent’s psychic disintegration. He said, “I felt Petrosian’s ego crumbling after the sixth game.” Petrosian’s comments support that: “After the sixth game Fischer really did become a genius; I, on the other hand, either had a breakdown or was tired, or something else happened, but the last three games were no longer chess.” Indeed, when the Armenian returned, Fischer quickly wrapped up the proceedings. President Nixon wrote to Fischer, “Your victory at Buenos Aires brings you one step closer to that world title you so richly deserve, and I want you to know that together with thousands of chess players across America, I will be rooting for you when you meet Boris Spassky next year.”
Although there were no major rows, Petrosian complained later, “A player feels at a disadvantage when he knows that he is playing in the city and the hall where his opponent wants to play, that the lighting is such as his opponent ordered, that while one of the players will receive a superpurse, the other will not. It is not that without a superpurse it is hard to play chess, but that you unwittingly begin to feel a certain discrimination, a sense of injury, almost of humiliation.” He added that tortuous match negotiations left Fischer’s opponents softened up, much as troops under attack in the trenches were softened up by a preliminary bombardment. This formed the basis of a warning to Spassky.
In Moscow, Petrosian was credited with having accomplished what Taimanov had not: at 6.5 to 2.5, this was defeat with dignity. But a non-Soviet player was now the challenger for the world crown for the first time in a quarter of a century. Spassky was asked about his prospects of retaining the title but gave nothing away: “The one thing I can say is that I think the match will be a very interesting one.” All the evidence suggests that, privately, Spassky was convinced that he could and would win.