Original subtitles

BOBBY: Gonna stick a knight here. He takes it off.

He takes the bishop.

So, he took it off this bishop.

BOBBY: And he's threatening his pawn.

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

BOBBY: Now he took the bishop.

REPORTER: Bobby Fischer is one of the greatest,

perhaps the greatest chess player in the world.

(PEOPLE CHANTING)

REPORTER: Bobby Fischer, United States, World title contender.

BOBBY: Now, uh, black surprises him with this move.

REPORTER : Bobby Fischer is an isolated man.

Bobby Fischer's a strange man. People think that there's something wrong with the man.

BOBBY: The king moves, takes the queen.

REPORTER: 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.

BOBBY: He takes back, he gets checked.

REPORTER: Looking for Bobby Fischer...

What ever happened to Bobby Fischer? Reclusive.

BOBBY: Threaten his pawn, and then that's game.

REPORTER: Bobby Fischer is searching for asylum.

It's really Fischer against the world.

BOBBY: And here white resigned.

INTERVIEWER: Bobby Fischer Interview.

(SIGHS) All right. Try not to tense up.

INTERVIEWER: 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...

INTERVIEWER: 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.

INTERVIEWER: What would your ultimate aim be?

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

Maybe, 20 years or so.

INTERVIEWER: Twenty years?

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

AUDIENCE: (CHANTING) 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. INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

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.

EDMONDS: 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.

INTERVIEWER: And now you're gonna get them?

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

KISSINGER: 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.

NIXON: We will not tolerate being pushed around.

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

GOVERNMENT OFFICER: (IN RUSSIAN)

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

Bombs, having it out over the board.

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

Had made chess it's national sport.

THORARINSSON: They had spent unlimited amounts of money.

They had hundreds of Grand Masters.

They won every tournament, every Chess Olympiad.

(SINGING IN RUSSIAN)

For a Communist Regime,

keeping the crown was very important, uh, ideologically.

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

of intellectual superiority over decadent West.

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

(SINGING IN RUSSIAN)

(RUSSIAN SINGING CONTINUES)

SAIDY: 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.

(GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS)

EDMONDS: 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.

INTERVIEWER: 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?

(WOMAN CHEERS) (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

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.

CLARK: Did you have any help? No.

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

It made me happy. (LAUGHTER)

(BUZZER SOUNDS)

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.

SAIDY: 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.

TARG: 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.

EVANS: 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.

LYMAN: This was a period when Jew and Communist were equated,

so his mother denied his Jewishness.

SLOAN: 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.

INTERVIEWER: You're from Brooklyn originally?

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

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

No, I learned in New York, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: At what age?

Six.

INTERVIEWER: 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.

GLADWELL: 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.

GLADWELL: 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.

(WITH SWISS ACCENT)

GLADWELL: 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.

BOBBY: 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, ya know, playing chess by myself all the time.

BOBBY: Now, uh, black surprises him with this move.

EDMONDS: 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."

EVANS: 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.

SLOAN: Every move.

He went from being my peer in chess.

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

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

No chess player ever made much money in those days,

and my father basically arranged an exhibition tour for him.

In which, he went from city to city, playing anywhere from 40 to 80 people at a time.

And I don't know how much he got then, maybe $5 dollars a board.

SAIDY: Regina decided that this was a way to the big time.

She'd call me up and say...

"I want Bobby to go on Channel Two on Sunday,

"And he won't do it if I ask him, so I want you to tell him."

He just wanted to learn the game and she really wanted him to get publicity.

CAVETT: Fame is definitely a mixed blessing, and almost everybody

would admit that, at some some point in their life, they've wished they had it.

Once it starts it's fun, and the fun quickly wears off...

When you want to be alone, private and public, if that's ever possible.

But also, it's horrendous on the psyche for the young.

It totally distorts their world.

LYMAN: He had all these people around who really wanted a piece of him,

if they only wanted to be in his glow.

And, people have all kinds of motives, not always in his favor.

They're trying to make money out of him. They're trying to be associated with him.

They're talking behind his back. You know, I mean he couldn't stand any of that.

Particularly, he couldn't stand the press, because, he was such an individual.

He was an ideal object for caricature.

INTERVIEWER: You watch television?

No. Not much. Very rarely. INTERVIWER: Why?

I don't know. I read that you could get a little radiation from it.

I don't know. I've talked with a few scientist friends of mine, they say you...

You do, you do, it's a fact, you do get a little bit. They don't think it's dangerous.

What kind of magazines do you like?

My favorite magazine is Confidential.

I read that all the time.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you like that?

They've got a lot of the inside stories on things like water pollution.

It's pretty interesting. I like to read up on that.

A lot of things that the government is concealing, you know?

LYMAN: Fischer looked at the world his own way. I mean,

Bobby was not socialized, the way the rest of us were.

Every idea he had, virtually, he had to come to, through his own thinking.

In these days, he was unusual. But, he hadn't gone off the deep end yet.

REPORTER: Boxing champions have been coming to the Catskill Mountains of New York

for almost half a century to get in shape.

But does a chess champion need to train physically?

Take a look behind that window, into the training headquarters of Bobby Fischer.

(TELEVISION BLARES)

REPORTER: Championship chess is a physically exhausting game.

More than just a test of mind and will, it is a contest of physical endurance too.

Bobby is 29, and he lives virtually a monastic life.

He lives alone, always in hotel rooms that seem barely larger than chessboards.

A lot of the time he won't even answer his telephone.

The television set is his window on the world, exercise is part of it.

I'm a world class Olympic-level coach.

I'm also a world champion in the bench press, and I've trained a lot of celebrities.

But no one can match the fabulous Bobby Fischer.

SNEIDER: He was interested in the human body, how it performed...

and how it could be more productive.

He said "I want you to work on my grip.

"You see this dynamometer?

"I want to squeeze this thing all the way to the end."

I said, "The world's strongest man has not squeezed 100 kilograms."

He said, "I'll squeeze 105." I said, "Why?"

"When I shake that little Russian's hand, I want him to feel it!"

I started him off with a little swimming, racquetball, which we were quite good at.

A little weight training.

I said, repeat this after me, "I'm a winner! I'm a champion! I'm not a loser!"

And he says, "Why'd you put the loser thing in there? You know I'm a champion."

BENSON: Bobby is probably the most interesting person I've ever photographed.

There he is. There's Bobby.

"I decided to hold my breath like this, and..."

You know, it was good for his training.

He was in training for Spassky.

He asked me what other jobs do I do?

And I told him, I'm, I've just finished one on the New York Jets.

"Jets?" He thought that was marvelous.

He thought... He wanted to hear all about it.

How they train, and he said,

"You know, I've got to train like that as well."

(ROCK MUSIC PLAYS)

BENSON: And he didn't mind anything I did.

But it could have gone either way. He treated everybody else quite awful.

REPORTER: Bobby Fischer is a stubborn young man.

Sometimes he fights for principal, more often just for himself.

He'll refuse to play a match because his special terms aren't met.

And for the past month, he's been giving fits to the International Federation too.

Not enough money for the winner of the world title, he says.

EVANS: There was bidding on the match.

And Iceland got it, I guess because they put up the highest bid.

And Bobby didn't want to play. He said the country's too small.

They don't have facilities, they don't have communication.

The International Chess Federation wants word by tomorrow morning from Fischer

on whether he's agreeable to 24 games in Iceland,

and Fischer is taking his time answering.

REPORTER: You, as President of the Icelandic Chess Federation.

Are there times where you have been tempted to say, "Let's forget all about it."

As you know, we are organizing a chess match,

and our only wish is to enrich the chess world.

They had all these lawyers, and they were raising demands all the time.

But at the same time, it was never clear whether Fischer would come to Iceland.

The stumbling block, the principal one was the prize money.

And I said, we have already settled the money question.

And we will not be ready to discuss that.

EDMONDS: There was a real possibility that the match wouldn't take place.

One has to remember with Fischer, that he dropped out of tournaments before.

This was no bluff necessarily.

He's going, he's not going, and then he told me he was going.

He moved quietly, put his hands on my shoulders, and says,

"I'm going to Iceland, Harry." You know, it was...

So, and the next thing I would read in the paper would be, he's not going.

But, Bobby wouldn't sign it.

And then Bobby disappeared.

REPORTER: Boris Spassky, the world chess champion,

came to Iceland twelve days before the match, scheduled to start Sunday.

Spassky said he wanted time to get used to the place,

without, incidentally, being constantly molested by newsmen.

Bobby Fischer was also sensitive about being photographed.

Sensitive to the point that he kept not showing up.

SAIDY: He was sitting in Pasadena, California and my job,

my personal mission, was to get Bobby to go to Iceland.

And play the World Championship Match.

But I didn't see any activity. I didn't see any plane ticket.

I said, "Bobby, I have to go to New York. My dad is sick.

"Let's travel together. You'll be that much closer to Iceland."

He said, "Yeah, I think that's a good idea, travel with a friend.

"Yeah, okay."

I was getting him closer to where he had to go.

We took him to Kennedy airport.

We were headed for the Icelandic Airlines counter.

Somehow a Daily News photographer spied him.

And Bobby started running. He wasn't just running, he was sprinting.

I turned around, and I stopped, and I put my hands up. I didn't say anything.

And Bobby kept running, right out of the airport.

To the curbside limousine, and got in, and left the airport.

SAIDY: Where to? Nobody knew.

It was only three days before the scheduled start of the match.

Chess history was in the balance.

I said, you can stay at my parents' home in Douglaston, Long Island.

I don't think the bell works.

(DOORBELL RINGS)

It works.

JOURNALIST: Hi, where are you?

JOURNALIST: Oh, I need to know...

Bobby was staying at Saidy's house, and Saidy's father was dying of cancer at the time.

I don't know whether he told you that, and they were...

They were trying their best to get Fischer on that plane to Iceland.

At one point Saidy said, "You know, uh, my father's dying."

And Bobby says, "That's okay, I don't mind."

They could not dislodge him from that house.

This was probably the most stressful week of my life.

JOURNALIST: Are you Dr. Saidy? SAIDY: Yes I am.

Mr. Fischer made it clear that he would try to go to Iceland tonight.

Did he express these thoughts to you? Made it clear to whom?

JOURNALIST: We had talked to a few people, and they had the impression he was going.

Well, everybody can have impressions,

but the only person who knows what Bobby Fischer is going to do is Bobby Fischer.

That's about all I really want to say.

JOURNALIST: I see... I want you to all keep cool.

SAIDY: At one point, during his stay at our home...

He simply said, "It's over, I'm not going."

REPORTER: Still no sign of Bobby Fischer.

Today, the International Chess Federation

postponed by 48 hours the start of the match, but it said...

If Fischer is not in Iceland by noon on Tuesday, he will be disqualified.

JOURNALIST: Mr. Thorarinsson, if I may ask, are you worried?

No. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

JOURNALIST: And, I just wondered if you've ever seen Mr. Fischer,

if you have any proof that he actually exists?

That's a good question.

Yes, I think, gentlemen, we can agree on the point that Mr. Fischer exists.

We were losing the whole thing.

We had to get Fischer to come to Iceland.

The Soviet Union had the feeling that the World Chess Champion was humiliated.

They wanted to call Spassky back to the Soviet Union.

Boris said to me, "This is a very severe situation.

"You have to solve this on a higher level."

Gudmundur Thorarinsson,

I think he asked the Prime Minister of Iceland to call Kissinger.

Fischer was very reluctant to go, and I placed a call to him, and I said to him...go.

The United States of America wanted Bobby to go there and win the world title.

By that time, James Slater, the British Multi-Millionaire,

had already doubled the purse.

So, Fischer's answer to Kissinger was, "Yes, I've decided to play."

REPORTER: What finally did make you decide to go then?

I feel that the prestige of this country is at stake.

REPORTER 2: Some people have suggested this was psychological warfare,

against Spassky on your part.

Mmm. REPORTER 2: Did that figure into it?

No, huh-uh.

I don't believe in psychology, I believe in good moves.

ANNOUNCER: Bobby Fischer left New York for Iceland,

and what a scene that was on the morning of July the 4th.

Nothing like this has ever happened in Iceland before.

REPORTER: You try to describe the impact on the citizens here at Reykjavik,

is probably about the same as if the promoters of the next,

Joe Frasier-Muhammad Ali prize fight, decided to stage their international extravaganza

in Butte, Montana.

REPORTER 2: One observer said the chess match was turning into the biggest thing,

to hit Iceland, since Eric the Red.

Though some people were still mad at Fischer,

others approve of his hold-out for more money.

Well, he was fighting for all the chess players of the whole world, I think

He's tedious, he's arrogant, he's inconsiderate.

Uh, basically, people think that there's something wrong with the man.

PALSSON: I became his private bodyguard.

It was a big moment for me, you know.

I was more of his friend than a bodyguard.

He was quite a character, you know.

He could be gentle, but he could be like a volcano sometimes.

And it was better to know when to speak and when to keep quiet, actually.

LYMAN: Finally Bobby showed up in Iceland.

Now is he gonna really play for the World Championship?

REPORTER: It's been a long road for Fischer to this game,

and it'll be a long match at the end of that road.

Both he and Spassky have to play 24 games.

The match could last up to two months, each game runs to five hours.

The most intellectually exhausting battle known to the mind of man.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) The World Chess Championship.

THORARINSSON: We had the Icelandic Government, the Icelandic President,

the Ambassador of the Soviet Union, the Ambassador of the United States,

and many foreign guests.

The theatre was full.

ANNOUNCER: Regularly scheduled programs will not be seen at this time,

so we may bring you the following sports special.

ABC Sports presents the World Chess Championship Match,

between Boris Spassky, the defending champion from the Soviet Union,

and 29-year-old Bobby Fischer, the challenger from the United States.

CAVETT: It was the Super Bowl.

The audiences were gigantic. People stayed home from work.

LYMAN: People were lining up in front of TV sets at department stores.

There were chess groupies.

In Time Square, they were showing the game live. It was that important.

ANNOUNCER: Let's find out from you Larry...

If there are any late-breaking developments.

They might fuss around with the chess pieces and the size of the board and the lighting,

but I'm fairly confident the match will start on time.

THORARINSSON: Boris Spassky, the world chess champion was there with all his assistants.

But, Fischer was not here.

(CLOCK TICKS)

REPORTER: The clock has now been started. It was officially 5:00 in Reykjavik.

Spassky is obviously anxious about the whereabouts of Mr. Fischer.

SAIDY: Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

And all of us despaired.

REPORTER: If Fischer doesn't show up by the time one hour has elapsed,

he forfeits the game automatically.

Oh, there he goes now. He's just played one pawn to queen 4.

ANNOUNCER: You saw Spassky make his move then he touched his clock,

which turns his clock off, but turns his opponent's clock on.

So Fischer's time is now ticking.

EDMONDS: There was no certainty, that even though this was the biggest match,

of his life, he would actually show up.

See, many people think that his antics were designed to upset Spassky,

to discombobulate Spassky, which they did.

But I don't think that was their intent.

I don't think any of this was directed against Spassky.

It was his own inner demons that he was fighting.

REPORTER 1: Unpredictable Bobby Fischer.

REPORTER 2: Nobody really knows why Bobby Fischer does or does not do anything.

REPORTER 3: The most individualistic, intransigent, uncommunicative,

solitary chess master of all time.

He has no permanent home.

REPORTER 3: Fischer is a nomad. Speaks to almost no one.

REPORTER 3: No contact with his family. REPORTER: Troubled childhood.

REPORTER 3: He hasn't seen his mother in over 10 years.

REPORTER: Is your mother still living?

Yeah. REPORTER: Do you get a chance to see her very much?

Haven't seen her in a few years, yeah.

REPORTER: What about your father? No, I don't see him. No.

REPORTER: Are they living together? No, her, her...

SLOAN: "I never talk about my father."

That's what Fischer would say, "I never talk about my father."

This is what led me to realize that there was something special about Fischer's father

that nobody else knew.

BENSON: Regina Fischer has a 900-page FBI file.

And, one of the things it reveals is that Bobby Fischer's father,

was not Gerhardt Fischer as it had been supposed,

and as the family had allowed to be known.

In fact, Bobby Fischer's father was a man named Paul Nemenyi.

Gerhardt Fischer, who is officially listed on the birth certificate,

never came to America.

BENSON: Regina and Paul Nemenyi met at a University near Denver,

and they had an affair.

Regina moved on and took the baby, Bobby, with her.

Regina, often, because she was destitute, and needed help,

would go to social service agencies, and ask for help.

Paul Nemenyi would show up, and consult with the social workers,

because he was very concerned about Bobby.

He said that Bobby, even at a very young age, was a very upset child.

He was afraid that he wasn't being raised right.

BESON: Later, when Bobby moved to New York City.

Paul would come and take him out to restaurants,

and would admonish him for having bad table manners.

And would basically act towards him in the way that a father would.

BENSON: One day, Bobby asked his mother, "Where's Paul?

"Why isn't he coming around anymore?"

EVANS: When Nemenyi died, that's when his mother told him he was his real father.

He learned about it only about the time he was 9-years-old.

SAIDY: Chess to him was the ultimate escape,

his single obsession.

EVANS: Well, Spassky's waiting.

REPORTER 2: Right, and it uh, waiting and wondering whether Bobby will show or not show.

And there is absolutely dead silence in the hall.

EVANS: Spassky is pacing, he's nervous and...

REPORTER: Wait! Here comes Fischer,

coming onto stage, saying that he was caught in traffic.

And, uh, I think Spassky is visibly relieved.

EVANS: And also perhaps pained.

LYMAN: It didn't look like this match would happen, but finally it happened and...

it was phenomenal.

How do you spell relief, okay?

REPORTER: Now, for the first time, we're looking at Bobby Fischer, the man that

eight times has won the United States Open Championship.

LYMAN: I remember saying on TV at one point during the match,

I said, "You know, we're really lucky...

"to be alive, at this moment, when Bobby Fischer's playing Boris Spassky."

ANNOUNCER: There's the first move. One knight to king bishop 3, very noncommittal.

REPORTER: Now watch, see Fischer turn around here? ANNOUNCER: Yeah.

He's checking to see that camera location.

And now, uh, he goes over to protest those cameras being there.

ANNOUNCER: There's Lothar Schmid in the background.

Bobby said, "I feel disturbed. I cannot have that, please."

ANNOUNCER: Spassky remains serene and imperturbable throughout all this.

POLGAR: The first game started out with some minor psychological games,

in the opening, but then it calmed down.

And the position that we reached after 28 moves, seemed like a complete draw...

It seemed like they were gonna agree to a draw shortly, and move onto the next game.

SAIDY: All the pieces were traded.

They got into an endgame. Each side had a bishop and a bunch of pawns.

It was a very easy... It was a dead draw.

The position reached very even position, virtually symmetrical.

And Fischer went haywire.

He did something that hardly anyone would do except a rank amateur.

He grabbed a pawn, allowing his bishop to be trapped.

LYMAN: He made a colossal beginner's blunder.

He took a pawn which allowed Spassky to trap his bishop. We couldn't believe it.

This looks like an error, but this is Fischer playing the move.

There must be more to it than that.

There must be an explanation. There must be some deep combination that we've missed.

KROGIUS: (SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

(CONTINUES SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

Bobby saw six moves ahead here, when he made the move.

He just didn't see seven moves ahead.

EVANS: White can interpolate a move. You can play bishop to queen 2.

Notice that that cuts off the escape square.

And then all that white has to do on the next move, is play king to knight 2,

and the bishop is lost.

EVANS: That was the shot heard around the world.

SAIDY: It was inexplicable.

I still don't know how that happened.

SCHMID: Spassky won the first game.

You had to get to 12.5 points, the best of 24.

A win is one, a loss is zero, and a draw is one half.

He had an agreement that the cameras be quiet and Bobby said they aren't quiet.

And, uh, they disturb me.

He claimed that the noise from the machines...

was so high that he couldn't, you see, he couldn't think or concentrate.

I believe that, by the way.

I think that he had hyperacusis,

a medical condition characterized by excessive sensitivity to noise.

Fischer said he would boycott the match,

until hidden movie cameras were removed from the playing hall.

The promoters said the entire financial structure of the match

depends on recording and exhibiting the play.

He asked to put the camera away.

THORARINSSON: He wanted me to clear the cameras out of the hall.

And I said, "No."

SCHMID: You have to start in time.

If a player is not present, you have to, as the arbiter, press his clock.

HOFFMAN: Fischer had been known to quit matches over trivia...

So, we were afraid that, uh, he would just, you know,

run back home, and that would be the end of it.

SCHMID: Bobby did not show up.

I had, as the arbiter, to forfeit him.

And, for a moment, I thought, "Did I make the right decision?

"Was it fair? Was it correct?" But it was necessary.

There was no other way.

This, uh, night I remember that I had been woken up by tears in my eyes.

That I, as an arbiter, had to destroy a genius.

EVANS: He was now trailing two nothing.

It's very hard to make that up in a 24-game match.

POLGAR: Half the world thought, "That's it, the match is over."

"He'll never come back."

"Why would he even bother trying to come back from such a difficult situation?"

HARRY BENSON: During the match, he would knock on my door about...

One or two in the morning, and we would just walk and walk.

And we would sit, and look at the animals.

He loved animals.

And he would talk, but he didn't like to talk about his childhood.

It was a bad subject.

He did tell me that, like, from the age of 2 or 3 he was left alone...

all day with his sister.

The loneliness.

CLEA BENSON: Regina, for all of her gifts, was not a traditional mother.

She was a person who moved her kids around from place to place,

ya know, even every few months when they were really little.

SAIDY: There was obvious conflict between Regina and Bobby from an early age.

BENSON: He didn't like to have his mother around.

She would end up having to send his sister, Joan, abroad with him on tournaments,

He wouldn't play if his mother was along.

Regina moved out of the apartment that he shared with her...

in Brooklyn when he was only 16 years old.

SAIDY: He told his mom to leave, I don't know how politely, and she left.

In a way, he rejected her because she was so like him.

So pushy, so self-centered, so goal-directed.

Maybe he was splitting off part of himself.

TARG: In 1960, Regina went to Europe to get her M.D. Degree.

And Bobby would have still been living on Lincoln Place in Brooklyn then.

I went to his apartment a couple of times, and it was roach-ridden.

It was a walk-up tenement.

He had chess books all over the place,

and it was just in a complete state of disarray.

MARSHALL: The fact is, his mother left him.

Think about yourself. If, suddenly, your father wasn't there,

and your mother disappeared, said, "Goodbye."

How would you feel? What would have happened to you?

REGINA: Bobby is all chess.

I don't play chess, and I don't pretend to speak for Bobby.

But I feel that whatever I do here,

whatever I say, to help make the Vietnam come to an end more quickly,

will help every son, every daughter in the whole world.

ALL: One, two, three, four, sign the treaty, end the war!

One, two, three, four, sign the treaty end the war!

One, two, three, four, sign the treaty end the war...

MAN ON PHONE: Well, you're not gonna believe this, Sir, but I'm inside of a wind tunnel.

MAN ON PHONE: (CONTINUES SPEAKING)

EVANS: Fischer said, "Well, I'll continue but the third game,

"has got to be away from the auditorium inside a sealed room."

There's a little ping-pong room at the back of the stage.

And Spassky agreed.

You can't change the location without both sides' permission once the match has started.

He could have claimed the match on a forfeit.

He didn't have to play in that back room.

If he hadn't, Fischer would have not played and the match would not have continued.

Bobby started again to quarrel.

"No! Not this one and not that," etcetera.

And Boris said in this moment...

"So, I retire, I do not want this. This is too much for me. I...

"If so, we end the match."

The two boys were standing together at the table.

And I took them here, both, and pressed them down in the stools.

Now, will you play?

Boris automatically made his first move.

EDMONDS: The game could still be watched by a close-circuit TV camera.

THORARINSSON: The audience was in the hall and they could follow the game move by move.

(MURMURING)

In game three, Bobby played an opening, a defense he had never played before.

The Benoni, which means "Son of Sorrow."

It is so risky, so fraught with danger,

that whenever you play that, you're simply saying,

"We're not gonna make a draw. This is win or lose. This is a fight to the death."

Bobby moved his knight to the edge of the board.

There's a saying in chess...

(IN GERMAN) "Ein springer am rand bringt kummer am shand,"

"A knight on the side, I will not abide."

It was against principle.

It's not considered a good idea, because the center of the board, typically,

is the most important battle ground.

And that's where we want to position our pieces, or at least in a way that our pieces

attack the middle of the board.

HOFFMAN: Not only did he move the knight to the side of the board, but also it could have

been captured by a bishop, and he would have had a very ugly-looking...

Double pawn way over on the side of the board, which,

it was very unaesthetic, let's say.

REPORTER ON PHONE: Uh, Frank, I can see Spassky.

Uh, more tense than you've seen him? REPORTER ON PHONE: Yes.

He may be...what?

I see.

Spassky did not find the best continuation,

and was consistently outplayed...

Until Fischer won his first game of his life against Spassky.

He was on the scoreboard.

What do you think of Bobby Fischer?

I like him. I like his style.

Are you following the games? Yes I am.

The American chess players are behind Bobby 100%,

and they're all anxious to see him get in there, and win the championship.

( I'VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE PLAYS)

Do you think that Fischer will win for the first time over the Russian champion?

I think Fischer will win, because he's playing for $200,000,

but if Spassky wins most of the money will go to the Russian government.

EVANS: People sat in bars betting on what the next move was going to be...

the way people bet on whether there is going to be a hit in a baseball game.

That's when chess really exploded.

¶ Move me on to any black square

¶ Use me anytime ¶

Tell me what, what, you know what turns you on about chess. What?

Do you hope to be as good as Bobby Fischer one day?

Well, I'd hope to, but I doubt if I would be. REPORTER: Why?

Well, I just think Fischer's just about the best player in the world,

and not very many people can get to be as good as he is.

EVANS: We're watching the looming presence of Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer,

as sketched by Leroy Neiman, noted artist and familiar face to Wide World.

Leroy is here with me at the Wide World studio in New York, and he's going to be

sharing some of his artistic impressions with us, in just a minute.

Larry I thought going up there to that chess match would be like watching the grass grow,

but it was far more exciting than I ever expected it to be.

Well, I thought it was pretty exciting too.

NEIMAN: It was just like the Ali-Frasier fight all over again.

This is Bobby Fischer leaving the hotel for the fight,

like a matador leaving the Palace hotel in Madrid.

On stage, the tension is developing, it's a real "prizefight."

That's when Fischer... That's when he's a fighter.

This right hand is, like it struck and drew blood on Spassky.

The score was even. Two and a half, two and a half.

SAIDY: Spassky was not himself.

All these shenanigans had affected him adversely.

He was not playing his true game.

KROGIUS: (IN RUSSIAN)

(CONTINUES IN RUSSIAN)

MARSHALL: They believed that the chairs had been wired,

and the lighting fixture, to destabilize Boris' concentration.

That's when Boris cracked.

Spassky complained that there was some radiation...

which was affecting him.

During the match I felt myself quite unusually like before.

So, that was reason to be for myself... I'm not a suspicious man...

to become suspicious.

There might be something in the chair.

There might be something on the surface of the chair.

There might be something in the light.

EVANS: They inspected the chairs and the lights to see,

whether the Americans were up to some kind of "Hanky Panky."

They found two dead flies, and that was it.

(FLIES BUZZING)

Games 6 is very celebrated.

It is probably the most reprinted game of the entire match.

It was like...a symphony of placid beauty.

POLGAR: Right on the first move...

Bobby Fischer came up with a major surprise to the entire world.

He almost always starts the game, with moving

the pawn in front of his king, two pawns up, with E4.

KROGIUS: (IN RUSSIAN)

And in this game, everybody's shocked.

He started with the English opening by playing C4.

Spassky's preparation was out the window.

I'm sure he prepared for many things, but not this.

Fischer did not play his usual game.

He played a different kind of game, a placid, positional, slowly building up game,

where he deprived Spassky of mobility.

Pushed him back where his pieces could not do anything.

It was just a, just a beautiful game...

I don't know what more can be said about it. It's just a model of precision.

It was such a beautiful game,

that when the crowd applauded at the end of the game,

Spassky, himself, stood up and applauded Fischer.

EVANS: On his way back to the hotel, Fischer said,

"Did you see what Spassky did?"

He said "That's a sportsman. He's a real sportsman."

EDMONDS: Game 21 reached move 40,

the move at which the game was adjourned, for the two players to go and study it.

ANNOUNCER: This is NBC nightly news, Friday September 1st.

Good Evening. We'll have more on the developments in the Watergate Bugging case.

We'll hear George McGovern talking about tightening up his campaign organization.

And we'll have a look at the new unemployment figures, but first Bobby Fischer.

Today was the day when Fischer and the Russian champion, Boris Spassky,

were to have finished the 21st game of the World Championship,

a game they started yesterday.

But Spassky, after what must have been an agonizing night spent analyzing his position,

didn't even show up to play.

BENSON: I was going to photograph Spassky in the morning.

He comes straight over to me, shook my hand, and said,

"There is another world champion.

"His name is Robert James Fischer."

I went back to the loft later to Bobby's room,

and I told him Spassky just retired.

And I want to be the first to congratulate you.

REPORTER: Congratulations, how you feel, babe? Tell us how you feel about it!

You said you were gonna do it. (YELLING)

Listen would you talk to us, Bobby?

Bobby, roll the window down!

BENSON: Bobby wanted to get away...

'Cause they're all banging on the door and all that,

just to beat it out into the hills.

Someone brings up The New York Post, and it says, "Bobby is the Champ."

His mother had said to him, when she saw she couldn't separate him from chess.

She said, "Okay, go play chess.

"When that's over, you can start your life.

"You can do something important."

REPORTER: NBC news correspondent Dick Schapp was in Iceland today...

and here's what Fischer said.

SCHAPP: How does it feel now, you have the World Championship.

You're the best in the world at what you've devoted your life to.

How does that feel inside?

It feels pretty good, yeah. I mean, my goal now is play a lot more chess.

I feel I haven't played enough chess.

(TRUMPET MUSIC PLAYS)

How did it feel...all this between the mayor and all...

Did you ever thought of anything like that?

No, I never, you know, thought this was gonna happen...

You know, with Chess. I just hope, uh, this keeps on.

I just had a premonition that something awful was going to happen to him.

I didn't know what it would be,

but I didn't feel good about it.

One of Fischer's problems was that after the match,

he was, supposedly, better known by the population of the world,

than anyone, except for Jesus Christ.

And, he was a guy who treasured his privacy.

He had a problem.

REPORTER: The entire world knows the name Bobby Fischer by now.

Was it a letdown after it was all over Bobby? I mean...

Well, there must have been a tremendous, uh...

There was. I woke up the day after the thing was over and...

I just felt different. Like...

Something had been taken out of me.

LYMAN: He didn't really, after he won, know what he wanted to do with his life.

He, uh, he reached an end point, when he was 29.

He's 29 years old, and he hadn't had a childhood.

Is it not true that, um, the Chess masters are always young men,

and that they... they don't last?

Uh, that's been true, generally speaking, but there are exceptions.

Steinitz, he was 63 when he was world champion.

But, you're in a fortunate position, because...

Most of us in life, no matter how successful we think we are.

We still have to do what other people want us to do, just to hold jobs.

But, you don't have to hold a job... You're on your own. That's right.

It's a unique position.

That's right, you can't say "Well, if Fischer won't come,"

"We'll get some other chess genius, uh, who's the best in the world."

REPORTER: Bobby Fischer, the world champion chess player,

has until midnight tonight to decide whether to abide by the international rules of chess,

or give up his title.

If Fischer defaults, the title would go to the challenger,

Soviet grandmaster, Anatoly Karpov.

SAIDY: He wanted probably to play the kid from Russia, Karpov,

and beat him. I mean, it would be an easy task.

On the other hand, part of him knew he could lose.

And, that's death to Bobby. He didn't want to risk that.

So, what came out was a series of new demands on the rules.

First of all, I like to play matches without draws.

And, uh, they're gonna have to increase the prizes, if they want me to play...

Well, if I get a title... They want me to play a match for the title.

I'm not gonna just play for what their minimum prizes are.

Accepting all of Fischer's demands, was unacceptable

politically for the Soviet Chess Federation.

REPORTER: Barring a very unlikely last-minute change of heart by Fischer,

Anatoly Karpov becomes the new champion by default.

EVANS: The world chess body gave him about 95% of what he wanted,

but that was it. He didn't defend his title.

KARPOV: (IN RUSSIAN) I think he was unable to cope with his own invincibility.

He got more or less scared to sit down again,

in front of the board, and risk losing.

But only he who never plays, never loses.

EVANS: We all felt disappointed that he let chess down,

he'd let the American masters down.

Yeah, we all felt kind of a betrayal.

FISCHER: Whereas others could suffer from a...

Depression after such debacle.

BENSON: I went out to California on a job, phoned Bobby,

picked him up in Pasadena, where he was staying, some cult place he was staying.

FISCHER AUDIO RECORDINGS: I've had so many bad experiences...

BENSON: And, he would talk about nuclear disarmament, our capabilities, ICBMs, and that.

You know? And that would go on for about an hour and a half.

PREACHER ON RADIO: Just what is, the Worldwide Church of God?

EVANS: Bobby had been involved with the Church of God, since 1962.

And after he won the Championship, the church was providing him with a place.

The Worldwide Church of God was a...

A group of people that believed in fundamental principles of the Bible.

Some people would probably call us fundamentalists.

That will bring on the great tribulation!

And that will end in the second coming of Christ,

the end of this present civilization!

Basically, a sense that there was an impending coming Christ,

and we need to prepare for that particular second coming.

I told him, "It's all a bunch of hooey," but, uh, that's what he chose to do.

MAN ON RADIO: I've warned you may be living in the time in which you will see...

EVANS: I went to his apartment in Pasadena.

It seemed to me pretty hopeless.

SNEIDER: He was extremely depressed.

We would get into these long discussions about the Bible. "Why are we here?"

"What are we doing here? What is life?"

EVANS: That's when he started to go haywire.

He, uh, felt that he was being influenced by these Russians,

and he also was scared of the Mossad, Israeli Secret Police.

(MAN SCREAMING ON RADIO)

SNEIDER: He felt that he could be easily spied upon through radioactivity.

And through other means, fillings...

He thought maybe the Russians could send signals there.

Phones...

Tinfoil, over the windows...

Media... Radioactive... This is paranoia.

SNEIDER: We tried as church members to bring him in to a little more of a normal life.

I think he turned against the Worldwide Church of God,

when one of its prophecies patently did not come to pass.

CHURCH AUDIO RECORDING: But in the last days, that these times

right now, in which we are living, perilous times shall come!

EVANS: Fischer felt betrayed.

He wrote a pamphlet attacking the church and Armstrong, its leader,

saying that, "Nobody should ever control your mind."

FISCHER: (AUDIO RECORDING) I was never a member of the Church of God,

absolutely not true, it's a lie.

SNEIDER: As he denied God, he began to get worse.

EVANS: He started to go astray.

He started reading, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Which he mentioned to me, and I said "That book is a forgery, and it's a hoax.

"And it's a bit of anti-Semitic propaganda that even Hitler used."

BOOK READER: Protocol Number 1. What has restrained the wild beast we call men?

SNEIDER: He got into all these doctrines.

What has influenced them heretofore? SNEIDER: The Illuminati...

All these different people that were gonna take over the world.

BOOK READER: Protocol Number 9, Merciless revenge and bitter hatred.

From us emanates an all-embracing terror.

TARG: We began to see less of Bobby because we didn't want to expose our children,

to the famous uncle who had become a fulminating anti-Semite.

BOBBY: Hitler said in Mein Kampf, that the Jews are not the victims,

but they're the victimizers!

TARG: We could be having dinner and he would suddenly start thinking about,

"The Jews did this, and the Jews did that."

And in our house it was just unacceptable.

BOBBY: They're actually making things happen, and causing revolutions,

and killing people all over the world...

You start mixing fish with humans, and anything is possible.

His mother was Jewish. His real father was Jewish.

It's complete madness.

SAIDY: The question is how could a Jewish kid become an anti-Semite?

Paranoid psychosis.

He had false fixed ideas of a very widening conspiracy against him.

It was as if he were at war with himself.

EVANS: He became a recluse. Fischer watchers refer to it as the "wilderness years."

REPORTER: Where's Bobby these days? Oh, Bobby's at home.

Where, in New York? Well, I...

I don't think that I want to get on the subject of Bobby.

You know how Bobby feels about it. Yeah.

The last conversation we had, enraged him.

"If you don't play chess...

"There will soon come a time when no one will ask you to play chess."

He thought that was unacceptable, and that was the end of our relationship.

EDMONDS: If you look throughout history,

there have been a disproportionate number, of

extremely talented chess players, who have also had serious psychological issues.

You are putting yourself in a world that is infinite.

It's abstract. You are, in essence, reshaping your mind.

SHENK: If you understand that in the first move of a chess game...

Each player has 20 possible moves.

If you multiply 20 by 20, that means there are 400

different possible chess positions, after the first move.

POLGAR: The tree becomes with a lot of branches, you know.

That, you start with one move and that one move there are several options...

Then all of the sudden it becomes a jungle.

The number of all positions that theoretically can occur in the game of chess...

is something like ten with 45 zeros.

It's like the number of atoms on the solar system.

SHENK: You're trying to anticipate what your opponent might do,

and you don't know what he might do.

So, you are thinking of all the different possibilities.

A good chess player is paranoid on the board.

But then, if you take that paranoia to real life, it doesn't play so well.

You end up seeing your real world, according to the confines of chess.

HOFFMAN: There were some that came to a sad end.

I mean, we like to think that chess didn't cause that, but maybe it did.

SAIDY: An individual with an unbalanced tendency,

by becoming a chess monomaniac, will throw himself over the brink.

Yeah, we have some examples where people of, um... exceptional abilities,

were infected by this, uh, mental illness.

Victor Korchnoi claimed to have played a match with a dead man.

He even provided the moves. KASPAROV: Rubenstein...

Rubenstein jumped out the window, because the fly was after him.

KASPAROV: Wilhelm Steinitz.

HOFFMAN: Steinitz was in an institution.

Steinitz, in late life, thought he was playing chess by wireless with God Almighty.

And, had the better of God Almighty.

Carlos Torre took all his clothes off on a bus.

And, the probably greatest name, the greatest impact on the game of chess.

Uh, in the 19th century, belonged to an American player, Paul Morphy.

Unfortunately, there is some resemblance with Fischer.

SHENK: Paul Morphy was an American player who stunned the world with his chess play.

And then at age 26 he wandered the streets aimlessly.

He muttered to himself. He became a paranoid schizophrenic.

His tour in Europe in 1858, 1859 was one of the most unforgettable events,

in the history of chess, and then Morphy stopped playing chess.

EVANS: There are many similarities between Morphy and Fischer.

HOFFMAN: People are always gonna, uh, equate their names together.

They both gave up the game at the height of their powers.

And disappeared into a...world of neurosis, of psychosis.

FEMALE REPORTER: Where did Bobby Fischer go?

MALE REPORTER: What happened to Bobby Fischer?

FEMALE REPORTER: We spent countless hours prowling the streets,

where he's been known to roam.

Looking for him at chess clubs where he's been known to play.

Ultimately the, now investigation was successful. We found Bobby Fischer.

The quest paid off.

In 1990, he shows up in Pasadena, little on the heavy side.

He hands me this letter.

SNEIDER: (READING) "Mr. Fischer, you are the Mozart of the chess world.

"I want you to get back into Chess."

Her name was Zita.

"I wonder what she looks like Harry."

All of a sudden, he's romantically entwined.

She got him off all of his rationalizations, why he couldn't play chess anymore.

And...and she set up the tournament.

After many false alarms, it was a 19-year-old Hungarian Chess player,

Zita Raycsanyi who brought Fischer back to chess.

Do you think he's still as handsome now?

ZITA: What do you think?

As a result of their meeting, Zita rushed off to arrange Bobby's comeback.

REPORTER: The chess world was shaken today with news that an old legend lives,

apparently ready to risk himself in public again.

Headlines around the world announced he'd signed a contract,

to play a rematch, with his old Russian rival form Iceland, Boris Spassky.

LYMAN: I was in the chess world. Everybody is waiting for him to play for 20 years.

I mean, month after month, year after year, there were these stories.

He's negotiating this. Ya know, someone's trying to raise this for him.

He wouldn't play, finally he plays!

He was playing, uh, uh, in Yugoslavia against Spassky.

It was trumpeted as a return World Championship Match.

This is a typical question, uh, from Mr. Roger Cohen of The New York Times.

(CLEARS THROAT)

(READING) "If you beat Spassky...

"Will you go on to challenge Kasparov for the World Championship?"

Well...can he read what it says behind here?

(APPLAUSE)

(BOMB EXPLODES)

EDMONDS: The match took place in Yugoslavia during the middle of the Yugoslav war.

And by participating, Fischer broke a U.N. backed embargo.

The U.S. government sent him a letter, and said...

"Don't play, if you do you're going to go to jail."

This is my reply to their order not to defend my title here.

(SPITTING) That's my answer...

KASPAROV: The match of '92, in my view, had no chess relevance.

They played very decent chess, but it was chess of 1972.

It's like watching two old boxers come back into the ring for one last payday.

A slightly sad affair where both players are clearly past their best.

Both Fischer and Spassky are shadows of their former selves.

He won, and won several million dollars,

but was declared a criminal for having taken part in the match.

U.S. OFFICIAL: Today a federal grand jury here in Washington,

charged Robert James "Bobby" Fischer with a criminal violation,

of the United States imposed sanctions on the federal republic of Yugoslavia.

Fischer faces up to 10 years in prison, and the millions of dollars

of proceeds of the chess match, are forfeitable to the United States.

Bobby Fischer, like anyone else, should be held accountable for his actions.

The cost was very high.

I mean, he lost his country. He couldn't come back. He was indicted.

A lot of people questioned the validity of this indictment, but it was a law.

So, Fischer broke the law.

He couldn't come back into the country. They were out to arrest him.

So, he became an expatriate.

FISCHER: (OVER PHONE)

I saw him in Yugoslavia, but it was pointless.

You know, he was gone, it was no longer a story.

I knew Zita. I knew her personally, and she was a nice girl.

But, who knows what he did there?

TARG: Joan had gone to Hungary,

in 1995, to visit Bobby, when he was staying in Budapest.

That's the last of our family who had seen him.

Regina died in '96.

And my wife, Joan, died in 1998,

from a cerebral hemorrhage, no forewarning at all...

Died...within a half a day.

It was a tragedy. His mother dies, his sister dies.

SAIDY: Bobby was stripped of any family support that he could hope for.

And when he was a man without a country, he got worse and worse.

(NEWS JINGLE)

(SPEAKING IN CHINESE)

BOBBY: (OVER PHONE) This is all wonderful news.

It's time for the fucking U.S. to get their heads kicked in.

It's time to finish off the U.S. once and for all.

This just shows you that what goes around comes around, even for the United States.

(BOBBY LAUGHS)

TARG: He felt that he was above politics, and could say whatever he wanted to say.

And George Bush says, "No, you're not. I can grab you, wherever you are."

OFFICIAL: United States citizen, Robert, "Bobby" Fischer,

has been detained by Japanese authorities, on alleged immigration law violations.

I got a collect phone call from Japan.

"From who?" I said, or he said, "Bobby Fischer."

Twenty-two years I haven't heard from him, not anything.

But, he must have kept me in the drawer or something.

So, I was not completely forgotten when he needed me.

And, I went to Japan to get this man out of jail.

When I saw him there, it was on his birthday.

He asked me if I could help him out, you know.

I said "I will see what I can do."

(BELL RINGING)

Iceland has stood up and offered him residency.

Iceland has stood up and given him passport.

At the end, we, this small nation of 300,000 people

intervened, and went against the United States and Japan,

the two strongest economies in the world.

And got him to Iceland.

(SPEAKING IN ICELANDIC LANGUAGE)

CROWD: (REPEATEDLY) Bobby Fischer!

ICELANDIC REPORTER: Welcome to Iceland, Mr. Fischer, how does it feel to be home?

BOBBY: Great, Great.

REPORTER: You're getting quite a hero's welcome, did you expect this?

BOBBY: No I didn't. REPORTER: We've got a car waiting for you.

REPORTER: This is your, uh, first time in Iceland in quite a few years...

You weren't that thrilled the first time around. Think it will be better this time?

That is not true, I never... You mean...

You mean, I didn't want to play here originally?

REPORTER: Well... Yeah.

I explained all that. That was all a CIA setup. I'll explain that someday.

REPORTER: We look forward to that.

Bobby Fischer, welcome to Iceland, and thanks for talking to us.

Have a good night.

PALSSON: Sorry for keeping you waiting.

REPORTER: How does it feel to be a free person?

BOBBY: Oh, it feels great.

You got a wonderful country, wonderful fresh air, very fine people.

Um, excellent food, uh, plenty of room...

REPORTER: What's next Bobby?

I still want to do a book showing how the...

1984-85 Karpov-Kasparov match was pre-arranged, move by move.

They all say, "Oh, Fischer didn't write the book he said he was going to write."

Yeah! But they don't say that they stole all my file on it.

They don't say that they stole several big moving boxes full of books,

that took me years to accumulate.

BOBBY: What is your name? JEREMY: Jeremy.

Jeremy, what? JEREMY: Schapp.

Your father was Dick Schapp, you were telling me last night?

JEREMY: Yes, exactly. Yeah, I knew him yeah.

He rapped me very hard.

He said that, I don't have a sane bone in my body.

I didn't forget that. (LAUGHING)

His father many, many years ago befriended me.

Took me out to see I don't remember what...

JEREMY: Knicks games. Knicks games, and...

JEREMY: You were 12. Acted kind of like a father figure...

And then later, like a typical Jewish snake,

he had the most vicious things to say about me.

JEREMY: I have to object, Bobby. Okay. Go ahead.

Did you read the article where he said, I don't have a sane bone in my body?

JEREMY: Honestly, I'm not sure if I read it, but I know that he said it.

Yeah. And, and, honestly...

I don't know that you've done much here today, really, to disprove anything he said.

(CAMERAS CLICKING)

STEFANNSSON: I met Bobby after he came to Iceland.

His existence was a very lonely one.

He gradually, in Iceland, like everywhere else, he alienated people with his behavior.

BOBBY: I had two... I had one huge safe...

We just walked around the pond, downtown Reykjavik, and we talked...

and we had coffee together, and...

Then, I met him a few times when I ran into him in restaurants, etcetera.

The U.S. didn't give a damn what their opinions were anymore.

Their role was over. Now the bomb belongs to the government. You understand?

This is... This is... And, and they were...

And they were shocked. They didn't believe it.

Listen to me, if we are going to have a fucking conversation Okay...

All right? Then this cannot be a monologue. Yeah, okay.

STEFANNSSON: He, uh, could not tear himself from the topic of the evil nature of the Jews.

And the evil nature of the United States, or the evil nature of Nuclear power.

He talked about this relentlessly.

And, you couldn't... really couldn't pull him out of that discussion.

It was not just that he was talking about it.

STEFANNSSON: It was also the obsessive-compulsive nature of the discussion,

the relentless nature of it.

You don't see how fucked up the world is, that's a form of insanity.

STEFANNSSON: The last time I ran into him...

I turned him away from my table, because I had gotten enough of him.

Most of us, think within relatively narrow boundaries.

But, an occasional individual manages to get outside of the box.

Those are the people who make new discoveries. Those are the creative people.

But, occasionally, it is difficult to get back into the box.

BOBBY: The king moves, takes the queen...

His genius and his illness are joined at the hip.

I don't think that Bobby could have been as creative, as extraordinary,

without being extraordinary in other aspects.

And that aspect, we call a disease.

BOBBY: (INAUDIBLE)

I don't consider myself to be...

A genius at chess.

I consider myself more to be, uh...

A genius who just happens to play chess, you understand?

So, I could be doing any...

I could have done, and I can do any number of other things, you know?

You know I always wanted to write some songs.

I was telling Evans, uh, Larry Evans. This was back in the 60's, I remember.

I said, you know, I listen to all these songs. I wish I could write them...

But, I try to write something. I try to think of something,

and, I guess, nothing comes out.

And, he says, "Yeah, because you haven't lived..."

(LAUGHING) And I started thinking about it, he's right.

My chess library, all my other regular library...

All my personal correspondence, all my chess sets...

BOBBY: All kind of stuff, everything just stolen. Everything...

He died from his psychiatric illness.

He did not want to accept treatment for benign prostatic hypertrophy.

He refused dialysis, I understand.

Probably could have prolonged his life, if he had taken it.

TARG: I was able to get him a photograph of Regina and Joan to have with him,

which is what he had with him in the hospital when he died.

EVANS: Reportedly, Fischer's last words were...

"Nothing is so healing as the human touch."

The Former World Champion of Chess, Bobby Fischer has died.

His career reached its height during matches with his

nemesis, Boris Spassky, back in 1972.

REPORTER 2: American chess superstar, Bobby Fischer, has just died.

REPORTER 3: Former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer has died.

Considered by many as the greatest chess player of all time.

Bobby Fischer dead at the age of 64.

EVANS: Just his games, that's his monument.

His games.

SAIDY: If you love an art...

Let's say, you love painting.

Imagine if Picasso had died after only five years of work,

and all the rest of his works had never appeared.

This was a tragedy for the whole chess world.

He did it all by himself.

He penetrated the secrets of chess, in this shabby Brooklyn apartment.

He was the best player who ever lived.

REPORTER: Bobby Fischer. Sound Roll 3.

REPORTER: (SIGHING) Right.

REPORTER: Speed.

REPORTER: Bobby, uh...

You've been playing this game since you were 6 years old.

And, playing it very seriously since shortly after the age of six.

Did all this concentration, to the exclusion of other activities...

Did this bother you? Do you think this deprived you of anything growing up?

Maybe, yeah, yeah, to some extent, yeah.

REPORTER: Like what?

Well, it would have been better, you know, a little more balanced...

Yeah, maybe, you know, a little more rounded, but what can you do?

(HARMONICA PLAYS)

(FOLK SONG PLAYS)