Frank Brady - Endgame

To limit the time that a game of chess may take—and to establish equality between players so that, for example, one doesn’t take hours to make a move and the other only minutes—a special chess clock is used in tournaments. Actually, two clocks are utilized, one for each player. In that way players can budget their time in whatever way they wish. For example, they can take a few seconds on one move and perhaps thirty-five minutes on another—as long as all the moves are made within the period specified by the tournament organizers. In this Interzonal, the time limit was forty moves in two and a half hours and sixteen moves per hour thereafter. When a player made a move, he depressed a button on top of his clock, which stopped his device and started his opponent’s. Both players were required to keep a record of their moves to prove, if necessary, that they’d complied with the time limit.

With only seconds to spare, Bobby just barely made his fortieth move against Bronstein before his flag fell, which otherwise would have caused him to be forfeited. He played one more move, and the game was then adjourned to be resumed the next day. That evening, he and Lombardy went over the endgame position, which consisted of both Bobby and Bronstein having a rook, a bishop, and an equal number of pawns. Although this position would result in a draw in most cases, the two young American colleagues searched for hours for any possibility that Bobby could squeeze out a win when play resumed.

The next day, when Fischer and Bronstein continued the game, both men parried for twenty more moves. Bronstein lost a pawn and began to check Fischer’s king over and over again. Fischer could make no headway. The game was declared a draw through the special rule of repetition—that is, when a position comes about three times, not necessarily in succession, the game is automatically a draw.

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:

A CHEER FOR BOBBY FISCHER

Chess fans all over the United States are toasting Bobby Fischer and we are happy to join in the acclaim. At 15, this youngster from Brooklyn has become the youngest international grand master in chess and has qualified for next year’s tournament to decide who shall meet Mikhail Botvinnik for the world’s chess championship. Those who have followed Bobby’s stirring matches in the competition just concluded in Yugoslavia know that he gave an exhibition of skill, courage and determination that would have done credit to a master twice his age. We are rightfully proud of him.