Bobby Fischer

I was in Madrid, on my way to Gibraltar, deciding whether to buy an English newspaper. Then I noticed the Guardian headline, ‘Bobby Fischer Obituary’. It had been known for some time that he was gravely ill, so it came as no surprise. But I was surprised at the big effect it had on me. By now there will have been obituaries and many stories in the chess and international chess and on TV. But he remains the person I have known personally who is best known to the general public. Thus, herewith some personal comments.

I lived in New York 1963-5 and first met Bobby at Manhattan Chess Club. Spotting my English accent, he promptly showed us a game where he had beaten that English fish, Bob Wade. Much later Bob was to draw with him and later still helped with his preparation for the 1972 match against Spassky. That was before the days of ChessBase and finding all of Boris’s games was no mean feat.

It is normal to play blitz for money in New York and later I played Bobby at five minutes each. Thus I could say we played on even terms. But he gave me 10/1 money odds. That is, for each game he won, he collected $1 and each game I won, I got $10. This irritated me a little. He held me in high regard because he admired a suit I used to wear. But he gave Asa Hoffman, a better player than me, 20/1. You can find two of the games we played on ChessBase, one of which he won and one I drew (I mucked up a won king and pawn endgame). He won all the other seven. It makes me a rather sad case that, even more than 40 years later, my best-known game is a blitz one. The first session I managed to equalise from the opening with the white pieces; it was never any contest when I had black. The second session he slaughtered me right from the opening, even when I had white. He had learnt more from the first session than me!

We were all young men in New York then and often used to eat in Jewish delicatessens together. That was hardly surprising, most of us would have been Jewish and it was never an issue. Thus his later utterly rebarbative utterances about Jews came as a huge disappointment to me. We often also used to analyse together. But Bobby was very careful never to offer his opinions. That was somewhat flattering; possibly he thought we were good enough to be serious threats.

We next met up in Belgrade in 1970 at the USSR v Rest of the World Match, when Bobby astonished me by ceding Board 1 to Bent Larsen. Davis Levy and he analysed the Marshall together in their heads. I kept on saying, “Wouldn’t it be better with a board”, but to no avail. Bobby adjourned his second game against Petrosian and sat analysing it by himself at the dinner table. I warded off anybody who wanted to interrupt him, after all what are friends for? After he had satisfied himself, he joined us at the table and went over the game up to move 40. Later Larry Evans asked whether he wanted to discuss the adjourned position. “No,” Bobby said vehemently. “Then people will say Evans won the game, not me.” We looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and went to the casino, leaving Bobby to it.

The only other time I met him was in Reykjavik during the great match. But he had no time for more than a brief greeting. Instead I had to make do with playing blitz with Bill Lombardy, his second.

After his poisonous diatribes, I would not have wanted to renew our acquaintanceship, although I realised he was never ‘normal’ and was prepared to make concessions. I am sure he was not ‘mad’ in the time I knew him and cannot comment about his later life. I am no expert, but I suspect he had Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism of which I had never even heard until 2002.

Unless you were a chessplayer in 1972, you cannot really appreciate the effect the publicity surrounding the match had. There is a recent phenomenon in my life, the boom in the interest in poker, which may similarly now be past its peak. To give you an idea, when I started the Islington Open in 1965, the first in Europe, there were 24 entries. By 1971 this had risen to nearly 500. The Evening Standard sponsored the event in 1972. “How many entrants do you think we’ll get?” Leonard Barden asked me. 800 was my prediction. A week before the event I instructed Leonard not to continue to mention that it was not too late to enter. “Why not?” he enquired. “Because I don’t know whether we have room for more players.” In the end 1204 took part and the following year 1508. That was the peak and eventually the event, now no longer sponsored, dwindled down and became financially unsustainable below 100 players.

It is clear that England benefited at the top more from the boom in chess than any other chess federation. We advanced to being the second strongest team in the world after the USSR in the 1980s. Our juniors in this period became the envy of the world. If we knew what the magic was, we could seek to repeat the effect.

I doubt any of us would have been connected with chess in quite the same way had it not been for Bobby Fischer. He lives on in my memory and his games will live on for all time. Yes, it is sad that he somewhat wasted his prodigious talent and probably wasn’t happy for most of his life. But let us instead reflect on the glory days.

Stewart Reuben 21.1.2008