Daily News New York, New York Sunday, September 26, 1971 - Page 82
He Hopes to Beat The Russians At Their Own Game by Robert Byrne. Buenos Aires.
Robert Byrne, author of this article, is a noted chess writer who has long been a friend and chess foe of Bobby Fischer. Byrne is one of the world's 60 international chess grandmasters, the highest rank.
The Russians are worrying. One of their baubles is, apparently, in the process of being taken from them. To be exact, this treasure is the world chess championship.
The man likely to best the Soviets at their own game is Robert J. Fischer of Brooklyn. Now 28, Fischer is that rare genius, a celebrated child prodigy who grew up to realize his brilliant boyhood promise.
Single-minded of matchless talent, Bobby Fischer will begin playing a 12-game match here Thursday in a theater crowded with chess fans from all over the world. His opponent will be the Russian star Tigran Petrosian.
Their contest may stretch over the next four weeks. Its outcome will determine who is to meet Boris Spassky, current titleholder and another Russian, for the championship.
If Fischer finally triumphs over Spassky, he will be breaking a long-standing Soviet monopoly.
For 23 years, world chess supremacy has been the exclusive province of USSR superstars. Ever since Mikhail Botvinnik brought the world crown to Moscow by decisively winning the six-sided match-tournament in The Hague in 1948, he and the team of Vassily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Petrosian and Spassky have tipped it back and forth without letting the title outside the USSR.
And why not? Chess is Russia's national sport.. Chess players are subsidized there. They are as much heroes as Tom Seaver and Joe Namath are in the U.S.
Nevertheless, everyone, including the Russians, expects Fischer to win.
Fischer not only is the leading contender but he is a contender the like of which has never been seen before.
In May, when the current series of elimination matches began, those in the know favored Fischer to defeat his first-round opponent, the Soviet's Mark Taimanov, by a close 5½-4½.
No one foresaw Bobby's utter demolition of the Russian grandmaster by six straight wins.
Never before in top-flight chess had there been such a lop-sided victory.. In baseball, Fischer's performance would have equaled pitching six consecutive no-hitters. Surely such marvelous success — which seemed a curiosity, even a freak — could never be repeated, not even by such a genius as Bobby.
But then came the August quarter-final match with Denmark's Bent Larsen, who with characteristic aplomb had announced that he was to be the next world champion.
Once again Bobby brought the miracle to pass, annihilating Larsen by another “impossible” 6-0, doubly flabbergasting the chess world and reducing even his most rabid fans to speechless amazement.
The small, select group of serious contenders for the world championship were always supposed to be separated by only the most minute differences in their skills. When Botvinnik held the world crown, he used to refer to himself as “first among equals.” But neither he nor any of the other “equals” ever came close to shutting out an opponent of Larsen's gigantic stature.
So, in light of Fischer's virtuoso display, is it possible that a fairly evenly matched opponent can no longer be found? The answer will come in the confrontation with Petrosian, then, hopefully, with Spassky.
To the fray, Fischer brings extraordinary equipment. In a game where mistakes are commonplace over the grueling, five-hour playing periods, Bobby makes hardly any. In a game in which opponents spend months of sleepless nights preparing openings for use against each other, there have been no surprises for him. Only devastating shocks for his victims.
For such achievements, it is necessary to live chess. That is what Bobby does. He continually analyzes chess openings, on planes, in trains, through dinner and at the ping pong table (a favorite place for him to train for chess matches).
Most of the deadly serious, final preparation he does while holed up like a recluse in a hotel room.
All professional chess players lead nomadic lives. But unlike others, Fischer does not even pretend to have a permanent address, let alone a home.
The only way he can be reached is through the U.S. Chess Federation offices in Newburgh, N.Y., which he visits from time to time to pick up the reams of technical magazines he receives from the U.S. and abroad.
To insure that he can play every game through 40 moves without losing concentration and committing errors in the tense, fatiguing last hour, the rangy 6-foot-2 Fischer keeps in top physical condition. For weeks he has been in training like an athlete for the forth-coming match with Petrosian. He got in shape swimming and playing tennis.
For indispensable escape from the relentless tension of play, Bobby will continue his vigorous sports program while in Argentina. Bobby also finds his transistor radio vital for relaxation. He has catholic tastes, unwinding between rounds with soul, rock, country and other varieties of music.
His musical interests do have limits, though. Once, when we were teammates in a tournament, I dragged him off to the opera in Leipzig, East Germany, where he promptly dozed off.
Fischer woke up once. In mid-performance of “Cavalleria Rusticana,” he whispered to me, “That's not a bad tune,” then went back to catching up on his sleep.
I first met Bobby at the U.S. Open in 1957 when he was 14 and a gangling sophomore at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School when he wasn't trouncing all comers at chess.
At the Open, my brother Donald said, “Watch out for that kid. He's really great.”
I took that with the seriousness of a friend of mine whom I warned about hot mustard. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck before he could catch his breath.
And Bobby, in an old gray sweater and sneakers, lit in to me before I could catch mine. I fought for my life—and salvaged a draw.
In that same year, Fischer began the first of his seven sweeps of the U.S. championships. There have been other prodigies—it's no trick for even an alert 6 year old to learn chess—but to reach the grandmaster level at 14 is something else.
In international tournaments, Bobby quickly got a reputation for complaints. They were directed at the lighting, at noise from spectators, at photographers' flashbulbs.
He felt, in other words, that a bumpy infield might be okay for a crummy shortstop. But for a genius such as he admitted himself to be, playing conditions must be perfect, without distractions.
Grandmasters agreed and admired his spunk. But, when Fischer went on to insist that telefoto lenses and sketch pads be banned from the playing room, he was called cantankerous.
In the playing room, Bobby refuses to whisper with anyone. This is partly because he doesn't want to distract anyone, partly to avoid any suspicion of collusion.
Though solicitous of his opponents—except when pushing them ruthlessly on the chessboard—he sometimes is criticized for wrestling with his favorite overstuffed Dagwood sandwiches in mid-game.
Already the U.S. champion in 1957, Bobby entered his first formal foreign competition in Portoroz, Yugoslavia, the next year. There he won the grandmaster title on his first try, an astonishing achievement.
Along the line, Bobby, who had spurned neckties and all garments except jeans and tee shirts, developed liking for clothing. He began advising me as to the best English, Yugoslav and Hong Kong tailors in an attempt to rescue me from what he considered Brooks Brothers stodginess.
Once, when we were catching a plane from Warsaw, he suggested that we combine our luggage so that he could avoid excess baggage charges. I travel light, so I agreed.
We were, nonetheless, overweight. The reason was disclosed when we reached destination and unpacked. From the suitcases of the new-fledged fashion plate came no less than 22 pairs of shoes — each containing its own custom-designed pair of shoe trees.
In Tigran Petrosian, Fischer will find a worthy opponent, cool and wily. An Armenian, Petrosian's rule of play is: “Never kick a man unless he's down.”
To get his opponent down, Petrosian, a former world champion, will devote hours, days or weekends to stalking.
The danger for Bobby is that the longer Petrosian can hold Fischer to draws, the greater the chance that the American star might become impatient and try something rash. No one else has the fantastic zeal for winning that Bobby Fischer has.
Still, I'm betting on Bobby to win by 6½-4½.
Caption:Bobby Fischer, Brooklyn's gift to the world of international chess, tells defeated Bent Larsen of Denmark how he was able to shut him out last month. Fischer hopes to wrest world championship from Russians in Buenos Aires.
Fischer was just an eighth grader when he burst on an unprepared chess world. The author of this article managed to salvage a draw with him in the U.S. Open in 1957, the year he began first of a series of seven sweeps of the U.S. championships.
