ASouth Florida Sun Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sunday, February 09, 1997 - Page 72
Memories of '64, and of Bobby Fischer
Recently I spent several pleasant hours looking at back issues of Chessworld, a great magazine that folded the same year it was launched, in 1964. Editor Frank Brady later wrote Profile of a Prodigy, the only major biography of Bobby Fischer.
In 1964, Fischer was 21 when he swept the U.S. Championship with 11 straight wins, the stuff of legend. I was runner-up at 7.5 points, normally a winning score in such a strong field, prompting one critic to quip, “Fischer won the exhibition and Evans won the tournament.”
During this historic event I turned 32, exactly half the number of squares on a chessboard, when editor Brady caught up with me for an interview in the penultimate issue of Chessworld.
Some excerpts:
Q. Do you expect to win it?
A. No. I'll be happy to finish in the top three. My feeling is that everybody is doing badly here with the exception of Fischer.
Q. How would you rate Fischer in historical terms?
A. It's been my opinion for a few years now that he's the best player in the world. I'd say he's in the same category as Capablanca or Morphy. Of course it's hard to make a comparison since they didn't have the competition that he has now.
Q. Fischer just told me that Paul Morphy would beat anybody alive today in a set match.
A. It's impossible to tell how good Morphy was. He was head and shoulders above his age. In the ring anyone looks good against a palooka.
Q. Why do you say Fischer is at the top of his form right now?
A. Well, he's been doing nothing but studying chess — I'd estimate five or six hours a day. He's beautifully prepared for every opening and moves quickly. In every game he's about an hour ahead of his opponent on the clock.
Q. How would you describe his style of play?
A. He follows the truth on the board. If it calls for a wild move and he can't see it clearly, he'll make that move. Whatever is called for in a given position, Fischer will do.
Q. What about your style?
A. Positional. But I'm also alert to tactics and never give up on inferior positions. I subscribe to theory of the second resource. That is, no matter how bad your position, if it's not totally lost, you will reach a point during the game where you will be presented with an opportunity to win or draw if you take advantage of it.
Q. Why do you play chess?
A. For the spirit of competition. I don't like to have to score the point in order to win the money. I try to make each game a work of art.
Q. Do you get actual pleasure from playing chess?
A. Anybody who does anything well finds pleasure in it.
Q. Do you want to become famous?
A. I guess everyone wants to become famous. Chess is a back door to fame.
Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park, New Jersey, Sunday, March 23, 1997 - Page 66
Fischer is forever a chess champion
I remember the last time I saw Bobby Fischer. It was in 1972 at a mayor's reception in his honor at New York City Hall shortly after he defeated Boris Spassky in their epic match.
Resplendent in a very expensive green suit, he alluded to the whirlwind of activity in the wake of his victory: “The creeps are beginning to gather.” he said.
Shortly afterward, Fischer went back to Southern California where he lived a reclusive and impecunious existence for much of the next 20 years. When he finally emerged to play and win a second match with Spassky in 1992, time had inevitably eroded his skills:
“This is not the Fischer we used to know,” said ex-World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. “The Fischer who use to fascinate us with his play. That Fischer is no more, nor can he be.”
Pocketing more than $3 million for beating Spassky again, Bobby Fischer once more has forsaken competitive chess. But his fame and myth continue to endure, enhanced rather than tarnished — it seems — by his most recent incarnation.
Last month, the International Chess Writers Association voted Fischer a “Life Oscar of Chess” in tribute to his genius. His fellow grandmasters have been no less admiring:
“I have never met him, but he is one of my idols,” Vladimir Kramnik, one of the top players in the world, recently told a Belgrade journalist.
“Fischer,” said the late Mikhail Tal, himself a phenomenal wizard of the game, “is the greatest genius to have descended from the chess sky.”
