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

9

The Candidate

DURING THE 1960S, Bobby Fischer continued his often brilliant and sometimes self-sabotaging career: He won the Monte Carlo International and ungallantly refused to pose for a photograph with His Royal Highness Prince Rainier, the tournament’s sponsor, and at a public ceremony when Princess Grace awarded him his cash prize, he rudely tore open the envelope and counted the money first before he thanked her; he led the American Olympiad team to Cuba, where he won the silver medal for his play on top board, and was more cordial to Fidel Castro, whom he presented with an autographed copy of his book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess; and he summarily dropped out of the 1967 Interzonal in Tunisia—even though he was leading and was almost assured of first place—because of the refusal of the organizers to agree to his scheduling demands. When tracked down by a journalist at his hotel in Tunisia, he wouldn’t open the door: “Leave me in peace!” he yelled, “I have nothing to say.” He realized that by not participating in the tournament he was allowing yet another chance for the World Championship to slip from his grasp, but he was resolved no matter what the consequences: He, not the organizers, would decide when he’d play and when he wouldn’t.

Fischer’s most significant accomplishment of 1969 was actually publishing-related. His long-promised games collection, My 60 Memorable Games, was published by Simon & Schuster, and it made an immediate and indelible impression on the chess public. Ten years previously, Bobby’s slender volume Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess was seen as a revealing glimpse into the teenager’s mind, but it was criticized for its sparse annotations. In this new book, his first—and, ultimately, only—serious work as an adult, Fischer was anything but sparse. In fact, what he produced was one of the most painstakingly precise and delightful chess books ever written, rivaling the works of Tarrasch, Alekhine, and Reti. Fischer, like his predecessor Morphy, the nineteenth-century American prodigy, wasn’t especially prolific when it came to writing about chess, so the public greedily awaited each word he produced. In the 1969 book, he omitted his 1956 “Game of the Century” with Donald Byrne, instead including nine of his draws and three of his losses—a humble gesture unheard of in the annals of grandmaster literature. Fischer actually devoted fourteen pages of exhaustive analysis to his draw against Botvinnik at Varna.

Bobby was at first going to title his book My Life in Chess, but he changed his mind, possibly deciding to reserve that title for his future autobiography. His original plan for the volume was to include only fifty-two games, but as he continued to make corrections and also to play in more events, he eventually added eight more games. It took more than three years to complete.

Simon & Schuster was in a constant state of anxiety over the book since the changes over the years seemed almost endless, and at one point Fischer deleted all of the annotations, returning the book to the publisher and requesting a release from his contract. He may not have wanted to reveal all of his ideas to his competitors. The company reached a financial accommodation with him and publishing plans were dropped. Two years later, however, he changed his mind. Larry Evans, who wrote the introductions to the games, suggested that Bobby’s decision to go ahead was a pragmatic one: “He was feeling depressed about the world and thought there was an excellent chance that there would be a nuclear holocaust soon. He felt he should enjoy whatever money he could get before it was too late.”

My 60 Memorable Games was an immediate success. If Fischer had never played another game of chess, his reputation, certainly as an analyst, would have been preserved through its publication.

Bobby withdrew from playing competitive chess in late 1968, and with the exception of one widely praised game played as part of the New York Metropolitan League in 1969, he took an eighteen-month hiatus, to the consternation and curiosity of the chess world. He wouldn’t explain his reasons, later telling one interviewer that he’d refused to play because of undefined “hang-ups.” To another, he was quoted as saying that he avoided competition “to plot my revenge. I wanted to come back and put all those people in their place,” but the venue, prize fund, and roster of competitors all had to be right. And so he refused offer after offer, opportunity after opportunity.

Then, unpredictably, he made an exception: He’d play in the “USSR vs. the Rest of the World” match. On March 26, 1970, Bobby flew to Belgrade and lunched at the Hotel Metropol with chess columnist George Koltanowski and Larry Evans, who was reporting on the match instead of playing in it and would act as Fischer’s second. Optimistic and uncharacteristically friendly, Bobby autographed cards for most of the hotel waiters. When a female chess columnist asked him for an interview after lunch, he agreed; she shrieked joyfully, hugged Bobby, and kissed him on the cheek. Bobby accepted it fairly calmly, then Evans remarked: “This is not surprising, but if you see Bobby kiss the girl, then you have a news item!” Even Bobby laughed. Afterward, Bobby went to inspect the lighting and playing conditions at the theater inside the Dom Sindikata, on Marx-Engels Square. Often used for trade union meetings, the huge domed theater had been modified for the match. It met with Bobby’s approval.

Bobby walked into the enormous theater, ready to play his first game, and looked up. Hanging on the wall was his photograph, three stories high. Looking around, he saw equally huge pictures of the twenty competing grandmasters. There was the brooding Mikhail Tal, he of the disconcerting stare; Bent Larsen, his blond hair brushed straight back; Mikhail Botvinnik, who looked like a conservative businessman; the Czechoslovakian Vlastimil Hort, just a few months younger than Fischer; Bobby’s friend Svetozar Gligoric, the handsome, mustached Serbian whose personality made him one of the most popular players; and the swarthy Tigran Petrosian, whom Bobby was about to play.

Bobby initiated an unexpected variation in response to Petrosian’s opening. He revealed later that he’d manipulated the Russian into a variation that Fischer had studied years before, and for which he had originated a favorable response. The two dueled for the first half of the game, but Bobby clearly had the advantage after that and he won on the thirty-ninth move. After all the first-round games were over, a jury chose Fischer to receive the best-game award. The audience applauded for three minutes, despite attempts by the ushers to keep them quiet. Bobby had triggered similar reactions at other tournaments and matches; fans often wrote him admiring letters. He’d even received some marriage proposals. Commenting on his win afterward, Bobby said: “I could have played better.”

For the third round, excitement in Belgrade was so great that fans filled the large hall to capacity in less than half an hour. Black market vendors left their normal posts in front of theaters and cinemas, and stationed themselves in front of the Dom Sindikata to peddle entrance tickets to the match, which were in great demand. President Ribicic of Yugoslavia, who’d attended the first two rounds, came back to see the third.

Fischer drew the game, then relaxed and looked at the rest of the games. Samuel Reshevsky’s game vs. Vasily Smyslov had been adjourned. Back at the Metropol Hotel, Bobby sat down with Reshevsky to analyze the position and consider possible strategies the older grandmaster might play when the game resumed. After ten years of bitterness and competition, this was the first time Fischer had had a friendly interchange with his American rival. (The next day, Reshevsky won his game.) In Bobby’s fourth and final game he managed to hold on to a draw.

The Soviet Union won by one point over the Rest of the World: 20½–19½, and the Russians were shaken by their near defeat. “It’s a catastrophe,” said one team member. “At home they don’t understand. They think it means there’s something wrong with our culture.” On the top four boards, the Soviets managed to win only one game out of a possible sixteen. Bobby Fischer was the high scorer for his team, with a 3–1 score against Petrosian (two wins and two draws). As the winner of the second board he also won a Russian car, the Moskvich.

He wanted to win the car, not to keep the car. Once he had it, he chose to sell it immediately. He said: “Last year in the United States, we had 56,000 deaths as a result of car accidents, and I decided I’d rather use buses.”

All of the players gathered together after the match to pose for the official photographs. As was typical, Bobby was not there. Argentina’s Miguel Najdorf, who knew Bobby fairly well, said: “He prefers to enter chess history alone.”

If Bobby Fischer was ever going to become the World Chess Champion, he would first need to finish near the top at an Interzonal, and he did this quite easily at Palma de Majorca in 1970. After eleven rounds, nearing the tournament’s midpoint, Fischer was in second place, one-half point behind the leader, Efim Geller of the USSR. Fischer and Geller were to meet in the twelfth round in a pivotal matchup.

Geller had not yet lost a game in the tournament. Perhaps more important, he’d beaten Fischer in their last three meetings and had more wins against Fischer than any living player. Here was a definite challenge for Bobby, and he attempted to stay focused and confident by carefully studying Geller’s other games in the tournament. Geller, who talked like a sailor and who had the look and build of a wrestler, arrived with his tie loosened, and wearing rumpled clothing.

Within the first few minutes of the game, Geller insulted Bobby by offering him a draw after his seventh move. Fischer sat back and initially laughed, and Geller chimed in. Bobby then responded with a statement that no one but Geller heard clearly. A bystander reported that Fischer had said, “Too early,” but Geller’s face turned red, suggesting that Fischer’s reply had been more caustic. Speculation was that Fischer’s response had been along the lines that early draws were solely the property of the Soviet state. When the official book of the tournament was published, the editors wrote of Geller’s seventh-move affront: “But why would Geller expect Fischer to take a quick draw? Fischer’s entire record as a player shows his abhorrence of quick draws and his wish at every reasonable (and sometimes unreasonable) occasion to play until there is absolutely no chance of winning. No draws in under 40 moves is an essential part of his philosophy.”

In subsequent moves Geller blundered badly, and Fischer won the game, beating a man who’d become a personal nemesis.

Bobby seemed to have come of age at Palma. Despite besting twenty-three of the world’s most eminent chess players, though, he remained relatively unimpressed with his performance: “I am satisfied with the result, but not with my play.” When reminded of his disastrous performance at the 1962 Candidates, he said: “Maybe this was a good thing. I didn’t have the maturity to handle it then.” He certainly had it at Palma.

Bobby’s success at Palma had brought him to the next level in his quest for the world title. After he’d failed to win the Candidates tournaments in Yugoslavia in 1959 and in Curaçao in 1962, he’d protested that he was gang raped by the Soviets who, with their short premeditated draws stole the championship from him. Now FIDE had finally acceded to Fischer’s repeated urgings and changed its system of choosing an opponent to vie for the World Championship. The federation eliminated the Candidates tournament, an event that had multiple players competing against one another, which Fischer charged led to the opportunity for collusion among the Soviets. In its stead, FIDE instituted Candidates matches. Fischer would now play games against each of the three contenders: two Soviets—Mark Taimanov and Tigran Petrosian—and the Dane Bent Larsen.

Analysts and players alike predicted that Fischer would win the Candidates, but not without a struggle. Even the Soviets were concerned. Tal predicted that Fischer would win 5½–4½ against Taimanov. Fischer himself seemed uncharacteristically self-doubting. Although he’d played seventy-four tournament games in the past nine months, with straight wins in his last seven games at Palma, he felt he was not in the best shape, and that he needed to play in more tournaments. Candidates matches require thorough preparations. Taking nothing for granted was one of the keys to Fischer’s success. As usual, he prepared arduously for his encounter with each opponent in the series of tension-filled matches that would eventually spread over six tiring months.

Mark Taimanov was his first opponent, a powerful competitor who, at forty-five, was playing some of the best chess of his life, and who’d played exceedingly well at Palma. Fischer was twenty-eight and in excellent physical shape. Their match was to begin in May 1971 in Vancouver, Canada, on the beautiful campus of the University of British Columbia.

Taimanov arrived with a full Russian entourage: a second, an assistant, and a match manager, but even with all the help, he was, nevertheless, helpless. Bobby defeated him in six straight games, the first shutout of a grandmaster in chess history.

The crushing loss virtually ended Taimanov’s chess career. The Soviet government considered it a national embarrassment and punished him for not drawing at least one game. Officials canceled his salary and forbade him to travel overseas. At the conclusion of the match, Taimanov had sadly told Fischer: “Well, I still have my music.”

Bobby’s match against Bent Larsen began in Denver on July 6 at four p.m., in the midst of an uncomfortable one-hundred-degree heat wave. Fischer was as dominant against Larsen as he’d been against Taimanov: He annihilated the Dane, shutting him out and winning every game.

It was nine p.m. on July 20, 1971, and Bobby Fischer had achieved what no one else had ever accomplished in chess: winning two grandmaster matches without drawing or losing a single game. He’d now won an unprecedented nineteen straight games against the strongest players in the world.

Fischer-doubters, especially the Soviets, had suggested that his total destruction of Taimanov was an aberration. His equally absolute defeat of the younger, highly respected Larsen proved that Fischer was in a class by himself. Robert Byrne, watching the match in astonishment, said he couldn’t explain how Bobby, how anyone, could win six games in a row from such a genius of the game as Bent Larsen.

The Soviets were relieved at first, since Larsen’s loss lessened Taimanov’s stigma. Television and radio networks throughout the Soviet Union interrupted regular broadcasts to announce the result. Millions of Soviets were avidly following the progress of the match, fascinated by Fischer’s mastery. Sovietsky Sport declared, “A miracle has occurred.”

Fischer arrived in Buenos Aires a few days before the start of the first round against Petrosian. This time he was not alone. Larry Evans came along as Bobby’s second, and the ever-present Edmund B. Edmondson of the U.S. Chess Federation was there as Bobby’s manager-representative. Petrosian had an entourage too: his manager, two seconds, his wife Rona, and two bodyguards.

Argentina treated the match as though it were an event of global significance. The president, Lieutenant General Alejandro Lanusse, received the two players, official photographs were taken, and Lanusse presented each with a beautiful marble board and a set of onyx chessmen. A single chess table was placed in the center of the vast stage in the Teatro General San Martín. Behind it hung a blue-and-gold circle, some fifteen feet in diameter, bearing the emblem of FIDE, its motto Gens Una Sumus (“We Are One People”), and the name of the Argentine chess federation. Slightly off center stood a demonstration board, about five feet by five feet, on which a man duplicated each move as the contestants manevered their pieces on the central chessboard, so that the audience of twelve hundred attentive people could follow the game. If they made a sound, red signs flashed SILENCIO.

Reporters asked Petrosian whether the match would last the full twelve games, the maximum that would be required if every game were drawn, with no wins or losses. “It might be possible that I win it earlier,” Petrosian replied, and confidently went on to explain that he wasn’t impressed with Fischer.

Bobby’s prediction was calm and direct, and reveals his belief in himself and his abilities. “I am the best player in the world, and I am here to prove it. I have waited ten years for this moment, but I was hindered by Russian maneuvers. I shall depart from Buenos Aires before the twelfth game is scheduled.”

Both players surprised everyone, and probably each other, by virtually reversing their normal playing behavior during the first game. Petrosian’s style was closed and defensive, like a motionless but watchful snake, ready to strike the moment his opponent made the slightest mistake. Bobby’s style was one of relentless aggression—usually. Experts expected that Petrosian would follow his conservative style and try to achieve a draw, to break Fischer’s winning streak. Instead, he was startlingly aggressive, forcing Bobby into the defensive position he hated. Petrosian introduced an innovative move not normally used, and probably provided by Soviet theorists working behind the scenes. He was clearly forcing a draw when the lights went out. Literally. The theater was plunged into darkness. Alarmed, Fischer asked, “What happened? What happened?” The players were told that a fuse had blown and would take a few minutes to replace. Petrosian left the board; Fischer and the audience of twelve hundred continued to sit in darkened silence. Eventually, Petrosian complained that Fischer was still studying the board—in total darkness—and that therefore his clock should be started. Fischer agreed, and Lothar Schmid, the German referee, who was himself a grandmaster, started the clock. For eleven minutes, Fischer continued to visualize the position in his head, evaluating it without seeing it. Then the lights came back on.

The interruption seemed to have hurt Petrosian’s concentration, because he made some mistakes and resigned on the fortieth move. It was Bobby Fischer’s twentieth straight win. The army of assembled reporters and photographers flocked around both players as they left the stage, but both hurried out of the theater, declining to give any statements.

Bobby was obviously sick with a bad head cold during the second round. Once again, the players seemed to switch personalities as they played, with Petrosian as the aggressor. Not able to focus clearly on the game, Bobby realized that he wouldn’t be able to play well enough: He offered a handshake and his resignation. The crowd went wild. Petrosian’s wife rushed to her husband to embrace him. Some members of the audience began to chant “Tigran un tigre! Tigran un tigre!” and the victory cheer spread to the outer lobby and street. Some players rushed onto the stage and tried to lift the joyful Petrosian to their shoulders, but they were stopped by officials. He didn’t care: He’d just accomplished what the finest players in the world had been unable to do on twenty occasions during the previous nine months. He’d won a game from Bobby Fischer.

Fischer screamed at Edmundson that he had been seeing too many people, and for the next ten days as he and Petrosian battled, Bobby agreed to see only the young Argentine player Miguel Quinteros.

Now supremely confident of his chances of winning both the eighth and the ninth games, which would give him the match, Bobby rather formally declared that he would dethrone Spassky. When the eighth round finally began, the lights went out again, but this time only for eight minutes. It had no effect on the results. Both players used attacking moves, but Petrosian resigned, giving Fischer his fourth victory of the match. Gone was the speculation that Bobby Fischer had played his best chess too soon. Rather, it seemed obvious that he couldn’t be stopped.

At the start of the ninth game, more than ten thousand fans packed the playing hall, the lobby, and the surrounding streets. Even in Russia, chess crowds this enormous had never been seen. Petrosian resigned on the forty-sixth move, and Bobby Fischer was the new challenger for the World Championship. Against a former World Champion who was known to be one of the most difficult to defeat, Bobby had won five games, drawn three, and lost one, for a total score of 6½–2½.

Fischer would now be the first non-Soviet or non-Russian in more than three decades to play for the title against the reigning World Champion. For years Soviet grandmasters had competed only against one another, ensuring that the championship would remain in the hands of the Soviet Union. For his labors, Bobby was awarded a $7,500 prize plus an honorarium of $3,000 from the U.S. Chess Federation. More significant, he ignited a phenomenon in the United States not seen before: Almost overnight, a chess boom arose. Sales of chess sets shot up over 20 percent. Virtually every major magazine and newspaper in the country ran a story about Fischer, often with pictures of him and a diagram of his final position against Petrosian. The New York Daily News reprinted the score of every game, and The New York Times ran an article on the cover of its Sunday Magazine section, and then a news story on its front page the following day. The last time chess had made the Times front page was in 1954, when the Soviet team visited the United States and Carmine Nigro had brought the eleven-year-old Bobby to witness the international match.

Bobby Fischer had become a national hero. After returning home, he appeared on television constantly and his face became so familiar that people on the streets of New York City asked him for his autograph. But he became more than a household name, more than the equivalent of a pop star. He was the American who had a fighting chance of defeating a Soviet champion. The Cold War—or at least a version of it—was about to be decided not on a battlefield or in a diplomatic meeting, but in a contest of intellect and will involving thirty-two enigmatic pieces.