Searching for Bobby Fischer

by Fred Waitzkin

  Jerry worried about Joshua’s chess and Josh worried about Jerry. He was a strong A player* with sweet chess tactics, but he was also a thirty-eight-year-old alcoholic. Ten years ago he had been an auto mechanic. That part of his life ended one night when he had a fight with his wife and she put five bullets in his back. Jerry said it had been his fault but never explained why. After he got out of the hospital he began living in flophouses and playing chess in the park.

  Jerry had a way of helping Josh without patronizing him. “You lost because you didn’t castle, Josh, and you’re gonna keep losing until you castle.” He always played his hardest against Josh and beat him game after game, all the while showing him that he hadn’t developed his pieces or had split his pawns so that they were vulnerable to attack, or pointing out the mates Josh had missed. When occasionally Josh beat Jerry he felt he’d accomplished something special—unless Jerry was drunk or high. Then it didn’t mean anything; Jerry would stumble all over the park and couldn’t beat a patzer.

  When Josh turned seven and began playing in a few scholastic tournaments, it made Jerry nervous. He had never been good in tournaments himself. He said it was too much pressure for a kid, and he was always relieved when the weekend children’s competitions were over and Josh was back playing in the park after school. In turn, Josh was afraid that Jerry would starve to death, and he brought food to the park almost every day for six months. He was particularly concerned on rainy nights when Jerry didn’t have the money for a room and had to sleep on a bench.

  One summer before we left for vacation, things were looking up for Jerry. He’d been on the wagon for nearly two months. Financed by the Veterans Administration, he was about to begin a six-month course as a computer repairman. He showed us the brochure; it was a new chance, he said, and he wouldn’t mess it up by starting to drink again. The V.A. was giving Jerry a set of tools worth five hundred dollars. In the afternoon after school he was going to study his manuals under the trees behind the chess tables, but maybe in the evening there would be time for a couple of games. Josh, Jerry and I all agreed that computer repair was more important than chess.

  One afternoon Jerry proudly showed his new red toolbox to Josh, and as the two of them sat on the grass, Josh tutored his friend on the multiplication table, which was part of the course requirement. At night Jerry slept on a bench with his hand slung over the toolbox so that it wouldn’t be stolen.

  When we returned to the park after the summer vacation, Josh couldn’t find Jerry, and none of the guys knew where he was. A couple of weeks later, he showed up with his face bruised and cut. He had been in the hospital and said there was something wrong with his chest. He’d been beaten up by three guys and his tools had been stolen. He was very angry. He said the cops wouldn’t help and had treated him like a criminal because he was poor and black. He said he was going to be away for a while and wouldn’t have time for chess, and he forced his copy of My System by Aron Nimzovich on Josh. He had bought a gun and said he had to do some things.

  We never saw Jerry again.

  ANOTHER CHESS HUSTLER in the park was Israel Zilber. At some fifty years of age, he was emaciated, his face so creased and weather-beaten that he could easily have passed for seventy-five. He wore a scuffed leather jacket and a naval cap decorated with a large sheriff’s badge. Each of his fingers was weighted with garish costume jewelry, and he had the look of a tattered Hell’s Angel. Zilber was an international master and one of the best in the country at blitz*—games that last anywhere from one to ten minutes. Thirty years ago, Zilber had beaten the brilliant Mikhail Tal, who would soon become world champion, for the championship of Latvia, and some of his games appear in evergreen collections of great chess games. But these days in the park, he offered chess players and tourists a choice: for a dollar he would pose for a photograph or play you a game of chess. Each game he played, no matter how powerful or pitiful the opposition, he scribbled in Russian notation on a napkin or an old envelope. At night he slept on a bench, his most valued possessions stuffed under his shirt and a few dollars rolled into a sock or an empty cigarette box.

  When Josh first played Zilber at the age of six, the master would make wonderful wild sacrifices, like Tal, his old rival, and crush my son in twelve or fourteen moves. I asked Josh if it upset him to lose every game to Zilber, and he answered, “I try to look like I don’t care, but inside I’m very angry.” Two years later, the games generally lasted for thirty or forty moves and Josh would lose in the endgame, the phase of play when there are few pieces on the board. Usually, while my son was thinking, Zilber would stare up at the trees and sing in Russian to the squirrels. But he had an eye like an eagle, never missed a trap and wagged a harsh finger if a tourist tried to snap his picture without first paying a dollar.

  One winter night during a driving snowstorm, I passed through the park and saw Zilber asleep on a bench partially sheltered by his chess table. I wondered if he would make it through the night. A few days later, as we walked through the chess corner, he was sitting alone at his table talking to the trees and taking notes. “I hope Zilber doesn’t die in the winter,” Josh said as we hurried home for dinner. “Why is there no money for such a great player?”

  Whenever I happened to run into Zilber walking with his suitcases on the street or sitting alone in the park, I offered to buy him food or to give him money, but he always shook his head relentlessly. He had beaten Tal two out of three and had no need of my nickels and dimes.

  ZILBER WAS BY far the strongest player in Washington Square, but each year the other players predicted that living outdoors in the winter would take a toll on his game. It was wishful thinking. Despite his fulminating madness and the ravages of the weather, his play remained sharp and clear, and masters throughout the city continued to come to Washington Square to practice against him. In the spring of 1986, the strongest woman player in the world, the Hungarian Susan Polgar, sixteen years old, serious and pretty in a sturdy way, came to play against the Latvian, who reeked of urine and raged at the voices in his head while he and she created brilliant games. “He’s a great player,” she said afterwards.

  Vinnie the hustler calls Zilber the Sheriff. Everyone wants to beat the Sheriff. For a month or so in the spring of 1986, a twenty-three-year-old black chess hustler was playing him nearly even, and kibitzers weren’t sure if winters on the street were finally finishing Zilber off, or if the young man’s game had taken a fantastic leap. But then the black man started doing too much crack, his game fell apart, and soon he was in jail for armed robbery; he’d had to steal to support his habit. He had learned the game on the street, and for him it wasn’t an art form, it was just a way to earn a few dollars. What a great player this young hustler might have been with the right motivation and encouragement, with a master-level chess teacher. But then, perhaps Zilber could have become U.S. champion if he hadn’t gone to pieces.

  Each spring the guys in the park look to see whose game is slipping. By the spring of 1986 people were saying that Vinnie’s game had fallen off too, but to me he still looked strong. Maybe he was hustling a few of the guys, dropping games so that he could raise the ante; with a great hustler you never know for sure. The better players in the park are always testing one another. A chess game between two park hustlers is a litmus test of a man’s worth. “Everyone wants to be the Sheriff,” says Vinnie. When Zilber is off sleeping somewhere else, Vinnie is the Sheriff, the fastest draw in the park, the one to beat.

  ONE AFTERNOON I was crossing the park when a friend of Joshua’s, a clean-cut thirty-year-old graduate student who worked long hours to put himself through school, began to play for five dollars a game against a third-rate hustler. In the evening I passed through the park again and they were still at it. Joshua’s friend, a kind, good-humored man, was chain-smoking and moving too quickly. His shirt and jacket were disheveled. The hustler was shouting at him after each move: “You’re nothing. You’re a fish.” The student was coming apart. “You’re the dog of the wor
ld.” By ten P.M. he was playing like a beginner, hanging pieces in almost every game. The two men were of approximately the same playing strength, but the hustler had convinced Joshua’s friend that he was a loser.

  At midnight they were still at it beneath a streetlight. A few kibitzers were hanging around, watching and passing a bottle of wine. It was a bad moment for the student; he wasn’t going to have the money to pay the rent. He had played so many encouraging games against my son that I felt embarrassed to be watching his humiliation, but I couldn’t leave.

  The hustler was doing very dark work. He had started this twelve-hour session with ten dollars in his pocket and would leave the table with almost seven hundred. The next day all the players would be talking about it. The hustler would go to sleep tonight in a flophouse, convinced that he could beat Zilber.

  During their last half-dozen games, the graduate student moved the pieces instantly, without thinking. His jaw was set and sometimes he shook his head. He threw the last of his month’s wages on the board as if he were trying to get rid of a part of himself that he despised.

  I never thought he would return to the park, but a few days later, he was sitting there at lunchtime with a sheepish smile on his face, watching two of the guys play a five-minute game. He asked me when Josh would be coming to the park to play with him.

  SPRING AND FALL are the best times in Washington Square. When it’s a little cool or there’s a breeze, the guys play more sharply, with renewed promise. Although they rarely look up from the board, they sometimes talk as if they are outdoorsmen.

  “I love the weather today, the breeze. It’s beautiful,” said one bald player without taking his eyes off the board. He had a winning position and wanted to savor it while his opponent, generally a stronger player and a braggart, squirmed. In point of fact, the park was shrouded in the dark gray clouds of an impending storm, and the air was thick.

  “I feel some rain,” said the stronger player, who shook a little from the chill of the storm, or perhaps from the inevitability of defeat.

  “No, you’re wrong. It’s great today. Not too hot.”

  “I tell you, Stanley, I felt a drop.”

  “Maybe, maybe, but maybe not. If it’s anything, it’s passing,” said Stanley as if he were analyzing an impenetrable Alekhine position. By now the wind was blowing about twenty miles an hour. A yachtsman would have raced for shelter, but neither player looked up.

  “I feel some rain, you fishcake,” said the stronger player, who was trying to find some final resource to salvage the win. Maybe Stanley would become distracted and lose on time.

  “I love this weather.”

  “I felt rain,” said the bully, eyes flashing over his dwindling pieces. He hadn’t noticed that the wind had blown a leaf into his thinning hair.

  “It’s only moisture off a tree,” insisted Stanley as he made the decisive move. “It isn’t rain.”

  BECAUSE JOSH WAS so young, whenever he played in the park people watched his games. He liked being on stage and concentrated better when kibitzers were standing around his table, but he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Before he began serious study, chess to him was only another game like Monopoly, Pac Man or gin rummy. But for some of his adult opponents, games against him were grim, no-win contests. An experienced adult player is expected to beat a little kid but is considered a bit of a bully for beating a child badly and can’t help feeling humiliated and ridiculous if he loses. When Josh was eight, he played a long game in the park against a short, bearded man, who scrutinized the pieces with almost desperate intensity. Josh was down a couple of pawns when he sacrificed a rook, which forced mate in three. His opponent, a master, was so upset that he looked at the position for fifteen minutes and kept repeating, “There must be a way out of this.” A week later, we ran into the master again, and when Josh said something about their game, the man looked at him blankly. “I’ve never played you,” he said to Josh in front of Jerry and a few of the other guys who had watched his defeat. Josh didn’t know what to say. I don’t believe the man was lying; he had simply erased the game from his mind.

  * The United States Chess Federation categorizes players by rating—as Class E, D, C, B, A, Expert, Master, or Senior Master. An A player has a rating between 1800 and 1999 and is among the top 17 percent of all tournament players. Numerical ratings are estimates of chess skill based on tournament results. Rating points are awarded or subtracted for winning or losing games in recognized tournaments. More points are gained for beating stronger opponents or lost for losing to weaker ones.

  * In speed chess, or blitz, each player is allotted a short time, usually one to ten minutes, on the clock. A chess clock is actually two stop clocks, mounted together. When a player moves he presses a button which stops his clock and engages his opponent’s. If either player runs out of time before resignation or checkmate, the flag on his clock falls and he loses, even if his position on the board is favorable.

  4

  BRUCE PANDOLFINI

  One afternoon as Josh was playing in the park when he was six, I noticed a tall man with an overstuffed, badly worn briefcase watching his games. He introduced himself as Bruce Pandolfini, chess teacher and manager of the Manhattan Chess Club. He was excited by Joshua’s play and with some urgency insisted that our son should have formal chess instruction. He gave me his card, and two weeks later I called and left a message on his answering machine. Pandolfini didn’t call back, even though during the next few weeks I tried to reach him several more times. This was the unlikely beginning of Joshua’s most important chess relationship.

  I think of Pandolfini as the prince of chess. He is a handsome man with curly brown hair and a generous, caring manner. He is very visible on the New York chess scene, usually in attendance at chess exhibitions, at the lectures of top international masters and at organizational meetings for citywide and national chess programs. More often than not, when a chess personality is asked about the latest Karpov-Kasparov match or about the whereabouts of Bobby Fischer or is quoted in the Times about the potential of an up-and-coming chess prodigy, it is Pandolfini who is being interviewed.

  Even when he is broke and consumed by financial concerns, Pandolfini, like a ruined aristocrat, has the carriage of success and money. In the park I’ve seen him share his meager pocket money with a hungry player. Pandolfini needs to be needed, and sometimes he gets carried away and promises too many people too much. One morning he was teaching Josh in his cramped little bedroom, where there is hardly room for Pandolfini’s lanky legs and elbows. At the end of the lesson, Josh wished plaintively that his room were a little larger. It had been an inspired lesson; all of the infinite permutations of chess seemed to fall into place during their hour and a half together. Feeling ebullient, Pandolfini answered wildly, “We can do something about that also, Tiger.”

  WHEN PANDOLFINI SHOWS up at a small local tournament, players greet him like a long-lost friend. He is unctuously received by the smiling director, who explains how special the smoky gathering of a few dozen men is: “Look who’s come all the way up from Pennsylvania for the Greater February Open,” he says, pointing Pandolfini in the direction of a heavily perspiring fellow cramped over a chessboard with his fingers jammed into his ears to block out the noise. The director is hoping that Pandolfini will mention the gala event in his popular column in Chess Life magazine.

  In private, some impoverished players speak of Pandolfini with a trace of anger as the ultimate chess hustler—an ordinary master who wheels and deals inside and outside the chess world in order to make money from the game. The unspoken implication is that one ought not to make money from chess. Many players assume that he has become wealthy from the game, which is not true. For most of his adult life, working chaotically sixty or more hours a week at fifteen or twenty different projects, Pandolfini has managed a modest living. This is no small accomplishment in a land where chess is considered an esoteric hobby—when it is considered at all—rather than an art
or a profession, and where even top grandmasters are unable to support themselves.

  In the first twenty minutes of his visit to a tournament, half a dozen players are likely to ask Pandolfini favors:

  “Bruce, can you get me any students?”

  “Bruce, can you help me find a publisher for my collected games?”

  “Pandolfini, would you see if you could get me a discount on the new Fidelity chess computer?”

  “Bruce, my last published rating in Chess Life was eight points too low. How could they do that to me? Would you check with the Federation?”

  His brown eyes soft with regal beneficence, Pandolfini says yes to everyone. He has every intention of coming through and feels glad to have been asked, but in many cases he forgets. His forgetfulness is entirely democratic: he neglects to return the phone calls of grandmasters and patzers alike. He is as likely to come late to the lesson of a movie star as to that of a telephone operator. It is a quirk of nature that this man, who can play ten simultaneous chess games blindfolded and has total recall of tens of thousands of chess positions, has such difficulty remembering appointments, publication dates and the departure times of airline flights.

  Pandolfini’s students are in love with him and gladly put up with late or broken appointments and midnight lessons in a cafeteria, on a bench in the park or on a sofa at the New School. When a lesson is going well, Bruce sometimes continues for hours, oblivious to who or what is scheduled next.

  Students who manage to get his home number call Pandolfini day and night, as if it were their right. He is polite, even if he was asleep. For several months, one little brunette who cut and curled her hair to look like his called him four or five times a day. She was a bulldog, and whether he was sleeping, giving a lesson or presiding over a board of directors meeting at the Manhattan Chess Club, she refused to hang up until he gave her a jewel of chess insight.