The Mind of Bobby Fischer

There is probably no other
topic that intrigues chessplayers as much as the inner machinations
of the mind of Bobby Fischer. Among world chess champions of the
past, there has always been a strong equation between their
demonstrable talents in other intellectual areas and their supreme
proficiency in chess – despite attempts by the general press to
depict them as bizarre, egotistical, single-minded renegades from
society. Emanuel Lasker was a noted mathematician, philosopher, and
friend of Albert Einstein. Alexander Alekhine paused in the middle of
his pursuit of the championship to take a law degree at the Sorbonne
and was a prolific writer in several languages. Mikhail Botvinnik has
been highly decorated by the Soviet Union for his work as an engineer
and has done pioneer work in the field of computer chess. Capablanca
was a diplomat – honorary, it is true, but effective nevertheless.
Euwe has been a professor of mathematics and is currently the
president of FIDE, the world chess organization. And I could go on
down the list of other great players.

At first glance, however,
it seems that Bobby Fischer has few other skills than his ability to
play chess. Since he is possessed of the most significant chess
talent of this era, Fischer therefore represents a break with the
pattern of the past. We are faced with a paradox. How can he play so
consistently with such brilliance? Is his intelligence really as high
as it has been reported to be? Is his memory as gigantic as it
appears? How many moves can he see ahead? Do his mental processes
function in a way that is somehow unique to the ability to play
chess?

The speculation seems
endless, and replete with contradictions. Chessplayers feel that if
they can discern specifically how Fischer’s mind operates, they can
apply what they learn to their own approach to the game, and improve
by emulation and application. Yet in his interviews and books,
Fischer exhibits nothing more unusual in his thinking than the
tendency to be down-to-earth to the point of being untactful, and
precise to the point of being paranoid about mistakes.

Until such improbable time
as Fischer subjects himself to further interviews, examinations, and
extensive testing by psychologists and educational experts, we are
left with only fragments as the key to his mental faculties. What
really goes on inside the mind of Bobby Fischer – or anybody’s mind,
for that matter – when he studies the thirty-two not-so-inanimate
pieces for hours at a time probably can never be properly documented
and analyzed. Let’s examine, however, the evidence we do have.

In previous writings I
have cited Fischer’s I.Q. as in the range of 180, a very high genius.
My source of information is impeccable: a highly regarded political
scientist who coincidentally happened to be working in the grade
adviser’s office at Erasmus Hall – Bobby Fischer’s high school in
Brooklyn – at the time Fischer was a student there. He had the
opportunity to study Fischer’s personal records and there is no
reason to believe his figure is inaccurate. Some critics have claimed
that other teachers at Erasmus Hall at that time remember the figure
to be much lower; but who the teachers are and what figures they
remember have never been made clear.

It is probably a
reflection of the “chess-champion paradox” that the 180 figure is
considered unrealistic. Fischer’s apparent lack of intellectual
attainments, in contrast to the champions of the past, would seem to
make a high I.Q. unbelievable. He is considered by many to be almost
an idiot savant. Perhaps some of the following anecdotes will dispel
the doubts of the unbelieving.

Before playing the match
with Spassky in Reykjavik, in 1972, Fischer toured Iceland for a few
days to get the feel of the land. One morning he telephoned his old
friend Frederick Olaffson, Iceland’s only grandmaster. Both Olaffson
and his wife were out of the house, and a little girl answered the
phone. Fischer said, “Mr. Olaffson, please.” Olaffson’s daughter
explained, in her native Icelandic, that both her mother and father
were out of the house and would return in the early evening for
dinner. Fischer does not know a word of Icelandic and had to hang up
with an apology. Later that day, talking to another Icelandic
chessplayer (who did speak English), Fischer remarked that he had
tried to reach Olaffson. “It sounded like a little girl on the
phone,” he said. He then repeated every Icelandic word he had heard
over the telephone, imitating the sounds with perfect inflection, so
well, as a matter of fact, that the Icelander translated the message
word for word.

In 1963 Fischer played in
and won the New York State Open Championship at Poughkeepsie, New
York. During the last round I was involved in a complicated ending
with Frank S. Meyer, the late senior editor of National Review.
Fischer, on his way to the washroom, briefly paused at my board – for
perhaps five seconds – and then walked on. A few months later, he
visited me at my office, then located at the Marshall Chess Club.
“How did that last round game turn out?” he inquired. I told him I
had won, but with difficulty. “Did you play Q-B5?” he asked. I told
him quite frankly I couldn’t remember what I had played. He
immediately set up the exact position to “help” me remember, and then
demonstrated the variation I should have played to have secured a
much more economical win. The main point is that he did not simply
remember the position, then analyze it in front of me; he remembered
not only the position but also his fleeting analysis as he had passed
my board months previously.

Anecdotes like this lead
to speculation of how many moves Fischer sees ahead, and in what
period of time. Masters who have traded Pawns with him in speed chess
(usually five minutes for the entire game for each player) claim that
postmortem analysis shows Fischer sees three or four moves ahead in
any position, with a glance of a second or two. If he studies the
position for all of five seconds, he can see five or six moves ahead,
sometimes more. Occasionally for fun, against strong players, Fischer
will place the hands at one minute on his clock and give his opponent
ten minutes. Invariably he will win with time to spare.

Even more remarkable is
the fact that Fischer can remember most of his speed games. At the
conclusion of the unofficial Speed Championship of the World at
Hercegnovi, Yugoslavia, in 1970, Fischer rattled off the scores of
all his twenty-two games, involving more than 1,000 moves, from
memory! And just prior to his historic match with Taimanov, in
Vancouver, British Columbia, Fischer met the Russian player Vasiukov
and showed him a speed game that the two had played in Moscow fifteen
years before. Fischer recalled the game move by move.

Whatever his degree of
intelligence or memory facility may be, it is an unimportant question
in appraising Fischer’s contribution to chess. We do know that he has
an eidetic memory when it comes to remembering positions and moves;
we do know that he can move with rapid-fire precision that is
phenomenally superior to his contemporaries’ ability. Since chess is
Bobby Fischer’s profession, his business, and his art, is it really
germane to try to evaluate his prowess in other fields, or can we
finally begin to take his acknowledged chess ability as evidence
enough of his remarkable intelligence?

The discussion of
Fischer’s mental qualities is an embarrassment to him personally. He
claims not to know what his I.Q. is. It is a wise policy of school
boards, indeed, not to reveal actual figures to the student. In the
spring of 1974, Fischer castigated his friend Bernard Zuckerman for
reporting to a Soviet chess weekly that Fischer’s I.Q. was
“astronomical.”

Fischer believes that his
statement, as an artist and as a man, lies in his chess. That is what
this volume is all about; accordingly, The Chess of Bobby Fischer is
a ground-floor approach to the workings of Fischer’s brain. Though
the speculation about his intelligence and memory is fascinating, it
will be by his games that he will be remembered. They are the true
testament, perhaps the only one possible, to his mind.

The Chess of Bobby Fischer
(c) 1975 by Frank Brady