Frank Brady - Endgame

I began to weep quietly, aware that in that time-suspended moment I was in the presence of genius.

Bobby’s prediction at the Cedar Tavern was realized at Mar del Plata. When Bronstein and Bobby met in the twelfth round, the Russian did play for a win, but when the game neared its ending, there were an even number of pieces and pawns remaining on each side, and a draw was inevitable. By the conclusion of the tournament, Fischer and Spassky were tied for first place. It was Fischer’s greatest triumph in an international tournament to date.

And then there was the Argentinean disaster two months later. Of all the cities Bobby had been to, Buenos Aires was his favorite: He liked the food, the people’s enthusiasm for chess, and the broad boulevards. Yet something went uncharacteristically wrong with Bobby’s play during his stay there, and the rumor that circulated, both then and for years after, was that he was staying up until dawn—on at least one occasion with an Argentinean beauty—allowing himself to become physically run-down, and not preparing for the next day’s opponent. The worldly Argentinean grandmaster Miguel Najdorf, who wasn’t playing in the tournament, introduced Bobby to the city’s nightlife, not caring that he was undermining the boy’s possibility of gaining a top spot in the competition. And with the bravado of a seventeen-year-old, Bobby assumed that he had the energy and focus to play well even after very little sleep, night after night. Unfortunately, when he found himself in extremis at the board and called on his chess muse to save him, there was no answer.

Whatever the reason for his poor play (when pressed, he said the lighting was atrocious), Bobby as the brilliant Dr. Jekyll morphed into a weakened Mr. Hyde, a shell of a player. In the twenty-player tournament, he won only three games, drew eleven, and lost the rest. Bewildering . Anyone can have a bad tournament, but Bobby’s past record had been one of ascendancy, and his 13½–1½ result at Mar del Plata just a short time before had left his fans predicting that he’d take top honors at Buenos Aires.

For Bobby, the defeat was devastating. It’s bad enough to fail, but far worse to see another succeed at the very accomplishment you’d hoped to achieve. Samuel Reshevsky, his American archrival, had tied for first with Viktor Korchnoi. A group photograph of the players taken at the end of the tournament shows Bobby with unfocused eyes, apparently paying no attention to the photographer or the rest of the players. Was he thinking about his poor performance? Or was he perhaps considering that, just this once, his determination to win hadn’t been strong enough?

He’d agreed to play first board for the United States that year at the World Chess Olympics, which was to be held in Leipzig, East Germany, in October of 1960, but American chess officials were claiming that they didn’t have enough money to pay for the team’s travel and other expenses. A national group called the People-to-People Committee was attempting to raise funds for the team, and the executive director asked Bobby if he’d give a simultaneous exhibition to publicize the team’s plight. The event was held at the Rikers Island jail complex, which stands on a 413-acre plot of land in the middle of New York’s East River. At the time the facility housed some fourteen thousand inmates, twenty of whom Bobby played. Unsurprisingly, he won all the games.

Unfortunately, though the exhibition did garner coverage in local newspapers, not one story mentioned the reason for the event: to bring attention to the American team’s financial straits. But if the State Department and American chess organizations couldn’t help, Regina Fischer thought she could. Probing into the activities of the American Chess Foundation, she demonstrated that some players (such as Reshevsky) received support while others (such as Bobby) did not. A one-woman publicity machine, she sent out indignant press releases, as well as letters to the government demanding a public accounting.

Although Bobby desperately wanted to go to Leipzig to play in his first Olympics, he began to seethe over his mother’s interference, and on at least one occasion he openly took her to task when she made a public appearance at a chess event. She felt she was helping her son; he felt she was simply being a pushy stage mother.

While picketing the foundation’s offices, Regina caught the attention of Ammon Hennacy, a pacifist, anarchist, social activist, and associate editor of the libertarian newspaper the Catholic Worker . He suggested that Regina undertake a hunger strike for chess. She did so for six days and garnered yet more publicity. Hennacy also talked her into joining the longest peace march in history, from San Francisco to Moscow, and she agreed. While on the march she met Cyril Pustan, an Englishman who was a high school teacher and journeyman plumber. Among other areas of interest, their political beliefs and religion—both were Jewish—meshed perfectly, and eventually they married and settled in England.

When, ultimately, Bobby walked into the lobby of the Astoria Hotel in Leipzig, he was greeted by a man who resembled a younger and handsomer Groucho Marx: Isaac Kashdan, the United States team captain. Kashdan and Bobby had never met before, but the former was a legend in the chess world. An international grandmaster, he was one of America’s strongest players in the late 1920s and 1930s, when he played in five chess Olympics, winning a number of medals. Having been warned that Bobby was “hard to handle,” Kashdan was concerned that the young man might not be a compliant team member.

Bobby may have sensed the team captain’s wariness, because he turned the conversation to Kashdan’s chess career; the teenager not only knew of the older man’s reputation, he was also familiar with many of his past games. Kashdan responded to Bobby’s overture and later commented: “I had no real problem with him. All he wants to do is to play chess. He is a tremendous player.” Although separated in age by almost four decades, the two players became relatively close and remained so for years.

One of the highlights of the Olympics came when the United States faced the USSR and Bobby was slated to play Mikhail Tal, then the World Champion. Fischer and Tal met in the fifth round. Before making his first move, Tal stared at the board, and stared, and stared. Bobby wondered, rightly so as it developed, whether Tal was up to his old tricks. Finally, after ten long minutes, Tal moved. He was hoping to make Fischer feel completely uncomfortable. But his effort to unsettle the American failed. Instead, Bobby launched an aggressive series of moves, waging a board battle that was later described as both a “slugfest” and a “sparkling attack and counter-attack.” The cerebral melee ended in a draw, and later both players would include the game in their respective books, citing it as one of the most important in their careers.

That seventeen-year-old Bobby had held his own against the reigning World Champion didn’t go unnoticed, and players at the competition were now predicting that in a very short time, Bobby would be playing for the title.

By the end of the Olympics, the Soviet Union, which had fielded one of the strongest teams ever, came in first and the United States eased into second. Bobby’s score was ten wins, two losses, and six draws, and he took home the silver medal.

At the closing banquet someone mentioned to Mikhail Tal that Bobby, who’d been studying palmistry, was reading the palms of other players, almost as a parlor game. “Let him read mine,” said Tal skeptically. He walked over to Bobby’s table, held out his left hand, and said, “Read it.” While Bobby stared at Tal’s palm and pondered the mysteries of its lines and crevices, a crowd gathered around and hundreds of others watched from their tables.