Frank Brady - Endgame

His respect for the Soviet players, from what he knew of their games, was immense, and at first, the reality of being in Russia was like being in chess heaven. He wanted to see how the game was taught and played at the state-supported Pioneer Palaces. He wanted to read and purchase Russian chess literature and visit the clubs and parks where chess was played. But mostly he wanted to duel with the best in the world. His mission was to play as many masters as possible and to emulate the Soviets’ training regimen for the Yugoslav tournament. Fortune, however, seemed to have other plans.

There was no way that the Soviet chess regime would allow an American to observe their training methods or to share in their chess secrets—especially when the very same players Fischer hoped to train with would be competing against him in a few weeks. The Soviet chess establishment thought of Bobby as a novinka —a novelty—but, also, someone ultimately to be feared. They certainly weren’t going to aid his attempt to defeat them at their own national pastime.

An itinerary and schedule were established for the Fischers, which included a tour of the city, a sightseeing introduction to the buildings and galleries of the Kremlin, and a visit to the Bolshoi Ballet, the Moscow Circus, and various museums. For Bobby, it was a chance to gorge himself on Russian history and culture. He had little interest, though, in such figures as Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great or Joseph Stalin or Leo Tolstoy or Alexander Pushkin. He’d come to Moscow to play chess, to cross pawns with a serious Russian tournament player. And every spare minute he spent there he wanted to be engaged in chess, hopefully playing with the highest-rated masters in the country. Moscow was the city where the great tournament of 1925 had been played; where Alekhine had become a grandmaster; where most of the world’s top masters played, learned, and lived; where the World Championship had been held only a few months prior. For Bobby, Moscow was the Elysium of chess, and his head was spinning with the possibilities.

Spurning Abramov’s offer of an introduction to the city, Bobby asked to be brought immediately to the Tsentralny Shakhmatny Klub, the Moscow Central Chess Club, said to be one of the finest in the world. Virtually all of the strongest players in Moscow belonged to the club, which had been opened in 1956 and boasted a library reported to consist of ten thousand chess books and over one hundred thousand index cards of opening variations. Bobby simply couldn’t wait until he saw it all.

Upon arriving at the club’s headquarters on Gogolsky Boulevard, Bobby was first introduced to two young Soviet masters, both in their early twenties: Evgeni Vasukov and Alexander Nikitin. He began playing speed chess in rotation with both, in a hallway on the first floor of the club, and won every game. Lev Khariton, a Soviet master, then a teenager, remembered that a crowd gathered. Everyone wanted to see the American wunderkind. “There was a certain loneliness about him hunched above the board,” said Khariton.

“When can I play Botvinnik [the World Champion]?” Bobby asked, using a tone that was almost a demand. “And Smyslov [Botvinnik’s most recent challenger]?” He was told that because it was summer, both men were at their dachas, quite a distance from Moscow, and unavailable. It may have been true.

“Then what about Keres?”

“Keres is not in the country.”

Abramov later claimed that he’d contacted several grandmasters but had made little progress in finding an opponent of the caliber that Fischer was insisting on. True or not, Abramov was becoming more than annoyed by Bobby’s brashness and frequent distemper. Bobby begrudgingly met the weight lifters and Olympians he was introduced to, but he seemed bored by it all. The Russians began calling him Malchick or “Little Boy.” Although it was an affectionate term, to a teenager it could be considered an insult. Bobby didn’t like the implication.

Finally, Tigran Petrosian was, on a semi-official basis, summoned to the club. He was an international grandmaster, known as a colorless player but he was almost scientifically precise, and one of the great defensive competitors of all time. He was also an extraordinarily powerful speed player. Bobby knew of him, of course, having played over his games from the Amsterdam tournament of 1956 and also from seeing him from afar at the USA-USSR match in New York four years earlier. Before he arrived, Fischer wanted to know how much money he’d receive for playing Petrosian. “None. You are our guest,” Abramov frostily replied, “and we don’t pay fees to guests.”

The games were played in a small, high-ceilinged room at the end of the hallway, probably to limit the number of spectators, which had grown to several dozen while Bobby was playing the younger men. The contest with the Russian grandmaster was not a formal match, but consisted of speed games, and Petrosian won the majority. Many years later, Bobby indicated that during those speed games Petrosian’s style of play had bored him “to death,” and that was why he’d wound up losing more than he won.

When the Soviet Union had agreed to invite Bobby to Moscow, and generously pay all expenses for him and his sister, he was granted a visa that was good for only twenty days. Regina, though, wanted him to stay in Europe until the Interzonal in Portorož began, and because of a lack of funds she was trying to get both his visa and his guest status extended. She wanted him to have a European experience and sharpen his use of foreign languages, which she kept insisting was so vital for his education. Plus, she knew that he wanted to play chess against the better Soviet players as training before he entered the Interzonal. It wasn’t to happen, however.

When Bobby discovered that he wasn’t going to play any formal games, but simply speed chess, he went into a not-so-silent rage. He felt that he wasn’t being respected. Wasn’t he the reigning United States Champion? Hadn’t he played “The Game of the Century,” one of the most brilliant chess encounters ever? Hadn’t he played a former World Champion, Dr. Max Euwe, just a year earlier? Wasn’t he the prodigy predicted to become World Champion in two years?

A certain monarchic attitude seized him: How could they possibly refuse him , the Prince of Chess? This was no trivial setback, no mere snub; it was, to Bobby, the greatest insult he could imagine. He reacted to that insult, from his point of view, proportionately. It seemed obvious to him that the reason the top players wouldn’t meet him was because, on some level, they were frightened of him. He likened himself to his hero Paul Morphy, who for the same reason, on his first trip to Europe in 1858 exactly one hundred years before, was denied a match with the Englishman Howard Staunton, then considered the world’s greatest player. Chess historians and critics believed that twenty-one-year-old Morphy would have easily beaten Staunton. And fifteen-year-old Fischer firmly believed that if he were given a chance to meet Mikhail Botvinnik, the World Champion, the Soviet player would be defeated.

As the reality set in that Bobby would not soon—not in the next several days, at least—be meeting the giants of Russian chess and triumphing over them, and that while in the Soviet Union he’d receive no financial reward for his playing, the Soviets ceased to be his heroes; rather, they became his betrayers, never to be forgiven. He made a comment in English, not caring that the interpreter could hear and understand it—something to the effect that he was fed up “with these Russian pigs.” She reported it, although years later Abramov said that the interpreter confused the word “pork” for “pigs” and that Bobby was referring to the food he was eating at a restaurant.