Champion of Champions

There are champions in any sport and then there is The Champion. In boxing it’s Muhammad Ali, in soccer it’s Pele, in basketball it’s Michael Jordan, in surfing it’s Laird Hamilton, in shot-put it’s Al Order. Someone else may be crowned the champion but to the world, they know who the supreme champion is, the best of the best.

In chess, the champion is Bobby Fischer. There is no other. No one comes close. Someone else may wear the crown bestowed on them by an organization proclaiming them to be the champion but that person knows in his heart that he is not, nor never will be The Champ.

To understand Bobby Fischer is to understand the world he inhabited and what he accomplished in that world. Through the centuries there have been great chess players. Most of them go mad. It’s a fact of life. Whether it is due to playing the game or whether the game attracts a certain kind of personality that has a tendency toward madness is not known.

Bobby Fischer ascended into world view in the late 1950’s by winning the New York City chess championship at age 13 with a game that was so unique, so daring, so unbelievable that it is still replayed and talked about to this day. It is akin, no it surpasses, a Hail Mary pass into the end zone. For in the Hail Mary pass play one knows it is a desperation play with 50-50 success at best. Moreover, there have been several instances of them: Doug Flutie at Boston College, Colorado over Michigan at Michigan comes immediately to mind; but there has only been one game in the history of chess like Bobby Fischer’s New York win. A queen sacrifice 17 moves out and with that sacrifice Bobby Fischer knew that if his opponent took the piece he would win the game.

Maybe you don’t play chess and you don’t understand how incredible that is let me explain. Maybe, you’ve played checkers. How many moves out can you plan? With ever move forward in the game you have to consider all the alternative moves your opponent could do. So as you think forward in a game move by move the number of potential moves you have to consider grows. Then there is visualizing where the pieces are as you move forward and thinking if I take him he takes me then I take him and he takes me, etc. At some point, I can’t keep it all in my brain and I just say to myself, “Aw, heck I’ll just move this piece.”

How far out can you think? Two moves? Three? Five? Five to six is probably the best I’ve ever done – but seventeen? I’ve replayed that game of Bobby’s and I don’t see how he knew. The average chess game goes about 43 moves. Therefore, Bobby Fischer kept about half that game in his head. Can you imagine keeping all that in your head when the championship is on the line? When the room is filled with people older than you? When there are champions upon champions in the room watching?

To lose your queen in a chess match is the equivalent of suicide. It is the most powerful piece on the board. If you lose your queen you aren’t dead but it’s a given that you will be soon. How does a thirteen year old kid have the guts to offer his queen to be taken by a lesser piece and know he’s going to win the game and the championship at the most prestigious chess club in the United States and the free world?

This at a time when the animosity between the United States and the U.S.S.R. was at one of the chilliest points in Cold War.

The feat is unparallel in the annals of chess lore.

In 1972 when he battled Boris Spassky for the world title, he won a game because Spassky made a childish blunder. How could that be? How could someone from the exalted Russian chess establishment, the best of the best in the world, the dominant nation in the sport for centuries make such a mistake? Ah, he was playing Bobby Fischer. I saw Bobby Fischer play only once. It was right after his win over Spassky in Iceland. He was on Diana Shore. Diana Shore had a talk and variety show. She was a gracious beautiful charming southern lady who was well known as an entertainer in the 1960’s and 70’s. She had Bobby on her show. There was a chessboard set up and as she asked him questions, they played a game of chess. He was enthralled by her. He looked at her the whole time. It rather looked like the young rube in awe of the beauty. Dinah would make a move and Bobby would keep looking at her. Finally, she would say, “I moved.” And point toward the board.

“Oh,” Bobby would say and glance at the board. Without hesitation, he would take a piece and slide it to a square on the board where he would land it with a thud of finality. The sound of the slide and the landing were a kind of whish ….boom sound. It seemed like the whish of the slide was a forewarning of imminent danger like a falcon in a dive and the thud/boom was the coup de grace.

I remember on several occasions Diana asked Bobby, “Why did you do that?” He would explain, “You will probably move here” whish…boom,

“and I will move here” whish…boom,

“and then you will go here” whish…boom,

“which means I will go here” whish…boom.

As he explained and moved pieces gathered the pieces up and held them between his fingers. Each hand has three slots between the four fingers; Bobby Fischer could hold two pieces per slot maybe more. I remember him holding both hands bristling with pieces as he explained why he had made a particular move.

Diana Shore would typically say, “Oh.” Fischer would replace each piece on the chessboard in reverse order that he had put them down. All with that whish…boom.

This was 1972. I remember the TV I was watching as being a black and white. Maybe, it was color. It was probably a 22 or 24 inch TV with one speaker on the side. In other words nothing great in picture or sound quality, but I was intimidated. Intimidated by the way Bobby Fischer moved the pieces in a casual game of chess that no one was really paying attention to while being interviewed by a beautiful woman on TV.

Can you imagine the ferocity he must have brought to the competitive table?

I remember asking a baseball fanatic friend of mine what was so great about Reggie Jackson, known as Mr. October for the New York Yankees because of the unbelievable ability he had to make the decisive hit at the time when his team needed it most. My friend recounted a World Series game from the year before, “Remember in the fifth inning when Reggie Jackson stuck out?”

“Yeah,” I said hesitantly because I only vaguely recalled the game.

“Remember in the ninth inning when Reggie came to the plate?” he asked me.

“No, not really.”

“Reggie looked at the pitcher and you could tell he communicated to the pitcher and everyone watching ‘You are mine’.”

“What happened?”

“He hit a home run and won the game.”

That’s the kind of ferocity Bobby Fischer brought to the chessboard. The ferocity of Muhammad Ali at his prime, of Michael Jackson in the fourth quarter when he took the ball one on five, when Pele charged down the soccer field with the ball coming off his feet like it was attached by a string and put it in the top corner of the goal.

The U.S. was locked in a strategic war with the Russians. It was a time of great fear and trepidation. And here this kid comes out of Brooklyn wins the coveted New York Chess Club Championship and goes on to defeat the Russians at their own game. And not just defeat them – decimate them.

IBM has developed a chess playing program that uses one of the biggest and fastest machines in the world to calculate hundreds and thousand even millions of moves with certainty. It can probably defeat any player in the world save one or two.

In a way like John Henry the machine has defeated the man. There will never be another like Bobby Fischer.