AEl Paso Herald-Post El Paso, Texas Friday, October 29, 1971 - Page 10
Bobby From Brooklyn
His fame may not yet compare with that of Willie Mays or Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, but the man of the hour in the eyes of 60 million chess players around the world is a 28-year-old high school dropout from Brooklyn named Bobby Fischer.
Fischer, who won his first American title at 14, has earned the right to challenge Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union next spring for the world championship of chess.
He did it by disposing of grandmasters like Denmark's Bent Larsen and Russia's Mark Taimanov and Tigran Petrosian as though they were helpless black pawns trapped in an onslaught of angry white knights.
It may come as a surprise to those who consider chess a pastime for monks and hermits, but there is no game played with such fierce determination and growing popularity in so many countries of the world.
In the Soviet Union, for example, there are four million registered chess players. Even in the United States there now are 25,000 chess federation members, many of them youngsters attracted by the exploits of Bobby Fischer.
Too long dominated by Russians, it is a game (as played by experts) that requires the kind of nerve and stamina associated with brain surgery or tournament golf.
No American has won—or even been in the finals—since world championship matches first began on an organized basis in 1948.
But there are those who say that 1972 will be different, that no one, not even a Boris Spassky, can beat Bobby Fischer at chess.
