1972

Michael Vick was indicted just as Chris Mortensen said wouldn’t happen, Randy Moss and Tom Brady appear to be getting along fine just like ESPN unilaterally decided wouldn’t happen, and David Beckham is here to energize soccer in America, which everyone knows won’t happen.

Derek Jeter says the Yanks can catch the Sox, which everyone knows they can’t.

Talladega nights won the ESPY for best sports movie, which everyone knows sucks.

Dale Earnhardt Junior is going to replace Kyle Busch in Hendrick racing (probably the first NASCAR related factoid ever divulged on The Sports Maunderer), even though he stinks.

If only the world was as simple as in 1972. Back then, Americans were good guys, Russians were bad guys, and everyone else had to pick a side, rename itself Switzerland, or surrender (only one country chose the latter option, I’m sure you can guess which). Back then, no one had ever heard of steroids, and the Super Bowl was a new-fangled concoction of those dudes whose shoulders looked way too big. Movies were movies (and Al Pacino didn’t look dead), and Harry Potter had never been heard of (its too bad he isn’t dead).

In 1972, Bobby Fischer told the world he would win the World Chess Championship, though everyone knew the Russians always won. He then told the world he wouldn’t play because the cameras had to leave, and most people believed him. He was insane, after all.

He ended up not only playing but capping off one of the great stories of the 20th century. Bobby Fischer was a champion in every possible way; he was called a complainer, a crackpot, insane, reckless, and bordering on otherworldly. He was likely all of these things as well, but they do not diminish his greatness. Indeed, they were likely the reason for his greatness.

In the late 1950s and the 1960s, when Fischer was winning U.S. opens at the age of fourteen and beyond (he played in the U.S. Chess Championship eight times, and won each time), becoming the youngest grandmaster ever at sixteen, mesmerizing former world champions with his play and nearly disappearing on multifarious occasions, chess was hardly on the map of the world, except in the place that owned it: Russia.

Russian chess players were often seen as products of the communist system, and in the sense that Russia had a very good system for discovering and nurturing young chess talent, that was true. They were extremely varied in style and physiognomy, however, not all lining up as boring, mathematical, apathetic geniuses. The man who seemed to embody that saturnine, tedious verisimilitude did end up claiming the World Championship, however, in the form of Boris Spassky. He was the last in an impressively long line of Russian champions. Indeed, after Fischer, that line would start again and has maintained itself to this day. Since 1948, only three years have gone by where a Russian was not the world champion. So in case you haven’t gotten the picture, Russians are very, very good at chess.

So obviously when Fischer was in the midst of thwomping Spassky like a native American drum, the world was slightly interested. The entire career of America’s lone champion was worth discussing, though. It was, very simply, weird. It also contained the Sandy Koufax period of championship chess, and indeed that is a great injustice to Bobby Fischer’s play; not only was he better than Koufax in his prime, he never had a 4.00 ERA in his early career. Bobby Fischer was one of the great chess players of all time throughout his career. For a span of one or two years, he was far better than anyone else has ever been, possibly at anything.

To understand why ordinary people look at Bobby Fischer in a different light is to understand the obvious. He was calumnious, cranky, picky, quick-tempered—you never knew what vicissitudes of countenance he would showcase or what their effect would be. He was churlish, boorish, and in many ways simply a rude curmudgeon. If he had not played chess as well as he did, it is likely he would have been an ostracized crazy man.

To understand why chess players find Bobby Fischer interesting, one needs to understand that he did not simply win the world championship once and then disappear. Oh sure, he did that. But this man dominated tournaments like no one before him or after him has. He dominated match play against the world’s best like no one before him had or anyone after him likely will.

In high level tournaments, draws are inevitable. It is simply impossible to consistently outplay other grandmasters to the point of defeat over and over and over. For instance, a score of 7/12 (a win is one point, a draw is half a point, a loss is zero points) at a strong grandmaster invitational is considered a great outcome. The winner might be 7.5/12, if that. For perspective, 7.5/12 would likely mean a player scored four wins, one loss and seven draws. Draws are merely expected to outnumber decisions at such a level. In match play, where the same two opponents are facing each other repeatedly, draws are even more ubiquitous.

To illustrate the point: In Kasparov v. Karpov, the world championship match in 1981, the format was simple. First man to six wins claims the title, no matter how long it takes. After forty-eight games, the match was cancelled due to the absurd length of the match. Only eight decisions had been derived; forty of the matches were draws! In Kasparov v. Kramnik in 2000, Kramnik eked out a close victory in which Kasparov did not manage to win a single game. For reference, Kasparov is considered one of the best, if not the best player of all time by most pundits. He holds records for highest rating, duration of rating, and numerous other titles in addition to almost twenty years of being world champion. Yet he failed to win once. Instead, he racked up a ton of 1/2-1/2s.

So clearly, high level play is fraught with draws.

Bobby Fischer’s U.S. Open scores were : 1957-58: 10.5/13; 1958-59: 8.5/11; 1959-60: 9/11; 1960-61: 9/11; 1962-63: 8/11; 1963-64: 11/11; 1965-66: 8.5/11; 1966-67: 9.5/11.

Included rather innocently in that tiny diagram of domination is his impossible 1964 victory at the U.S. Open in which he won every game he played. He did not draw a single game. This is akin to a football team playing an entire season without even falling behind at any point in any game. As a player continues winning, it is the almost understood duty of each player who plays him to at least draw him. Yet they could not. Even with the black pieces (a common misconception is that black and white are equal in chess. They are not. A draw with black is more or less considered a good outcome at the highest levels), Fischer could not be touched.

And none of this takes away from his overall domination at the tournament from the age of fourteen and beyond. He played in eight U.S. Opens and lost three whole games out of ninety!

Well “so what?” you say, he was clearly the greatest American player ever. Indeed, so what. Never mind the fact that no player has dominated a tournament scene like that—what about the Russians?!

For the year leading up to his historic battle with Boris Spassky, Fischer put on a show like none other in the history of chess. To reach the position of world championship challenger, one had to first climb through a succession of zonal, interzonal and match play tournaments. After easily reaching the candidates matches (while posting scores of 19/22 and 15/17 in other, non-championship related tournaments), he played three of the greatest chess minds of the day. To say he extirpated them would be an understatement.

First, he played against Russian Mark Taimanov. Taimanov has an opening named after him, if you were curious as to his ability. Fischer won the match 6-0. Taimanov could not even draw him once. Towards the end of the match, Taimanov contracted a mysterious illness.

Second, Fischer played Bent Larsen, the strongest Danish grandmaster ever. Towards the end of another 6-0 rout, Larsen contracted a mysterious illness. It was dubbed “Fischer fever” and no one could really take it seriously other than an excuse to delay games towards the inevitable conclusion of the match.

The final opponent before Spassky: Tigran Petrosian, the former world champion, considered one of the three strongest players in the world. Petrosian finally offered a bit of resistance, managing a win in the second game and even the score. After a few draws, Fischer won again. Then, he won again. Petrosian was suddenly ill. Fischer finished him off with a four game winning streak. Fischer so dominated his opponents mentally and physically that they all complained of an ersatz illness.

After all, let us not forget it was Bobby Fischer. He never made a match easy. He complained about lighting, about chess sets, about chairs, etc. He would show up late to games, leave for extended periods of time, etc. He was perhaps the most difficult opponent to play in the world completely regardless of his ferocious ability on the board.

And he put his psychological warfare into full force with Boris Spassky. He first refused to attend his own match, then he arrived and refused to play because of the cameras and the spectators, then he forfeited the second game by not showing up. He had now played Boris Spassky seven times, won none, drawn three, lost four—one by forfeit. The world was beginning to think Fischer was as much of a poseur in chess as the French are in war.

But really, Spassky was doomed to lose. After agreeing to play in a back room away from cameras and spectators for the third game, Spassky finally broke and lost to Fischer. Over the course of the match, Fischer would relatively easily defeat Spassky. After grabbing a three point lead, Fischer was content to draw the rest of the games to eventually win by a score of 12.5-8.5 Bobby was the king of the world.

It would not stay that way for long.

It is often believed that chess drives men crazy. A wise man once denied that belief with the clever and indubitable line, “Chess does not drive normal men past the edge of sanity. Chess keeps insane men on the normal side.”

Nowhere was this expressed more visibly than with Fischer, whose disappearances, rants, hate and simply downright lunatic behavior since 1972 show a man who likely would never have been sane but for the board he so thoroughly dominated. For a period of a year, he so utterly crushed all comers that he might as well have played me and the result would have been similar to the greatest players of the day (I exaggerate of course, but if you aren’t enthralled by my hyperbolic cadence by now, you aren’t reading anyway. I am being arrogant of course, but if you aren’t enraptured by my egotistical rambling by now…).

Basically, I can’t write about the Yanks because the last time I did, they fell apart. But I don’t think the story of Bobby Fischer ever gets old. Some puling egomaniacal chess players of today will claim Fischer only won because of the fuss he created around matches. While this is probably absurd, it misses the point. Fischer was a whirlwind of chaos, and he had to deal with it just as his opponents’ did. Fischer was able to overcome everything else and simply win.

The mark of a champion is not upon those whose best is better than their best. You win because your worst is still good enough. At his peak, Fischer’s worst was better than even his opponent’s best. He overcame near-insanity, extremely skilled opponents, endless distractions and the freaking Cold War to dominate like no other.

To the thirty-fifth anniversary, here here,

The Sports Maunderer