Bobby Fischer light of day during that period, and that the staff had ignored his complaints about constant tobacco smoke in his cell. Tokyo-based Canadian journalist and consultant John Bosnitch set up the "Committee to Free Bobby Fischer" after meeting Fischer at Narita Airport and offering to assist him. Boris Spassky wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush, asking "For mercy, charity", and, if that was not possible, "to put [him] in the same cell with Bobby Fischer" and "to give [them] a chess set". It was reported that Fischer and Miyoko Watai, the President of the Japanese Chess Association
San Antonio 1972 chess tournament Gligoric, Paul Keres and Bent Larsen, and some promising stars, among them Brazilian Henrique da Costa Mecking and future world champion Anatoly Karpov. As a Category XII event (average rating of 2539), the San Antonio Church's Fried Chicken Inc. First International Chess Tournament was strong enough to be regarded at the time the most important chess competition to be held in american soil since New York 1924 (which attracted at the time elite players like Emanuel Lasker, Alexander Alekhine, José Raul Capablanca, Frank Marshall and Richard Réti, among many others). Newly crowned world champion Fischer and deposed champion Spassky were