Unfortunately, though the exhibition did garner coverage in local newspapers, not one story mentioned the reason for the event: to bring attention to the American team’s financial straits. But if the State Department and American chess organizations couldn’t help, Regina Fischer thought she could. Probing into the activities of the American Chess Foundation, she demonstrated that some players (such as Reshevsky) received support while others (such as Bobby) did not. A one-woman publicity machine, she sent out indignant press releases, as well as letters to the government demanding a public accounting.
Although Bobby desperately wanted to go to Leipzig to play in his first Olympics, he began to seethe over his mother’s interference, and on at least one occasion he openly took her to task when she made a public appearance at a chess event. She felt she was helping her son; he felt she was simply being a pushy stage mother.
While picketing the foundation’s offices, Regina caught the attention of Ammon Hennacy, a pacifist, anarchist, social activist, and associate editor of the libertarian newspaper the Catholic Worker. He suggested that Regina undertake a hunger strike for chess. She did so for six days and garnered yet more publicity. Hennacy also talked her into joining the longest peace march in history, from San Francisco to Moscow, and she agreed. While on the march she met Cyril Pustan, an Englishman who was a high school teacher and journeyman plumber. Among other areas of interest, their political beliefs and religion—both were Jewish—meshed perfectly, and eventually they married and settled in England.
When, ultimately, Bobby walked into the lobby of the Astoria Hotel in Leipzig, he was greeted by a man who resembled a younger and handsomer Groucho Marx: Isaac Kashdan, the United States team captain. Kashdan and Bobby had never met before, but the former was a legend in the chess world. An international grandmaster, he was one of America’s strongest players in the late 1920s and 1930s, when he played in five chess Olympics, winning a number of medals. Having been warned that Bobby was “hard to handle,” Kashdan was concerned that the young man might not be a compliant team member.
Bobby may have sensed the team captain’s wariness, because he turned the conversation to Kashdan’s chess career; the teenager not only knew of the older man’s reputation, he was also familiar with many of his past games. Kashdan responded to Bobby’s overture and later commented: “I had no real problem with him. All he wants to do is to play chess. He is a tremendous player.” Although separated in age by almost four decades, the two players became relatively close and remained so for years.
One of the highlights of the Olympics came when the United States faced the USSR and Bobby was slated to play Mikhail Tal, then the World Champion. Fischer and Tal met in the fifth round. Before making his first move, Tal stared at the board, and stared, and stared. Bobby wondered, rightly so as it developed, whether Tal was up to his old tricks. Finally, after ten long minutes, Tal moved. He was hoping to make Fischer feel completely uncomfortable. But his effort to unsettle the American failed. Instead, Bobby launched an aggressive series of moves, waging a board battle that was later described as both a “slugfest” and a “sparkling attack and counter-attack.” The cerebral melee ended in a draw, and later both players would include the game in their respective books, citing it as one of the most important in their careers.
That seventeen-year-old Bobby had held his own against the reigning World Champion didn’t go unnoticed, and players at the competition were now predicting that in a very short time, Bobby would be playing for the title.
By the end of the Olympics, the Soviet Union, which had fielded one of the strongest teams ever, came in first and the United States eased into second. Bobby’s score was ten wins, two losses, and six draws, and he took home the silver medal.
At the closing banquet someone mentioned to Mikhail Tal that Bobby, who’d been studying palmistry, was reading the palms of other players, almost as a parlor game. “Let him read mine,” said Tal skeptically. He walked over to Bobby’s table, held out his left hand, and said, “Read it.” While Bobby stared at Tal’s palm and pondered the mysteries of its lines and crevices, a crowd gathered around and hundreds of others watched from their tables.
Sensing the building drama, Bobby took his time and seemed to peer even more deeply at the hand. Then, with a look on his face that promised he was going to reveal the meaning of life, he said in stentorian tones: “I can see in your palm, Mr. Tal, that the next World Champion will be …”
At that point Bobby and Tal spoke simultaneously. Fischer said, “Bobby Fischer!” And Tal, never at a loss for a quip, said, “William Lombardy!” (who happened to be standing to his immediate left). Everyone assembled screamed with laughter.
A short while later, Chess Life, in describing the incident, chose to find in it an augury of things to come. Said the magazine: “By the look of confidence and self-assuredness on Fischer’s face, we wonder if in fact, he did ‘see’ himself as the next World Champion.”
7
Einstein’s Theory
BOBBY LEFT THE BALLROOM of the Empire Hotel, just steps away from the construction site of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts cultural complex. He’d just clinched the 1960–61 United States Championship, and he walked briskly through the snow-covered streets with his mother and Jack and Ethel Collins. Jack found it tough going with his wheelchair, so he and his sister took a taxi to a victory dinner for Bobby at Vorst’s, a German restaurant a few blocks from the tournament site. If there was any question of his accomplishment, Chess Life set the record straight:
By winning the United States Championship for the fourth time in succession, Bobby Fischer, 17-year-old International Grandmaster from Brooklyn, has carved an indelible impression in the historic cycle of American chess and has proven without a doubt that he is both the greatest player that this country ever produced and one of the strongest players in the world. Fischer has not lost a game in an American tournament since 1957.
There was only one problem with Chess Life’s semi-hagiography: Reshevsky didn’t agree with it, nor did many of his supporters.
Some chess players felt that it was an insult to proclaim Fischer the greatest American player at seventeen, and thereby diminish the reputation of Reshevsky at fifty. It didn’t help that a study had been published that year in American Statistician magazine, “The Age Factor in Master Chess,” in which the author posited that chess masters go downhill after a certain age, “perhaps forty.” Reshevsky wanted to prove the study wrong.
For many years Reshevsky had enjoyed a reign as America’s “greatest,” and now all the spoils and baubles seemed to be going to Bobby, whom many thought of as simply a young, irreverent upstart from Brooklyn. That said, at least an equal number of observers couldn’t get enough of “the upstart.” They believed that he signaled the possibility of a chess boom in America.