Fred Waitzkin - Searching for Bobby Fischer

SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER

Fred Waitzkin was born in Massachusetts in 1943 and graduated from Kenyon College and New York University. His work has appeared in Esquire, New York, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and Book Review, Outside, Sports Illustrated, among other publications. Searching for Bobby Fischer was made into a major motion picture released in 1993. Other books are Mortal Games, The Last Marlin, and The Dream Merchant. He lives in Manhattan with his wife Bonnie. He has two children, Josh and Katya, and a grandson Jack. He spends as much time as possible on the bridge of his old boat trolling baits off distant islands with his family.

Copyright Fred Waitzkin, 1984, 1988

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any form. For information, address International Creative Management, 730 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10019.

ebook ISBN: 9780786754847

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For Bonnie, without whose love and ideas this book could not have been written, and for Katya and Josh

I n the spring of 1984, at the National Elementary Chess Championship in Syracuse, New York, a distraught father began to whisper moves to his son. Across the gymnasium floor, scores of other parents crowded close to the chessboards and nervously discussed the games within earshot of the players. Some of the six-, seven- and eight-year-old children asked the parents to be quiet and to give them room to play. Two frustrated fathers began shoving each other, and one took a swing. Eventually the irate tournament director ordered all parents out of the playing room. Soon more than a hundred fathers and mothers were pacing in the hall outside. The absence of desperate parents was a relief to the kids, no doubt, but being locked out heightened the already feverish anxiety of these poor people. Once in a while the tournament director would open the door a crack so the children could have some air. Instantly, scores of parents would scramble for a hand-in-your-face glimpse of their kids game. I was among them.

When Josh was a baby, I fantasized that he would grow up to be a star basketball player, with me cheering from the stands. Together we would stay in shape, jogging like Joe and his father in Ernest Hemingways story My Old Man. Instead my son is a chess player. Since he began playing in tournaments at the age of seven, he has frequently been the highest-rated player for his age in the United States. Our home has become cluttered with gaudy trophies, chess sets, chess clocks, score books, computers and chess literature in different languages. His precocious ability for this board game has seized control of my imagination. I used to worry about my career, my health, my marriage, my friends, my mother. Now I mostly worry about Joshuas chess. I worry about his rating and whether hes done his chess homework. There are tournaments to be concerned about. Has he practiced enough? Too much? In years past, while I sat at my desk struggling to write, I often daydreamed about the Knicks or about going fishing. Now in my mind I play over my sons chess games; his sedentary activity has displaced many priorities in my life.

Josh is very athletic, and at chess tournaments he is eager to play ball between rounds. While I gather up his chess pieces and pencils, its my job to say, No, Josh. You dont want to knock yourself out. Why not go over your openings? Usually at scholastic tournaments he is seated at the number-one board, and other little kids sometimes get sick to their stomachs because they have to play against my little kid. Their parents treat me deferentially, as if I had done something myself. Its an odd position for a father to be caddy and coach for his three-and-a-half-foot, sitting, brooding son.

Josh and I played our first chess games on a squat coffee table in the living room when he was six years old. He sat on the floor, his face cupped in his hands, his eyes at the level of the wooden pieces as if he were peering into a dangerous but alluring forest. By trial and error, more than by my instruction, which he staunchly resisted, he found tricky ways to trap my pieces. He unearthed standard chess strategies and tactics that players have used for centuries. He was good at this new game.

So good that I kept forgetting how old he was. Often I became caught up in the intrigues of combat and found myself trying to take my sons head off. I batted aside his little attacks like RommelI crushed him. Josh would come back shaking his fist at me and grimacing. I must win, I must win, hed mutter to himself while setting up the pieces. It must have been profoundly confusing for him that I was able to defeat his best ideas. A couple of times I offered him the handicap of knight odds and he cried at my impudence, as if Id tried to humiliate him. Already he seemed to know that his old man was a hack, what chess players call a patzer.

While I tried to slaughter Josh, I rooted for him to win. The game became a quicksand of passion for us. After an emotional loss, he would pretend not to care, but his lower lip would tremble. Dejected, hed go off to his room and my heart would be broken. My carefully crafted victories felt like defeats. The next day he would refuse to play me again, not even for a new toy carnot even for candy. I would feel panicky. Maybe during my last blistering attack Id killed off his baby dream of being the world champion. Or maybe it was my dream, not his. Such distinctions are ambiguous between a father and a little son. This is how fathers mess up their kids, Id lecture myself. Would you throw a slider to a six-year-old just learning to hit? Or smack him in the belly with a hard spiral? Still, a few days later wed be at it again. Once after Id sprung a trap on his queen, Josh announced that he didnt want to become a grandmaster; its too hard, he said. Feeling bad, I asked what he would do instead. He announced soberly that he would work in a pizza shop that had a Pac Man machine (he knew how much I hate video games).

In retrospect I suppose that Josh was just beginning to exercise his muscles as a chess psychologist, trying to soften me up, because the following afternoon he was squirming with pluck and purpose, knocking down pieces each time he reached his short arm across the board to take one of my pawns. That day I was feeling like Karpov, carefully building an insurmountable attack. The game took a long time, and while he was considering the position, I took a break for a shower. I was toweling off when Josh called me, beside himself with impatience. I grabbed a beer, checked the position and made my move. Josh smiled, slid his rook over and announced, Mate in two.

I doubt it, I said smugly, but every move was a vise. He had me. I hugged him and we rolled on the floor laughing. It was the first time hed ever beaten me.

A FEW MONTHS later, to find Josh stronger opponents we took him to the Marshall Chess Club on 10th Street, which was within walking distance of our apartment. In the Marshall, the worn Victorian furniture, the unpolished parquet floors, even the dust resonated with brilliant chess games from the past. But in the shadows of late afternoon the tangible presence of chess history made no impression on six-year-old Josh, who picked red gummy bears out of a plastic bag while he observed two chess masters playing speed chess, which is called blitz. While my wife and I chatted with the manager, our son giggled as the players moved the pieces at sleight-of-hand speed and took turns ferociously slamming the time clock after each move.