Endgame (20 page)

A cynic once said that the most difficult part of success is finding someone who is happy for you. That wasn’t the case with Bobby’s draw against Bronstein.
At the Marshall Chess Club, where players were analyzing the Interzonal games as they were cabled in from Portorož, there was near-delirium when word arrived of the draw.
“Bronstein?!”
people were saying incredulously, almost whooping, as if the Soviet player were Goliath, and Bobby as David had stood up to him piece for piece, pawn for pawn.
“Bronstein!? The genius of modern chess!”
The impossible had occurred: A fifteen-year-old had managed to draw against perhaps the second or third strongest player in the world.
So great was the impact of that game that club members began planning a party for the returning hero, even if he hadn’t actually qualified as a Candidate yet. In their minds people began rehearsing champagne toasts. And the process of mythologizing Bobby commenced in earnest. Stories were offered of how a certain club member had once played Bobby when he was a child, or was an eyewitness when he played “The Game of the Century,” or shared a hot dog and orange drink with him at the Nedick’s stand in Herald Square.

Expectations now changed, not only for Bobby’s future, but for American chess itself. Could this precocious Brooklyn boy not just become a Candidate but possibly
win
the tournament? Was American chess about to soar on the wings of Bobby’s fame?
“Bronstein!”

Although it was only the sixth round out of twenty-two, for Bobby everything that followed from Bronstein was an emotional anticlimax. He tried to
keep his focus, but it was difficult. On days off in Portorož, during the rare times he wandered into public view, Bobby was continually asked for his autograph or to pose for a photo. At first he liked the attention, but it annoyed him that the attention was constant, and he grew to hate it. At least twice, he was swallowed up in a throng of fans, and in both cases he became almost hysterical in his attempts to wrest himself free. He set a self-imposed policy: He’d sign autographs only
after
each game (as long as he didn’t lose or wasn’t upset over how he played) and only for a period of about five minutes, for the chess players assembled there. Sometimes, he’d sit in the theater seats after a game, and literally hundreds of people would hand their programs to him for his reluctantly scrawled signature.

Eventually, he asked the tournament organizers to rope off the area around his board, because the crowds would gather and gape, often for hours at a time, while he was playing. He complained that he couldn’t concentrate. When he was in the streets, he’d ask autograph requesters if they played chess, and if they didn’t, he refused to sign and disdainfully walked away. Continually besieged by newsmen, photographers, and autograph hunters, he finally put a stop to it all: By the midpoint of the tournament he wouldn’t pose for a photo, sign his autograph, or answer any question.

Aside from his heroics against Bronstein, the tournament wasn’t going quite the way Bobby had planned. He lost or drew to some of the “small-fry,” including multiple players from Argentina, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. However, his draws against superstar Tal; his erstwhile Moscow Chess Club opponent Tigran Petrosian; and Svetozar Gligoric of Yugoslavia were all great accomplishments, as was his win against Larsen of Denmark.
Years later, Fischer would judge the Larsen game one of the best he ever played. “
Fischer won with amazing ease,” bleated
Chess Review
.

Against Olafsson Bobby fared more poorly. He didn’t try to rationalize that loss (though he did think that he could have won the game).
Writing to Collins, he explained: “I never should have lost.… I played the black side of Lipnitsky’s thing [and here he gave the moves]. Anyway, I had a good opening. He sacked [sacrificed] the exchange for a pawn, but after winning the exchange, I blundered, and the game was about even. But (again) I got into time pressure, and played a series of weak moves in a row, and by adjournment he had two connected passed pawns which could not be stopped.”

Bobby’s last game of the tournament was with Gligoric, one of the strongest players outside of the Soviet Union. If Bobby lost that game, and others won who were only a half point behind him on the cross table (a scoreboard-like tally of who played whom and the results), he wouldn’t be invited to the Candidates tournament. Because of his high score, Gligoric was already assured a berth in the Candidates, so he could easily offer Fischer an early “grandmaster draw” and coast to a successful denouement. Instead, he played for a win, sacrificing a knight, but ultimately winning back three pawns in exchange. Bobby withstood a relentlessly harassing attack, but always found a way to defend. On Gligoric’s thirty-second move, the Yugoslav looked up from the board and said,
“Remis?”
Fischer knew the French word for “draw,” and he immediately consented. “
Nobody sacrifices a piece against Fischer,” he brashly declared, grinning slightly as he said it.

Drawing his last game and coming in sixth, Bobby Fischer became the youngest chess player ever to qualify to play in the Candidates tournament, and the youngest international grandmaster in the history of the game. Some were even calling him the Mozart of chess. Normally quite restrained in its chess reporting,
The New York Times
was
exuberant in running a salute to Bobby on its editorial page:

Though he’d only been gone from the United States two months, Bobby had taken from his competitive experiences more than just bragging rights. His new maturity was noticeable. When asked by a reporter in Portorož
whether he was looking forward to playing the World Champion, he said, “Of course I would like to play Botvinnik. But it’s too early to talk about that.
Remember, next year I will have to attend the tournament of Candidates before I can think of meeting Botvinnik.” Reflecting for a moment, he added, “
One thing is certain—I am not going to be a professional chess player.”

Bobby felt manhandled in both Moscow and Portorož, and his receiving only $400 for six weeks of effort at the Interzonal (“Every chess game is like taking a five-hour final exam,” he said) discouraged him. The fact that he was now an international grandmaster and was eligible to compete for the World Championship made him feel accomplished, but he wondered how he could possibly make a living playing chess. Outside of the Soviet Union, where chess masters were comfortably supported by the state, no chess player could survive on his tournament winnings. There
were
some Americans who were chess professionals, but none made a living from tournament winnings alone. Rather, they put food on the table by teaching chess, giving exhibitions, operating chess parlors, selling chess sets, and writing books and magazine articles that received small advances.

It was an insecure life.

Bobby was met at Idlewild (which was later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) by his mother, sister Joan, and Norman Monath, an editor at Simon & Schuster who was putting the final touches on Bobby’s first book of annotated games, called appropriately
Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess
. “He looks as skinny as a rail,” Regina said upon beholding her famous son, and she almost burst into tears. All four tumbled into a limousine, and on the ride to Brooklyn, Monath talked to Bobby about the book, getting his opinion as to whether the publication date should be postponed slightly, until such time as his twenty Interzonal games could be included. In its original conception, the book had only contained thirteen games and the working title was just that:
Thirteen Games
. The plan was to focus it on Bobby’s efforts in the 1957 U.S. Championship, with the teenager annotating each game. Later “The Game of the Century” from 1956 was added. By including the Interzonal games, the book would acquire some needed bulk and, presumably, be more valuable. Even
with
the Interzonal games, the finished tome was only ninety-six pages.
Thirteen Games
, had it remained as
thirteen games only, would have appeared to be just a shade more than a monograph.

Upon arriving at Lincoln Place, Bobby charged up the three flights of stairs, unpacked his satchel, gave his mother a scarf that he’d bought in Brussels (“
That looks Continental,” he said in a courtly manner, when she tried it on), and, within twenty minutes, was out the door. Monath had him dropped off at the Collins house, and in a matter of seconds, Bobby and Jack were analyzing his games from the tournament. Bobby stayed for hours, and the Collins regulars began to drift in to offer their congratulations, have something to eat, and discuss the losses to Benko and Olafsson. The evening was capped off with Bobby playing dozens of five-minute games with almost all assembled, one by one.

Bobby entered his junior year at Erasmus several days late, and since his five courses were especially demanding, owing to his having to study for a Regents exam associated with each, he quickly fell behind in his work. The officials at the school were accommodating, however, and instead of chastising him for his sometimes shoddy work, they awarded him a gold medal for becoming the youngest grandmaster in history. Additionally, Bobby was profiled in the school newspaper, the
Dutchman
, adding to his student-as-celebrity status.

Six days after Bobby’s arrival back in the United States, the Marshall Chess Club followed through on its intentions and held a reception for him with more than one hundred members in attendance. The president of the club, Dr. Edward Lasker, welcomed everyone, thanked them for coming, and then began a litany of Bobby’s many accomplishments. Bobby, however, was hardly paying attention. Rather, he was playing speed chess at a side table with several of the young masters, who congregated around him.

To watch Bobby play speed chess was an entertainment in itself, aside from his depth of play. To him, speed games were like playground basketball or street stickball: trash-talking was definitely allowed. At the board, playing a speed game, Bobby was truly in his element, like Michael Jordan soaring for the hoop. Typically, he would crack his knuckles and pursue a humorous strategy of intimidation:

“Me?! You play that against Me?!”

“Crunch!” “Zap!”

“With that I will crush you,
crush
you!”

[In a feigned Russian accent] “You are cockroach. I am elephant. Elephant steps on cockroach.”

He would pick up a piece and practically throw it at a square, almost as if he were tossing a dart at a bull’s-eye; invariably, it would land in the center of the square. His fingers were long and nimble, and as he moved, his hand quitting the piece with a flourish, he looked like a classical pianist playing a concerto. When he made a weak move, which was rare, he’d sit bolt upright and inhale, emitting a sound like a snake’s hiss. On the few occasions when he
lost
a speed game, he’d just push the pieces to the center of the board in disgust, his nostrils flaring as if he smelled a bad odor. He maintained that he could tell the strength of a player by the way he handled the pieces. Weak players were clumsy and unsure; strong players were confident and graceful. Sometimes, during a five-minute game, Bobby would get up from the board while his clock was running, go to the soda machine, buy a soft drink, and stroll back to the table, having “wasted” two or three minutes. He’d still win.

A week later Bobby was back at the Marshall to play in the weekly speed tournament—christened the “Tuesday Night Rapid Transit” in homage to the New York City rapid transit subway system. Bobby tied for first with Edmar Mednis, both players scoring 13–2. Not so ironically, the one game Bobby lost was to his mentor Jack Collins.

Bobby’s relationship with Collins was complex. To Collins, Bobby represented a second existence—the boy’s career was a vicarious entry to a level of chess mastery he himself would never achieve.
But Collins also showed Bobby a father’s love, taking pride in all of his accomplishments. He claimed to view Bobby as a surrogate son.

Bobby viewed their relationship differently. He didn’t regard Collins as a father substitute, but as a friend, despite their thirty-year difference in ages. He considered Jack Collins’s sister Ethel a friend as well, and he could be even more affectionate toward her at times. Bobby always felt comfortable with both, and at one point when Regina was about to embark on one of her perennial long-term journeys, she suggested that Bobby live with the Collinses. Their apartment was small by American standards, however—even for two people. Adding a third would have been impossible, so the idea never went beyond Regina’s wish.

What Collins
didn’t
know was that Bobby would occasionally snipe at him behind his back. The criticisms were purely chess-related. Despite the fact that Collins could occasionally beat Bobby in speed games and even in clocked training games (they never met over the board in a formal tournament), Bobby’s opinion of his mentor’s prowess—as indeed happened with him and other players—became inexorably linked to what his official rating was.

“What’s your rating?” is one of the first things players ask each other on meeting for the first time, and whichever player has the lower rating is likely to get a snobbish reaction from the other and even be shunned, as if belonging to another caste. Fischer’s rating reached an average high of 2780. Collins’s rating never rose higher than 2400, light-years apart in winning predictability. If the separation in rating points had been minimal, Bobby’s opinion of Collins might not have been so deprecatory.
Raymond Weinstein, a strong international master and a student of Collins, wrote that he’d been in awe of his teacher until he heard Fischer’s unkind remarks about him.