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

11

The Wilderness Years

BOBBY FISCHER’S LONG, almost monastic pursuit of the World Championship, although not totally chaste, gave him little time to connect with women. “I want to meet girls,” Bobby said when he moved back to Los Angeles in 1973. “Vivacious girls with big breasts.” He was twenty-nine years old, and though there’d been a few brief liaisons, at no time had he experienced a meaningful romantic relationship. Now, with his earnings from Reykjavik and a new place to live—an apartment provided for him at a modest rental fee of $200 per month by the Worldwide Church of God—he felt that he was starting a new life. He wanted to read more—not just chess journals—acquire more money, continue his religious studies, and possibly meet someone with whom he could fall in love. What it all added up to was an intense need to recharge his emotional and spiritual life.

Not all was altruism and ebullience, however; certain realities still cast a pall. His alienation from the press caused ongoing problems. He’d suffered a series of fractured relationships with chess organizers in the United States (he was no longer speaking to Edmondson, the executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation) and looming in the near future were the Soviets, with what he foresaw would be a resumption of their underhanded ways of competing.

After Bobby’s period of post-Reykjavik idleness had stretched to about a year, he decided that his first priority should be accumulating more money, always on his terms. So, working with Stanley Rader, the chief counsel for the Worldwide Church, he called a press conference in August of 1973 to publicly discuss his plans.

Rader was a lawyer and Armstrong’s closest advisor. As chief counsel, he was becoming rich through his work with the Church, and Bobby was impressed with Rader’s trappings: his Ferrari, his chauffeur-driven limousine, his palatial mansion in Beverly Hills, and his use of a private jet. Rader was in charge of the $70-million-a-year windfall that the Church was bringing in, mostly from tithing its members. Bobby himself had given the Church more than $60,000 from his Icelandic winnings, and ultimately his tithe would be close to $100,000.

For the press conference, dozens of journalists and photographers assembled in Rader’s soaring living room. Aside from two television appearances right after Reykjavik, it had been almost twelve months since Bobby had made any statements or, for that matter, been seen in public. The words “secluded” and “recluse” had begun straying into newspaper stories about him. Hardly days after his win in Iceland, an article in The New York Times headlined NEW CHAMPION STILL MYSTERY MAN speculated as to whether he’d ever play again. The Associated Press took the same tack, publishing a story entitled BOBBY FISCHER TURNS DOWN FAME, FORTUNE; GOES INTO SECLUSION. It was an odd slant, since at that point Bobby had no intention of isolating himself or turning down money; he was just tending to personal matters that he’d neglected for years. Also, up to that time chess champions would traditionally defend their title only every three years. Although the public wanted to see Bobby back at the board, his absence from chess for less than a year was not an aberration.

Rader did most of the talking at the press conference, and he was good at it, having graduated first in his class at the University of California Law School. Bobby, dressed conservatively, stood somewhat nervously at his side. Throughout the event, photographers took photos, and Bobby looked annoyed every time a flashbulb popped. Rader said, in a voice that was both sonorous and emphatic, that Fischer would like to announce that he will soon be back at the 64 squares and 32 pieces again … quite soon. “We are making arrangements for a series of simultaneous exhibitions and matches for early next year. We are also considering an exhibition match where Bobby would play the entire Dutch Olympic team simultaneously.” A reporter shot out a question: “What about a re-match for the championship?” Rader and Bobby exchanged a flicker of a glance, and the lawyer responded: “That is a possibility.” The reporter came back with an immediate follow-up: “Would that match be under the authority of the World Chess Federation?” Rader didn’t hesitate: “That would not be likely but it is under discussion.” Rader also mentioned that a tour of both Russia and South America was being talked about.

The reporters wanted a go at Fischer: “What have you been doing for the last year?” was one of the first questions. Bobby drawled out his response: “Well, uh, I’ve been reading, working out, playing over some games, that sort of thing.” A few other general questions were tossed out, and Bobby answered them succinctly and with aplomb, until someone asked whether he was living in an apartment subsidized by the Church. “That’s personal,” he said. “I don’t want to answer any more personal questions.” A reporter asked him about a supposed offer of $1 million for a match against Spassky in Las Vegas. Rader jumped in with the answer: “To begin with, the Las Vegas offer was not a firm $1 million offer. They said the offer was for a million but it would have turned out less, and Bobby didn’t want to agree with anything less than a firm $1 million.”

Rader pointed out that aside from any non-sanctioned matches, the official match for the World Championship would be in 1975, and it would consist of Bobby against whoever qualified through the Candidates system. “When he defends his title in 1975,” Rader added, “he’ll be much better able to capitalize financially.”

And then the conference was over. “That’s all gentlemen. Thank you,” said Rader, and he and Bobby scurried away. The reporters looked at one another, incredulous at the abrupt termination. As a result of the non-event event, the resulting press coverage was practically nil.

Rader had reason to be helpful to Bobby. If Bobby could make millions, and if he continued tithing large amounts to the Church, he could emerge as one of the Church’s biggest benefactors. Also, the more publicity Bobby received, the more publicity the Church would receive. Before anything was completed, however, complications set in.

Attractive financial offers kept tumbling Bobby’s way—almost pouring over him—but nothing was to his satisfaction:

Warner Bros. offered him a million dollars to make a series of phonograph records on how to play chess, but Bobby wanted to voice the series himself. Scripts written by Larry Evans were translated into several languages and rendered phonetically to make it easier for Bobby to read. Unfortunately, when he voiced one of the scripts for a pilot recording, he didn’t like the sound of his own voice, and he wouldn’t approve a professional announcer as a substitute. Ultimately, he rejected the whole project.

An entrepreneur, hearing of the $1 million offer from the Hilton Corporation in Las Vegas for a Fischer-Spassky match, offered to raise the amount of the prize fund to $1.5 million if the two men played in his home state of Texas. Nothing came of it.

A publishing company offered Bobby a “small fortune,” according to press reports, to write a book on his title match. He refused.

A television producer wanted him to make a series of chess films that could be marketed throughout the world. No agreement could be reached.

Bobby was offered $75,000 plus residual royalties plus a new car simply to say in a commercial that he drove only that car, which would have been true since it would have been the only car he owned. He declined.

The most fabulous offer came to Fischer in 1974, right after the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight (known as “The Rumble in the Jungle”) in Zaire. The Zaire government offered Bobby $5 million to play Anatoly Karpov in their country in what would have been a month-long championship chess match. “Too short,” said Bobby. “How dare they offer me five million dollars for a month-long match? Ali received twice that much for one night!” (He didn’t.) It was after that match that Ali began calling himself “The Greatest,” and Bobby took issue with that, too. “Ali stole that from me,” said Bobby. “I used ‘The Greatest’ for myself on television before he ever used it.”

Bobby did accept one offer, but not for millions—rather, for $20,000. He was invited to be the guest of honor at the First Philippine International Chess Tournament in 1973, and in addition to the honorarium mentioned above, all of his expenses were paid. He stayed at the Tropical Palace resort on the outskirts of Manila for a month. At the tournament he made the ceremonial first move and played a mock game with President Marcos—one that ended in a mock draw after eight moves.

Journalists asked Fischer why he’d accepted the offer to come to the Philippines on his first “official” visit when he’d turned down similar offers from other countries. “I was there in 1967,” he said. “I was not yet World Champion but they treated me like a world champion.” According to Casto Abundo, a chess player who described himself as Bobby’s “Young Man Friday” during his 1973 stay, Bobby studied chess every night, already preparing himself to face whoever emerged as the winner of the Candidates match. After finishing his studying, he often took long walks at three in the morning and didn’t fall asleep till four. Film footage from the visit shows Bobby at the apex of his life. Wearing the traditional crisp white barong shirt and often sporting a lei of flowers, he looked fit and handsome and was always smiling. The Filipinos loved him; Marcos entertained him at the palace and on his yacht; Marcos’s wife, Imelda, dined with him at lunch; young ladies gathered around him constantly, as if he were a movie star. On a Bangkok stopover en route to Manila, he’d bought a number of Thai music cassettes, which he played over and over again at night while he was going over games. By the time he sailed back to the United States, his fondness for the Filipino people had intensified.

Paul Marshall, Bobby’s lawyer during the Fischer-Spassky match negotiations, has said that by the time Bobby came back from Iceland he’d received offers that could have totaled up to $10 million—but he turned down all of them. Bobby’s interest in making money was undeniable, so theories abounded as to why he acted contrary to his own financial interests. One friend chalked it up to Bobby’s winner-take-all mentality, saying, “If someone offers him a million dollars, he thinks there is a lot more available, and he wants it all.” Grandmaster Larry Evans preferred a more neutral explanation: “I think he feels that lending his name to something is beneath his dignity.” International master George Koltanowski conjectured that Bobby just didn’t trust people and didn’t want to be cheated: “There’s a word for it in German: Verfolgungswahnsinn,” he said. “It means ‘persecution mania.’ ” But perhaps the best explanation of why Bobby cast aside all financial offers came from Bobby himself: “People are trying to exploit me. Nobody is going to make a nickel off of me!” Nor, as it developed, would he make a dime off of them—in the short term, at least.

As all of these financial shenanigans were happening—offers, discussions, negotiations, acceptances, and then rejections—Bobby was going his own way but under the influence and guidance of the Church. Church officials set him up with young, amply endowed women—all Church members—but since no physical intimacy was permitted, Bobby soon grew disillusioned. After dates with eight different “candidates,” each of whom adhered to the same sexless script, he abandoned Church relationships as the avenue to an amorous life.

His connection to the Church was always somewhat ambiguous. He was not a registered member, since he hadn’t agreed to be baptized by full immersion in water by Armstrong or one of his ministers. And since he wasn’t considered a duly recognized convert, he was sometimes referred to as a “coworker” or, less politely, as a “fringer”—someone on the fringes or edges of the Church but not totally committed to its mission. The Church imposed a number of rules that Bobby thought were ridiculous and refused to adhere to, such as a ban on listening to hard rock or soul music (even though he preferred rhythm and blues) and prohibitions against seeing movies not rated G or PG, dating or fraternizing with non–Church members, and having premarital sex.

Ironically, despite Bobby’s unwillingness to follow principles espoused by the Church, his life still revolved around it. He sat in on a demanding Bible course, even though it was open only to members (the Church made an exception for him); he discussed personal and financial matters with both Rader and Armstrong; and he prayed at least an hour a day, in addition to spending time on a careful study of Church teachings. On a visit back to New York, while driving around Manhattan with his friend Bernard Zuckerman, Bobby made a reference to Satan. Zuckerman, ever sarcastic, said, “Satan? Why don’t you introduce me?” Bobby was appalled. “What? Don’t you believe in Satan?”

As he continued to tithe more and more money to the Church, he enjoyed perks only available to high-ranking members, such as occasional use of a private jet and a chauffeur-driven limousine; invitations to exclusive events such as parties, concerts, and dinners; and a continuous parade of bright and pretty women whom he couldn’t touch. He was also given access to the Church’s personal trainer, Harry Sneider, a former weight-lifting champion who took a special interest in Bobby. Sneider trained Bobby in swimming, weight lifting, tennis, and soccer, and they became friends.

With the same diligence he’d brought to the task of soaking up chess knowledge, Bobby around this time started a relentless search for general knowledge. The library at the Worldwide Church’s Ambassador College, to which he had access, was highly limited. It contained books on religion and theology, but he wanted other points of view and to explore other topics, and he never set foot back in the library after he heard it was sprayed with insecticide for termites.

Botvinnik may have been right when he suggested that Bobby suffered from a lack of culture and a thinness of education. But he was determined to catch up. He started by going to bookstores in Pasadena, and when he’d depleted their shelves, he took the bus into downtown Los Angeles and scoured the shelves of every bookstore he could find. He became a voracious reader.

There have been many theories offered over the years as to why Fischer eventually turned against Jews, including speculation that Bobby’s rhetoric was triggered by distaste he felt as a child for his mother’s Jewish friends; that he was antagonistic toward officials of the American Chess Foundation, most of whom were Jewish; that he was ultimately disillusioned with Stanley Rader, who was Jewish but had converted to the Worldwide Church of God; that he was somehow influenced by Forry Laucks’s Nazism; and that he was propelled by ideas he’d read in some of the literature that fell into his hands during the time he lived in California. Perhaps all of those factors contributed.

David Mamet, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, described the prototypical self-hating Jew in his book The Wicked Son, and his description, although arguable, could conceivably be applied to Bobby: “The Jew-hater begins with a proposition that glorifies and comforts him, that there exists a force of evil that he has, to his credit, discovered and bravely proclaimed. In opposing it he is self-glorified. One triumphs over evil, thus becoming a god, at no cost other than recognition of his own divinity. Ignorant of the practices of his own tribe, he (the apostate) gravitates toward those he considers Other … thinking, as does the adolescent, that they possess some special merit. But these new groups are attractive to the apostate merely because they are foreign.”

In at least one significant case, Bobby woke up to the fact that the Other was less appealing than he’d first thought. More and more he was becoming alienated from the Worldwide Church of God. Herbert W. Armstrong had made prophecies that there would be a worldwide catastrophe and that the Messiah would return in 1972. As 1973 wound down, Bobby didn’t need much convincing to have an epiphany about the evils of the Church. In an interview that he gave to the Ambassador Report (an irreverent and controversial publication that criticized the Church) he said: “The real proof for me were those [false] prophecies … that show to me that he [Armstrong] is an outright huckster.… I thought, ‘This doesn’t seem right. I gave all my money. Everybody has been telling me this [that 1972 would be the date that the Worldwide Church of God would flee to a place of safety] for years. And now he’s half-denying he ever said it, when I remember him saying it a hundred times.’ … If you talk about fulfillment of prophecy, he [Armstrong] is a fulfillment of Elmer Gantry. If Elmer Gantry was the Elijah, Armstrong’s the ‘Christ’ of religious hucksters. There is no way he could truly be God’s prophet. Either God is a masochist and likes to be made a fool of, or else Herbert Armstrong is a false prophet.”

Before he knew it, Bobby’s winnings from Reykjavik were beginning to diminish, and yet he saw that Rader and Armstrong were flying all over the world, entertaining lavishly, and proffering gifts to world leaders. “The whole thing is so sick,” said Bobby.

Wandering into a used bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, Bobby stumbled on a dusty old book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Though he was introduced to the book by happenstance, he was ready for it. A work of fiction, it purported to be the actual master plan by Jewish leaders to take over the world. First published in 1905, the book, at the time Bobby found it, was still believed by some to be an authentic work of nonfiction. Even today those who are predisposed to believe it swear by its accuracy, and over the years its publication has done its share to stoke worldwide anti-Semitism. To fire up hatred toward Jews, the book uses reverse psychology in presenting a damning case against gentiles: “It is the bottomless rascality of the goyim people, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless toward weakness, unsparing to faults, and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism.”

As Bobby read The Protocols, he thought he saw authenticity in the book’s pages, and their implicit message resonated with him. Soon he began sending copies of the book to friends. To one he wrote: “I carefully studied the Protocols. I think anyone who casually dismisses them as a forgery, hoax, etc., is either kidding themselves, is ignorant of them or else may well be a hypocrite!” At the time, one of the most militant anti-Semites and anti-blacks in the United States, Ben Klassen, had just written his first book, Nature’s Eternal Religion, and Bobby, who wasn’t particularly anti-black, nevertheless connected with Klassen’s theories concerning Jews. “The book shows,” Bobby wrote, “that Christianity itself is just a Jewish hoax and one more Jewish tool for their conquest of the world.” As Regina had proselytized all her life for various causes—always liberal and humanistic ones—so, too, Bobby had become a proselytizer. The pawn did not stray too far from the queen.

At one point Bobby had both Protocols and Nature’s Eternal Religion mailed to Jack and Ethel Collins, without asking whether they wanted to read them. He gave their address directly to the bookseller and then wrote them a letter of apology for disclosing their address.

Bobby’s evolving credo was not only anti-Semitic, but as he fell away from the Worldwide Church of God, completely anti-Christian. He discredited both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the very book that had been so much a part of his belief system. The idea of God in the form of a man appearing on Earth and then doing a “disappearing act,” as Bobby put it, for two thousand years was both “incredible and illogical.”

Despite holding what had become strongly antireligious views, Bobby liked to quote from a song written by Les Crane, a radio and television talkshow host. Based on the poem Desiderata, the lyrics conveyed that everyone in the universe has a right to be here. Apparently, Bobby didn’t see the discrepancy between the gentle acceptance espoused by the song and poem, and his growing philosophy of exclusivity, which rejected all people who didn’t believe as he did.

The Collinses didn’t know what to say to Bobby about his newfound convictions, which on their face seemed contradictory: If everyone has the right to be here, why was Bobby inveighing against Jews? Following the gift of the Klassen book, Fischer sent the Collinses another hate-filled screed, Secret World Government, by Major General Count Cherep-Spiridovich. The count starts off his book by saying that the Jews are Satanists, and it offers the theory that there’s a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Bobby followed up with another letter: “Did you like the books I sent you?” Jack Collins never answered, and indeed, it’s possible that neither he nor Ethel ever read the books.

But Bobby was nothing but complex. Although much of his reading was confined to hate literature, he also embraced other works, such as Dag Hammarskjöld’s piquant book of aphorisms and poetry, Markings; and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, which in many ways repudiates Armstrongism and about which Bobby said: “The greatest danger to an authoritarian organization like the Worldwide Church of God is when the authority is relaxed a bit—they ease up on the people a bit. Then the true believers begin to lose their fear. Most people are sheep, and they need the support of others.”

Nevertheless, despite acknowledging the validity of certain liberal ideas, Bobby seemed to be hardening toward the world and losing sensitivity to people in need. He was also reading Friedrich Nietzsche at this time and was influenced by such books as The Anti-Christ and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Although the German philosopher possessed great animus toward Christianity (he referred to Jesus as an idiot), he was definitely not anti-Semitic, possibly creating a conflict in Bobby’s beliefs.

Through telephone conversations and correspondence, Regina began to sense Bobby’s drift toward racial and religious prejudice, and she was driven to write him when he refused to offer financial help to his titular father, Gerhardt Fischer, and Gerhardt’s wife and children who had been briefly imprisoned in South America for their political protests and had just been released. They fled to France. Regina’s words were a not-so-subtle attempt to educate her son:

I was really shocked when you refused to discuss the matter or do anything … to let somebody go under without the slightest interest in the matter. That is bad for the person who does it, too. It takes longer but that person is destroyed gradually, by his or her own conscience. The greater the person’s mind and talent, the greater the destruction. A stupid, coarse person may not suffer; he does not believe his behavior was not worthy of himself. If you are thinking I am making this up, read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.… Don’t let millions of people down who regard you as a genius and an example to themselves. It’s no joke to be in your position. But even if you were an unknown, just being a decent person is a job these days. It’s easier to shut your eyes. But that’s what people did in Nazi Germany while people were being tortured and murdered, children gassed to death like vermin. It was more convenient not to want to hear about it or talk about it because then their conscience would have made them do something about it.

So if you are now going to be mad at me, don’t be. Remember, whatever you do or whatever happens I am still your mother and there is nothing I would refuse you if you wanted or needed it, and nothing would change it.

Love,

Mother

Rumors began to spread that Bobby and his mother were estranged. Though Fischer was alienating some people, such as Jack and Ethel Collins, who’d been virtual grandparents to him, he did remain close to his mother, as their ongoing correspondence at the time indicates. As the saying goes, they could agree to disagree.

Bobby’s life during this period was not all theological, political, or philosophical, however. There were also legal battles to wage.

The old adage “Talk is cheap until you hire a lawyer” didn’t apply to Bobby since he had two high-profile lawyers working for him pro bono. Still clinging to the material support of the Church, despite his grumbling about it, Bobby was using Stanley Rader as his “on-site” attorney in California for present and future deals and Paul Marshall in New York for any business left over that concerned the Icelandic match. Three issues emerged, all in 1973, concerning publications and film rights. One was a sixty-four-page booklet, 1972 World Chess Championship, Boris Spassky vs. Bobby Fischer: Icelandic Chess Federation Official Commemorative Program, which presented the games with notes written by Gligoric. It also gave a history of the match—before, during, and after—and was not particularly flattering to Bobby. Both Rader and Marshall considered a lawsuit since Bobby hadn’t given permission for the booklet, since his name on the cover falsely implied that he’d had a role in its creation; and since neither he nor Spassky were to receive any remuneration for its publication. Marshall wrote a cease and desist letter to the prime minister of Iceland and to the president of the Icelandic Chess Federation, but it’s not known how many copies of the booklets were sold from bookstores in the United States before it was withdrawn from sale.

It was then announced that a book entitled Bobby Fischer vs. the Rest of the World was to be published in 1974, written by Brad Darrach, the Life magazine writer who’d covered the match and was given exclusive access to Bobby. Marshall investigated a possible injunction to stop publication of the work since according to Bobby, Darrach had allegedly violated his contract: Supposedly, he’d agreed to write only articles about Bobby, not a book. Gaining such an injunction through what is called “prior restraint” was almost impossible in the courts, however, and Marshall advised Bobby to wait until the book was published. Then, if there were any other violations by Darrach, such as libel or invasion of privacy, a stronger suit could be brought. Marshall, after all, was well aware of Darrach’s reputation for revealing the most intimate details of the lives of his subjects. Bobby ultimately did go to court but lost, the judge throwing the case out because it was so poorly presented and without sufficient evidence.

The third legal problem was that Bobby was being sued by Chester Fox because he’d interfered with the filming of the Icelandic match. Although Bobby had received numerous requests to give a deposition, he continued to refuse, so the case was dragging on.

While he was waiting to see how these entanglements would work out, Bobby began to prepare for his defense of the World Championship, almost a year away.

Anatoly Karpov, a pale, short, slight twenty-three-year-old economics student from Leningrad University, who always looked as though he could use a haircut, seemed an unlikely contender for the title against Bobby Fischer, the thirty-two-year-old ex-wunderkind from Brooklyn, the World Champion with the physique of an athlete and the confidence of a king. But Karpov had qualified to play Bobby by winning his three Candidates matches, during which he’d played forty-six grueling games and only lost three. Contrasted with Bobby at the same age, he was further along in his chess ability by several years, and many chess players—not only Soviets—were saying that he could be even greater than Bobby as he matured. Bobby’s former nemesis Botvinnik had become Karpov’s teacher.

Hoping the match would be another Reykjavik—in explosive media attention if not financial outcome—cities around the world submitted bids to host the competition. Topping them all was Manila, which came up with a staggering $5 million offer—a sum that, were the match to happen, would make it one of the most lucrative sporting events (if, indeed, chess is a sport) ever. There was only one problem: Bobby Fischer.

He petitioned FIDE for a rules change that would scrap the old Reykjavikstyle method of determining the winner of a twenty-four-game match. The old method dictated that in the event all the games were played and there was a tie, the reigning champion would retain the title. Bobby proposed a new approach whereby a match would consist of an unlimited number of games, and the first player who scored ten wins would be named the winner. Draws wouldn’t count, and in case of a 9–9 tie, the reigning champion would retain his title.

FIDE agreed to the ten-game-win idea but voted against the 9–9 rule. Also, instead of approving the idea of an unlimited number of games, it narrowed the number to thirty-six—which struck Bobby as an outrageously small number if draws weren’t going to count. This was hardly a compromise. Bobby claimed that his system would actually reduce the number of draws, that it would produce games in which the players would take more chances, trying to achieve wins rather than half points.

Fischer cabled the FIDE Extraordinary Council in the Netherlands that his match condition proposals were “non-negotiable.” He also pointed out in Chess Life & Review that his demands weren’t unprecedented and had been used in many great championship matches: “Steinitz, Tchigorin, Lasker (too), Gunsberg, Zukertort … all played under the ten-win system (and some matches with the 9–9 clause). The whole idea is to make the players draw blood and give the spectators their money’s worth.”

Colonel Edmund B. Edmondson, the executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation, attempted in vain to get FIDE to change its vote, or get Bobby to change his mind. The story of the machinations employed to enable the Fischer-Karpov World Championship match to take place are enough to fill a separate book—and have!—but the details are hardly dramatic in retrospect.

Fischer continued his intransigence: FIDE must change the rules to meet his demands or he simply wouldn’t play. He began making God-like pronouncements about the match to his friends: “I will punish them and not play,” as if retribution was his sovereign right to dispense. The deadline for moving ahead or abandoning the match was looming, and then it came … and went, with no further word from the champion. FIDE gave Bobby one more day to change his mind. Euwe finally cabled him:

YOUR PROFESSIONALISM, COMPETITIVE SPIRIT, AND OUTSTANDING SKILL HAVE THRILLED ALL DURING THE YEAR YOU FOUGHT TO ATTAIN THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP. FIDE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ASKS THAT YOU RECONSIDER POSSIBLITY OF DEFENDING TITLE.

When Bobby didn’t answer and the press interviewed Euwe about it, he issued an apt reply: “At the moment we are in a complete stalemate.” Bobby was about to checkmate himself, however.

The next day he sent the following cable (in part) to Euwe:

FIDE HAS DECIDED AGAINST MY PARTICIPATION IN THE 1975 WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP. THEREFORE, I RESIGN MY FIDE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE. SINCERELY, BOBBY FISCHER.

His echo of resolve was heard around the world.

The New York Times ran a story by international grandmaster Robert Byrne, “Bobby Fischer’s Fear of Failing,” which opined that Bobby’s fears had always kept him out of certain tournaments because he thought if he lost a game or two at the beginning of an event, he was practically eliminated as a prizewinner. The main fear of every top notch chess player, the story went on, “is the inexplicable error from which no one is immune,” the chance blunder. Even Paul Marshall, Bobby’s lawyer, addressed Bobby’s “dread”: “Bobby fears the unknown, whatever lies beyond his control. He tries to eliminate any element of chance from his life and his chess.” What everyone seemed to overlook was that at the board Bobby feared no one. He did show nervousness before a game, as certain great actors show stage fright before a demanding performance, but this state of anxiety shouldn’t be confused with fear. This anxiety was the mother of Bobby’s foresight, it kept him on edge and gave him an advantage. Ultimately, it was his supreme confidence in himself that made him a great player.

A psychoanalyst, M. Barrie Richmond, M.D., wrote a dissertation titled “The Meaning of Bobby Fischer’s Decision” that took issue with Robert Byrne and held that Fischer should be thought of as a profound artist, a phenomenon on the order of a Picasso. Richmond maintained that Bobby’s failure to defend his title bespoke a responsibility he felt to himself as the World Champion: His attempt to shape, create, and alter his own universe of rules addressed that burden and had nothing to do with fear.

Without moving a pawn, on April 3, 1975, Anatoly Karpov was declared the twelfth World Champion by Dr. Max Euwe, president of FIDE. And on that day, Bobby Fischer became the first-ever champion to willingly relinquish the title and along with it the chance to compete for the winner’s share of a $5 million purse … five million dollars! It was the largest refusal of a prize fund in sports history. The winner would have received $3.5 million, and the loser would have walked away with $1.5 million, guaranteed. It was all declined, and over a mere rules dispute.

“I had no idea why Fischer refused to defend his title,” Karpov later said, somewhat coldly. Although he was champion, he was without a convincing portfolio, his right to wear the crown left in doubt by Bobby’s shadow. He was also bereft of the millions of dollars he would have received had the two men played. He huffed: “It is an unprecedented instance in chess history.”

Just to get away from it all—the World Championship imbroglio and the constant stalking of him by reporters and photographers—Bobby took a two-month cruise by himself around the world. His boat trips in the past—to and from Europe, and from the Philippines to the United States via Hong Kong—had been thoroughly relaxing: no telephone contact, no mail, no people bothering him, and magnificent meals served all day long. It was heaven. Now that he’d grown a beard, most people didn’t recognize him, and he recaptured the peace and incognito of his earlier trips. It eased him into a placid mood, at least for the trip’s duration. He was still prone to ruminate on race and religion, however, and at one point he wrote to Ethel Collins that he liked Indonesia, where he stayed on a farm for a few days while the boat docked at Bali. Noting that most of the people were Muslims, Bobby seemed pleased that they’d retained their “cultural purity.” At New Delhi, he bought for $15 a peg-in travel chess set with a beautifully detailed design that was made of fragrant sandalwood—but he felt guilty about paying so little for it. He realized that the artisan who carved it probably received only a fraction of the sale price for his labor.

Bobby was content in his basement apartment on Mockingbird Lane in South Pasadena, a small, quiet place out of sight from the world, and he lived there for several years. His friends from the Church, Arthur and Claudia Mokarow, owned the house, and Claudia became a kind of buffer for Bobby, answering queries, shooing away reporters, and serving as his majordomo and resident Gorgon, even to the point of considering offers (and rejecting them) without even discussing them with Bobby.

Bobby’s support came from unexpected sources. New York City’s mayor Edward I. Koch wrote him a letter trying to convince him to come back to the chessboard. “Your extraordinary skill and genius at the most difficult of games is a source of pride to me and to all who stand in the light of your remarkable accomplishments.”

Often, photographers or reporters staked out the front of the house, attempting to get Bobby’s photograph or interview him. He once said that the only thing he feared was a journalist, and slipping in and out of the house without being confronted by the press took the ingenuity of a Houdini and the dexterity of a gymnast. Sometimes it sent Bobby into a panic.

If a friend wanted to reach him, he or she would call Claudia first, and she’d run downstairs and either give Bobby the message or leave it for him, and then Bobby would call back if he so chose. Bobby never accepted calls directly unless he’d initiated them. Claudia would also drive him to and from certain out-of-the-way Los Angeles destinations; otherwise he was quite adept at traveling by bus to wherever he wanted to go. He became a man of routine: up and out by four p.m., and into Los Angeles or downtown Pasadena for his first meal of the day, followed by his hunt through the bookstores, searching, searching, searching. He loved Indian and Chinese food and consumed what seemed like barrelsful of salads whenever they were available.

When he was finished with that day’s pursuit of books, he returned to South Pasadena in the early evening for a workout at the gym, forty-five minutes of swimming, and then a sauna; by nightfall he was back at Mockingbird Lane, settling into his world of reading, and studying chess: peace. Unless a friend was visiting, he rarely went out at night, enjoying the comfort and safety of his home.

The apartment was strewn with books, magazines, and piles of clothing and had the smell of fresh oranges: Bobby would buy them and other fruits and vegetables by the bagful. Every day, he’d drink one or two pint glasses of carrot juice, one right after the other. Dozens of bottles of vitamin pills, Indian herbal medicines, Mexican rattlesnake pills, lotions, and exotic teas were piled on tables and ledges everywhere, all to help keep him on what he believed was a strict, healthful diet—and to treat some ailments he had from time to time. Often he’d take his hand-cranked juicer to a restaurant with him, order breakfast, ask for an empty glass, and break out a half dozen oranges, cut them in half, and squeeze them at his table while customers and waiters looked on in either puzzlement or amusement. He began to put on bulk and muscle and he seemed to be in perfect physical shape.

He’d collected hundreds of chess magazines in five or six languages, and all genres of chess books, the majority of which were sent to him by his mother. Now living in Jena, East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, where she was completing her medical degree, Regina could purchase the latest Soviet chess literature quite inexpensively, and she regularly made shipments to her son, either at random or by request. At one point Bobby had to tell her to stop sending chess books because he was running out of room.

Far into the night he’d play over the latest games by himself—from tournaments in places ranging from England to Latvia to Yugoslavia to Bulgaria—and he’d hiss and scream as he followed the moves. So loudly did he exclaim “Yes!”, “Absurd!”, “It’s the knight!”, or “Always the rook on that rank!” that his pronouncements could be heard on the quiet lane where he lived. Bobby’s outbursts would startle the infrequent passersby and sometimes produce complaints from neighbors.

By the late 1970s, Fischer hadn’t played a single game of chess in public since Iceland. He was continuing to study the game, but he spent more time exploring his theories on religion. At one point, he was spotted in a parking lot with an armful of anti-Semitic flyers that promulgated the superiority of the Aryan race. In between handing out the flyers to those who walked by, he placed his declarations on windshields. Gradually, his savings were evaporating, and other than biannual royalty checks from his books, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess and My 60 Memorable Games—which netted him roughly $6,000 a year in total—he had no other source of income.

Either by choice or necessity, Bobby moved out of the Mokarow house and settled in Los Angeles, in a small, dingy, dark, and inexpensive furnished room on Orange Avenue, one block off Wilshire Boulevard. Within a short while, though, the rent for the room became too much of a financial burden to carry. So he wrote to his mother, who was living in Nicaragua doing pro bono medical work for the poor, to see if she could help out. She immediately instructed his sister, Joan, to send the entire amount of her monthly Social Security check to Bobby to assist him with his rent. Joan had been collecting Regina’s checks and then banking them for her so that she’d have a small nest egg when she returned to the United States. Bobby continued to accept the proceeds of his mother’s Social Security checks for years.

His settlement on Orange Avenue wasn’t permanent, however, and he eventually began renting in the skid row section of L.A. near MacArthur Park, taking rooms in what might be called flophouses, sometimes just for the night or by the week.

In time, judging from his uncombed and disheveled physical appearance, it was difficult to differentiate Bobby from the down-and-outers of the area. His ten $400 suits were in storage somewhere, but he just didn’t seem to care to dress well anymore. He stopped regularly working out, started developing a paunch, began dressing in whatever clothes he happened to have handy, rarely had his hair or beard cut professionally, and even had the fillings of his teeth removed.

This last piece of physical business has been so distorted by the press over the years that it has entered the “Bobby Fischer Urban Legend Storybook” as proof of his “insanity.” Somewhere he was quoted as saying that he’d had his fillings removed because he feared that the Soviets could affect his mind by sending harmful radio signals through the metal in his teeth—and virtually every profile and book written about Bobby since has mentioned it. Either the quote was spurious or misremembered, or Bobby was joshing the reporter who recorded it, because the truth is that he had the fillings removed for what he believed was a legitimate health reason. He was solicitous toward Ethel Collins about this, since she’d been suffering with a chronic gum problem for years.

Bobby believed that false teeth and metal fillings (especially silver) were detrimental to periodontal health because they irritated the gums. He was also convinced that mercury in most fillings has a toxic effect on the body.

Consequently, Bobby had all of his fillings removed by a dentist in a quick procedure (it only took a few minutes), and he recommended that Ethel do so too. He admitted that eating without fillings was “uncomfortable,” but it was better than the alternative of losing all of one’s teeth, which he predicted would happen if the fillings remained.

Years later in Iceland, he told his closest friend Gardar Sverrisson that the “radio signal” story about the fillings was bogus: The reason he’d had them removed was because he felt that fillings caused more problems than they cured.

The problem for Bobby became that, since his teeth no longer had fillings, they also no longer had any support and became more fragile. They were also open to decay, and therefore began to chip away. The result: over time he lost a number of teeth. Since he no longer believed in going to a dentist (nor could he afford it) for crowns, implants, or replacements, his broken and missing teeth added to his vagrant look.

Despite his cordial exchanges with the Collinses, and his attempt at proselytizing them into accepting his conspiracy theories, he hurt Jack Collins deeply when he refused to write the introduction to Jack’s book My Seven Chess Prodigies (1974). Jack had told him that if he would just write a short introduction, it would mean a sizable advance from the publisher. Collins needed the extra money; although not indigent, he was always short of income since he was living off Ethel’s salary as a part-time nurse. His request of Bobby was couched in cordial, nonpleading terms, but Bobby heartlessly never answered him, and Lombardy stepped in to do the job.

When Bobby became unbearably lonely for companionship, he would often head up north to Palo Alto and stay with his sister and her husband, Russell Targ, a Stanford University scientist who was an authority on extrasensory perception. Joan was Jewish, as were Russell and their three children, and after hearing Bobby’s rants time and again against Jews, the family asked their houseguest to leave.

Living not too far from his sister was Bobby’s friend, grandmaster Peter Biyiasas and his wife Ruth, so Bobby stayed there for weeks on end. Over a period of four months Fischer and Biyiasas played seventeen five-minute games and Bobby won them all, with Biyiasis claiming that he never got into an endgame once: Bobby would just wipe him off the board in short order every time.

On three occasions, Bobby went to Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area to visit Walter Browne, an Australian-American grandmaster. They went over some of the games from Browne’s recent tournaments, although they didn’t play chess, and once took a long walk at sunset to enjoy the spectacular views of the city across the Bay. During the walk, Bobby kept up a continuous spiel about the Jewish World Conspiracy and made various anti-Semitic remarks, but when they returned to the house and sat down for dinner with Browne’s family he ceased his outré comments. On his third visit with Browne, Bobby was to stay overnight. After dinner he asked to use the phone and talked long distance for the rest of the evening—“perhaps for four hours,” Browne later recalled. Finally Browne said, “You know, Bobby, you’ll really have to get off the phone. I can’t afford this.” Bobby hung up and immediately said he had to leave and couldn’t spend the night with the Brownes. They never talked again.

Back in Los Angeles, Bobby wrote to his mother, asking her when she could visit him, hoping it would be “soon,” and advising her to sail from England instead of flying, telling her that his boat trips in the past had been “a real experience.” At the end of the letter he included instructions: “Write to me at the Post Office box and do not put my name on the address. It’s not necessary.”

He simply did not want contact from anyone he didn’t know, and he made it quite clear, peremptorily, to Jack Collins that no mail—even important, flattering, or personal messages—should be forwarded to him. Possibly, he was worried that that a letter might contain poison or that a package could contain an explosive.

Chess colleagues of Bobby’s—including grandmaster Robert Byrne—have said that the real reason he was so private, and didn’t want anyone to know where he was at any given time, was that he feared a KGB assassination plot. Bobby believed, they said, that the Soviets were so enraged by his winning the crown from Spassky and thereby diminishing their greatest cultural achievement that they wanted him murdered. Of course, Bobby’s fears were thought by some to be incipient paranoia, and although it was highly unlikely that the KGB was plotting against him, even paranoids can have real enemies. At restaurants Bobby always carried with him a virtual pharmacy of remedies and potions to immediately counteract any poisons that the Soviets might slip into his food or drink. Hans Ree, a Dutch grandmaster and an accomplished journalist, summed it up this way: “It is undeniable that Fischer had real enemies and that they were extremely powerful ones.” He then went on to indicate that Mikhail Suslov, one of the most influential Soviet leaders, became involved in issuing instructions on how to subvert (not murder) Bobby, by creating a situation “unfavorable to R. Fischer.” Ree concludes: “There is nothing in the [KGB] documents that there ever were any plans to kill him. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t any.” The important point is that Bobby was convinced it was so and acted accordingly.

Part of his desire for privacy may have been attributable to his readings. Nietzsche said that solitude makes us tougher toward ourselves and more tender toward others. He held that in both ways it improves one’s character. It’s possible that since Bobby was influenced by Nietzsche to some extent, he was following this course to the extreme. By refusing to read letters that might have been laudatory or complimentary, or those that would have been for his own good, such as a letter from an old friend or an invitation to be a guest of honor at West Point, he was deliberately maintaining his isolation.

It was clear, though, that Bobby had a very difficult time considering anything that wasn’t on his own agenda. He was so focused on his path of righteousness and giving free rein to his different-drummer sensibilities that he refused to be distracted by trivia—as he saw it—entering his mailbox from a possibly unknown or unwelcome source.

Because Jack Collins was known as Bobby’s teacher, and he was readily available for contact—his telephone number was listed in the Manhattan telephone directory—he received calls and messages on a daily basis from people who for various reasons wanted to reach Bobby. Unfortunately for them, and even sadder for Bobby, after Collins received the letter warning him against forwarding anything, that conduit was cut off and the requests for contact drifted down into wastebasket oblivion.

Generally, Bobby was depressed, but he still managed to get up and out every day. He was attentive to his surroundings and hardly limited in his physical activity. But in retrospect, he was upset at having passed on the chance to acquire a portion of that $5 million purse in 1975. Who knew, after all, when the next opportunity to earn significant money would come along? The truth was, having to make ends meet was wearing on him. Also preying on his mind were his failure to find romantic love, and his constant religious doubts. This cumulative sadness contributed to his not wanting to be with people … unless he felt highly secure and comfortable with them. So he walked and walked for miles every day, lost in his dreams, or dwelling in a meditative state.

A sportswriter once wrote that Fischer was the fastest walker he ever saw outside of an Olympian. He took great strides, creating a slight wind in his wake, his left arm swinging high with his left leg, his right with his right, in an unusual cadence. Another journalist, Brad Darrach—who Fischer was suing—said that when he walked with Fischer, he felt as if he were Dopey, one of the Seven Dwarfs, trying to keep up with the big folks. Fischer’s erstwhile friend Walter Browne talked about walking with Bobby—very fast—from the Manhattan Chess Club all the way down to Greenwich Village on the West Side of Manhattan—over three miles—having dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant, and then walking all the way back uptown on the East Side, another three miles. Walking gave Bobby time to think—or to lose himself—and it kept him trim. He listed it, along with sports and reading, among his favorite pastimes.

After visiting Harry Sneider at the gym one day—he’d continued his friendship with the trainer even after severing his relationship with the Worldwide Church of God—Bobby chose to take one of his mammoth treks around the city of Pasadena. He walked alongside the Foothill Freeway and then walked back and turned at Lake Avenue, passing the Kaiser Permanente medical facility. A police cruiser stopped him. Apparently there had been a bank robbery in the area, and Bobby fit the description of the robber. He was asked for his name, address, age, type of work, etc., and although Bobby claimed that he answered the questions dutifully, there was something suspicious about him, according to the police interrogator. His appearance didn’t help, untidy as he was and carrying a soiled shopping bag containing a juicer and a number of hate books. The more questions that were asked, the more Bobby became belligerent. Perhaps because he was nervous, or perhaps because he kept moving from one flophouse to another, he couldn’t remember his address. Eventually, he was brought to the station and booked for vagrancy (since the bank robber had already been caught), although he did have $9 and some change on him at the time. He was stripped of his clothing, put in a cell, and not allowed a phone call to enlist help. Moreover, he later claimed that the guards brutalized him and deprived him of food.

Just so the world would know what he’d gone through those two days, when Bobby was finally released he wrote a punch-by-punch description of his ordeal, an eighty-five-hundred-word essay titled “I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse!” Although not reaching the virtuosic literary heights of incarceration essays penned by writers such as Thoreau or Martin Luther King Jr., the document was an oddly compelling account of the execrable details of his experience. Described by some as incoherent ranting and too melodramatic, Bobby’s story, if it could be trusted on the basics, was truly horrifying. He was innocent, he claimed, and yet he was made to parade through the halls naked and threatened with being put in a mental institution.

Bobby self-published the essay in a fourteen-page booklet, with red-and-white stripes on the front to resemble cell bars, and signed it “Robert D. James (professionally known as Robert J. Fischer or Bobby Fischer, The World Chess Champion).” He had ten thousand copies printed, which cost him $3,257. How in his near destitute state he was able to obtain the needed money is not known. He sold his essay for $1 a copy, and Claudia Mokarow handled the distribution and sales. Breaking his own privacy rules, Bobby even included a PO box number that he could be written to in care of so that the reader could order “additional copies.” Ironically, he ended up making money from the project—after the printing, shipping, and advertising costs were deducted. Twenty-five years later, an original copy of I Was Tortured … was selling as a collector’s item for upward of $500. A collector asked Pal Benko to see if Bobby would autograph a copy of his j’accuse. Benko requested and Bobby refused: “Yes, I wrote it, but I had a terrible time in that jail. I want to forget about it. No, I don’t want to sign it.”

The pamphlet is important in offering a glimpse of Bobby’s state of mind at that time (May 1981): It shows his utter outrage in being manhandled and falsely accused; his refusal to bend to authority; his use of a pseudonym (even Regina had begun to address her letters to him as “Robert D. James,” the “D” standing for “Dallas”) for self-protection; and his designation of himself as “The World Chess Champion.” Regarding this self-description, Bobby explained to a friend that he had never been defeated. He resigned the FIDE World Championship, but he believed the true World Champion’s title was still rightfully his. Further, he claimed that he had not won the World Championship in Iceland in 1972; he already was the World Champion: His title was stolen, he said, by the Russians.

Bobby’s life, post-Reykjavik, has been referred to by the press as his “Wilderness Years,” as indeed they were: living in the seamy underside of Los Angeles for the most part, twenty years out of view, refusing offers of money, on the edge of vagrancy, attempting to evaporate into anonymity so as to be shielded from perceived threats.

Money, however, was still available if he chose to avail himself of it. But the complications in getting it to him, or having him accept it, were enormous. First, those who had offers had to find him, not an easy task because he kept changing his address, gave his telephone number to virtually no one, and didn’t have an answering machine. His use of an alias also increased the difficulty of tracking him down. The mailbox at one of his apartments read “R. D. James.” Second, if contact was made, he’d never accept the first offer, and he usually named an amount that was double or triple—or more—pricing himself out of the market. Third, he refused to sign any contracts, making it impossible for most corporations or individuals to proceed with any kind of legally binding arrangement. Stories were told, unconfirmed by this writer, that when he was flat broke, he’d accept short telephone calls from chess players at a charge of $2,500 each, and would also give lessons over the phone for $10,000. If the stories were true, how these calls were arranged, how long they lasted, and who made them aren’t known.

It is known that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wanted to interview Bobby for a documentary: He demanded $5,000 just to discuss it over the phone, with no promises of anything else. The network refused. A reporter from Newsday, which had one of the largest circulations of any daily tabloid in the United States, sought an interview with Bobby and was told by Claudia Mokarow to “go back to your publisher and ask for a million dollars, and then we’ll talk about whether Bobby will grant you an interview.” Carol J. Williams, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, approached Bobby for an interview and was told his required fee was $200,000. His request was refused “on principle.” Freelance photographers were willing to pay $5,000 to anyone who could arrange just to locate Bobby so they could take a single photograph, and perhaps pay $10,000 to Bobby if he’d allow the picture to be taken. It never happened. Edward Fox, a freelance journalist for the British Independent newspaper, wrote of Bobby: “The years passed, and the last extant photographs were growing more and more out of date. No one knew what Bobby Fischer looked like any more. Into the vacuum of his non-presence rushed a fog of rumors and fragmentary information. He existed as a vortex of recycled facts and second-hand quotes. Every now and then there would be a ‘sighting’ of a forlorn, bearded figure.”

A sensationalistic television show, Now It Can Be Told, spent weeks in the early 1990s trying to capture the reclusive Bobby for their broadcast, and managed to film him for a few seconds in a parking lot, getting out of an automobile, en route to a restaurant with Claudia Mokarow and her husband.

Bobby Fischer! It was the first time he’d been seen by the public in almost two decades. His pants and jacket were wrinkled, but he didn’t look as derelict as some of the press accounts had indicated. Aside from the fact that his hair was thinning and he’d put on weight and grown a beard, he was the unmistakable, broad-shouldered, swaggering Bobby Fischer.