Endgame

6

The New Fischer

THE PLEADING WAS EMBARRASSING to witness. “C’mon, Bobby. Let me pick you up. C’mon.” Silence on the other end of the phone. “We can just hang out.” Dead air. “We can play some Five-Minute, or go to a movie.” A young chess master, a few years Bobby’s senior, was calling from the office phone of the Marshall Chess Club, attempting to talk Fischer into getting together. “Or take a taxi. I’ll pay for it.” It was two in the afternoon and Bobby had just woken up. His voice, when he finally answered, sounded tinny and sluggish, the words drawled so that each syllable was stretched into two. His volume was loud, though—loud enough for everyone in the office to hear. “I don’t know. No. Well, what time? I have to eat.” The caller’s optimism surged. “We can eat at the Oyster Bar. You like that. C’mon.” Success. An hour and a half later sixteen-year-old Bobby was having his first meal of the day: filet of sole and a large glass of orange juice.

As he walked through Grand Central Terminal toward the restaurant, Bobby probably wasn’t recognized by most of the people he passed, but to his host—and almost all other chess players—having a meal with Fischer was like dining with a movie star. He was becoming a super-celebrity in the world of chess, but the more fame he achieved, the more unpleasant his behavior became. Inflated by his successes on the board, his ego had begun to shut out other people. Gone was Charming Bobby with the electric smile. Enter Problematic Bobby with the disdainful attitude and frequently flashed warning scowl. Increasingly, Bobby viewed it a favor merely to be seen with him.

And it didn’t matter if he rebuffed or rejected a person, because someone else was sure to phone with yet another offer to play chess, see a movie, or eat a fish dinner. Everyone wanted to be in his company, to be part of the Bobby Fischer Show, and he knew it. One mistake, disagreement, or mistimed appointment on the part of a friend was enough for Bobby to sever a relationship. And banishment from his realm would last forever; there were always others who’d take the offender’s place.

If you didn’t play chess, it was nearly impossible to enter Bobby’s world, and yet his disrespect seemed to be directed more at weak players than those who didn’t know how to play the game. The latter could be forgiven their ignorance, but a weak player—which, by definition, included almost anyone he could beat—had no excuse. “Anyone should be able to become a master,” he said with certainty.

Ironically, given his regal attitude, nothing seemed to be going right for Bobby in the fall of 1959. He’d been home barely a month from the Candidates tournament in Yugoslavia, and he was tired—never really weary of the game itself, but fatigued from his excruciating two-month attempt to become Botvinnik’s challenger. He was psychically injured from not winning the tournament, and he couldn’t eradicate the sting of his four bitter losses—robberies, he called them—to Tal.

Too, as always, there was the problem of money. Those still close to Bobby asked the obvious question: If he was one of the best players in the world, or certainly in the United States, why couldn’t he make a living practicing his profession? While the average American salary at that time was $5,500 annually, Bobby, who certainly didn’t consider himself average, had made barely $1,000 for a year’s work. His prize for playing in the Candidates tournament had been only $200. If there just wasn’t substantial tournament money to be had, why couldn’t the American Chess Foundation sponsor him? It backed Reshevsky, even sending him to college. Was it because Bobby wasn’t devoutly Jewish, while Reshevsky was Orthodox? Virtually all of the directors of the foundation were Jewish. Were they exerting subtle pressure on him to conform? To go back to school? Did they not respect him because he was “just a kid”? Was it because of the way he dressed?

Telegrams and phone calls kept pouring into Bobby through the end of November and the first weeks of December. Some of the correspondents asked whether he was going to defend his United States Championship title in the Rosenwald tournament. He really didn’t know. A letter finally arrived in early December that announced the pairings. It listed the twelve players who were invited—Bobby included—and detailed who’d play whom on which dates, and what color each player would have in each round. Bobby went into a slow fume. Public pairing ceremonies were the custom, he loudly pointed out, in all European and most international tournaments.

The Rosenwald organizers, catching Bobby’s implication that they’d colluded to make the pairings more favorable for some, expressed outrage at his protest. “Simple,” said Bobby in response, “just do the pairings over again … this time publicly.” They refused, and the sixteen-year-old Bobby threatened a lawsuit. The New York Times picked up on the dispute and ran a story headlined CHESS GROUP BALKS AT FISCHER DEMAND. The fracas escalated, and Bobby was told that a replacement player would take his place if he refused to play. Finally, the contest of wills ended after officials agreed that if Bobby would play this time, they’d make the pairings in public the following year. It was enough of a concession for Bobby, and he agreed to play. Ultimately, he’d won the battle.

In the past, Bobby had been perturbed by the constant criticism he received for his mode of dress. For example, an article in the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, read by tens of millions, published a photograph of him giving a simultaneous exhibition with the caption: “Despite his rise to fame, Bobby still dresses casually. Note his dungarees and [plaid] shirt in contrast to his opponents’ business suits and ties.” Such potshots, he felt, diminished him—however subtle they might be. They detracted not only from who he incontestably was—a grandmaster and the United States Champion—but who he believed he was—the strongest player in the world.

Later, Pal Benko, whom Bobby had played in the Candidates tournament, would claim to be the one who talked Bobby into changing the kind of clothes he wore. He introduced Bobby to his tailor in the Little Hungary section of Manhattan so that the teenager could have some bespoke suits made. How Bobby could afford custom-tailored clothing is a mystery. Possibly, the money came from an advance he received for his book Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess, which was published in 1959.

When Bobby arrived at the Empire Hotel in December 1959 for the first round of the U.S. Championship tournament, he was dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, a custom-made white shirt, a Sulka white tie, and Italian-made shoes. Also, his hair was neatly combed, completing an image makeover so total that he was barely recognizable. Gone were the sneakers and ski sweaters, the mussed hair, the plaid cowboy shirt, and the slightly stained corduroy trousers. Predictably, the press began talking about “the New Fischer,” interpreting Bobby’s sartorial upgrade as a sign that he’d crossed into young manhood.

Bobby’s competitors tried to hide their astonishment at the teenager’s transformed appearance. As play progressed, though, they were stunned in a different way. By the end of the tournament, the suavely bedecked Bobby had played all eleven games without a single loss. Fischer had not only retained his title as United States Champion, he’d accomplished something unprecedented: For the third year in a row, he’d marched to the title without being defeated in any of the pairings.

There was a financial windfall, too. Bobby received $1,000 for his tournament win—and the Fischer family’s pocketbook bulged further when Bobby’s maternal grandfather, Jacob Wender, passed away, leaving $14,000 of his estate to Regina. It was enough—if invested wisely—for the frugal Fischers to live on for several years.

Indeed, Regina was prudent in her plans for the money. Joan had already married a man of means and was at the beginning of a nursing career, so Regina wanted to make sure that whatever income the inheritance generated would take care of Bobby and herself. She set up a trust fund with Ivan Woolworth, an attorney who worked for the Fischers pro bono. He was made the sole trustee, charged with investing the money in the best and most profitable way he could devise. Under the plan, Regina received $160 per month to help cover her personal needs. Since she was planning to move out of the apartment to attend medical school, perhaps in Mexico or in East Germany, she wanted the rent to be paid for Bobby for as long as he remained at 560 Lincoln Place. So he received $175 per month—enough to cover the rent, gas, and electric—plus a little extra. Additional money was added to the trust by Regina and Bobby over time, and the interest on the money invested allowed Bobby to live rent free for years, with some pocket money left over for himself.

Despite the small annuity, Bobby, to get by, had dinner almost every night at the Collins home and took advantage of lunch and dinner invitations from chess fans and admirers. Until he grew much older, he was never known to pick up a restaurant check, suffering what a friend called “limp wrist syndrome.”

In March of 1960 seventeen-year-old Bobby flew to Mar del Plata, the seaside resort on Argentina’s Atlantic coast, south of Buenos Aires. Known for its art deco architecture and expansive boardwalk, the city had a proud tradition of hosting international tournaments. Argentinean players were as enthusiastic about the game as the Russians and the Yugoslavs, and Bobby was treated with respect wherever he went. The only downside of being in Mar del Plata was the incessant rain and the cold wind from the sea. Regina, ever irrepressible and somehow aware of the adverse weather, shipped a pair of galoshes to her son and admonished herself for not insisting that he take his leather coat when he left the States.

Bobby thought he’d easily walk through the Mar Del Plata tournament until he learned that David Bronstein and Fridrik Olafsson were also going to play, in addition to the twenty-three-year-old grandmaster from Leningrad, Boris Spassky. But it wasn’t Spassky or Olafsson who really worried Fischer. It was Bronstein.

A week before he left for Argentina, Bobby and the author of this book had dinner at the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, hangout of avant-garde artists and Abstract Expressionists, and one of Bobby’s favorite eating places. The night we were there Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline were having a conversation at the bar, and Andy Warhol and John Cage dined at a nearby table—not that Bobby noticed. He just liked the pub food the restaurant served—it was a shepherd’s pie kind of a place—and the anonymity that came from sitting among people who preferred gawking at art celebrities to taking note of chess prodigies.

We slid into the third booth from the bar and ordered bottles of beer—Lowenbrau for Bobby, Heineken for me. The waitress didn’t question Bobby’s age, even though he’d just turned seventeen and wasn’t legally old enough to drink in New York State (eighteen was then the age limit). Bobby knew the selection without looking at the menu. He tackled an enormous slab of roast prime rib, which he consumed in a matter of minutes. It was as if he were a heavyweight boxer enjoying his last meal before the big fight.

He’d just received in the mail the pairings chart and color distribution from Mar del Plata. Bad news: He was to have black against both Bronstein and Spassky.

During a lull in the conversation—lulls were typical while spending time with Bobby, since he didn’t talk much and wasn’t embarrassed by long silences—I asked, “Bobby, how are you going to prepare for this tournament? I’ve always wanted to know how you did it.” He seemed unusually chipper and became interested in my interest. “Here, I’ll show you,” he said, smiling. He then slid out of his side of the booth and sat next to me, cramming me into the corner. Next, he retrieved from his coat his battered pocket chess set—all the little pieces lined up in their respective slots, ready to go to war.

As he talked, he looked from me to the pocket set, back and forth—at least at first—and spat out a scholarly treatise on his method of preparation. “First of all, I’ll look at the games that I can find of all of the players, but I’m only going to really prepare for Bronstein. Spassky and Olafsson, I’m not that worried about.” He then showed me the progression of his one and only game with Bronstein—a draw from Portorož two years earlier. He took me through each move that the two had made, disparaging a Bronstein choice one moment, lauding another the next. The variety of choices Bobby worked through was dazzling, and overwhelming. In the course of his rapid analysis, he discussed the ramifications of certain variations or tactics, why each would be advisable or not. It was like watching a movie with a voice-over narration, but with one great difference: He was manipulating the pieces and speaking so rapidly that it was difficult to connect the moves with his commentary. I just couldn’t follow the tumble of ideas behind the real and phantom attacks, the shadow assaults: “He couldn’t play there since it would weaken his black squares” … “I didn’t think of this” … “No, was he kidding?”

The slots of Bobby’s pocket set had become so enlarged from thousands of hours of analysis that the half-inch plastic pieces seemed to jump into place kinesthetically, at his will. Most of the gold imprint designating whether a given piece was a bishop, king, queen, or whatever had, from years of use, worn off. But, of course, Bobby knew without looking—just by touch—what each piece represented. The tiny figurines were like his friendly pets.

“The problem with Bronstein,” he went on, “is that it’s almost impossible to beat him if he plays for a draw. At Zurich he played twenty draws out of twenty-eight games! Did you read his book?” I was snapped back into the reality of having to converse. “No. Isn’t it in Russian?” He looked annoyed, and amazed that I didn’t know the language: “Well, learn it! It’s a fantastic book. He’ll play for a win against me, I’m sure, and I’m not playing for a draw.”

Resetting the pieces in seconds, again almost without looking, he said, “He’s hard to prepare for because he can play any kind of game, positional or tactical, and any kind of opening.” He then began to show me, from memory, game after game—it seemed like dozens—focusing on the openings that Bronstein had played against Bobby’s favorite variations. Multiple outcomes leaped from his mind. But he didn’t just confine himself to Bronstein’s efforts. He also took me on a tour of games that Louis Paulsen had played in the 1800s and Aaron Nimzowitsch had experimented with in the 1920s, as well as others that had been played just weeks before—games gleaned from a Russian newspaper.

All the time Bobby weighed possibilities, suggested alternatives, selected the best lines, discriminated, decided. It was a history lesson and a chess tutorial, but mainly it was an amazing feat of memory. His eyes, slightly glazed, were now fixed on the pocket set, which he gently held open in his left hand, talking to himself, totally unaware of my presence or that he was in a restaurant. His intensity seemed even greater than when he was playing a tournament or match game. His fingers sped by in a blur, and his face showed the slightest of smiles, as if in a reverie. He whispered, barely audibly: “Well, if he plays that … I can block his bishop.” And then, raising his voice so loud that some of the customers stared: “He won’t play that.”

I began to weep quietly, aware that in that time-suspended moment I was in the presence of genius.

Bobby’s prediction at the Cedar Tavern was realized at Mar del Plata. When Bronstein and Bobby met in the twelfth round, the Russian did play for a win, but when the game neared its ending, there were an even number of pieces and pawns remaining on each side, and a draw was inevitable. By the conclusion of the tournament, Fischer and Spassky were tied for first place. It was Fischer’s greatest triumph in an international tournament to date.

And then there was the Argentinean disaster two months later. Of all the cities Bobby had been to, Buenos Aires was his favorite: He liked the food, the people’s enthusiasm for chess, and the broad boulevards. Yet something went uncharacteristically wrong with Bobby’s play during his stay there, and the rumor that circulated, both then and for years after, was that he was staying up until dawn—on at least one occasion with an Argentinean beauty—allowing himself to become physically run-down, and not preparing for the next day’s opponent. The worldly Argentinean grandmaster Miguel Najdorf, who wasn’t playing in the tournament, introduced Bobby to the city’s nightlife, not caring that he was undermining the boy’s possibility of gaining a top spot in the competition. And with the bravado of a seventeen-year-old, Bobby assumed that he had the energy and focus to play well even after very little sleep, night after night. Unfortunately, when he found himself in extremis at the board and called on his chess muse to save him, there was no answer.

Whatever the reason for his poor play (when pressed, he said the lighting was atrocious), Bobby as the brilliant Dr. Jekyll morphed into a weakened Mr. Hyde, a shell of a player. In the twenty-player tournament, he won only three games, drew eleven, and lost the rest. Bewildering. Anyone can have a bad tournament, but Bobby’s past record had been one of ascendancy, and his 13½–1½ result at Mar del Plata just a short time before had left his fans predicting that he’d take top honors at Buenos Aires.

For Bobby, the defeat was devastating. It’s bad enough to fail, but far worse to see another succeed at the very accomplishment you’d hoped to achieve. Samuel Reshevsky, his American archrival, had tied for first with Viktor Korchnoi. A group photograph of the players taken at the end of the tournament shows Bobby with unfocused eyes, apparently paying no attention to the photographer or the rest of the players. Was he thinking about his poor performance? Or was he perhaps considering that, just this once, his determination to win hadn’t been strong enough?

He’d agreed to play first board for the United States that year at the World Chess Olympics, which was to be held in Leipzig, East Germany, in October of 1960, but American chess officials were claiming that they didn’t have enough money to pay for the team’s travel and other expenses. A national group called the People-to-People Committee was attempting to raise funds for the team, and the executive director asked Bobby if he’d give a simultaneous exhibition to publicize the team’s plight. The event was held at the Rikers Island jail complex, which stands on a 413-acre plot of land in the middle of New York’s East River. At the time the facility housed some fourteen thousand inmates, twenty of whom Bobby played. Unsurprisingly, he won all the games.

Unfortunately, though the exhibition did garner coverage in local newspapers, not one story mentioned the reason for the event: to bring attention to the American team’s financial straits. But if the State Department and American chess organizations couldn’t help, Regina Fischer thought she could. Probing into the activities of the American Chess Foundation, she demonstrated that some players (such as Reshevsky) received support while others (such as Bobby) did not. A one-woman publicity machine, she sent out indignant press releases, as well as letters to the government demanding a public accounting.

Although Bobby desperately wanted to go to Leipzig to play in his first Olympics, he began to seethe over his mother’s interference, and on at least one occasion he openly took her to task when she made a public appearance at a chess event. She felt she was helping her son; he felt she was simply being a pushy stage mother.

While picketing the foundation’s offices, Regina caught the attention of Ammon Hennacy, a pacifist, anarchist, social activist, and associate editor of the libertarian newspaper the Catholic Worker. He suggested that Regina undertake a hunger strike for chess. She did so for six days and garnered yet more publicity. Hennacy also talked her into joining the longest peace march in history, from San Francisco to Moscow, and she agreed. While on the march she met Cyril Pustan, an Englishman who was a high school teacher and journeyman plumber. Among other areas of interest, their political beliefs and religion—both were Jewish—meshed perfectly, and eventually they married and settled in England.

When, ultimately, Bobby walked into the lobby of the Astoria Hotel in Leipzig, he was greeted by a man who resembled a younger and handsomer Groucho Marx: Isaac Kashdan, the United States team captain. Kashdan and Bobby had never met before, but the former was a legend in the chess world. An international grandmaster, he was one of America’s strongest players in the late 1920s and 1930s, when he played in five chess Olympics, winning a number of medals. Having been warned that Bobby was “hard to handle,” Kashdan was concerned that the young man might not be a compliant team member.

Bobby may have sensed the team captain’s wariness, because he turned the conversation to Kashdan’s chess career; the teenager not only knew of the older man’s reputation, he was also familiar with many of his past games. Kashdan responded to Bobby’s overture and later commented: “I had no real problem with him. All he wants to do is to play chess. He is a tremendous player.” Although separated in age by almost four decades, the two players became relatively close and remained so for years.

One of the highlights of the Olympics came when the United States faced the USSR and Bobby was slated to play Mikhail Tal, then the World Champion. Fischer and Tal met in the fifth round. Before making his first move, Tal stared at the board, and stared, and stared. Bobby wondered, rightly so as it developed, whether Tal was up to his old tricks. Finally, after ten long minutes, Tal moved. He was hoping to make Fischer feel completely uncomfortable. But his effort to unsettle the American failed. Instead, Bobby launched an aggressive series of moves, waging a board battle that was later described as both a “slugfest” and a “sparkling attack and counter-attack.” The cerebral melee ended in a draw, and later both players would include the game in their respective books, citing it as one of the most important in their careers.

That seventeen-year-old Bobby had held his own against the reigning World Champion didn’t go unnoticed, and players at the competition were now predicting that in a very short time, Bobby would be playing for the title.

By the end of the Olympics, the Soviet Union, which had fielded one of the strongest teams ever, came in first and the United States eased into second. Bobby’s score was ten wins, two losses, and six draws, and he took home the silver medal.

At the closing banquet someone mentioned to Mikhail Tal that Bobby, who’d been studying palmistry, was reading the palms of other players, almost as a parlor game. “Let him read mine,” said Tal skeptically. He walked over to Bobby’s table, held out his left hand, and said, “Read it.” While Bobby stared at Tal’s palm and pondered the mysteries of its lines and crevices, a crowd gathered around and hundreds of others watched from their tables.

Sensing the building drama, Bobby took his time and seemed to peer even more deeply at the hand. Then, with a look on his face that promised he was going to reveal the meaning of life, he said in stentorian tones: “I can see in your palm, Mr. Tal, that the next World Champion will be …”

At that point Bobby and Tal spoke simultaneously. Fischer said, “Bobby Fischer!” And Tal, never at a loss for a quip, said, “William Lombardy!” (who happened to be standing to his immediate left). Everyone assembled screamed with laughter.

A short while later, Chess Life, in describing the incident, chose to find in it an augury of things to come. Said the magazine: “By the look of confidence and self-assuredness on Fischer’s face, we wonder if in fact, he did ‘see’ himself as the next World Champion.”