That brought back some fond memories Petro. Eventually you turn off the animation to play a normal game. Turned them back on for the Checkmate.

But, I propose the following scenario. For some mysterious reason, in game 3 of the WC, he suffers some kind of mental breakdown in his chess abilities, and he ends up playing the rest of the match not in his best, and he ends up losing by 2 or 1 point. What do you think would have happened then?

Of course, immediatly he would have screamed to the press that the conditions were awful, and the evil russians, etc. the usual schtick. But, in terms of his career, what could have happened then?. Perhaps he may never have retired?. Or perhaps he would have become even more recluse?. Who knows?. I've been reading this site for years, and I've never read anyone making speculation about this (then again, probably there is speculation about this: there is 110 pages of kibitzing in this guy).

If Fischer had lost the match (for whatever reason), people would have been upset, of course. Would excuses have been made? Of course, this is chess, isn't it?

The really dicey scenario would be if the match ended up in a 12-12 tie. One of Spassky's 12 would have been the forfeit, so Fischer would actually have won 12-11 in games played, but wouldn't have won the title.

Instead, I think that would have found new excuses to withdraw or perhaps request a postponement of the match, possibly in a different venue, due to his diminished capacity. Certainly if, say, he'd had a stroke, that would have been a reasonable request. Whether it would have been granted or not is a different issue.

I don't think that's quite correct. There had been substitutions in the interzonal before. Bisguier lost his spot in the 1964 interzonal to Benko in a match that he absolutely didn't have to play. Ray Weinstein and Bill Lombardy also qualified for an interzonal once, and then gave up their spots. One of the spots went to Bisguier who was the next highest finisher in the Zonal, but the other went to Benko, who was way down in the scoretable, presumably because he'd been in the previous Candidates, but how they justified giving it to him ahead of higher finishers in the zonal, I'm not sure.

The Benko deal only applied to Fischer, if Fischer said 'No' then Benko would go to the interzonal so I'm not too sure if the other players below Benko needed to be asked, either way they were not going to interzonal.

FIDE agreed America could replace one of their three qualifying players if the playing dropping out agreed.

Benko agreed...His side of the story.

Pal Benko (kibitz #216)

In 72, Fischer was unpredictable and volatile but still generally sensible. Especially related to chess. For him, he knew that he was better than Spassky. All he had to do was prove it on the chess board.

I think Fischer would've continued until he got one or two wins. In fact, the greater the Spassky lead without a Fischer win maybe the greater the chance Fischer plays. Think the head to head tension and the unknown disturbed Fischer most. Strangely, Spassky up 3.5 - .5 reduces that tension.

But once Fischer got his couple of wins I'd guess anything could happen if Spassky still had a sizable lead. Maybe equal chances of straight forfeit, controversial forfeit or continued play. Fischer being unpredictable and volatile.

It's that simple.

Fischer thought it was no big deal. That he'd gotten Benko's spot, but Benko had gotten his spot in 1964, so it evened out.

When the idea of 'Benko out and Bobby in' was brought up in the July 1970 Chess Life and Review (page 370) which was months before FIDE and the Americans met to discuss the matter, Bobby said Benko would not give up his place without cash.

(which I suppose is only right because Benko would have been giving up $2,000 appearance fee. So once again we give the link Pal Benko (kibitz #216) to get Benko's side of the story.)

And mention of an appearance fee also hints that it was not just America, FIDE and most of the rest of the chess world that wanted Fischer to play.

The organisers of the Interzonal were so desperate to secure Fischer they offered and paid Fischer a $15,000 appearance fee (David Levy, CHESS, 'Christmas Edition' 1970).

As for getting a postponement, I can't see how the Soviets would have agreed to such a thing. By that point, Fischer had already arrived late, and insulted Spassky by not showing up at the drawing of lots.

I rather suspect the Soviets weren't all that enthused about Fischer playing in the Interzonal.

Perhaps not. But while there had been player replacements for Interzonals before, these replacements were not instigated by Euwe who did not become FIDE president until 1970. At any rate, the replacements you mentioned were USCF issues, not FIDE issues, and would not have involved Euwe in any way.

For those who are not familiar with the situation, the 1962 US Championship (US Championship (1962)) served as the US qualifying event for the 1964 Amsterdam Interzonal. The top 2 finishers would qualify. Bisguier finished 2nd and therefore qualified for it along with Fischer (who finished 1st), but Fischer declined to participate in the Interzonal. Addison, Evans, and Reshevsky finished in a tie for 3rd place and played a mini-tournament which Reshevsky won, followed by Evans and then Addison. So the two US representatives should have been Bisguier and Reshevsky.

I don't know why Bisguier "had" to play a match against Benko who had finished in a tie for 9-10 place with Rossolimo, with a <minus> score of 4½ - 6½ compared to Bisguier's score of 7-4 in order to select one of the two US representatives. It seems to me that it was a done deal. I can only guess that, as you mentioned, just like later in 1969, the USCF wanted to send the best US players to the Interzonal and Benko, who had recently emigrated to the US in 1958, was considered a better player than Bisguier (probably true) and certainly had more international tournament experience, having competed in the 1959 Yugoslavia and 1962 Curacao Candidates Tournaments. And anybody can have a bad tournament, for example, even Fischer in Buenos Aires (1960), tied for 13th place with 4 others with a score of 8.5/19. The 1962 US Championship was apparently Benko's. And some day it will be Carlsen's turn.

Lombardy and Weinstein qualified for the 1960 Zone 5 (USA) zonal tournament by finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively (Fischer, as usual, finished 1st). According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World... and http://graeme.50webs.com/chesschamp..., Lombardy was too busy to play since he was either in seminary school or had already become a priest and Weinstein was too busy with his college studies, possibly in the middle of exams. Their places were taken by Bisguier and Reshevsky who finished tied for 4-6 with Sherwin. I could not find any mention why Bisguier and Reshevsky were selected instead of Sherwin but both Bisguier (participating in 2 Chess Olympics) and Reshevsky (certainly!) had much more international playing experience than Sherwin, who had none. So the USCF's selection of Bisguier and Reshevsky, by whatever method was used, was consistent with their later selection of Benko(ironically) over Bisguier.

I don't think he did have to, he just agreed to because he didn't mind losing his interzonal spot. That's not to suggest that he threw the match or anything. Maybe if he'd won it, he'd have been emboldened enough to play in the Interzonal after all.

But Benko, who finished much better than expected at Curacao must have been seen as the better representative. Sheesh, if he'd won that won game against Geller in the last round, he'd only have finished -1.

But substitutions like that have been frequent. Evans qualified for the 1952 Interzonal and didn't want the spot. Reshevsky qualified for Portoroz, didn't want it, and Sherwin took his place. Lombardy and Weinstein qualified for the 1962 Interzonal, but neither played. This stuff has never been etched in stone. If anybody had been pushed aside , that would be one thing, but with Benko and all the others stepping aside themselves, I just can't get too worked up about Fischer being given the interzonal spot.