One difficulty arose when Lombardy had to leave the tournament for several days and attend the World Chess Federation annual meeting as the U.S. representative, leaving Bobby without a second. Bobby had two adjournments to play and analyze by himself. He lost to Olafsson and drew with Tal.
In a pre-tournament conversation with Bent Larsen of Denmark and Fridrik Olafsson of Iceland, Lombardy reported the following remarks about his friend Bobby:
Larsen: Fischer is one baby I am going to spank.
Olafsson: Don’t be too sure. Be careful!
Larsen: Don’t worry, I can take care of myself.
Scrubbed clean at Lombardy’s behest, Bobby was dressed in a dark shirt and starched khaki pants for the first evening of play. His opponent was the stocky Oleg Neikirch of Bulgaria, one of the oldest players in the tournament (he was forty-four) and considered, by Bobby’s standards, a small-fry. Nevertheless, perhaps because of first-night board fright, Bobby underestimated his opponent but was lucky to coax a draw from Neikirch, even though Bobby had an inferior game. With tongue in cheek, Neikirch explained his draw offer: “It’s sort of embarrassing to defeat a boy. Back in Bulgaria I would be the laughing-stock of everybody.” But it would be more embarrassing to lose to a boy, clucked the scoffers. As for the New York World-Telegram, it proclaimed that Bobby’s managing to avoid a loss in his first European tournament “highlighted a noteworthy turn in chess history.”
Bobby’s play was spotty in the first several games of the tournament, as he attempted to find his chess legs. After the Neikirch game, he won one, lost one, and drew one. FISCHER OFF FORM IN DEBUT ABROAD, blared a headline in The New York Times. It wasn’t until the sixth round, at which point Bobby had barely compiled an even score, that he was tested by one of the true greats of the game, David Bronstein of the Soviet Union.
Bronstein looked like what one might picture a chess player to look like. Bald-pated, with horn-rimmed glasses, and often dressed in a black suit and white shirt, he was actually the prototype of the grandmaster character Kronsteen in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (except that Kronsteen had hair), and the game played on-screen in that film was based on a real one Bronstein had played against Spassky. But despite his mien of seriousness and inapproachability, Bronstein was friendly, animated, and liked by virtually all the other players, owing to his cordiality, immense knowledge of the game, and a certain intellectual eccentricity. He was a fiercely attacking player, but at the board he’d often seem as if in a trance. In one game he actually stared at the position for fifty minutes before making a move. On paper and through reputation, Bronstein and Smyslov, both of whom had played against Botvinnik for the World Championship, were considered the favorites at Portorož (though some contended Tal should be a favorite as well). Bronstein had tied Botvinnik in their 1951 match for the World Championship, but Botvinnik retained the title as sitting champion. The rules of the World Chess Federation required a challenger to win the match, not merely draw it, to gain the title.
Because of a lack of air-conditioning in the hall, both Fischer and Bronstein arrived in short-sleeved shirts: white for Bronstein, beige for Fischer. Fischer had publicly announced before the tournament that there might be one player who could defeat him: Bronstein. And, in fact, Bobby had diligently prepared for his opponent’s onslaughts.
Fischer’s and Bronstein’s places at the table were indicated by a small American flag on Bobby’s side and an equally small Soviet flag on the opposite side. Fischer plunged into the game with his trusted and thoroughly analyzed opening, the Ruy Lopez, instantly seizing the initiative and generating pressure in the center squares.
The game was a struggle, however, and he found himself in time trouble. It wasn’t the tactical possibilities that made him consume time, but the long, drawn-out endgame position, rife with complications. He desperately wanted to win against Bronstein for many reasons: to prove to himself that he could do it; to prove to others, especially those in the tournament, that he was capable; to demonstrate to the world that he was as great a chess player as anyone. But the clock, the clock! Time was ebbing.
To limit the time that a game of chess may take—and to establish equality between players so that, for example, one doesn’t take hours to make a move and the other only minutes—a special chess clock is used in tournaments. Actually, two clocks are utilized, one for each player. In that way players can budget their time in whatever way they wish. For example, they can take a few seconds on one move and perhaps thirty-five minutes on another—as long as all the moves are made within the period specified by the tournament organizers. In this Interzonal, the time limit was forty moves in two and a half hours and sixteen moves per hour thereafter. When a player made a move, he depressed a button on top of his clock, which stopped his device and started his opponent’s. Both players were required to keep a record of their moves to prove, if necessary, that they’d complied with the time limit.
With only seconds to spare, Bobby just barely made his fortieth move against Bronstein before his flag fell, which otherwise would have caused him to be forfeited. He played one more move, and the game was then adjourned to be resumed the next day. That evening, he and Lombardy went over the endgame position, which consisted of both Bobby and Bronstein having a rook, a bishop, and an equal number of pawns. Although this position would result in a draw in most cases, the two young American colleagues searched for hours for any possibility that Bobby could squeeze out a win when play resumed.
The next day, when Fischer and Bronstein continued the game, both men parried for twenty more moves. Bronstein lost a pawn and began to check Fischer’s king over and over again. Fischer could make no headway. The game was declared a draw through the special rule of repetition—that is, when a position comes about three times, not necessarily in succession, the game is automatically a draw.
A cynic once said that the most difficult part of success is finding someone who is happy for you. That wasn’t the case with Bobby’s draw against Bronstein. At the Marshall Chess Club, where players were analyzing the Interzonal games as they were cabled in from Portorož, there was near-delirium when word arrived of the draw. “Bronstein?!” people were saying incredulously, almost whooping, as if the Soviet player were Goliath, and Bobby as David had stood up to him piece for piece, pawn for pawn. “Bronstein!? The genius of modern chess!” The impossible had occurred: A fifteen-year-old had managed to draw against perhaps the second or third strongest player in the world. So great was the impact of that game that club members began planning a party for the returning hero, even if he hadn’t actually qualified as a Candidate yet. In their minds people began rehearsing champagne toasts. And the process of mythologizing Bobby commenced in earnest. Stories were offered of how a certain club member had once played Bobby when he was a child, or was an eyewitness when he played “The Game of the Century,” or shared a hot dog and orange drink with him at the Nedick’s stand in Herald Square.