GM Lothar Schmid about the match of the century

"Everyone spoke of a duel between east and west, and that's what it was," Dresden-born grand master Schmid remembers of the match played in Reykjavik, Iceland. "I was accepted by both players," he said.

The West German saw the delayed finally start on July 11. "I play chess, so I can put myself in the players' place," said Schmid, now an 84-year-old publisher living in Bamberg, where he says Fischer visited him twice.

The 29-year-old challenger from the US, took on the Russian World Champion Spassky, six years his senior. But there were protracted and increasingly ill-tempered negotiations to get through first.

"It was possible after all to bring such two very different characters together," said Schmid, who had already refereed the semi-final between Fischer and Armenian Tigran Petrosian a year earlier.

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