Bobby Fischer Against the World

Gonna stick a knight here. He takes it off.

He takes the bishop.

So, he took it off this bishop.

And he's threatening his pawn.

Pulling took his right away, because he played here first.

Now he took the bishop.

Bobby Fischer is one of the greatest,

perhaps the greatest chess player in the world.

Bobby Fischer, United States, World title contender.

Now, uh, black surprises him with this move.

Bobby Fischer is an isolated man.

Bobby Fischer's a strange man.

People think that there's something wrong with the man.

The king moves, takes the queen.

The great Bobby Fischer is here tonight.

A child, not a champion. His social life is a vacuum.

The most arrogant man you're ever likely to meet.

He takes back, he gets checked.

Looking for Bobby Fischer...

What ever happened to Bobby Fischer? Reclusive.

Threaten his pawn, and then that's game.

Bobby Fischer is searching for asylum.

It's really Fischer against the world.

And here white resigned.

Bobby Fischer Interview.

All right. Try not to tense up.

Bobby, uh, you've given virtually your entire life to the world of chess.

What about Bobby Fischer, the Man? What's he like?

I don't know, it's pretty, uh, chess and me, you know, it's like...

It's hard to take them apart, you know?

It's just like my alter ego, you know? I don't really...

But there are times when you get away from that chessboard.

What do you do?

I don't do too much, at the most. I'm really, you know, tied up in chess.

I intend to expand, but first I've got to get the title. That's basically...

Bobby, what does it take to make a good chess player?

Well, talent, skill, patience. You have to study a lot and work.

What would your ultimate aim be?

Well, I'd like to be, uh, world champion and keep it for...

Maybe, 20 years or so.

Twenty years?

Fischer is to chess, what Muhammad Ali is to boxing.

Bobby! Bobby!

Can Fischer beat the Russian?

Yes, Fischer will beat the Russian.

Do you honestly think that you probably are the world's greatest chess player?

- Yeah, right. - Yeah.

In the 18-month period, in the run up to his challenge to Boris Spassky,

Fischer, had beaten, and in some cases,

destroyed, some of the best Soviet players.

Fischer was wiping away his opposition, like flies.

He went on a 20-game winning streak,

which was unheard of in championship chess.

Bobby Fischer was exciting, the, not only the chess world, but the world.

There's trouble in Northern Ireland.

Henry Kissinger is shuttling to and from Vietnam,

and against that competition, the chess dominates.

In Moscow today,

the Soviet Chess Federation called an angry news conference,

to denounce Bobby Fischer.

General Motors recalls 500,000 Chevrolet Vegas, and Bobby Fischer...

Bobby Fischer, true to his recent erratic behavior...

Finished off Tigran Petrosian of the Soviet Union,

a former world champion...

It was the best news story of the day.

The victory gave Fischer the right to play the world's champion,

Boris Spassky, another Russian, next spring.

We all had hopes. We all wanted him to be World Chess Champion.

The one person he was yet to beat, was Boris Spassky.

You've said it's your title the Russians are holding.

You don't like the Russians?

The Russians have cheated at chess.

They've tried every way to avoid me,

to avoid giving me a chance for the match.

And they have slandered my name, and, uh, you know.

They just, and they just...

They're afraid of me and they have been for years.

That's the true story.

And now you're gonna get them?

Well, now I'm going to try and get them, yeah...

The Soviets had been winning these tournaments

and I thought it would be good for America, for Democracy,

uh, to have an American winner.

The stakes really couldn't be much higher, politically,

popularly. In people's minds, you know, these were two enemies,

who were not fighting a real war,

but were trying to out-do one another strategically all the time.

We will not tolerate being pushed around.

We have the desire and the material assets to deal with the Soviet Union.

This little thing with me and Spassky, it's, you know, with...

bombs, having it out over the board.

One of the Soviet powers, the Soviet Union...

had made chess it's national sport.

They had spent unlimited amounts of money.

They had hundreds of Grand Masters.

They won every tournament, every Chess Olympiad.

For a Communist Regime,

keeping the crown was very important, uh, ideologically.

This communist state took over chess to use it as proof...

of intellectual superiority over decadent West.

Everybody knew that the crown has to remain in the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union, everybody of talent was

cultivated, was given financial help, coaching.

All the top players were privileged people.

In the United States, we didn't have any of that.

Every single one of us was on his own.

And here came this lone American,

combating the might of the Soviet chess machine.

National prestige was at stake.

Fischer recognized that he was representing not only him...

but the entire free world.

I think there was just too much on his shoulders.

Could you tell us how old you are and where you're from?

I'm 15, and I'm from Brooklyn.

He is 15 years old and he is from Brooklyn, all right?

Will you show your headline to camera three and to Dick Clark?

Because we'll make him go to work on you.

It says, "Teenager's Strategy Defeats All Comers!"

This strategy, did it involve, uh, finances? -No.

- Did you have any help? - No.

You did it all by yourself. Did it make people happy?

It made me happy.

This young man's name is Bobby Fischer, and already

he is the United States Chess Champion.

He is 15 years old, and he has defeated the masters.

He is the United States Champion in chess.

I met Bobby when I was 14, and he was eight,

in one of the chess clubs in Manhattan.

He was the youngest kid around. He was unassuming.

He was well-mannered. He was a nice kid.

His mother, Regina, she was a woman who had to work two jobs, single mom,

supporting two children, Bobby and Joan.

Regina was really the genius of the family.

She spoke quite a number of languages, including Russian.

She worked as a telegraph operator, a nurse, a welder.

She actually got a PhD in Hematology as well.

She was an activist, she was a Communist.

And the FBI files on her are quite extensive.

His mother was hounded by the FBI, because...

they thought she was possibly a Soviet spy.

This was a period when Jew and Communist were equated,

so his mother denied his Jewishness.

His mother told him if he would be sitting on the stoop

at 560 Lincoln Place, Apartment 4Q, and

somebody would come up to him and ask him a question,

he would say, "I have nothing to say to you".

That was the proper answer that his mother told him to say.

You're from Brooklyn originally?

Chicag... Well, born in Chicago, moved to Brooklyn when I was about six.

- So, lived on the coast... - Were you playing chess by then?

No, I learned in New York, yeah.

At what age?

Six.

When did you start to get serious about chess?

About when, I was maybe seven.

If you can think back to your childhood and all the things you did

after school, and on the weekends. And, imagine just filling all that in with

chess study, chess lessons, chess practice, chess competition.

Sure, Bobby Fischer starts with a very exceptional mind.

But genius is not only about a particular innate gift for "X".

Genius is about a desire to do "X".

It's about a willingness to sacrifice.

It's about an ability to develop that kind of obsessive interest,

in perfecting one's ability to do some task.

People who studied expertise have looked at classical music composers,

and surgeons and chess players...

interested in figuring out, what do high achievers have in common?

They have always, almost without exception,

put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice first.

That love component is such an enormous part of the achievement,

of any kind of genius...

Because if it's dutiful, there is no way you can be that obsessive about it.

There was nothing else he would rather do.

I started playing, uh, games with myself.

I would make the white moves and the black moves.

Play through the whole game and eventually I would

checkmate the other guy.

I almost always won.

Then my mother started to get worried that, you know,

it wasn't healthy to be, you know, playing chess by myself all the time.

Now, uh, black surprises him with this move.

Regina was so worried that she decided to take him to a psychiatrist.

And the psychiatrist said,

"Don't worry, there are worse things to be obsessed by then chess".

Everybody said to him, "What happened?"

And he said, "One day I just got good".

He was suddenly out of everyone else's league.

And everybody knew it.

Fischer would open a chess magazine, okay, like this.

He would open it like this, he would say, "Hmm, okay here...

"Let's see here...

"Okay here, okay here".

Now, it looks like he's just, like, looking at the pictures, right?

That's what you think he's doing.

No, he's not doing that.

He's playing through the entire game, in his head, in a few seconds.

Every move.

He went from being my peer in chess

to being the United States Chess Champion, a quantum leap.

That's when he first became famous. This was 1958.