The Courier, Waterloo, Iowa, Tuesday, September 16, 1958
Has Eye on World Title—Yankee Chess Whiz-Kid Begins His Training a Year in Advance
Brooklyn (AP)—If a boxer began training for a championship fight a year in advance of the battle, you'd wonder if he was kidding.
But chess players … ah, that's different.
BOBBY FISCHER, the 15-year-old whiz-kid of world chess—he's youngest international grand master ever—went back to Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush Tuesday, but he was mentally figuring out his strategy for next year's challenger's tournament.
In that one, he could wind up challenging Mikhail Botvinnik of Russia, the current ruler, for the world championship.
When he showed up in Europe for the candidates' tournament—sort of an elimination for the challengers' event—he wasn't taken very seriously. Still he wound up in the top six in the competition in Portoroz, Yugoslavia.
“I LEARNED a few tricks,” he said, “and I can't wait a minute to get started with my practice.”
He arrived home Monday and within 10 minutes he had sat down at a chess table. In a few more minutes he had his opponent, Norman Monath, beaten. Monath is an editor who is helping Bobby write a book on chess.
“You know,” said Bobby, “when I arrived in Yugoslavia, all the international players told me they would beat me. Actually, I lost two games. I should have won them all.
BOBBY SAID that there is much more interest in chess outside the United States than there is here.
“Why,” he said, “I had to sign hundreds of autographs. Abroad everyone knows about chess. It is considered an art.”
Bobby's mother, Mrs. Regina Fischer, was worried that the lad would not have the money to come home. But his fifth-place in the tournament provided him with about $340 and that made it easy.
WELL, IT'LL BE hard, but a few hours a day while he's cracking the books in English, history and the like, he'll forget about chess.
But if he could only get that Botvinnik …
