Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

8

Legends Clash

ABOARD THE New Amsterdam ocean liner nineteen-year-old Bobby Fischer didn’t wear a tuxedo to dinner in the first-class lounge, but he dressed as conservatively as he could, with a blue serge suit, white shirt, and dark tie. Forgetting that he’d ever been way behind the fashion curve, he was appalled, in some priggish, nouveau riche kind of way, that certain passengers appeared in the dining room in slacks and sneakers.

During the nine-day voyage from New York to Rotterdam in September 1962 he slept as much as could, played over some games, and sat on the promenade deck to take in the bracing sea air. The trip was paid for from the $5,000 appearance fee he was getting to compete for the United States in the Olympiad in Varna, Bulgaria. He had a triple motive in sailing, instead of flying, across the Atlantic: He wanted to see and experience how the “aristocrats” traveled, he needed some rest and time alone, and he was also beginning to become afraid—in a way that many might consider paranoid—that the Soviets, to protect their national chess honor and remove him as a threat to their hegemony, might sabotage a plane that he was in.

Bobby’s diatribe about cheating by the Soviets was being discussed all over the world, and the chess hierarchy in Russia was incensed. Consequently, he believed the Soviets might be furious enough to, as he put it, murder him by “tinkering with the engine of a plane.”

The anticipation of playing against World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik for the first time was exhilarating, though, and worth the discomfort of participating at what was rumored to be a not-so-exemplary tournament site—the Black Sea resort called Golden Sands.

Mikhail Moisevich Botvinnik of Leningrad was fifty-one years old and arguably one of the best chess players who ever lived. Winner three times of the World Championship, he’d defeated Alexander Alekhine, José Capablanca, Max Euwe, and Emanuel Lasker, among other renowned players, and was a living legend. Ironically, despite his much-deserved reputation, he was apprehensive about playing Bobby Fischer for the first time. The Russian had, of course, heard of Bobby’s “Game of the Century,” his near-perfect performance at Bled, and his astounding win at Stockholm. But there was another factor putting Botvinnik on edge: He considered Bobby an enemy of the Soviet state, owing to the nineteen-year-old’s post-Curaçao accusations.

What loomed was a mini Cold War—one played across sixty-four squares.

Fischer and Botvinnik had met once—but not to play—at the Leipzig Olympiad in 1960, and when introduced, Bobby shook hands and said succinctly, “Fischer.” No other words of greeting were exchanged. Although he spoke passable English, Botvinnik was not known for his cordiality.

Botvinnik surmised that someday Bobby might be his or someone else’s challenger for the World Championship—and perhaps even hold the title—but even if that did not occur, the whole world would be studying and analyzing his game with Fischer at this Olympiad perhaps for hundreds of years. Thinking of the embarrassment if he lost, Botvinnik suggested to the organizers that the game be played in a private room: At least then he wouldn’t have to face spectators and the other players in the hour of his possible defeat. But no such room was available, and anyway the organizers wanted the game to be in public view for the publicity it would generate. Of the thousands of games to be played at this Olympiad, Fischer-Botvinnik promised to be the tournament’s one marquee event, and the organizers didn’t want chess fans to be robbed of the excitement.

Botvinnik, who wore steel-rimmed glasses and a gray suit, exhibited a serious, businesslike demeanor. He was buttoned up, both literally and figuratively, projecting the look of a scientist—which, in addition to being a grandmaster, was exactly what he was. He knew he was a major representative of the Soviet Union, and he chose his words as if his every conversation might end up as a part of a court transcript somewhere. His pupil, Anatoly Karpov, said of him that he had an “Olympian inaccessibility.”

Bobby had already played fifteen games over four weeks in the Olympiad by the time he sat down to play Botvinnik, so long before their matchup he’d shaken off any rust. As they met at the board, they shook hands and then slightly banged heads when they went to be seated. “Sorry,” said Bobby, uttering the second word he’d ever spoken to Botvinnik, again without a reply.

When the game was adjourned, it appeared that Fischer’s position was clearly superior.

Fischer dined alone that night, took a cursory look at the game, was confident he had it won, and went to sleep early. Not so, the Soviets. Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, Paul Keres, Efim Geller, team coach Semyon Furman, and Botvinnik worked on the position until five-thirty the next morning. They also called Moscow and spoke to Yuri Averbach—an endgame authority—and asked for his opinion. It was Geller who suggested that although Fischer was ahead materially, there was a subtle way that the game might be drawn.

The next morning at breakfast, someone approached Botvinnik and asked him what he thought about the position. He answered in Russian with one word: “Nichia.” Draw.

When play resumed, Botvinnik was in shirtsleeves, a look so unusual for him that the other players knew he was worried and prepared for serious work. Bobby, meanwhile, was unaware that he was about to play against the analysis of no less than seven Soviet grandmasters, not just the ingenuity of his opponent. Slowly, he saw what Botvinnik was up to, and his face became ashen. Botvinnik, who rarely rose from the board until the game was over, was so exuberant about having changed the game’s momentum that he could not sit still. He stood, walked over to the Soviet team captain, Lev Abramov, and, once again, whispered, “Nichia.” Bobby, still remembering the argument he’d had with Abramov in Moscow in 1958—the men hadn’t spoken since—immediately complained to the arbiter. “Look,” he said. “Botvinnik is getting assistance!”

Abramov, though he was far less skilled than Botvinnik, was nevertheless an international master and might have, at that moment, relayed to Botvinnik information from the other Soviet grandmasters. At least, that’s what Bobby was thinking. No official protest was put before the tournament committee, however, because Bobby’s own teammates believed he was being extreme and wrongheaded.

Eventually, Bobby could make no headway in this game that he should have won. He looked up at Botvinnik and said the third word he’d ever spoken to him: “Draw.” Botvinnik simply offered his hand. Later, he recalled that Bobby, his face pallid, shook hands and left the tournament hall in tears. The United States team wound up finishing a disappointing fourth, mainly as a result of Bobby’s disappointing results. Mysteriously, the nineteen-year-old wrote a letter of apology to Dr. Eliot Hearst, the United States team captain, saying he’d been under great stress that had nothing to do with the Olympiad or chess.

Aboard the New Amsterdam once again, heading back to New York, Bobby wrote a note to his friend Bernard Zuckerman explaining how he felt about his draw against Botvinnik. The message was cabled to Brooklyn. Bobby felt that he had fallen into a “cheapo”—that he’d been tricked by one of his opponent’s ruses and had made an unsound move—and that, prior to Bobby’s committing this error, Botvinnik, because of Bobby’s superior position, seemed so upset that he looked like he was going to collapse.

In an estimation filled with sour grapes, Bobby also wrote that Botvinnik, the well-respected former World Champion, was never really a great player, never “first among equals” as Botvinnik had once described himself. Instead, Bobby claimed that Botvinnik’s superiority lay in the field of politics. He suggested that Botvinnik might have been able to become Premier of the Soviet Union because of his [political] ability “off the chessboard.”

Curaçao was a watershed for Bobby in his vow to never again play in the World Championship cycle. The Varna match, with the assistance of Botvinnik’s teammates to eke out a draw, was also a turning point. It would be two years before Bobby accepted an invitation to play in another international tournament. The Russians claimed that his retreat from the world stage was because of his “pathological” fear of the “hand of Moscow.” But back in Brooklyn, Bobby said he just no longer wanted to be involved with those “commie cheaters,” as he called them.

Then—a little more than a year later, in December 1963—came the 1963–64 United States Championship, held in the unpretentious Henry Hudson Hotel in New York. Bobby’s opponents fell as if they were tenpins, Bobby scoring a strike—game after game they toppled—with not a hint of a draw. The audience sensed that something unusual was about to happen. It did.

Bobby defeated the powerful champion Arthur Bisguier and the aging Samuel Reshevsky, and speculation surged through the hotel ballroom: Was it possible Bobby could make a clean sweep—pull off a win against every foe, with not even a single draw? The audience increased every round as word of Fischer’s incredible run spread throughout the chess community.

Tension, always high in a major tournament, was escalating. Bobby’s immaculate timing and apparently infallible play was creating a psychological handicap for players who hadn’t yet faced him. He vanquished every player he met. It was December 30, 1963, and Bobby had played all but one game of the championship without losing or drawing a game. There was only one more to go.

The combatants rested on New Year’s Day and returned to the contest on January 2. Bobby’s score made him the winner already, but how the tournament would end was not inevitable. His final game was against Anthony Saidy, a friend. In his mid-twenties, six years older than Fischer, Saidy was then a medical doctor with the Peace Corps and had been given a leave to play in the championship. He’d been playing very well, and this round gave him a chance at second place. He could also be the “spoiler,” the person to ruin Fischer’s chance for a perfect score in the championship. If that happened, it would go into the chess history books. And Saidy might, in fact, win, especially since he had the advantage of the white pieces.

By now there were hundreds of spectators at the hotel, tensely watching the big demonstration board. Most of them were clearly, but very quietly, rooting for Bobby, in part because his win that day would give him a clean sweep. But as the game grew longer, a win seemed very unlikely. Saidy’s position was powerful, and Bobby’s was precarious. The two-and-a-half-hour time limit ended, and there was no winner as yet. It was Saidy’s turn to move. The young doctor thought for about forty minutes, wrote down his intended move on his score sheet, sealed it in an envelope according to the rules, and handed it to the tournament director. The game was then adjourned until the next day. Everyone left the hotel ballroom assuming that when the game resumed it would be a draw, at best. It was not. It took Saidy about thirty minutes to realize that he’d sealed a blunder. The next day when the envelope was opened by the director, and the move made on the board, Bobby realized immediately that Saidy hadn’t chosen wisely. He looked up at Saidy and a slight smile appeared on his face. Saidy’s blunder gave Fischer an opportunity to develop a winning endgame, and half an hour after the adjourned game was resumed, Saidy was forced to resign.

The incredible final score was picked up by the wire services and sent by radio, newspapers, and television throughout the world: eleven championship games, eleven wins. At this level of competition, such a streak wasn’t suppose to happen, no matter how adept a given player might be. Fischer’s first prize for his two weeks of intensity and brilliance was just $2,000.

The non-chess media gave the tournament far more attention than usual, though they’d never been sure whether chess was a sport or an art. Life and the Saturday Evening Post arranged to interview Bobby. Sports Illustrated headlined its story THE AMAZING VICTORY STREAK OF BOBBY FISCHER. Chess publications around the world wrote of the unparalleled achievement. Only Bent Larsen, always a Fischer detractor, was unimpressed: “Fischer was playing against children,” he said.

Reshevsky a child? Robert Byrne? Larry Evans? Pal Benko?

On March 9, 1964, Bobby Fischer was twenty-one. His birthday gave him something in common with many young American males during that time of military escalation: participation in the military draft. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated the previous November, and his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had escalated the war in Vietnam. To be drafted at that time meant a strong likelihood of serving in Southeast Asia.

As a “1-A” candidate, Bobby was scheduled to take his physical examination at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station on Whitehall Street in New York City. If selected, he’d spend the next two years in the army. Fischer was patriotic at that time, but his focus was chess, and the chess community was counting on him to play in the Interzonal at Amsterdam. True, he’d said that he would never play in the FIDE cycle again because it was stacked in favor of the Soviets. But might he somehow get back on the road to the championship? The world wanted it, and in his heart Bobby wanted it—but he said he wouldn’t change his mind. Nevertheless, several people began researching whether there might be a way to get Fischer a deferment until after the Interzonal was completed … just in case he played in it.

On Bobby’s behalf, an official of the United States Chess Federation contacted General George B. Hershey, head of the Selective Service bureau. Hershey explained that “a temporary deferment, on almost any grounds, is usually an easy matter to secure from a local board, but eventually Fischer will probably be drafted.”

A somewhat longer deferment was available, and totally legal, for college students. Bobby had dropped out of high school, but the New School for Social Research, a progressive college in New York City, was willing to accept his extraordinary chess accomplishments in lieu of traditional schoolwork. Alfred Landa, then assistant to the president, said that Fischer would not only be allowed to matriculate into the college, but be given a full scholarship. Bobby thought long and hard about the offer. One afternoon he started to walk to the New School to put in his application—and then stopped. His experience with schools had been distasteful, and perhaps that caused forebodings. Without giving an explanation, he refused to enter the school building, and he refused to apply for a student deferment.

He was rescheduled to take his physical examination and went to the recruiting station by himself. Afterward, it was announced that Bobby had been rejected—for reasons that have never been made public. Bobby Fischer was classified 4F—the military rating that meant you had one or more medical conditions that totally disqualified you from serving in uniform. He seemed and appeared fine, physically.

Whatever the reason, Bobby Fischer never served in the military.

Bobby sat confined in a small wood-paneled room at the Marshall Chess Club, with only the chessboard and a referee. There was no player facing him. After deciding on his move, he wrote it down on his score sheet, which was then carried by the referee to a “runner,” who brought it quickly to a nearby room where a Teletype machine had been set up. Bobby then waited, still alone, as the move was transmitted to Havana, Cuba, where his opponent sat facing his own chessboard. When the opponent made his answering move, it was transmitted by wire from Havana back to the Marshall, the Teletype operator turned the reply over to the runner, and the move was carried back to the silent room where Bobby tensely awaited it.

It was 1965 and Bobby had accepted an invitation to play in the Capablanca Memorial Tournament in Havana. It was exactly the type of tournament he’d been seeking for his return to international competition. There would be thirteen grandmasters and eight international masters, not quite as strong a field as at Bobby’s last international tournament, but incredibly powerful. The $3,000 appearance fee sealed it for him. Bobby was back.

But not quite. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba were still severely strained. The State Department had begun to permit journalists access to Cuba, although it denied entry to ordinary citizens. Fischer had applied for a visa, since he was a regular contributor to Chess Life and had made special arrangements to do an article on this tournament for the Saturday Review, which sent a letter to the United States Department of State—as did the U.S. Chess Federation—confirming the legitimacy of his trip and petitioning permission for him to go to Cuba. There’s no question that his primary motivation in wanting to go was to play in the tournament, but he also intended to write about it. Nonetheless, the State Department flatly refused to recognize him as a legitimate columnist, and therefore denied him the opportunity to travel to Havana.

What no one knew was that the FBI was investigating Bobby, and had been for years. Their interest in him may have been triggered by their belief that his mother was a Communist, in part because she’d spent six years in Moscow attending medical school; they’d been investigating Regina since Bobby was a child. When Bobby went to Moscow in 1958, when he was fifteen, the FBI presumed that Regina had sent him there to be indoctrinated.

The Bureau obviously had trouble believing that someone would travel so much simply for the purpose of playing chess, especially to countries that were restricted for political reasons. A notice in Bobby’s FBI file states that his passport was “not valid for travel to Albania, Cuba, and those portions of China, Korea and Vietnam under communist control,” and it contains a 1965 memorandum from the Office of the Coordinator of Cuban Affairs which advises that “Cuban travel criteria make no provision for validation for the purpose of participating in chess competitions.”

FBI target or not, Bobby was primed to play in the tournament, and he wouldn’t be denied. Helping him out were officials in the United States Chess Federation who came up with a highly unorthodox idea: Bobby would stay in New York and play the tournament from a room in the Marshall Chess Club. There were no cell phones in 1965, and there was certainly no Internet. But Fischer could play the tournament by Teletype. Cuban chess officials were delighted, offering to pay some $10,000 in expenses for the open telephone line and Teletype machine that were required. As for the other participants in the tournament, they agreed, some reluctantly, to the novel arrangement. Che Guevara, a strong chess player, was the principal force behind organizing the tournament.

Then Fidel Castro intervened, calling the situation a “great propaganda victory for Cuba.” It made headlines. Furious, Bobby cabled Castro, threatening to withdraw from the tournament unless the premier promised to stop using him as a political ploy. Bobby continued:

I WOULD ONLY BE ABLE TO TAKE PART IN THE TOURNAMENT IN THE EVENT THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY SENT ME A TELEGRAM DECLARING THAT NEITHER YOU, NOR YOUR GOVERNMENT WILL ATTEMPT TO MAKE POLITICAL CAPITAL OUT OF MY PARTICIPATION IN THE TOURNEY, AND THAT IN THE FUTURE NO POLITICAL COMMENTARIES ON THIS SCORE WILL BE MADE.

BOBBY FISCHER

Castro cabled back, denying making the statement and questioning Bobby’s courage:

OUR LAND NEEDS NO SUCH “PROPAGANDA VICTORIES.” IT IS YOUR PERSONAL AFFAIR WHETHER YOU WILL TAKE PART IN THE TOURNAMENT OR NOT. HENCE YOUR WORDS ARE UNJUST. IF YOU ARE FRIGHTENED AND REPENT YOUR PREVIOUS DECISION, THEN IT WOULD BE BETTER TO FIND ANOTHER EXCUSE OR TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO REMAIN HONEST.

FIDEL CASTRO

Upon receiving word from Castro, Bobby confirmed his participation in the tournament without any further sparring. He wanted to play the game of chess, not be a party to sensationalism.

The arrangement was certainly awkward for Bobby, however. To avoid any hint of cheating, he had to be isolated from everyone except the referee. It was a sterile, feedback-barren experience with no chance to read his opponent’s body language. As Bobby sat with the referee, not a word was spoken; the afternoons crept slowly into summer twilight. Occasionally, while waiting for his opponent’s move to come back from Havana, Bobby would gaze out into the club’s garden. A bust of Philidor, the eighteenth-century French chess player and composer who was considered the best player of his day, was perched atop an étagère of chess sets, almost as if he were at the game. The tick of the chess clock was the only sound heard.

A typical four-hour game was transformed by the Teletype process into an eight- or nine-hour affair. Some games stretched to twelve hours. The tournament became a test of endurance and stamina. Bobby grew exhausted. His opponents had the same problem, but each only had to submit to the process once—when playing Fischer. Bobby had to play this strange, isolated form of chess every single game. In the midst of the tournament, someone asked how well he thought he’d do and he answered, “It’s a question of when I’ll crack up.”

Bobby won his first two games but as the tournament wore on he lost to some players and drew with several others well below his caliber. While he exhibited flashes of brilliance, this wasn’t the same Bobby Fischer who’d swept through the United States Championship eighteen months earlier. Still, he tied for second, a half point behind Russia’s Vasily Smyslov, the former World Champion.

Had Fischer not done as well as he did, his story might have ended right there, surrealistically, in the quiet back room of a chess club. Havana was his comeback in the world spotlight, and a poor showing would only have deepened Bobby’s disillusionment with himself, probably permanently. Two setbacks in international tournaments would have been intolerable to him. True, for Bobby there was only one place in a tournament and that was first. But after the long international layoff, and playing every game under grueling conditions, he likely considered his second-place showing somewhat acceptable.

Openly, Bobby disparaged how he’d performed, but the Soviet chess establishment was dazzled by how he managed to place so high under such arduous conditions. They were convinced that he was continuing to grow as a player, and that unless something were done quickly, he’d smash the Soviets’ hegemony.

Worry about Fischer led the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Sports, which studied the psychology of sports, to appoint a Soviet grandmaster and theoretician, Vladimir Alatortsev, to create a secret laboratory (located near the Moscow Central Chess Club). Its mission was to analyze Fischer’s games. Alatortsev and a small group of other masters and psychologists worked tirelessly for ten years attempting to “solve” the mystery of Fischer’s prowess, in addition to analyzing his personality and behavior. They rigorously studied his opening, middle game, and endings—and filtered classified analyses of their findings to the top Soviet players.

Though he didn’t realize it, if Fischer hadn’t accepted the invitation to the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup in Santa Monica, California, there wouldn’t have been such a tournament at all. “We must get Bobby Fischer,” Gregor Piatigorsky told his wife. A few years prior, Mrs. Piatigorsky had been criticized in some quarters for not acceding to Fischer’s demands for the 1963 tournament, which had led to his not playing. Her solution this time was to pay everyone the same amount—$2,000—therefore saving face and securing the greatest American player.

The story of how Fischer went into a swoon in the tournament’s first half, tying for last, yet ended up in the penultimate round tying for first with Spassky, has been told many times. At the beginning of the competition, Fischer looked Abraham Lincoln–thin; his cheeks were hollow, and he had deep, dark circles under his eyes, all indicating that he might be ill.

As Fischer’s losses and draws mounted, it became clear that he was having the most disastrous tournament of his adult career, perhaps even worse than his Buenos Aires debacle. Bobby was at an existential precipice. He somehow had to find a better method of play, a better understanding of what he was doing wrong; he had to find lessons in his failures, or else his chess career would be, if not over, forever tarnished. Skirting or briefly inhabiting the bottom of the scoreboard does not make one a failure, but remaining there, refusing to fight, does.

Fortunately, drawing deep from his inner reserves, Bobby did climb. His ability and character enabled him to emerge from the depths. He came back in the second half of the tournament and ended just a half point below Spassky. His reaction was a study in ambivalence. He was overjoyed that he’d pulled himself out of the abyss in which he’d found himself in the tournament’s first half, but devastated that he hadn’t won first prize.

At the closing ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Piatigorsky posed for a photograph with Spassky on one side and Fischer on the other. Fischer, with a weak smile, looked somewhat embarrassed, as if to say, “I really should have won this tournament, and I can’t blame the Russians this time. It was me … all alone.”

As the players left the Miramar Hotel to go home to their respective countries or states, Bobby simply refused to check out. Other players have been known to do the same thing. It’s like an actor remaining in character and refusing to leave his dressing room, or a writer refusing to leave his garret after finishing a book. The challenge is tearing oneself away from a venue that has been one’s creative home for so many hours, days, weeks, or months.

Three weeks after everyone else had left, Bobby was still at the Miramar, just steps from the ocean, surrounded by gardens and palm trees, breathing in the pungent smell of eucalyptus. He swam and walked, and then often spent the rest of the day—and a good portion of the night—playing over all the games of the tournament, torturing himself over the mistakes he’d made. Someone finally pointed out to him that the Piatigorskys would no longer continue to pick up his hotel costs, so, reluctantly, he flew back home to Brooklyn.