ADaily News New York, New York Thursday, December 26, 1963 - Page 703
Only Human-Young Wizard of Chess
At 14 Bobby Fischer won the U.S. chess championship. At 16 he decided that school was interfering with chess, so he gave up school. He's now intent on proving that man can live by chess alone.
Bobby, now 20, is defending his title for the sixth time in the national tournament under way in New York with the country's 12 top players. He's the youngest among them. Three are professional chess players, two are college professors, one is an engineer. How does he stand?
“I've won the first six of the 11 games each of us must play,” Bobby said the other day when awakened at noon in his small hotel room. “The man closest to me is Dr. Anthony Saidy with four points. He won three, lost one, drew two. Each draw counts half a point.”
Bobby's room was in complete disarray. The TV set was on the floor; its stand was near the bed with a chess board and chess men on it. He washed and dressed quickly, suddenly remembered he hadn't shaved. So he shaved— with his shirt and tie on.
Takings Are Meager
Making a living only at chess is not simple. Tournaments are infrequent and prizes small. First prize for the U.S. championship is $2,000.
“But there's a $100 prize for brilliancy and another $100 for the best game played,” Bobby said.
He's a gangling 6 feet, 2, weighs 185, tolerates people and their conversation if they include chess. Otherwise he's shy or just clams up. His drive has always been a burning urge to win. At 14, when he was to make his first chess trip to Europe and had no money for it, he told me, “Oh, I'll get there. If I have to swim, I'll get there.”
Since then he's been to Europe seven times, to South America three times, and met and defeated some of the world's best chess champs.
Born in Chicago, raised in Brooklyn, Bobby was about 2 when his parents were divorced.
Home in Brooklyn
“My mother now lives in London,” Bobby said. “She remarried a couple of years ago, to a plumber.”
Bobby's home is the three-room Brooklyn apartment he once shared with his mother and sister. His sister, who also was a nurse and is now married, first taught Bobby chess when he was 6.
At 10 he was in his first tournament, ended up fifth. An observer, Carmine Nigro, who worked for a broker and loved chess, took Bobby under his win and taught him for 18 months. At 13 he was U.S. junior champion and got into a five-way tie for the senior title. The next year, 1957, he took it, and from then on won it every year except in 1961, when he didn't play.
He's played Tigran Petrosian, whom the Russians call the world champ, 11 times. Petrosian won three times, Bobby once and they drew seven times.
“I think I can take him now in a set match,” Bobby said. “Like whoever wins 10 games first, where draws don't count. Otherwise, if a guy wins one, he sits on it and goes for a draw.”
Until last year, his big goal in life was to win the world's chess crown. But he lost interest when he discovered that the Russians invariably end up playing for the title among themselves. In an eight-man tournament in 1962 there were five Russians.
“So they sew it up even before they begin,” Bobby said.
Hunts New Openings
It's a rare day when Bobby doesn't look at a chess board. He's always hunting for a new opening that will rock an opponent. If he devises one, he tries to find flaws in it, build a successful defense against it and checks a few dozen books and magazines to see if it's been used before. He subscribes to 10 chess magazines, picks up another five. They're in English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian.
“No, I don't speak all those languages,” he said. “But chess has a limited vocabulary. Maybe 100 words. So I learned them and have no trouble following most foreign books and magazines.”
And if you wonder what is the root of his overriding passion for chess, he says without any false modesty:
“I'm good at it. Why should I do something at which I'd be an also ran?”
