Dear Bobby F.: You were my childhood hero
By Bob Ferguson
Special to The Seattle Times
In my office, I have a framed black-and-white photograph of a young Bobby Fischer, dressed impeccably in a suit, engrossed in a chess game.
Bobby Fischer was my childhood hero. He was U.S. chess champion at 14 and a year later became the youngest grandmaster in history. He took on the Soviets at their favorite game and beat them all, breaking the decades-long string of Soviet champions. When he defeated Boris Spassky for the world championship in 1972, I was 7 years old.
It was the height of the Cold War. Public television covered each move of the 21-game match. One evening, a New York City reporter visited 21 Manhattan bars and discovered that 18 had the Fischer match on television instead of the Mets game. That epic event was my first exposure to chess.
There was something intriguing about Fischer’s intensity and those mysterious wooden pieces, so I asked Santa Claus for a chess set. Santa delivered.
As I began to study chess, I reveled in sharing Fischer’s initials. I signed everything “Bobby F.” When my dad came home with a copy of Fischer’s classic book, “My 60 Memorable Games,” I devoured every word. By the third reading, the binding was destroyed, and I kept the book together with a thick rubber band. When I read that Fischer subscribed to Russian chess magazines to learn the secrets of the Soviet masters, I got my hands on similar publications and taught myself the rudiments of the Russian alphabet so I could follow the moves.
Fischer possessed a relentless will to win. His great rival Spassky said, “When you play Bobby, it is not a question of whether you win or lose. It is a question of whether you survive.” Unlike other grandmasters, Fischer didn’t believe in occasionally taking short draws to conserve his energy in long, draining tournaments.
In the world championship qualifying matches, Fischer won 19 games in a row without conceding a single draw (the majority of grandmaster games are draws). It would be as if the New England Patriots didn’t just win every football game they played this year, but didn’t even allow their opponents to score. One Fischer opponent observed, “It began to feel as though you were playing against chess itself.”
But after winning the world championship at age 29, the man who once said, “All I want to do, ever, is play chess,” stopped playing. He didn’t bother to defend his world championship in 1975 and went into seclusion.
Here is the full story.
Great story! From Bobby F.!
Gegga
Well, except it was 20 wins in a row, not 19.
Admirable though the streak was, it’s possible to pick nits with it:
1) RJF’s win against Panno in the last round of the Palma Interzonal wasn’t, shall we say, your normal win.
2) The last game of the 1971 match against Larsen was a win all right, but only because a draw would have done Larsen absolutely no good in that situation — Larsen simply had no choice but to play for a win. In any other context he would have taken an easy draw. This game represents a good argument that matches should be to a fixed number of wins, draws not counting. To a lesser degree this consideration also applies to the last two games of the 1971 match against Taimanov. Would Taimanov have played 46.Rxf6?? if draws hadn’t counted?
3) It ignores the Manhattan Blitz Tournament.
Like I said, these are nitpicks.
He beat Petrosian 5-1 (not including draws).
Then he went on to beat Larsen and Taimanov, each 6-0 (no draw). Amazing games I would say.
But then he lost the first game of 1972 championship to Spassky.
Howcome people say he won 20 in a row. I thought at most he will win 17 in a row (5 + 6 + 6).
Although I am pretty sure Petrosian gave a heck of games to him, and beat him once and made some draws in between losing the game to him.
Anybody can correct me on the above stats ?
The figure 20 comes from:
last 7 games of the Palma Interzonal
6 games vs. Taimanov
6 games vs. Larsen
first game vs. Petrosian