by Frank Brady
Certainly, Bobby didn’t help himself with a postcard he sent to Collins: “I don’t like Russian hospitality and the people themselves. It seems they don’t like me either.” Before the postcard was delivered to New York, it was read by Russian censors, and Bobby’s intemperate response found its way into the Soviet press. Fischer’s request for an extended visa was denied, and what would be his lifelong, not-so-private war with the Soviet Union had commenced.
Bobby’s situation aside, it was becoming difficult at that time for any United States citizen to remain in Moscow. In mid-July, one hundred thousand irate Soviet citizens, inflamed by the government-controlled press, besieged the American embassy on Tchaikovsky Street, demanding that the United States withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Windows were broken, and outside the building an effigy of President Eisenhower was burned.
The situation was serious enough that Gerhardt Fischer, Bobby’s father of record, feared Joan and Bobby might be in great danger. Using his South American name of Gerardo Fischer, he wrote in German to Regina from Chile voicing his worries. He fretted that the children might have been kidnapped because no one had heard from them. He asked Regina what she was going to do to get Joan and Bobby out of the country. He said that if he didn’t hear soon, he’d try to do what he could, but he also added—somewhat mysteriously—that he didn’t want to get into trouble himself.
Just as Regina was beginning to panic, she received a cable from the Yugoslavian chess officials stating that they would not only receive Bobby and Joan as early guests before the Interzonal, but they’d also set up training matches for Bobby with top players. For her part, Joan Fischer, who’d gotten into some spats with her brother over his behavior while in Moscow, accompanied him to Belgrade but left after two days to spend the rest of the summer with friends in England. Fifteen-year-old Bobby was, thus, left to fend for himself—but not for long. He was surrounded by chess officials, players, journalists, and the merely curious, and within hours of touching down in Yugoslavia he was at the board playing, analyzing, and talking chess.
Bobby’s training match opponent in his first formal game on European soil was Milan Matulovic, a twenty-three-year-old master who would become infamous in the chess world for sometimes touching a piece, moving it, and then—realizing it was either a blunder or a weak move—returning the piece to its original square, saying, “J’adoube,” or “I adjust,” and moving it to another square or moving another piece altogether. The “j’adoube” statement is the customary announcement when a player wishes to center or adjust one of his or his opponent’s pieces, but according to the Laws of Chess this must be done before touching the piece, or the mover risks yielding a forfeit. French players would often say, “Pièce touchée, pièce jouée” (“if you touch a piece, you move it”). Matulovic “j’adoubed” his pieces after the fact so often that years later he earned the nickname “J’adoubovic.” In contrast, Bobby was strictly observant of this rule and said “j’adoube” first whenever he touched a piece to straighten it. Once he was even heard to say it, with a smile on his face, when he casually jostled someone at a tournament.
In his first encounter with Matulovic, Bobby ignored the Yugoslav’s mischievous disregard of the rules and lost the game. So with three games left to play, Bobby told Matulovic he’d no longer accept any bogus “j’adoubes.” Bobby won the second game, drew the third game, and won the fourth, and therefore won the match at 2½–1½. Both of Bobby’s wins were hard fought and went to fifty moves before his opponent resigned. Matulovic may have been a trickster, but he was also one of his country’s finest players, not easily defeated. Bobby felt that this victory was significant enough to write to Collins about.
Bobby then played one of the most colorful Yugoslavian masters, Dragoljub Janosevic, a heavy drinker, womanizer, and poker player, and more of a Damon Runyon character than a stereotypical chess player. He was a forceful and attacking opponent, but in a two-game match, Bobby held his own and drew both games.
Bobby cracked open his suitcase, weighed down with about fifty pounds of books and chess magazines, and prepared for the tournament to come, going over lines and variations, and analyzing the tactics of the opponents he’d be facing. Of the twenty players he was to meet, he’d competed against only three: Benko, Sherwin, and Petrosian. But the other seventeen were no strangers. For years he’d been studying the nuances of their games: their styles, opening preferences, strengths and weaknesses. For example, he knew how Fridrik Olafsson almost always drifted into time trouble and so might not play the end game so precisely; how Bent Larsen could be counted on to trot out a forgotten opening from long ago as a surprise. These unexpected jolts from Larsen were difficult to prepare for, but Bobby’s continuous study of the old masters left him relatively forearmed. There wasn’t one player in the upcoming Interzonal that Bobby wasn’t somewhat prepared to meet.
For reference, there was his talismanic Lipnitsky on which to rely, and the latest edition of Modern Chess Openings, which had thousands of games and variations. He confronted the board in the evenings after dinner, with his transistor radio playing whatever kind of music he could tune in to, and he usually continued his study until dawn, falling asleep as it became light. He rarely woke until sometime in the early afternoon. The only times he left the hotel were to play the two matches and once when a good friend, Edmar Mednis (a young American player en route to another tournament and only in the city for one day), visited him and convinced him to take a long walk through several of Belgrade’s parks.
Moving from the historic and somewhat somber city of Belgrade to Yugoslavia’s resort town of Portorož, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, to play in the Interzonal didn’t appear to have much effect on Bobby. He seemed to be uninterested in the beach that was just steps away from the hotel, or the outdoor cafes that faced the Gulf of Trieste and played host to both locals and tourists, who’d gather in the evenings for al fresco dining and a view of the stunning sunset. During the month that he played in the tournament, Bobby was rarely seen outside of the hotel: He spent most of the time holed up in his room, weighing strategy and tactics.
Twenty-one players from a dozen countries had qualified to play in this march, toward an opportunity to earn a place at the next plateau. The six players with the highest scores would then be joined by two top players who were seeded into the ultimate play-off, the Candidates (also known as the Challengers) tournament. The winner would then play a match with the reigning World Champion, Mikhail Botvinnik, to seek the title. Although the Interzonal was Bobby’s first international tournament, he wasn’t alone in this status; twenty-two-year-old Mikhail Tal of Riga, who’d twice won the USSR championship, was also playing in his first international. Some pundits, not just from the Soviet Union, were forecasting Tal to be the winner. Top players in the United States predicted that Bobby wouldn’t qualify for a place in the Candidates this time. He was just too young to conquer enough of the tournament veterans—each with years of experience in international competition.
Folke Rogard, the Swedish president of the World Chess Federation, welcomed the players, their seconds and trainers at the formal opening ceremonies, saying, “It is sufficient evidence of the widespread popularity of the game of chess in the last few decades and the way the strength of play has grown in pace with it, that the Interzonal tournament at Portorož can compare in respect of strength of play with many of the grand tournaments which we recall from an earlier period.”
Bobby, though, seemed to feel that he’d make short work of his competitors. He predicted that he’d wind up as one of the Candidates and that his method of qualification would be to beat all of the “small-fry” or “patzers” and then draw with all of the top players. The flaw in this plan was that there were really no feeble players in the tournament; they were all, if not world class, then at least of national or international renown.
Bobby’s aide or so-called second at the tournament was his close friend and fellow Jack Collins student William L
ombardy, a portly twenty-year-old seminarian who was studying to become a Roman Catholic priest. Lombardy had captured the World Junior Championship by winning every game, and he was a formidable player. He was so solid in his ability, so sure of himself on the board, that Fischer once described him as playing “like a house.” At that time in the United States, Lombardy was in ability only slightly behind Fischer himself.
In chess, a second’s job is to be an attendant, advisor, advocate, and majordomo for the player he serves. Many seconds pay particular attention to the openings of the other players and attempt to scout out any weaknesses. They then report back, round by round. Perhaps the most important role for a second is analyzing adjourned positions jointly with the player. Sometimes this means all-night sessions, so that the player has a variety of tactics to employ when play is resumed the next day. Soviet players were traditionally serviced by a team of seconds, each performing an assigned task. For example, there could be an endgame specialist, an opening theoretician, a physical trainer, a “go-for,” and sometimes a psychologist.
Acting and looking older, and being highly intelligent, Lombardy treated Bobby in a parental and nurturing way. From Portorož he wrote to Regina of his charge: “Bobby brushes his teeth daily but has more difficulty in taking a bath.” Lombardy also conveyed his initial impressions of Portorož:
If you have never seen a great international tournament such as the one in Portorož, then you might be interested in hearing something about this great chess classic. Extraordinary things happen in connection with such an event that do not exactly have anything to do with tournament itself. The Portorož tourney is of a type that should make for interesting and exciting chess as only six are permitted to go to the World Championship Challengers Tournament. It seems, however, to work au contraire. A great tension hangs overhead. The players are nervous, and many get into extreme time pressure. As a result, the games have not been especially brilliant for a tournament of this class.
Regina wrote to Joan that she was worried Lombardy might be damning Bobby with faint praise. “He’s good at that,” she wrote. But there was no evidence that Lombardy, known for his acerbic tongue, was antagonistic toward Bobby. On the contrary, the older player always showed the younger one affection and respect, often sending him friendly little notes and asides. The two young men shared almost all of the major holidays together, usually at the Collins home. James T. Sherwin, the other American in the Interzonal, recalled that Lombardy was supposed to be his second as well. “Bobby really didn’t need Lombardy since their styles were so dissimilar. Lombardy was an enormously gifted, intuitive positional player but not a well-prepared player like Bobby. Bobby’s strength was the inexorability of his tactics.”
One difficulty arose when Lombardy had to leave the tournament for several days and attend the World Chess Federation annual meeting as the U.S. representative, leaving Bobby without a second. Bobby had two adjournments to play and analyze by himself. He lost to Olafsson and drew with Tal.
In a pre-tournament conversation with Bent Larsen of Denmark and Fridrik Olafsson of Iceland, Lombardy reported the following remarks about his friend Bobby:
Larsen: Fischer is one baby I am going to spank.
Olafsson: Don’t be too sure. Be careful!
Larsen: Don’t worry, I can take care of myself.
Scrubbed clean at Lombardy’s behest, Bobby was dressed in a dark shirt and starched khaki pants for the first evening of play. His opponent was the stocky Oleg Neikirch of Bulgaria, one of the oldest players in the tournament (he was forty-four) and considered, by Bobby’s standards, a small-fry. Nevertheless, perhaps because of first-night board fright, Bobby underestimated his opponent but was lucky to coax a draw from Neikirch, even though Bobby had an inferior game. With tongue in cheek, Neikirch explained his draw offer: “It’s sort of embarrassing to defeat a boy. Back in Bulgaria I would be the laughing-stock of everybody.” But it would be more embarrassing to lose to a boy, clucked the scoffers. As for the New York World-Telegram, it proclaimed that Bobby’s managing to avoid a loss in his first European tournament “highlighted a noteworthy turn in chess history.”
Bobby’s play was spotty in the first several games of the tournament, as he attempted to find his chess legs. After the Neikirch game, he won one, lost one, and drew one. FISCHER OFF FORM IN DEBUT ABROAD, blared a headline in The New York Times. It wasn’t until the sixth round, at which point Bobby had barely compiled an even score, that he was tested by one of the true greats of the game, David Bronstein of the Soviet Union.
Bronstein looked like what one might picture a chess player to look like. Bald-pated, with horn-rimmed glasses, and often dressed in a black suit and white shirt, he was actually the prototype of the grandmaster character Kronsteen in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (except that Kronsteen had hair), and the game played on-screen in that film was based on a real one Bronstein had played against Spassky. But despite his mien of seriousness and inapproachability, Bronstein was friendly, animated, and liked by virtually all the other players, owing to his cordiality, immense knowledge of the game, and a certain intellectual eccentricity. He was a fiercely attacking player, but at the board he’d often seem as if in a trance. In one game he actually stared at the position for fifty minutes before making a move. On paper and through reputation, Bronstein and Smyslov, both of whom had played against Botvinnik for the World Championship, were considered the favorites at Portorož (though some contended Tal should be a favorite as well). Bronstein had tied Botvinnik in their 1951 match for the World Championship, but Botvinnik retained the title as sitting champion. The rules of the World Chess Federation required a challenger to win the match, not merely draw it, to gain the title.
Because of a lack of air-conditioning in the hall, both Fischer and Bronstein arrived in short-sleeved shirts: white for Bronstein, beige for Fischer. Fischer had publicly announced before the tournament that there might be one player who could defeat him: Bronstein. And, in fact, Bobby had diligently prepared for his opponent’s onslaughts.
Fischer’s and Bronstein’s places at the table were indicated by a small American flag on Bobby’s side and an equally small Soviet flag on the opposite side. Fischer plunged into the game with his trusted and thoroughly analyzed opening, the Ruy Lopez, instantly seizing the initiative and generating pressure in the center squares.
The game was a struggle, however, and he found himself in time trouble. It wasn’t the tactical possibilities that made him consume time, but the long, drawn-out endgame position, rife with complications. He desperately wanted to win against Bronstein for many reasons: to prove to himself that he could do it; to prove to others, especially those in the tournament, that he was capable; to demonstrate to the world that he was as great a chess player as anyone. But the clock, the clock! Time was ebbing.
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 havi
ng 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.