Ney, Ivo

In 1972, Ney was Boris Spassky's assistant in Reykjavik at the World Chess Championship match against Robert Fisher . Ney entered the coaching staff at the insistence of Spassky, along with grandmasters Efim Geller and Nikolai Krogius . Ney, who was not a strong analyst and, in general, as a chess player, was far from a grandmaster, let alone a champion, was taken into the team as a skilled sparring partner for playing tennis. This was to help Spassky usefully spend his free time, maintain physical activity on the court, athletic form and a cheerful mood. The plus was the fact that Ney, the only one in the Soviet delegation, spoke fluent German and periodically acted as a translator.

However, in fact, Ney played a very strange role in Iceland. As it later turned out, Ney secretly made an agreement with the American grandmaster Robert Byrne , editor of the chess department at the New York Times, who, together with him, would become a co-author of a book about the Fisher-Spassky match. After the match, Ney really co-authored with Byrne a book about the confrontation between Fisher and Spassky, entitled "On Both Sides of the Chessboard." However, ethically dubious, given Ney’s status as Spassky’s assistant, the collection of materials for this book - right during the match - turned into trouble for Ney and a loss of reputation. As a member of Spassky’s team, Ney was aware of all the plans, opening preparations, tactical plans of the world champion and his coaching team.

At the height of the match, Ney was suspected of transmitting information to the Americans. According to Krogius, the employees of the Soviet embassy informed him and Geller about the joint pastime of Ney with Byrne, which was also reported to the indignant Spassky. Ney explained that at meetings with Byrne they discuss already played games and he provides the American with his comments for publication in chess magazines. Since these explanations did not suit anyone, She was ordered to urgently leave Iceland. Immediately after the 17th game, on August 22, Ney flew through Copenhagen to Moscow. Subsequently, the unfortunate assistant everywhere explained that in Reykjavik his services were no longer needed, and in Estonia, where he headed the chess school, on the contrary, his presence was urgently needed by the beginning of the new school year.

Arriving in Moscow, Ney ignored a mandatory visit to the Sports Committee, where, according to the instructions, a passport should be handed over, and went straight to Tallinn. In Estonia, he completed work on a book about the match, while in order to avoid censorship , Ney sent seven final chapters by mail to seven different addresses in the USA and Canada . In the aggregate of adventures for his behavior, Ney was removed from the USSR Sports Committee from traveling abroad for two years. The relatively lenient punishment was due to the fact that Ney's malice was not proved, and he himself did not admit anything. In 2016, recalling the match with Fisher, Spassky, 79, directly called Ney “an American spy” ^{[1] [2] [3]} .

• Chess game textbook, Tallinn, 1955;
• Debut Theory, Tallinn, 1962;
• R. Fisher , B. Spassky , V. Korchnoi , B. Larsen , Tallinn, 1975;
• Chess alphabet, 2nd edition, Tallinn, 1978 (all works in co-authorship in Estonian);

• Chess Dictionary / Ch. ed. L. Ya. Abramov ; comp. G. M. Geyler . - M .: Physical education and sport , 1964. - S. 295. - 120,000 copies.
• Chess: Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ch. ed. A.E. Karpov . - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1990 .-- S. 268. - 624 p. - 100,000 copies. - ISBN 5-85270-005-3 .

• Ivo Ney's personal card on the FIDE website
• Ivo Ney's parties in the database
• Ivo Ney's personal card on 365chess.com
• An article in the Estonian Sports Biographical Dictionary (Est.)