Frank Brady - Endgame

BOBBY FISCHER

Castro cabled back, denying making the statement and questioning Bobby’s courage:

OUR LAND NEEDS NO SUCH “PROPAGANDA VICTORIES.” IT IS YOUR PERSONAL AFFAIR WHETHER YOU WILL TAKE PART IN THE TOURNAMENT OR NOT. HENCE YOUR WORDS ARE UNJUST. IF YOU ARE FRIGHTENED AND REPENT YOUR PREVIOUS DECISION, THEN IT WOULD BE BETTER TO FIND ANOTHER EXCUSE OR TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO REMAIN HONEST.

FIDEL CASTRO

Upon receiving word from Castro, Bobby confirmed his participation in the tournament without any further sparring. He wanted to play the game of chess, not be a party to sensationalism.

The arrangement was certainly awkward for Bobby, however. To avoid any hint of cheating, he had to be isolated from everyone except the referee. It was a sterile, feedback-barren experience with no chance to read his opponent’s body language. As Bobby sat with the referee, not a word was spoken; the afternoons crept slowly into summer twilight. Occasionally, while waiting for his opponent’s move to come back from Havana, Bobby would gaze out into the club’s garden. A bust of Philidor, the eighteenth-century French chess player and composer who was considered the best player of his day, was perched atop an étagère of chess sets, almost as if he were at the game. The tick of the chess clock was the only sound heard.

A typical four-hour game was transformed by the Teletype process into an eight- or nine-hour affair. Some games stretched to twelve hours. The tournament became a test of endurance and stamina. Bobby grew exhausted. His opponents had the same problem, but each only had to submit to the process once—when playing Fischer. Bobby had to play this strange, isolated form of chess every single game. In the midst of the tournament, someone asked how well he thought he’d do and he answered, “It’s a question of when I’ll crack up.”

Bobby won his first two games but as the tournament wore on he lost to some players and drew with several others well below his caliber. While he exhibited flashes of brilliance, this wasn’t the same Bobby Fischer who’d swept through the United States Championship eighteen months earlier. Still, he tied for second, a half point behind Russia’s Vasily Smyslov, the former World Champion.

Had Fischer not done as well as he did, his story might have ended right there, surrealistically, in the quiet back room of a chess club. Havana was his comeback in the world spotlight, and a poor showing would only have deepened Bobby’s disillusionment with himself, probably permanently. Two setbacks in international tournaments would have been intolerable to him. True, for Bobby there was only one place in a tournament and that was first. But after the long international layoff, and playing every game under grueling conditions, he likely considered his second-place showing somewhat acceptable.

Openly, Bobby disparaged how he’d performed, but the Soviet chess establishment was dazzled by how he managed to place so high under such arduous conditions. They were convinced that he was continuing to grow as a player, and that unless something were done quickly, he’d smash the Soviets’ hegemony.

Worry about Fischer led the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Sports, which studied the psychology of sports, to appoint a Soviet grandmaster and theoretician, Vladimir Alatortsev, to create a secret laboratory (located near the Moscow Central Chess Club). Its mission was to analyze Fischer’s games. Alatortsev and a small group of other masters and psychologists worked tirelessly for ten years attempting to “solve” the mystery of Fischer’s prowess, in addition to analyzing his personality and behavior. They rigorously studied his opening, middle game, and endings—and filtered classified analyses of their findings to the top Soviet players.

Though he didn’t realize it, if Fischer hadn’t accepted the invitation to the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup in Santa Monica, California, there wouldn’t have been such a tournament at all. “We must get Bobby Fischer,” Gregor Piatigorsky told his wife. A few years prior, Mrs. Piatigorsky had been criticized in some quarters for not acceding to Fischer’s demands for the 1963 tournament, which had led to his not playing. Her solution this time was to pay everyone the same amount—$2,000—therefore saving face and securing the greatest American player.

The story of how Fischer went into a swoon in the tournament’s first half, tying for last, yet ended up in the penultimate round tying for first with Spassky, has been told many times. At the beginning of the competition, Fischer looked Abraham Lincoln–thin; his cheeks were hollow, and he had deep, dark circles under his eyes, all indicating that he might be ill.

As Fischer’s losses and draws mounted, it became clear that he was having the most disastrous tournament of his adult career, perhaps even worse than his Buenos Aires debacle. Bobby was at an existential precipice. He somehow had to find a better method of play, a better understanding of what he was doing wrong; he had to find lessons in his failures, or else his chess career would be, if not over, forever tarnished. Skirting or briefly inhabiting the bottom of the scoreboard does not make one a failure, but remaining there, refusing to fight, does.

Fortunately, drawing deep from his inner reserves, Bobby did climb. His ability and character enabled him to emerge from the depths. He came back in the second half of the tournament and ended just a half point below Spassky. His reaction was a study in ambivalence. He was overjoyed that he’d pulled himself out of the abyss in which he’d found himself in the tournament’s first half, but devastated that he hadn’t won first prize.

At the closing ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Piatigorsky posed for a photograph with Spassky on one side and Fischer on the other. Fischer, with a weak smile, looked somewhat embarrassed, as if to say, “I really should have won this tournament, and I can’t blame the Russians this time. It was me … all alone.”

As the players left the Miramar Hotel to go home to their respective countries or states, Bobby simply refused to check out. Other players have been known to do the same thing. It’s like an actor remaining in character and refusing to leave his dressing room, or a writer refusing to leave his garret after finishing a book. The challenge is tearing oneself away from a venue that has been one’s creative home for so many hours, days, weeks, or months.

Three weeks after everyone else had left, Bobby was still at the Miramar, just steps from the ocean, surrounded by gardens and palm trees, breathing in the pungent smell of eucalyptus. He swam and walked, and then often spent the rest of the day—and a good portion of the night—playing over all the games of the tournament, torturing himself over the mistakes he’d made. Someone finally pointed out to him that the Piatigorskys would no longer continue to pick up his hotel costs, so, reluctantly, he flew back home to Brooklyn.

9

The Candidate

DURING THE 1960S, Bobby Fischer continued his often brilliant and sometimes self-sabotaging career: He won the Monte Carlo International and ungallantly refused to pose for a photograph with His Royal Highness Prince Rainier, the tournament’s sponsor, and at a public ceremony when Princess Grace awarded him his cash prize, he rudely tore open the envelope and counted the money first before he thanked her; he led the American Olympiad team to Cuba, where he won the silver medal for his play on top board, and was more cordial to Fidel Castro, whom he presented with an autographed copy of his book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess ; and he summarily dropped out of the 1967 Interzonal in Tunisia—even though he was leading and was almost assured of first place—because of the refusal of the organizers to agree to his scheduling demands. When tracked down by a journalist at his hotel in Tunisia, he wouldn’t open the door: “Leave me in peace!” he yelled, “I have nothing to say.” He realized that by not participating in the tournament he was allowing yet another chance for the World Championship to slip from his grasp, but he was resolved no matter what the consequences: He , not the organizers, would decide when he’d play and when he wouldn’t.