Frank Brady - Endgame

Bobby had already played fifteen games over four weeks in the Olympiad by the time he sat down to play Botvinnik, so long before their matchup he’d shaken off any rust. As they met at the board, they shook hands and then slightly banged heads when they went to be seated. “Sorry,” said Bobby, uttering the second word he’d ever spoken to Botvinnik, again without a reply.

When the game was adjourned, it appeared that Fischer’s position was clearly superior.

Fischer dined alone that night, took a cursory look at the game, was confident he had it won, and went to sleep early. Not so, the Soviets. Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, Paul Keres, Efim Geller, team coach Semyon Furman, and Botvinnik worked on the position until five-thirty the next morning. They also called Moscow and spoke to Yuri Averbach—an endgame authority—and asked for his opinion. It was Geller who suggested that although Fischer was ahead materially, there was a subtle way that the game might be drawn.

The next morning at breakfast, someone approached Botvinnik and asked him what he thought about the position. He answered in Russian with one word: “Nichia.” Draw.

When play resumed, Botvinnik was in shirtsleeves, a look so unusual for him that the other players knew he was worried and prepared for serious work. Bobby, meanwhile, was unaware that he was about to play against the analysis of no less than seven Soviet grandmasters, not just the ingenuity of his opponent. Slowly, he saw what Botvinnik was up to, and his face became ashen. Botvinnik, who rarely rose from the board until the game was over, was so exuberant about having changed the game’s momentum that he could not sit still. He stood, walked over to the Soviet team captain, Lev Abramov, and, once again, whispered, “Nichia.” Bobby, still remembering the argument he’d had with Abramov in Moscow in 1958—the men hadn’t spoken since—immediately complained to the arbiter. “Look,” he said. “Botvinnik is getting assistance!”

Abramov, though he was far less skilled than Botvinnik, was nevertheless an international master and might have, at that moment, relayed to Botvinnik information from the other Soviet grandmasters. At least, that’s what Bobby was thinking . No official protest was put before the tournament committee, however, because Bobby’s own teammates believed he was being extreme and wrongheaded.

Eventually, Bobby could make no headway in this game that he should have won. He looked up at Botvinnik and said the third word he’d ever spoken to him: “Draw.” Botvinnik simply offered his hand. Later, he recalled that Bobby, his face pallid, shook hands and left the tournament hall in tears. The United States team wound up finishing a disappointing fourth, mainly as a result of Bobby’s disappointing results. Mysteriously, the nineteen-year-old wrote a letter of apology to Dr. Eliot Hearst, the United States team captain, saying he’d been under great stress that had nothing to do with the Olympiad or chess.

Aboard the New Amsterdam once again, heading back to New York, Bobby wrote a note to his friend Bernard Zuckerman explaining how he felt about his draw against Botvinnik. The message was cabled to Brooklyn. Bobby felt that he had fallen into a “cheapo”—that he’d been tricked by one of his opponent’s ruses and had made an unsound move—and that, prior to Bobby’s committing this error, Botvinnik, because of Bobby’s superior position, seemed so upset that he looked like he was going to collapse.

In an estimation filled with sour grapes, Bobby also wrote that Botvinnik, the well-respected former World Champion, was never really a great player, never “first among equals” as Botvinnik had once described himself. Instead, Bobby claimed that Botvinnik’s superiority lay in the field of politics. He suggested that Botvinnik might have been able to become Premier of the Soviet Union because of his [political] ability “off the chessboard.”

Curaçao was a watershed for Bobby in his vow to never again play in the World Championship cycle. The Varna match, with the assistance of Botvinnik’s teammates to eke out a draw, was also a turning point. It would be two years before Bobby accepted an invitation to play in another international tournament. The Russians claimed that his retreat from the world stage was because of his “pathological” fear of the “hand of Moscow.” But back in Brooklyn, Bobby said he just no longer wanted to be involved with those “commie cheaters,” as he called them.

Then—a little more than a year later, in December 1963—came the 1963–64 United States Championship, held in the unpretentious Henry Hudson Hotel in New York. Bobby’s opponents fell as if they were tenpins, Bobby scoring a strike—game after game they toppled—with not a hint of a draw. The audience sensed that something unusual was about to happen. It did.

Bobby defeated the powerful champion Arthur Bisguier and the aging Samuel Reshevsky, and speculation surged through the hotel ballroom: Was it possible Bobby could make a clean sweep—pull off a win against every foe, with not even a single draw? The audience increased every round as word of Fischer’s incredible run spread throughout the chess community.

Tension, always high in a major tournament, was escalating. Bobby’s immaculate timing and apparently infallible play was creating a psychological handicap for players who hadn’t yet faced him. He vanquished every player he met. It was December 30, 1963, and Bobby had played all but one game of the championship without losing or drawing a game. There was only one more to go.

The combatants rested on New Year’s Day and returned to the contest on January 2. Bobby’s score made him the winner already, but how the tournament would end was not inevitable. His final game was against Anthony Saidy, a friend. In his mid-twenties, six years older than Fischer, Saidy was then a medical doctor with the Peace Corps and had been given a leave to play in the championship. He’d been playing very well, and this round gave him a chance at second place. He could also be the “spoiler,” the person to ruin Fischer’s chance for a perfect score in the championship. If that happened, it would go into the chess history books. And Saidy might, in fact, win , especially since he had the advantage of the white pieces.

By now there were hundreds of spectators at the hotel, tensely watching the big demonstration board. Most of them were clearly, but very quietly, rooting for Bobby, in part because his win that day would give him a clean sweep. But as the game grew longer, a win seemed very unlikely. Saidy’s position was powerful, and Bobby’s was precarious. The two-and-a-half-hour time limit ended, and there was no winner as yet. It was Saidy’s turn to move. The young doctor thought for about forty minutes, wrote down his intended move on his score sheet, sealed it in an envelope according to the rules, and handed it to the tournament director. The game was then adjourned until the next day. Everyone left the hotel ballroom assuming that when the game resumed it would be a draw, at best. It was not. It took Saidy about thirty minutes to realize that he’d sealed a blunder. The next day when the envelope was opened by the director, and the move made on the board, Bobby realized immediately that Saidy hadn’t chosen wisely. He looked up at Saidy and a slight smile appeared on his face. Saidy’s blunder gave Fischer an opportunity to develop a winning endgame, and half an hour after the adjourned game was resumed, Saidy was forced to resign.

The incredible final score was picked up by the wire services and sent by radio, newspapers, and television throughout the world: eleven championship games, eleven wins. At this level of competition, such a streak wasn’t suppose to happen, no matter how adept a given player might be. Fischer’s first prize for his two weeks of intensity and brilliance was just $2,000.