The Palma Interzonal – 1970 – Fischer’s crushing comeback
Since after World War II, interzonal tournaments have been used to find contenders for the world chess championship. Find the top six players and add two players who are pre-qualified to play. These eight players play against each other until they find the best player, who will be the official challenger to the world champion. In the three years it takes to find the challenger, the champion doesn’t need to play. He can only wait for the challenger.
Boris Spassky was the world champion at the time. And before the world champion can be challenged, you must win the ranking: you must be among the top six players out of 24 in a so-called “interzonal tournament”. However, the best Western player, Bobby Fischer, was not present at the 1970 interzonal. He had not participated in the American tournament that gave Mallorca the ticket.
But a few days before the tournament began, the Spanish organizer received a telegram: the American player Paul Benkö could not come and gave up his place. The American federation gave his place to Robert Fischer. Everyone remembered how Fischer had shocked and left the Tunis interzonal three years earlier, and few were comfortable with it. However, the American federation had spoken. It was legal, so FIDE accepted Fischer as one of the American challengers instead of Benkö and the tournament began. Very quickly, Fischer let his talent speak for him on the board.
Except Fischer, all the favorite players were from the USSR. Fischer hated them and kept repeating that they conspired against him and banded together so as not to fight each other. Former world champion Vasily Smyslov was in attendance, so was Lev Polugaevsky, Mark Taimanov and especially the very talented Efim Geller. Geller was a great opening specialist and had beaten Fischer three times before.
When the match started, Geller was leading the tournament with a half point advantage over Fischer. Fischer had surprised everyone by losing to Denmark’s Bent Larsen and had a few draws against lower-ranked players.
Geller began his game slowly and cautiously, and from move seven he proposed a draw. Bobby Fischer laughed and whispered an answer (a no) in a way that made Geller blush.
The game went on and very quickly, the Russian had to go into a defensive game. He resisted quite well, but totally worn out, he lost in the eighth hour of the game. Now, Fischer was leading and he drove it, so it went from win to win. He won the tournament with 18.5 points out of a possible 23. The six challengers were:
1. Bobby Fischer (USA) – 18.5/23
2. Bent Larsen (Denmark) – Efim Geller (USSR) – Robert Hübner (FRG) – 23/15
3. Mark Taimanov (USSR) – Wolfgang Uhlmann (GDR) – 23/14
After beating the other challengers, Bobby Fischer became the challenger to world champion Boris Spassky and ended up becoming the world champion himself.
