The Fischer King: Bobby in Iceland

Window of the bookshop that Bobby Fischer visited daily

We were driving in the dark (this time of year there's only four hours of light a day) through a town called Selfoss some 60km south of Reykjavik, Iceland. My companion Hinrik pointed out a light beside a mountain just outside the town. He said Bobby Fischer was buried there. Then he said, offhandedly, 'I knew him, you know.' I looked at him. 'Yes, really, I knew him.'

Hinrik was a young man when he first met chess grandmaster Robert James Fischer in Reykjavik in 1972. The American Fischer was there for the now-legendary world chess championship against the Russian Boris Spassky that was seen as more than mere chess: it was a Cold War battle, the USA Vs. the USSR. When Bobby won, it was a victory for the west, for democracy, for freedom and the American way. It made Fischer world chess champion, and an instant celebrity. Yet his chess career essentially ended in 1972; Fischer withdrew from public life and chess-playing and would not play a competitive game for almost 20 years.

At the time (1972), Hinrik was trying to sell silk-screen printed T-shirts. He approached an American smoking a cigar (for permission to sell them) who somehow – I didn't quite grasp how or why – introduced him to Bobby Fischer, who was in the next room. They spoke for five minutes.

Over the years Hinrik would occasionally bump into Fischer at Reykjavik airport, and they became friends. When Fischer moved to Iceland in 2005, Hinrik would often see him shuffling along the street on his own, and would offer him a lift in his car. Once, knowing of another American in exile, Hinrik introduced Fischer to him and the two spoke non-stop for nine hours. But Fischer was lonely in Iceland, a lost, shuffling and shambling figure.

After violating a United Nations trade embargo by playing chess in Yugoslavia in 1992 (he beat Spassky in an unofficial rematch), and owing the Revenue Service income tax, Fischer never returned home to the United States. He drifted and lived variously in Japan, the Philippines, Germany and Hungary. Iceland, a liberal country of chess fanatics, granted him a passport in 2005. It seems somehow appropriate that he ended up there, the place that made him a world champion in 1972.

Hinrik told me about a secondhand bookshop Fischer used to go to every day and chat with the owner. I found the bookshop the following day, Bokin ehf, on Klappastigur 25-27. It was like a cliche of a secondhand bookshop; piles of precariously balanced books everywhere and the owner almost buried under them. He looked like he hadn't moved for years. I asked him if this was the bookshop Bobby Fischer had come to. 'Yes,' he said, abruptly. I asked him if he'd known Fischer. 'No,' he said, abruptly. Then he fixed me with a stare. 'I'm not interested in…[rest of sentence inaudible]'. But I got the message. My Fischer trail had ended.

• Fischer died in 2008. His remains are to be exhumed to settle a bitter dispute over his £1 million estate.

• I've put some of my photos from Iceland on Flickr.

Previously on Barnflakes:
• Chessed Out
• The Tournament
• Top 10 Chess Openings

Chessed Out

Gavin called on me unexpectedly today. He said, ‘Do you want to play chess?’ and I said yes. I hadn’t seen or heard from Gavin for five months, when he had turned up unexpectedly and asked me if I wanted to play chess.

I don’t know Gavin very well at all, so it comes as a surprise when he tells me he’s been in a mental hospital for the last six months. He’s getting out this Friday and moving into a hostel. Most people are cagey talking about their mental illnesses; not Gavin – he’s positively forthcoming about it. He’s on medication and I could kinda tell because his sense of humour has gone. There’s a new intensity and seriousness about him and, if the truth be known, a touch of craziness. He may be a paranoid schizophrenic.

Gavin has been playing a lot of chess in hospital. Every day in fact. He’s been studying the moves of the greats. He likes Bobby Fisher a lot. Gavin and I used to be roughly on a par; now his game is leagues ahead of mine. Gavin says he can think eight or nine moves in advance.

‘Eight or nine!’ I exclaim. ‘A grandmaster is meant to be able to only think six moves ahead.’
‘By the time I’m thirty I’m going to be a grandmaster,’ says Gavin.

Gavin is twenty-two, well-built and black. His eyes are narrow slits, his head is shaved and he wears a silver whistle around his neck. He chain smokes Silk Cut Ultra Lows, maybe forty a day, if necessary. He’s stopped smoking dope now, but finds it difficult. Hence the Silk Cut. He needs to keep in shape. He’s going to be a professional footballer as well as a grandmaster. He wants to learn French.

He’s written a book on chess, on how not to play it, he says. I like Gavin. He tried to kill himself six months ago. He’s better now. Someone stole his manuscript but he still has the notes. He says he’ll show them to me one day.

I like it when Gavin compliments me on a move then his next move wins the game or at least a piece, then he goes back ten moves and shows me various variations I could have done. The only way I beat Gavin is by my, as he calls it, ‘unorthodox’ moves. What starts off as a possible Queen’s gambit turns into something quite unexpected and this flummoxes Gavin sometimes, and he’s not quite sure how to respond to my moves.

I like the names of the different chess openings: the Sicilian Defence, Philidor’s Defence, the Queen’s Gambit, King’s Gambit, Danish/Spanish/Budapest Gambit, and all the Gambit’s Declined. In short, a gauntlet of gambits. Gavin’s memorised them all and even invented some of his own. He thinks I should copyright some of my openings because they’re so weird and original.

After four hours I won once, Gavin twice, and we drew twice, though I had to take a couple of moves back.*

Six months later we played again. This time we drew four times: we were on a par once more. Gavin was upset that he couldn’t beat me.

He estimates he’s played 30,000 games of chess. Of course, no two games are the same.

Sometimes the chess gets to be like a martial art, or the movie The Matrix, where you see your opponent in slow motion, you know all his moves, all the possible combinations, and your mind races ahead beyond the game.

Gavin says chess is good on acid, and Casey says it’s not so good on heroin.

(2001, London)

* We play speed chess with a chess clock nowadays and get through about twenty games in four hours. Last time we played: Gavin won nine, I won one, nine draws.

The Tournament

(Extract from an abandoned novel, circa. late 1990s)

You can’t tell just by looking at someone if they’re, say, a martial arts expert. Likewise with sex. No matter how sexy someone looks, or how ugly, you have no idea what they’re really like in bed. And so it is with chess, sort of, mused Ralph.

Ralph was at a chess tournament in Alicante, Spain, down on his luck, pondering such things. More accurately, he was at the hotel bar. He said fuck it, got himself another straight vodka and thought about the twelve year-old girl who had just beaten him in twenty-nine moves. Bitch, he thought, downing the clear liquid, straight. He grimaced, for it tasted rank.

Her great grandfather had patented the gas lamp, she had just passed her 'A' levels in maths, physics and chemistry, she was going to study physics and maths at Imperial college, London, in September, and Ralph hated her. Ralph hated his poverty, his parents, his friends, in fact just about everything and everyone, except chess. And here was this girl, this child – her name was Rosie Jenkins – who had beaten him at chess, his game, his saviour. It wasn’t fair. He silently cursed his choice of opening: he’d opted for the Sicilian, but should have gone for the King’s Gambit. He cursed his middle game, he cursed his end game – which hadn’t lasted long – and he cursed the $10,000 he’d lost out on.

He thought about the twenty – twenty! – years between them. What had he done with the last twenty years? He remembered playing chess in Cairo in cafes with their sawdust-covered floors, and shisha pipes smelling of cherry and peach. No one beat him in Egypt. The fools. He'd played on a hill in Morocco, and Hyde park in Sydney, and on a pavement in Kuta, Bali at 3am where they tried to hustle him. He remembered the mental hospitals and vaguely looked at the ceiling. The fools. He’d even played chess with an Aboriginal girl in a prison in Sydney. He’d done nothing but play chess for the last nine years.

Twenty years is certainly a long time and Ralph doubted the girl would be playing chess in twenty years time. Look at Fisher. Look at all the greats. They all burn out early. Ralph had come late to the game. This was his advantage. He thought about all the things that could go wrong in twenty years. Lots. Fuck, lots and lots. Everything. You’re not going to have twenty years of things going right.

‘Ralph’ said a voice, like in a dream. At first he doesn’t recognise or hear it.

‘Ralph’, said the voice again. He looked down and Rosie looked up at him. He’s tempted to look away, to ignore her. Even hit her. But he catches her eyes, her face, and sees that she’s not smiling, or gloating, but she looks sad, and grown up, and wisdom flows from her face and he can’t help but look at it.

‘What?’ Abrupt, but not disinterested.
‘Ralph, I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For beating you. You’re good; you’re really good. You’re one of the best players I’ve ever played. Ever.’
Like that means anything, but secretly it does.
‘Where are your parents?’ Just for something to say.
‘My parents are dead. I have a chaperone looking after me but I hate him. He’s over there, watching me.’ She points at a large dull man, like someone from Eastenders and his eyes meet with Ralph’s.

He looked at her and wondered what she’d be like when she was his age. In another twenty years. He’d always wanted to meet a woman who played chess. There was Natasha, Russian – of course! – but she was mad, had nearly killed him, besides he’d hated Moscow. He projected a life with Rosie and deemed her probably to be the one if time and fate had been different. He laughed at her.
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘No, no, no. I’m laughing at me.’
‘Oh. That’s all right then.’
‘I’ve read about you.’
‘I’ve read about you too.’
‘I mean I’ve read good stuff about you. About how you’re gifted and all.’
‘Oh that,’ she said, slightly embarrassed, slightly chuffed. ‘Yes, they say I am. It’s unfair really.’
‘On who?’
‘Both of us.’
Then, as naturally as a cup of tea and a cigarette in the morning, she asked him for a game of chess.
‘What?’ Almost a snarl this time.
She takes a little dark grey plastic box out of her pocket: a pocket chess computer.
Ralph’s obviously impressed. ‘9000 series.’
She looked up, suddenly, pleased that Ralph recognised a good pocket chess computer when he saw one.
‘Yes.’

Lindsey lay on her back on the grass on the slope of the park and didn’t say a word. ‘What’s wrong, Lindsey?’, asked Clare, when the silence between the four of them had lasted longer than it should. ‘Nothing’, she replied, nonchalantly. Half a mile away, Ralph, dressed all in black, including a black coat, was sweating like a pig, occasionally muttering ‘fuck’ to himself, and more than occasionally wondering to himself what the fuck he was doing in this coat and this park looking for a girl who might be called Lindsey or might be called Louise. He couldn’t remember.

He’d never had a head for names – except chess ones. Ralph remembered his pocket and took a crumpled bit of paper from the back of his black Levi’s. The paper was wet. Ralph muttered ‘Lindsey’ as he looked at the bit of paper, put the paper back in his pocket, and stopped. He turned to Johnny, dressed in shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops. Johnny continued walking. Johnny annoyed Ralph immensely. He had the look of someone permanently happy, like nothing ever bothered him. He looked like an idiot. He wasn’t, far from it, but his always smiling made him look a bit simple. Ralph laughed inwardly at the time in a restaurant when Johnny was handed the Braille menu. In fact, he was tempted to remind Johnny of the time, but thought twice about it. Last time Ralph had reminded Johnny, they’d got into a fight. It was too hot for a fight today. Today was going to be E-A-S-Y.

(I don't know, this was going to be some Lolita-like novel with the two main characters on the run, playing chess on the way, sort of Lolita meets Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The Lolita and chess link is no accident; Nabokov was a big chess player, but his interest in young girls highly suspect. Anyway, the novel never went further than what you've just read.)

Anyone for table tennis?

I predicted table tennis becoming chic geek some time ago – after watching Jeff Daniels and his Tourette's suffering son playing in his NY loft apartment in The Squid and the Whale. Then I was flicking through some old Creative Review magazines and noticed how several cool creative design agencies had tennis table tables in their offices – not to play on but to store pretentious art books, display proofs and generally use as you would a coffee table.

Now The Saturday Times magazine has highlighted table tennis in its Radar section as the next big thing: bars in London's east end are installing tables and famous people in New York like, er, Matthew Broderick, Ed Norton and Susan Sarandon are playing the game. Sigh. Time to move on. My next prediction for chic geekness: chess. You read it here first.

Top 10 Chess Openings*

1. King's Indian Classical
2. King's Indian Samisch
3. French Winawer
4. Sicillian Defence Najdorf
5. Sicillian Defence Closed
6. Slav Defence
7. Caro Kann
8. Queen's Gambit Declined
9. King's Gambit
10. French Advance

*With help from Baxy - far more of a chess fanatic than me - he even named his two cats, Benko and Slav, after chess openings.