Buschke’s lair was no larger than a small bedroom. It smelled of mold, was redolent of antique paper and bindings, and was permeated with a perennial gray cloud from Buschke’s cigar. Used chess books were everywhere, hidden in every conceivable crevice, many stacked from floor to ceiling or on top of chairs, or weighing down and bending the shelves. Some were haphazardly strewn across the floor; none seemed to be in thematic order. If a customer questioned the proprietor about a book’s price being too high, he had the perverse habit of saying, “Oh, I’m sorry,” erasing the price that had been penciled in, and autocratically adding a new one that was higher!
Bobby pored over Buschke’s holdings for hours, looking for that one book, that one magazine, that one luminous game that might lead him to enlightenment. And he bought some books that were many decades old, such as Rudolf von Bilguer’s Handbuch and Wilhelm Steinitz’s Modern Chess Instructor. The serendipity of finding a book he hadn’t known about was delicious, as was the pleasure of discovering the expected—a book he knew he wanted if only he could find it in Buschke’s labyrinth.
Bobby’s funds were meager, but the good doctor would often give him a discount price, a policy he shared with absolutely no one else. When Bobby won the U.S. Championship, Buschke gave him a $100 gift certificate, and he took months to select his gift books, picking nothing but the best.
From Buschke’s, Bobby would sprint around the corner to the University Place Book Shop, just a pawn’s throw away. The store had a chess collection—at prices lower than Buschke’s—combined with a specialization in Caribbean and radical literature. It was at that store that Bobby met a short man named Archie Waters, who wasn’t only a chess player but also the World Champion of a variation of draughts called Spanish Pool Checkers, played for money in Harlem and other urban neighborhoods. Waters, a journalist by profession, had written two books on the variation, both of which he presented to Bobby—eventually, he’d teach the boy the intricacies of the game and become a lifelong friend. Bobby obligingly studied Waters’s books and other checkers books, but he never entered a tournament. He enjoyed checkers but found it far less of a challenge than chess. The only thing the two games had in common, he said, was the board of light and dark squares.
Within the chess world, Bobby at fourteen was something of a celebrity, and the general media were also finding his anomalous background good copy for their publications: a poor kid from Brooklyn who seemed interested only in chess, carelessly—or certainly, casually—dressed, talking in monosyllables, and beating the most renowned adepts of the day. Each story generated more publicity, and Regina, while conflicted about her son’s prospects, tried to help Bobby by capitalizing on the attention. Her oft-quoted statement that she’d tried everything she could to discourage her son from playing chess “but it was hopeless” had been blurted out in an offhand moment in an attempt to deflect the blame she was receiving for not broadening him. The truth is, she knew that Bobby’s self-chosen raison d’être was to become the world’s best at chess, and like any mother wanting her child to achieve his dreams, she supported him, ultimately becoming his pro bono press agent, advocate, and manager.
From that point forward, there wasn’t a tournament Bobby played in or an exhibition he conducted that wasn’t pre-ballyhooed by a press release Regina sent to the media. She also compiled the addresses and telephone numbers of the major radio and television stations, newspapers, and magazines in New York City, and if her press release didn’t work in generating coverage, she called, wrote personal letters, or—like a true stage mother—visited the newsrooms to promote her son. I. A. Horowitz, the editor of Chess Review, claimed that she was a “pain in the neck” for always appealing to him for more publicity for Bobby. She even tried to get on various radio and television quiz shows herself, hoping to bring home some money for being a successful contestant. She was pre-interviewed for television quiz shows such as Top Dollar and Lucky Partners, but despite her high intelligence and erudition she was never chosen.
That Regina was apt to put Bobby’s interests above her own and, out of love, signed on to Bobby’s dream of chess dominance is hinted in a letter she wrote back when her son had been vacillating between attending the Hastings Christmas Tournament and playing for the U.S. Championship. To Maurice Kasper, president of the American Chess Foundation, she wrote: “I hope Bobby will become a great chess champion some day because he loves chess more than anything else.”
During tournaments, either in the United States or abroad, she’d often send Bobby letters, cables, and telegrams of encouragement and advice, such as: “I see you are 1½ so far after two rounds, which is terrific. Keep it up but don’t wear yourself down at it. Swim, nap.”
Eventually, through Regina’s persistence, Bobby received an invitation to be a possible contestant on the most popular show on television, The $64,000 Question. The idea was that he’d be answering questions about chess. Several other players were also invited to audition for the proposed show, which would present questions that would focus on the history and lore of the game. Fourteen-year-old Bobby showed up at CBS’s Television Studio 52, garbed in his characteristic corduroy pants and flannel shirt buttoned at the collar and displaying an attitude that was one part assurance and one part skepticism.
The way the show worked was that contestants would choose a category, such as movies, opera, baseball, etc., and answer questions that would become exponentially more difficult and ultimately more valuable. The first correct answer was worth $2, then $4, then $8, doubling week after week until the sum of $64,000 was reached, if ever. If a contestant reached the $8,000 plateau and failed to answer that question correctly, he or she was given a new Cadillac as a consolation prize, worth about $5,000 at that time.
The $64,000 Question was so popular that even President Eisenhower watched it every week, telling his staff not to disturb him during its time slot. On the Tuesday nights when the show was broadcast, crime rates fell, and attendance at movie theaters and restaurants dropped. It seemed as if all of America was watching the show, and successful contestants were becoming celebrities in their own right. If chess were chosen as a category for the show, the result could greatly promote the game to the public. The chess fraternity, at least in New York, was all aquiver over the possibility.
Regina Fischer was also atypically giddy about Bobby’s prospects, and Bobby, for his part, was excited about using his immense knowledge of the game and the possibility of going all the way, emerging with $64,000 (equivalent to about a half million dollars in today’s wealth), thereby solving the family’s financial woes.
In the audition, everything went well at first. Bobby correctly answered question after question, until he was asked in what tournaments Yates defeated Alekhine. Bobby thought for a long while, then told his interrogator that it was a trick question, because Yates had never defeated Alekhine.
Surprised because Bobby’s answers had been unerringly correct up to that point, the quiz show representative told the boy that Yates had beaten Alekhine in two tournaments: in Hastings in 1922, and in Carlsbad the following year. Bobby was furious, unwilling to admit that he was mistaken.
Yates did defeat Alekhine in those tournaments. Nonetheless, it was not as a result of Bobby’s peevishness or slip of the mind that the producers decided against initiating a chess-devoted category segment. The idea died because of the arcane nature of the game. Ultimately, the producers concluded that there just weren’t enough people interested in chess to maintain a large enough viewing audience.