While negotiations as to the venue and the prize fund continued, both players went to the mountains to train. Spassky ensconced himself in the Caucasus while Fischer settled in the Catskills, more than seven thousand miles away. Grossinger’s, a mammoth hotel complex in Ferndale, New York, the heart of the “Borscht Belt” where much of the New York City Jewish population had been vacationing for more than half a century, served as Fischer’s training camp for the four months preceding the match. Since Fischer’s Worldwide Church of God faith observed the same dietary and many of the Sabbath laws as the Judaic tradition, Grossinger’s was an ideal selection. There was no pork served in the dining room, and from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, the devout observed a sabbatical decorum.
Grossinger’s removed Bobby from the pressures of New York City, where he was just a ten-cent telephone call away from anyone who wanted to reach him, and it prevented people from dropping in for a casual visit and disturbing his concentration and study. The hotel was also renowned for catering to famous guests. Bobby loved being there and was in a perpetually good mood, with thoughts of growing rich from the impending match. He was saving money from his book royalties, tournament winnings, and exhibitions, and he informed his mother that he was doing “real well financially.”
At that time it looked as though the match with Spassky would have a total prize fund of $138,000, the highest amount ever for a chess match. Bobby was trying to not get too excited about the money that would be coming his way. In spite of all the money and acclaim, he wrote with a certain humility that he was doing his best “not to forget who I really am, and to keep my mind on the eternal values.”
He was also happy to learn that Regina had passed the examination that would allow her to practice medicine in the United States, and he was hoping that she would consider moving back from Europe.
To prepare for the strenuousness of the World Championship match, Fischer trained his body as well as his mind, with workouts in the hotel gym, fast laps in the pool, and a few games of tennis each day. He seemed to dominate the tennis court while he was at Grossinger’s, and other than his games with the resident pro, Fischer usually won all of his matches. His serve was graceful and forcibly delivered, as were his return volleys. While waiting for his opponent to serve, he rapidly twisted the racket, bounced from foot to foot, and swayed his body, always ready to move to either side of the court. Walking back to his cottage or off to the swimming pool, he often swung the racket at an invisible tennis ball, just as he did as a boy when he’d swing an imaginary baseball bat while gamboling along Flatbush Avenue. All this physical activity kept him in great shape. He wrote to his mother that he was feeling “real fine” and that everyone was saying that he looked good because of his daily training.
Only after hours of exercise would he sit down at his chessboard. In the evenings, in a state of quiet contemplation, he began his exhaustive inspection of Spassky’s games. This microscopic analysis often continued until the early hours of the morning. The reference text he consulted most frequently was what journalists were quick to describe as the “Big Red Book”—number 27 of the excellent Weltgeschichte des Schachs series—the games of champions—containing 355 games of Spassky’s, conveniently typeset with a diagram at every fifth move. Bobby never let the book out of his sight and carried it everywhere. It contained his own notes on Spassky’s games, jotted in pencil, with comments and question marks designating poor moves, exclamation marks designating good ones. Almost as a parlor trick, he would often ask someone to pick a game at random from the book, tell him who played it against Spassky and where the game was played, and he would then recite the game move by move. He had memorized more than 14,000 moves!
Although Bobby said in his letter to his mother that he was “studying a bit” for the match, in reality he was spending as much as twelve hours a day, seven days a week, going over such issues as what openings he would or wouldn’t play against Spassky and what kinds of games he felt Spassky was most uncomfortable playing. He was buoyed when he played over Spassky’s games in the recently concluded Alekhine Memorial tournament in Moscow. Bobby told an interviewer: “They were atrocious games. He was really lost in half the games in that tournament; really bad games on his part.”
While Spassky was supported by a small army of helpers, Fischer basically toiled alone. A British player, Robert Wade, supplied Bobby with a detailed analysis of Spassky’s openings in two loose-leaf books, one marked “Spassky: White” and the other “Spassky: Black.” Other than that, Bobby relied on his own efforts. To the press, however, he displayed nothing but confidence. “I’m not worried,” he said. And in a Muhammad Ali–type quote, destined to be picked up by the press, he added: “The odds should be twenty to one [that I will win].”
During the months Fischer spent in training at Grossinger’s, he was visited by several other players, but while chess was the topic du jour, no one really contributed to Fischer’s preparatory efforts. Larry Evans and then Bernard Zuckerman visited, helping Bobby in any way they could, but even though he respected them, he sometimes asked them to sit away from the board so he could think things through himself.
Later, Lombardy fought the notion of Fischer as a player who was totally self-sufficient, an island unto himself. “It’s true that he works alone, but he is learning from the games of other players all the time,” he said. “To say that Bobby Fischer developed his talent all by himself is like saying that Beethoven or Mozart developed without the benefit of the music … that came before them. If other chess players had never existed for Bobby Fischer to learn from, then there would be no Bobby Fischer today.”
Since Bobby’s suite had two bedrooms, he liked to have guests from time to time. Jackie Beers was his most frequent visitor. Bobby had known Jackie since childhood and they were an odd pair. Jackie was a rated expert, an excellent speed player, but he was always finding himself in trouble at chess clubs, usually because of his ferocious temper. Once, a fight at the Manhattan Chess Club resulted in a lawsuit against him that was eventually settled out of court, and there were stories of his chasing people in the street or their chasing him because of altercations. With Bobby, Jackie acted meekly and respectfully. He often stayed overnight in the Fischer apartment in Brooklyn and later was Bobby’s houseguest when Fischer lived in California. Jackie was no sycophant or whipping boy, as he’s been described by other writers. He recognized that Bobby was the “chief” of their friendship, but he wasn’t afraid to speak up and disagree. While Bobby knew of Jackie’s reputation for truculence and tolerated him nevertheless, he was careful not to include him in all areas of his life, knowing instinctively when Beers wouldn’t be welcomed by others.
At the beginning of May, Bobby’s Iceland acquaintance Freysteinn Thorbergsson made the journey from Iceland to America and checked in at Grossinger’s. At first, Bobby was a little reserved with him, but as they talked—for about seven hours—he warmed up. Though Bobby had always pushed for Belgrade as the site of the championship match, a tentative understanding seemed to have been worked out to at least split the match between Belgrade and Reykjavik. Thorbergsson clearly favored the idea of all the games being staged in Iceland. Going back to Bobby’s chalet, the two analyzed some games, and Thorbergsson continued his volley of subtle arguments for why Bobby should play exclusively in Iceland.