Master Bobby

In the cosmopolitan cant of chess players, it is legend that masters of the game are all meshuga--Yiddish for a little batty. But when they talk of Brooklyn's Bobby Fischer, the newly crowned U.S.

champion, the kibitzers are moved to uncommon awe. Bobby, they declare, is ganz meshuga, which is to say that he is quite addled. Though he celebrated his 15th birthday only last week, he already shows all the marks of the great grand masters of one of the oldest, most intricate games known to man.

As to his greatness, Bobby himself agrees. A floppy, abrupt young gangle-shanks, he stumbles through the physical world of school and subways and summer vacations in a tangle of arms and legs not quite under control. But in the neatly ordered empire of the chessboard, he moves with vast precision. Swiftly he picks his way among the possibilities; haughtily he sidesteps the traps. Experts compare his aggressive, scientific style to that of Russia's famed Alekhine, his flair for combinations to the touch of the U.S.

master, Morphy. He eclipsed such comparative greybeards as Samuel Reshevsky, 46, and Arthur Bisguier, 28, to win the U.S. title. The Federation Internationale des Echecs made a special gesture of naming him an International Master of Chess. Said Bobby last week in his adolescent whine: "They shoulda made me a Grand Master." Win, Win, Win. "None of the great ones ever accomplished so much so early," says Hans Kmoch, secretary of the Manhattan Chess Club, where Bobby practices. The son of parents who were divorced when he was two, Bobby grew up under his mother's wing, learned the moves of chess from his older sister at the age of six. By the time he was nine, he played day and night, studied every chess book and magazine he could get his eager hands on. He was already beating most adults he could cajole into a game.

Bobby Fischer has always worked at his chess with deadly intensity-- an unkempt kid, his hazel eyes glowering beneath a snarl of mouse-brown hair as he systematically plotted checkmate after checkmate. As a tyro, he bawled whenever he lost, and he did not present himself at the high-pressure Manhattan Chess Club until he was sure he could handle just about any man in the place. He was then all of twelve years old.

Bobby rapidly demonstrated his gift for Rapid Transit (a form of chess that allows only ten seconds per move) and Blitz (which allows no time but the split second for actually moving a piece). But after having been beaten just once, he never entered another of the club's Rapid Transit contests. If he could not win, he would not play.

A Hit in the Head. Bobby is credited by Annotator Kmoch with "the Game of the Century"-- one that chess buffs retrace in slack-jawed admiration. It marked the boy's upset victory over Donald Byrne in last year's Lessing J. Rosenwald tournament. After a safe and careful opening that left him in a cramped position with no particular advantage, Bobby broke up the game with an ingenious exhibition of combination play.

White Black

(Byrne) (Fischer)

11. N--R5

12. Q--R3 N x N

13. P x N N x P

14. B x P Q--N3

15. B--B4 N x QBP

16. B--B5 KR--K1 ck

17. K--B1 B--K3

18. B x Q B x B ck

19. K--N1 N--K7 ck

20. K--B1 N x P ck

21. K--N1 N--K7 ck

22. K--B1 N--B6 ck

23. K--N1 P x B

24. Q--N4 R--R5

25. Q x P N x R

26. P--KR3 R x P

27. K--R2 N x P

Sitting over the board like an underaged Buddha, Bobby fiendishly kept offering piece after major piece for sacrifice--but each move held a pitfall that Byrne avoided. Then, on his 15th move, the boy seemed to botch the game. Old Master Sam Reshevsky watched him take one of Byrne's pawns with a knight, and muttered: "Now he's busted." But Bobby knew better. Later he said: "Byrne was playing pretty good, and then I gave him a hit in the head." It was a blow from which Byrne could not recover. After the 27th move, Bobby's mop-up of his opponent's shattered forces was routine.

Away from the chessboard, Bobby barely tolerates the world around him. An indifferent sophomore at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High, he professes a certain interest in astronomy, prehistoric animals, hypnotism--"all that sort of stuff"--but admits to no urge toward higher education or any aspiration but more chess. To the annoyance of his sponsors at the Manhattan Chess Club, he has turned up his nose at the club tournament. Now that he is in the big time, Bobby can't be bothered. Winning the U.S. title makes him eligible for the interzonal finals this summer in Yugoslavia. And a good showing against the tough competition there would make him a potential challenger for the world championship--a title now being decided in Moscow between the defending champion, Russia's Vassily

Smyslov, and his countryman, Mikhail Botvinnik.

Although he has no idea who will pay the bills to get him even as far as Yugoslavia, Bobby is so sure that he will get to Russia that he has already begun studying Russian.

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