The Morning News, Wilmington, Delaware, Monday, September 22, 1958
Sputnik From Brooklyn
Chess has been called the national game of Russia, where everybody seems to play it. Big school and community tournaments are held. Important national tournaments are played in opera houses to overflow crowds while the moves are relayed by loudspeaker to standees in the streets. Since the death in 1946 of Alexander Alekhine, himself an expatriate Russian, the world champion has been a citizen of the USSR. And in each championship match during that period, both contestants have been Russians.
No one would pretend that chess is the national game of the United States. This country has had quite a few international grandmasters, over the years, who ranked among the first 10 in the world, but not one of them ever won a world title. Emmanuel Lasker of Germany did come to live in the United States while he was still world champion, and so did Jose Raoul Capablanca of Cuba. Subsequently Samuel Reshevsky, the erstwhile boy prodigy from Poland, became United States champion and almost, but not quite, qualified to play the champion for the world title.
So it is that 15-year-old Bobby Fischer of Brooklyn, the most remarkable young player this country has produced since Morphy, may never become a national hero like Elvis Presley. But he is our best prospect to bring to the United States the first world championship ever won by a native American.
Bobby is a tournament-seasoned veteran, who has been playing in national championships for years. He is now United States champion, replacing Reshevsky. He is also a recognized “international grandmaster,” as of this summer —the youngest player of any nation ever to achieve that status.
How he won it is a story in itself. A while back Bobby won a little money on a TV show. He decided to use it to pay his fare to Portoroz, Yugoslavia, and enter the international Candidates Chess Tournament there. Where he was going to get the money to pay his fare back he didn't know. But he got it—as prize money for finishing fifth.
The Candidates Tournament is a high rung on the ladder to the world championship. The six who finished highest in it—and that included Bobby—qualify to play in a special six-man invitational tournament next year. The winner of that gets a shot at the world title by playing a subsequent 24-game match in Russia with Champion Botvinnik. It is an interesting fact that Bobby, though he lost two games in Yugoslavia, was undefeated by any of the Russian candidates.
Nobody thinks that Bobby could beat the champ today, but we can't recall any 15-year-old in chess history who was even thought of as a contender for the world title. Already a tournament veteran, Bobby has been improving steadily, and by the time he faces the champ—as by present indications he will, sooner or later—he may well have improved enough to beat him.
If he can do that, he will deserve to be addressed as the American Sputnik. If chess is the Russian national game, we defy Nikita S. Khrushchev to name any 15-year-old Russian boy who is considered a likely prospect to come to the United States and smash Babe Ruth's home run record.
