Searching for Bobby Fischer

by Fred Waitzkin

  WHEN A PARENT first learns that his child has chess talent he revels in it. The earliest games are more a form of children’s art than a contest with a winner and a loser. While the child is discovering the game, the parents delight in his precocious concentration, in his rapture over complexities, in his naïve ingenuities. His first attacks are like little poems. “Look what he’s done,” they say to each other; “Look what we’ve done” is what they may be feeling. One father of a seven-year-old told me that the first time his son played eight or nine moves blindfolded he began to cry; it was like beholding a miracle.

  Over the years, the parents of all gifted players witness little miracles. One evening when Josh was nine we walked through Washington Square Park on our way home, licking ice-cream cones. It was a cool spring evening and every chess table was occupied except for one, where an out-of-town master sat with his pieces set up, waiting for an opponent. Josh wanted to play, but the chess master was clearly put off by the challenge of a young boy and said disdainfully that he never played for less than two dollars a game. I am against Josh’s playing for money, but this time I agreed. Perhaps because of the fragrant spring air or the supercilious expression with which the man moved his pieces, Josh had an unusual composure and power that evening. He was able to focus all his knowledge and will into a force that was almost palpable. He was playing the game the way he would play it someday, and the dozen chess players watching nodded quietly, seeming to know from the start that he would win. Josh knew it also and was smiling broadly over his decisive combination long before the master knocked over his king and disgustedly tossed two crumpled bills out of his pocket.

  One would think that an eight- or nine-year-old could no more defeat a master than beat an NBA player in a game of one-on-one. But it is an unexplained and wondrous phenomenon that in chess, as well as in music and mathematics, a gifted child is capable of the creativity and genius of an exceptional adult. The parent of one gifted little boy said that when her son played brilliantly she felt as though she were the mother of Jesus.

  THE PARENTS’ JOY in their child’s precocious play is compromised by nervousness over competition with other kids and by fear of failure. In a children’s tournament one can always tell the winners from the losers. Those who have been defeated come out of the playing room with pasty faces; they have trouble speaking, and some of them cry uncontrollably. Winners smile broadly and walk with bounce. At their first tournaments fathers and mothers find themselves emotionally skewered. It doesn’t seem appropriate to be rooting for the heartrending sadness of another little kid, but there is really little choice; a parent doesn’t want his own child to feel bereft. Hearts harden, and soon the parent of a good player revels in his child’s wins against other children.

  Other parents, after watching their son’s or daughter’s painful defeats, remove their child from tournament chess, deciding it isn’t worth it. One talented and enthusiastic seven-year-old cried bitterly for twenty minutes whenever he lost a tournament game. His mother, a psychologist, patiently explained to her son that these games weren’t important enough to get upset about. “Chess isn’t about living and dying,” she said, and she urged him to put his life in perspective. Soon the child stopped crying, but he began to lose more regularly; then he stopped playing altogether. Apparently, if one is to be a good chess player one’s body and soul must resist any notion of defeat; a player must despise losing in order to struggle for the win. Great players feel traumatized when they lose, and perhaps as a consequence rarely do so.

  When chess parents talk about their kids, they try to be offhand about it. As if Jimmy’s gift were a delicate flower to enjoy, they try to recapture the spirit of those first moments when defeat and their own emotional investment had yet to become factors and little Jimmy was Magellan first navigating the sixty-four squares. With their friends they may talk about the aesthetics of the game or about the advantages of learning logical thinking as justification for the amount of effort they expend, but for the parents of the top players, all too often winning becomes the dominant motivation. If the child wins he is happy; if he loses he feels miserable or even inadequate as a human being. If he is a highly rated player he worries about his reputation, and his parents may worry about it even more. Troubling though it may be, in time they discover that it has become their reputation as well. If he wins a lot they are credited both inside and outside the chess world as being parents of “that brilliant child”; if he begins to do poorly they may feel loss, anger or even shame.

  Losing often takes the form of denial. A parent will rarely attribute his son’s loss to a brilliant combination played by his opponent. Rather, his kid made a simple oversight or was confronted by an opening he had never seen before, or the tournament director gave him unfair pairings, or he was tired or sick. He wasn’t really beaten; he merely slipped up or had bad breaks. This allows the parent to continue to plot his child’s future relatively unencumbered by limitations.

  CHESS PLAYERS OF all ages are interested in comparing themselves with other players. First- and second-grade children compare their numbers—900 or 1000 or 1050—against one another, and also against Kasparov’s and Fischer’s numbers: 2740 and 2780. The difference doesn’t seem so great. When you’re six or seven, becoming a grandmaster doesn’t appear to be hard; it’s only a matter of playing a little better and getting a higher number. No matter how good or bad they are, the littlest kids are convinced they’ll win the next game, and even after they have lost several and have no chance to win a trophy, they play on as if first place were in reach. They all believe that someday they’ll be great players. At scholastic tournaments their naïveté and optimism are infectious and lighten the dreary stairwells and hallways where they wait with their parents for the next round. But when fathers and mothers compare the ratings of their children, this activity takes on an importance that goes far beyond chess ability and technique. Parents glow when talking about their kid’s recent wins and fast-ascending rating. It is as if numbers on a bimonthly rating sheet reflected the very essence and value of the child.

  “The reason why parents put so much into chess has to do with its myth as an intellectual game,” says Sunil Weeramantry, who has coached more scholastic national champions during the past six years than any other teacher in the United States. “In this country there is no payoff for chess talent, as there is for, say, tennis, but some parents are still willing to go to extremes to support the play of their kids. They do it because they’re in love with the idea that they’ve spawned a genius. But in point of fact chess aptitude does not necessarily translate into general intelligence.” Indeed, there have been grandmasters who were illiterate, and many masters have no more than average intelligence. There are examples of learning-disabled and even retarded people who play chess proficiently. Both Weeramantry and Bruce Pandolfini assert that any adult with normal intelligence can become a chess master over time with regular study. Still, in our culture interest and proficiency in chess connote superior intelligence, and the parents of enthusiastic little players are infatuated with this idea.

  Some parents of scholastic champions insist that their kids do little studying on their own. Their kids are well-rounded and busy, they say; the child simply doesn’t have much time to practice or take lessons; it’s just that he or she has such a knack for the game that it doesn’t seem to matter. They would have you believe that their child was born with a precise understanding of rook-and-pawn endgame technique and an encyclopedic knowledge of the openings. Conversely, those children with a reputation for study are denigrated for their lack of raw aptitude, although all the top players take regular lessons and study a great deal. For all his genius, Bobby Fischer probably studied chess harder than any other player who ever lived.

  In this small and intense world, the breakdown of boundaries between parent and child is almost inevitable. An eight- or nine-year-old needs his parents at the tournament to make sure he eats lunch and knows how to set the clock, to
see that he’s not pestered or intimidated by other parents who are looking for an edge, and to ensure that he is not taken advantage of by a careless tournament director. The parent is more than a fan; while he roots as if each tournament were the finals at Wimbledon, he is also defending the child’s interests and attending to details. But in the emotional tumult of wins and losses, a parent may misperceive his importance or be too heavy-handed. Some parents don’t believe that their kids can win a game if they are not in attendance. One mother who hasn’t the slightest idea of how to play stands by the door of the tournament room with her eyes closed, her lips moving and her fists clenched. For hours she incants a secret mantra that will give her son the strength and concentration to win. After his important victories, she is convinced that she was the difference, and after his losses she blames herself for not trying hard enough. One father, a surgeon, quivers as he agonizes over his son’s games. If you speak to him while the child is calculating a move, the man’s voice cracks into falsetto, his face white with strain. Part of him strives to be casual and civil, but his body language says, How can you speak to me while my son is thinking?

  As a pregame ritual, some parents hassle tournament directors and other parents about every detail. For example, they may argue with all the force and dignity of their professional personae that their child’s chess clock should be used for the game instead of his opponent’s identical clock, or that their kid’s chess pieces should be the ones selected. A few parents become violent under the pressure, and when things don’t go their way or when their kids lose, they curse and challenge other parents or tournament directors to fight.

  AT THE END of the first round of the 1985 New York City Primary Championship, held at the Manhattan Chess Club, the mother of a seven-year-old was crying. She said that the father of her son’s first-grade opponent had whispered moves to his son. Every time her boy took a piece, this father became red in the face and smacked the table with his fist. Her son won the game anyway, but afterward the other boy’s mother glared at her with hatred and she didn’t know how to respond.

  An hour later two other fathers were arguing. One of them wanted to lodge an official protest because a child watching his son’s game had made a comment. “What did he say?” the other father inquired.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Your son won. It doesn’t sound as if you have anything to protest about.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me when I should or shouldn’t lodge a protest.”

  While we were killing time over coffee as our kids played an early round in the primary championship, Kalev Pehme, the father of a brilliant little player, said to me, “I don’t mind spending all my free time on Morgan’s chess. He has more talent for chess than I have for anything I do.” It was a disarming admission. “Did you notice that in the ratings he’s the number-one seven-year-old in the country?” Kalev went on. We are both writers, but whenever we get together our conversation invariably turns to scholastic chess, and we brag about the prowess of our seven- and nine-year-old sons like old men celebrating the professional accomplishments of their grown children.

  Last year Josh won this tournament, which is generally considered the most important scholastic tournament besides the nationals. He had just turned eight, and for me this first major victory was filled with novelty, charm and promise. It was an event which somehow connected my cuddly baby boy to the young man he would someday be. Now, in 1985, he was one of the older children in the primary division and was seeded first. Parents and children expected him to win the championship a second time, and being the favorite seemed burdensome. “It’s much better not to be the number-one-rated player,” Josh said; he still had to sweat through his games to win, but the payoff would be less special. Although he was the highest-rated third-grade player in the country and was playing well now, during the past year he had learned that other little kids could beat him and that he was likely to have ups and downs. Once when he was feeling depressed over a lost game I remarked that he was probably playing as well as Fischer had at eight, and he answered glumly, “Well, he must have gotten a lot better very fast.”

  During the first day of the tournament, children who had finished would come by to watch Josh’s game. They would discuss his attacks and wonder how they stacked up against him. “Did you ever lose to a lower-rated player?” one little kid asked him as if he were addressing Dave Winfield.

  After the first round, the father of Josh’s opponent came over and asked me timidly, “Did Josh say anything about how my son played?”

  In passing Josh had mentioned that it had been an easy win. “He said your son played a terrific game,” I lied, watching the man hang on my words.

  Joshua’s reputation had invested him with powers beyond his playing ability. Children were afraid of him; they blundered when playing against him or offered draws when they had strong positions. But only two months before he had wanted to stop playing, and despite his restored enthusiasm, Bonnie and I were keenly aware of his vulnerability.

  GOING INTO THE last round Joshua’s score was 4–1 and Morgan’s was 5–0. If Josh beat Morgan, they would tie for first place. During the last rounds parents were ordered to stay out of the playing room to eliminate accusations of cheating and to allow the kids to play without distraction.

  We waited by the door. “You’re lucky that you don’t get nervous,” I joked with Kalev, whose face was white and trembling. Our friendship is one of co-conspirators. Kalev shamelessly plots and plans Morgan’s assaults on the chess world; his ambition has no boundaries, and the two of us trade fantasies about how great our kids are going to be. But sometimes Kalev’s fantasies make me nervous, because if Morgan, who is younger, were to win everything in sight, there would be nothing left for Josh.

  “Hey, Josh, you’re losing,” I heard one of the kids exclaim behind the closed door, and I could see Kalev try to restrain a smile.

  At primary tournaments, little kids milling in and out of the playing room give news flashes to desperate parents: “Josh is worse through the opening,” “Josh is down two pawns” or “Josh has a positional advantage.” The rumors are intoxicating and unsettling. Often the parent is depending on the acumen of the weakest players, because the strongest play more complicated games, which take more time. Usually a player will glance at the top board as he leaves the tournament room. Often he counts the pieces wrong; more often he misses the attack and only counts the pieces. Still, a parent has nothing else to go on.

  The door swings open and I glimpse Joshua’s expression. He looks upset, so I’m sure he’s losing. I see a blur of pieces and am instantly convinced that he has fewer on the board. He must have lost his queen; that’s why his blur looks smaller than the other kid’s. How could he lose his queen to that fish? Irrationality over-whelms me, and even if the tournament director were to come out and report the position as one favorable to my son, I would still feel the defeat in my bones.

  “Don’t believe him. Josh will pull it out,” Kalev said in response to the latest rumor flashing past on its way to the Coke machine. Kalev always says this when Josh is losing; it’s like knocking on wood. Even when my son is playing children other than Morgan, Kalev is conflicted. He wants Josh to win because we are friends, but he also roots for him to lose; he would like Morgan to have the higher rating. I feel similarly ambivalent when his son plays.

  “No, he’s down material, he’s gonna lose,” I said, using the same tactic against him. I’ve held a crying Morgan on my knee, kissed his salty face and at the same time felt relieved that he lost. It would be agonizing for Josh to have his younger friend leapfrog ahead of him on the rating list.

  After our kids had been playing for about thirty minutes, Morgan had to go to the bathroom. He waited for a few minutes outside the door with his father but someone was inside. A tiny, cherubic child who at that time could have passed for five, Morgan was becoming upset; his clock was ticking. Finally Bonnie took him by the hand to a bathroom on the
next floor.

  A few minutes after they returned, a woman, a regular at the Manhattan Chess Club, came over and whispered in my ear. “Fred, did you watch Morgan when he went to the bathroom?”

  “Why would I? Of course not.”

  “You have to be careful,” she said in a singsong voice. “One of the fathers told me that Kalev will take any opportunity to give moves to Morgan.” I was too nervous and abstracted to focus on this remark until afterward. I knew that Kalev would never cheat against Joshua or anyone else. Some parents routinely start rumors about cheating by children and parents as a tactic. At the very least, such an accusation compromises the win or the spirit of one because it is difficult to disprove. Or perhaps it is not a tactic, but merely the raw manifestation of a parent’s conviction that his child simply cannot be bettered by another kid.

  Eventually Joshua won the game, but Morgan won the city championship on a tiebreak, meaning that his opponents in the earlier rounds had better results in the tournament than Joshua’s.

  DURING SEVERAL TOURNAMENTS in 1985, I observed one father, who was about six foot six and had the overweight build of a retired defensive lineman, stationing himself squarely in front of his son’s opponent and staring at him throughout the game like Vladimir Zoukhar, the Russian parapsychologist who used to glare at opponents for Anatoly Karpov. His son, a year older than Joshua, was an exceptionally good player and would have won most of his games regardless of where his father stood. The man was devoted to his son’s chess, took him to the best teachers and traveled with him on weekends to tournaments. It was his dream that his boy would win the Aspis Award for the best player in the country under thirteen.