Part One: Bobby Fischer: Chess Nazi

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well, it's Behind the Bastards, that's right. It certainly is.
It's it certainly is. You can't argue about that. That
is a fact that is as undeniable as it is
undeniable that someone in the subreddit will decide to argue
with us about that point, because that is what they
like to do. I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards,

(00:22):
where just a couple of weeks ago, I made a
comment that I will not be calling mummies mummified persons
because I like mummies, and somebody took offense a that
on behalf of the mummies, and I'm just gonna tell
you right now, Abad and Costello versus the mummified person terrible,
terrible name for a movie. So we're not going back.
Never anyway, Mia, welcome to the program. Thanks, I'm here.

(00:46):
I'm gonna I'm gonna make a non legally actionable statement,
which is that, if I remember correctly, the Orientals to
stole their entire everything, that's they were stolen, so for
sure legally actionable. This is just what I remember off
top of my head. Yeah great now it's paly things.
People were like, well, you know, it's it's important to
acknowledge the humanity of these mummies because a lot of

(01:06):
them were stolen. I was like, no, no, no, it's
important to give them back because a lot of them
were Still we can still call the mummies. The problem
is not that people were calling the mummies, it's that
they stole dead people. And then, yeah, which is the issue,
is not that we used to the term mummy. Just
let it be everybody anyway. I'm I'm very mummy pilled.

(01:27):
I'm very glad your mummy pilled. But thank you. So
we introduce our guest, a Mia Wong. How are you
doing today on the podcast that it is right now?
Normally you're on another podcast, but today you're on this one. Yeah,
I have I have hijacked this podcast in order to chess.
Oh god, oh god, we're talking about chess again. Yes,

(01:50):
which I I really, I really, I'm realizing it said
it wasn't a hack and a fraud. I would have
actually asked you before we did this, do you if
you actually play chess at all? Well, again, there's no
works in chess, so no know. When I was a child,
I played a few games of chess, and then I
was introduced to the true game of skill. Warhammer third Edition,
um and and and so that's that's the only strategy

(02:12):
game I ever needed. You know, can can consider considering
the minds of every single person in this story who
plays chess. I think this is actually a wise decision.
It it does, It does something to your brain. That
that's what That's what I've learned after many, many hours
of reading about chess players, is something something fundamentally breaks
in your brain when you play chess for this long.

(02:33):
That does not surprise me. It seems like the kind
of thing that people get extremely into, um and then
uh make it the entire core of their identity, much
like Warhammer forty, but again without orcs. Yes, but similar
numbers of fascists were as we're going to. Yes, yes,
that that is. That also does not surprise me to hear.

(02:56):
Oh god, okay, so speaking of Nazis and fascists, Um,
what one of the sort of elements of this story
that is kind of important is getting some kind of
understanding of how good these people are at chess, because
none of the story makes any sense unless you know
the people doing this are genuinely previously good. So I'm
gonna I'm gonna start this with a brief tangent about

(03:19):
a man named Miguel Najdorf. So, Miguel Nasdorf is not
a bastard. He's very cool and his life story is
very sad. Um. He he was born to a Jewish
family in Poland nineteen ten, which is that's not going
to go well. So yeah, yeah, boy, so one of
the one of the bottom times to be born to

(03:40):
a Jewish family. Ninetton. That's that's right, because you're going
to be old enough to be fully aware of how
bad things are going. Yep. So no magical realism for you. Yeah,
it's it's the story is always going to get very
bleak very quickly. Sonsdorf. You know as a kid, it's
very clearly he's very very good at chess. UM. He

(04:03):
very rapidly becomes a grand master, which is the highest
official rating in chess. UM. So there's this organization called
FETE or the International Chess Federation UM, and they they
basically run chess after like a certain period of time. Okay,
you could do like seventeen episodes just about fee a politics.
It's nonsense. I don't understand how this chess organization has

(04:24):
so much political drama. But it does. But so in
neteen fifty feet creates the rank of international grand Master
and they choose twenty seven people to be the first
grand Masters. Nasdorf is one of them. Um, these days
he's famous. Yeah, he's a he's a he's a mighty player.
You would have to have a pretty good strategic mind

(04:44):
to make it out of Poland. And yeah, well he
so he gets out of he's he gets out of polls,
he's out of Poland when everything goes to ship because
he's playing a tournament in Argentina. Oh oh boy, wow,
that's I don't know, there's like there's a comment to
make their given the history of Argentina and the people

(05:04):
who are Poland, to be a problem, but I don't
know what it is right now, so we should probably
just move on. Yeah, I mean, the other thing I
will say about it is that there are a lot
of Jews who fled to Argentina before this was happening.
So do do not automatically assume so with the European
lest name in Argentinas a Nazi, because there's actually a
good chance that they're like someone who is fleeing the Nazis. Well,
that's awkward, Um, but it makes sense. Yeah, so not Nashdorf. Today,

(05:26):
I think it's probably most famous is like that there's
there's an opening in chess called the Nashdorf or technically speaking,
in its full name is the Sicilian defense, the Nasdor variation.
So I go, okay, we're gonna do a little bit
of We're gonna do like one thing of chess terminology,
which is that chess is this thing called openings, and
they're they're like standard sets of moves that people play
at the beginning of the game. Yeah. And and now

(05:47):
you know if if if you have a if you
have an opening named after you, it is because you're
an important player in the history of chess. Okay, and
I mean that yeah, yeah, and Nash's opening, Like I
this might not be true, but I'm pretty sure it's
like the most it's like the most studied opening in
the history of chess. People games store. Back when I

(06:09):
played Warhammer, Uh, there was a move that everybody called
a Robert and it was when somebody did something so
stupid with their army that it led to a victory
because the other person simply didn't conceive of somebody doing
something that dumb. Look, I I won't beat an eight
tournament like an eight hundred is like a pretty seriously
good chess player. I was like a not very good

(06:30):
chess player, but I once beat him Because I did that,
I played so badly that he stopped paying attention. He
put his queen down, and I took it. There's nothing
more dangerous than an idiot with a trick up his sleeve.
It's it's it's the most dangerous thing in the world,
at least in war gaming anyway. Yes, so, okay, so
I'm gonna talk about Warhammer a lot during this. Well, okay,

(06:53):
you're ready the conclusion that I had about Bobby Fishers.
There there's two ways, right up, Bobby Fisher, right, Bobby
Fisher is the eventually going to be the subject of
the show. Uh, there's one way where you talk about
chess a lot, and then there's another way. You talked
about genocide a lot, and everyone everyone has already done
the one where you talked about chess a lot. So
I'm gonna do the one you talked about genocide a
lot instead of that. Sure, so speaking of genocide. Okay, So,

(07:15):
how how good is Nasdorf at the game of chess. Um.
Here's the Guardian talking about how many games Nasdorff could
play at one time while blindfolded. For decades, Miguel Nasdorf's
forty five games at Salpolo in ninety seven stood as
the record. Yeah forty five, um, nash Doorf had stated

(07:35):
in Buenos Aires when the war broke out during the
nineteen Olympiad and took up blindfold displays in the hopes
that the news of his achievements would reach his relatives
in Poland who would actually perish in concentration camps. Yeah.
Oh boy, Yeah, that's that's a lot. There's a lot there. Yeah, yeah,
playing forty five. The desperation that is behind playing forty

(07:59):
five games of chess at once so your relatives cost
will know that you achieved something is well. It's it's
both deeply impressive and like heartbreaking in a really specific
way that I don't think I've encountered before, but I
get it. It's I don't know that this is one

(08:19):
of the things that the political backdrop of chess is
just really bleak. Like. One of the things is going
on this period is Nashdorf keeps trying to play. Um,
this guy named al Kin who was the world champion,
and Alekin is a Nazi and he like just is
not able to play Alkin because bullshit just keeps happening.
But yeah, chess. Chess is a game that very very

(08:40):
quickly gets enfolded in this kind of stuff. Yeah. Um
that said, we can, we can, you know, we can
look back at what sort of nash door if like
did hear it or to like have a chance to
see his family again. And you know, okay, so well
what was he actually doing the answers? He is playing
forty five people at the same time in his mind, yeah, yeah,

(09:03):
purely just kind of keeping track of the movements in
his head. Yeah, and you know, I can't find his
actual win rate like for these but you know most
of the times when people do almost like this, they
win almost all of these games. And I mean this
is yah, yeah, and like this is the kind of

(09:24):
person that is like like Bobby Fisher is better than
nash Worf And this is the kind of thing nash
Worth can do. So this is the level of chess
that everyone in this story can do, right, is they
can do things like playing forty five games of chess
in their mind at the same time. Yep, I mean
ye okay, yeah, And and this is this is sort

(09:44):
of the justification for everything that we're going to see
in this story, right, like, yeah, this is this is
a justification for like literally people people like like physically
turning their backs on like actual genocides. Go one is
the mean, people don't need chess as an excuse to
do that. Yeah, but I would to say the normal

(10:08):
reaction to a genocide is to turn your back on it. Yeah,
but you know, okay, they're they're going to excuse a
just incredible mile so specifically because one man was really
really good at chess and he was also from the
United States, and and that that man is Bobby Fisher.
Oh boy. Now, most of my knowledge of Bobby Fisher

(10:28):
comes from a Hilltop Hoods song called Cosby Sweater, So
I know very little about him other than that he
was good at chess. Yeah, that's okay, So there there, there,
there are. There are two important things about Bebbie Fisher.
One he said he's very good at chess. The second
one is that he's a Nazi. We will be establishing
both and these over the course of this episode. Okay, okay, okay,

(10:50):
Chess Nazi. Al Right, well there's our title, so that's good.
So if they mark that, mark that off the to
do list. Chess Nazi Bobby Fisher, solid title that'll keep
everybody happy. Yeah, the words Bobby Fisher, Chess Nazi. This
is the closest I've ever come to divine inspiration. They
just appeared in my head one day and I was like,
I need to do this episode. Now. That's good. So,

(11:12):
I mean, why do we I feel like, if a
Nazi is good at chess, that's an easy case for
just just push that, push that fellow in a river,
put some heavy rocks in their pockets, right right in
a river. We don't need we don't. We don't need
a Nazi to be good at strategy and just kind
of hanging around society. That's not gonna help anybody, you
would think. But it's chess. And what the thing. The

(11:34):
thing that happens when a Nazi is good at chess
is everyone like gives him a bunch of money. Well
I don't like that either, although yep, okay, I don't
like that either, but I guess it does show that
chess isn't really good for anything, not really no, so okay,
but but Bobby Fisher was not born rich. He's born
on March nine at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.

(11:56):
And I need to put in and make an important
note at the beginning here. We do not claim this
man funk this guy, this guy's not in Chicago. When
he leaves very quickly, U I mean, you can tell
it's bad because his hospital was named after the current
Sheriff of Maltena mccunty in Portland, Mike Reece, who sucks. Anyway, amazingly,

(12:18):
this that that is not the only person in this story.
He was going to have the same name as a
guy from Portland who sucks. Oh wow, that's okay, I'm
excited for this. Yeah. Well we have a lot of
guys though, so the odds are always pretty good. So alright.
Regina Fisher is who's Bobby Fisher's mother is. She is
a wild character. She is a a long time, very

(12:41):
committed communist. She does I mean, she she's she's doing activism.
That might say started as communists, that's that's yeah. Yeah, well,
I mean Fisher Fisher is never really a commonist, like
his mom is, like like she she's so dedicated to
like this. Yeah, they're the complicated part of the stories,
at least his um. And there's questions over who Bobby

(13:01):
Fisher's dad is. I don't think of that interesting, but
at least half of his family is Jewish, and Bobby
Fisher Silter is out like this um his mom like
she's so the reason she's in the U s is
that she she had been like making a living, like
in the Soviet Union, and then anti Semitism got so
bed at her stable and that she had to flee.
And so you know, she's she's she's not, she's not

(13:23):
in the US. And when when she gets birth to Bobby,
she's like completely broke. She is a homeless single mother.
And so after about a week the kick her out
of the hospital and they're like, okay, well where do
we send this person? And she gets sent to this
hospice for single mothers. Great country. I bet this was
a nice place, well funded, had a lot of respect
for single mothers. Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing.

(13:46):
If she had been allowed to stay there, it probably
would have been kind of okay. The problem is that
the way the hospice worked was that I it's only
supposed to take care of parents and newborns. So Regina
has another daughter or has a daughter who's like very young,
and she tries to bring the daughter to this hospice

(14:08):
thing and they they are immediately like you need to leave,
and she's like no, I have literally a week old
baby and another child and I have no home. So
she tries to stay there and they call the cops.
Cool and not and this isn't just like a like
they you know, the CPD arrest her and this isn't
even just like an arrest, you know it's it's not

(14:29):
even just like they take her in and like whatever,
they prosecute her for this. Christ Yeah, and I love
I love the idea of like the I got a
job working at a hospice for single mothers because I
want to take care of the next generation. What she
has a child that's slightly too old, send her to present,
Like my god, it's so bad. Like the judge looks

(14:53):
at this and it's like, what are you guys doing here?
Like she's like, okay, give her a psyche vail and
let her go, which like this is a Chicago judge
in nineteen that is a terrifying individual that that guy
probably sentenced eight guys to death like that boarding for
being slightly too queer. And even he's like, what what
You're trying to put a single mother in prison for

(15:16):
trying to stay in a hospice for single mothers. This
is this is this is this is this is definitely
like the two parts of me are a warring here
because on one hand, this is an almost unthinkable nightmare.
But on the other hand, I'm very pro child prison,
so this is really tough for me. You know, well,

(15:37):
here's the thing. The children too young to do labor.
So what's the point of child prison? Like, you can't,
you can't, you can't. You can't put a one never
too young to do labor than can I've seen one
week olds. They could pick up blocks. We have a
lot of blocks in this country that need to be
picked up. Look an aggregate. They can do a lot
of work. That's all I'm saying. You've watched too many

(15:57):
Andrew tapes. Hustler, you know you gotta you gotta get
those kids working. Look, if they're not paying rent, they're
just you know, I don't suck it up. I'm trying
to continue this, but all of the different lines that
come to me are literal pieces of Nazi propaganda, so
it's probably best just to move off. Yeah. Yeah, So

(16:22):
all right, the first few years of Bobby's life, they
are moving constantly. Regina holds like half a dozen jobs
in like nine states, and she's, you know, she's like,
this is the middle of a war two, so it's
slightly easier to find a job than it would be
like like in in you know and like say night
or something. But you know, she's she's she's trying to

(16:45):
like work enough to keep her family together and keep
her kids fed. And you know that this one's a
Bobby's childhood is kind of a mess. Um, it doesn't
sound good now, Yeah, but one thing that emerges very
early is that Bobby loves games. Um. His he's biographer
Frank Brady, who who writes a really good book about

(17:05):
probably the best like biography of Bobby Fisher called Endgame
Bobby Fisher's Remarkable Rise and Fall. So there is a fall, Oh,
there's definitely you know, Okay, I'll give a minor spoiler
here is Bobby Fisher is the first person to be
canceled for making fun of nine eleven and maybe the
only person who deserves to be canceled for it, so

(17:27):
he doesn't. It does eventually go badly for him, but
that is it is currently nineteen forty, like what nineteen nine,
so that's gonna take a while. Um. Yeah, But Frank
Brady tells the story about how Bobby like he starts
playing per Cheesy and he really likes the strategy of
par Cheesy, but every time a random thing happens, he

(17:49):
just loses his mind and so okay, so so he
seems to have he has a brain that's very good
at solving puzzles, and at age six, he buys a
chest out so he doesn't he doesn't what he means.
He doesn't like the fact that, like part Cheesy is
based in part on like rolling of dice. Like yeah,
he hates that there's an element of chance. Again, he
doesn't have the raw human courage necessary to play Warhammer

(18:11):
and that's like he he could never have cut it
as a Harstone player, which maintain better at that game
than he ever would have been. Yeah, but okay, So
unfortunately he discovers chess and he okay, yeah, like six
years old, he buys a chess set for one dollar.
He starts playing it with his family, and his family
is like, I don't want to play chess with you,

(18:31):
but Bobby just like wants to play chess constantly. So
he starts doing something very strange, which is he just
starts playing games against himself. Okay, that made sense, Like
I have done this before when I was really really bored,

(18:52):
back like before smartphones existed. And yeah, when the Louis
body dementia was taking my grandmother, she would just play
Solitaire over and over and over and over and over
and over. Yeah, and so that seems that makes sense
to me. But but the thing, the thing with playing
chess against yourself is that you know what the other
person is doing because you're both people. And so that's exciting.

(19:13):
I mean I play a lot of Like so you
can play Heroes of Might and Magic three on your
phone and you can you can do a hot seed mode.
I've played both sides of that. That can be fun.
Sometimes I love him on this is what I'm saying.
I kind of good, Like he does this like literally
all the time, Like this is like what he spends
his day's doing. Yeah, it's more of a way to
pass time on a flight. But yeah, so Bobby likes

(19:38):
this a lot, and you know this, this does not
make him a normal kid. He's really bad at making friends.
And also, you know, the other part of the part
of his life is sort of genuinely sad is that
he's alone, Like after school ends, he's alone basically constantly
because his school gets out before his sisters does. And
then his mom is almost never home because she has
to work like night shifts and day shifts to sort

(20:01):
of like keep the whole family there, so she doesn't
get home until super late. And okay, so Bob, Bobby
has to find something to do. And the thing that
he does, and he's doing this as like a like
a pretty small child, like he's like seven or eight.
When he starts doing this is he starts just reading
chess books and like playing through the games on his board.

(20:21):
Oh okay, you know, Okay, So on the one hand,
he doesn't bobbly fishally like he doesn't really have anyone
to play against. But on the other hand, if you
want to train, like you know, if you want to
train like a six year old to be really good
at chess, like eventually this is what you do right
if if you want to get good at chess, you
sit down with a bunch of books and you study them.
And he's going to keep doing this literally his entire life.

(20:42):
It gets to a point where like he just this
is the only thing he does with his time is
just sit there and read chess books and articles. Again,
I have, I've I've made similar choices with warham Or
in my past. Yeah, although I mean the except Bobby
is doing this. He is reading so many chess books
that even like the Soviet chess grandmasters who are literally

(21:03):
paid by the state specifically to study chess, or like,
how are you reading this much stuff? And he's just like,
I just it's the only thing in my life. My
entire world is empty if anything but chess. And our
entire world, Mia and mine. Our entire world is empty
of everything except for the products and services that support
this podcast. We live in a dank void, surrounded by

(21:28):
the results of unchecked capital exploitation. Lots and lots of gold. Yeah,
buy some gold. Uh, I do get like ten to

(21:50):
fifteen messages a day about the gold ads. Yeah, well,
and love that that lets you feel like you're not alone.
I know, guys, I see you. Look. I am a
big fan of people reaching out to us and letting
us know that there are random ads from a shady

(22:11):
gold company going into our thing. Please continue to do that.
Every day, Sophie messages me and says, my life has
been improved by the fact that people are complaining about
these random gold ads. Don't just skip ahead by like
thirty seconds or a minute using the button on your
phone message Sophie. She loves it and it makes her
feel wanted and like she has a wide and and

(22:36):
broad base of of friends out on the internet just
checking out to her letting her know there's gold ads
on the show. So please keep doing it, everybody. One
of the upsides of podcast is that no, no, even
none of you ever will I see upsides. None of
you ever get to see the face of Sophie Big
stream this which which makes my life better and makes
your life worse, and that this this makes me happy.
Just know that my face said I hate you, Robert Evans.

(22:59):
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
but you know I don't. Oh, all right there, let's
let's let's rock on. Yes, let let us return to
the world of Bobby Fisher as a very small child,
so all right, but Bobby Fisher's mom is very concerned
about the fact that he's just sitting around playing chefs

(23:20):
all the time. But it doesn't have anyone to play
chess with. So she she emails a chess guy at
like the local newspaper and it's like, hey, can you
find someone for my like seven year old child to
play with? And for for for reasons I do not understand,
this guy is like, yeah, here go go go play
at this simultaneous exhibition that this like chess master is

(23:43):
going to be holding. So yeah, chess masters do these
things where they're called simul's where you know, like we
talked about natural during one of these, right, normally they're
not blindfolded. But it's a guy shows up and like
you show up in like thirty of you just get
destroyed by this guy. So the news spreditor is like, okay, okay,
send send, send Bobby Fisher to play against like this

(24:05):
incredibly strong American player. And the result of this is
that seven year Oldobby Fisher just gets absolutely annihilated and
then starts crying because he's a seven year old and
he's just like gotten destroyed in public and this is
this is an interesting sort of event of Bobby's life
because people make a lot out of this, like when
when you like, this is a critical moment, and like

(24:26):
it probably kind of is, but also like, I don't know,
he's a seven year old. It turns out when when
when when this happens to a seven year old, they
cry because there's seven. I mean, it's still toughen up
a little bit. Come on, he's I don't people expect
really weird, Like people keep asking, like people like throughout
the entire lif people would ask Bobby Fisher about the

(24:47):
games that he played when he was seven, and they're like,
do you remember these games? It's like this man is seven,
Like come on, why why? Why? What? Why do you
the chess writer expect this guy to remember for a
game that he played at age seven. I don't know.
I'm I'm I'm I've just been sort of continuously baffled
by chess writers as I've been. I mean, chess writer

(25:10):
does kind of presuppose a few things about a person.
I guess I'm not surprised that someone who would pick
that as a living would want, like question somebody in
depth about a series of games they played when they
were too young to be fully conscious of the world.
That makes sense to me. If someone were to interview
me about being seven, I would I could probably I

(25:31):
have moderately strong memories of hurting a bunch of cows
with a broomstick um in my fucking back forty but
but that's about it. Um. I remember the time my
dog got skunked and then ran into the house and
skunked the entire house. And I remember getting not the
big lego pirate ship, but I had a good report card,

(25:52):
and my mom got me the small lego pirate ship,
and that was the best day of my childhood. You know.
It was fucking dopes pirate ship. Everybody, I look so
so someone should have got Bobby Fisher this thing, so
he didn't turn into Bobby Fisher and said had a
cool pirate ship. One lego pirate ship could have solved
a lot of problems instead. Unfortunately, what happens is that, Okay,

(26:13):
so there there's a there's a guy who is the
president of the Brooklyn Chess Club who like sees the
seven year old playing this game and he's like, wow,
the seven year old is actually pretty good. He's and
and he invites him to join the Brooklyn Chess Club,
which is very weird because the Brooklyn Chess Club is
like it's a very xenious organization. It's like it's like
we're like doctors and lawyers and stuff go to play
chess and they don't allow children in. But the president

(26:35):
is like, now i I'm making an exception for this
like seven year old. And so Bobby shows up and
nobody wants to play him because and this, this is this,
this is a sort of a thing that's I think
kind of special about over the board chess that you
don't get with very many other things, which is that
over the board chess is one of the few games
you can play when you sit down and there's a
seven year old across of you, and the seven year

(26:56):
old just destroys you. Yeah, I mean, war ammer actually
would be one of the others. But yeah, but they're
they're they're they're kind of rare. Now, But that the
problem is okay, So Bobby Fish, I mean, nobody wants
it would be cool, it would be it would be
cool if football worked that way, Like full contact football
throws some seven year olds on the field. Now, let's
see if they're prodigies. Put them up against these three

(27:18):
and fifty pounds steroid monsters. See how it goes? Alright, kid,
after the snap, there's no more rules, I mean, you know,
I wus. So they throw Bobby Fisher into this pool
and it goes about as well as you would expect.
The baby fighting like a guy in full football ship,
which he gets run over and destroyed, like con genuously awesome.

(27:40):
That's good, that's good for kids. Yeah, But unfortunately he
like just keeps doing this and so he like even
even he's progressively more and more of his time is
consumed by chess. It gets to the point where like
he has this like little chess set, and his chess
set is just like covered in crumbs and like stains
of all the food that he's eating while he's playing chess.
And this gets to a point that's like I'm gonna

(28:01):
read this thing from Endgame, which that Fisher biography. He
even maintained his involvement with the game while bathing. The
Fishers didn't have a working shower, just a bathtub, and Bobby,
like many young children, needed to be urged to take
at least a weekly bath. Regina established a Sunday night
ritual of running a bath for him, practically carrying him
up to the tub, and once he was settled in

(28:23):
the water, she'd lay a door from a discarded cabinet
across the tub is a sort of tray, and then
bringing Bobby's chest set a container of milk and whatever
book he was studying at the time help him get
into position position on the board. Bobby soaked, sometimes for
hours as he became engrossed in the games of the Greats,
only emerging from the water prune like when Regina insisted

(28:45):
the milk of it all. Really, I don't like that. Yeah,
that's not my favorite thing that I've heard. Yeah, to
to to the too, Regina's actually, this is why we Okay,
I don't know. I'm I'm I'm I'm on shower gang.

(29:05):
Now I'm I'm fully shower pilled, I'm a shower cell.
I couldn't agree more. I used to think a bath
was a lovely thing, and now it's been milk defied
and sounds that sounds horrifying. It sounds like it sounds
like a scene from the one of the one of
the later alien movies where one of those androids has

(29:29):
been wounded and they've got that like white milky blood
gooping out everywhere. Gross. Thanks for that, Mia, yep, m hm.
So yeah, as you can see this is this is
a very normal child. Yeah, it sounds like a great childhood. Yeah.
Unfortunately he's just taking his milk baths. He's getting his
ass beaten by adults reading lots of weird chess books.

(29:51):
Sounds healthy. Yeah, so I can't see how this guy
turns out to be fast. Oh oh, don't worry. We're
we're we are literally right about to get to that.
So okay, the problem is that he just keeps getting
better at chess. But by the time he's twelve, he's
like actually really good at the game, Like he's playing
real tournaments. He's beating people who are actually good at chess.
And at this point Bobby becomes involved with the extremely

(30:13):
wealthy chess patron e Floory Locks, who arranges for him
to go on this like chess trip around the U
s and then go to Cuba to play chess against
Cuban chess players. Okay, what do we know about this guy?
Because that's that's yeah, that's oh boy. Okay, from that
does sound a little bit. That does sound a little
bit sketchy. Oh yeah. Locks frequently wore a small black

(30:36):
enameled the pel pin bearing a gold Nazi swastika. Amazingly,
it never seemed to attract much attention. He didn't wear
it all the time, but often enough did you wear
that once? The people should be like, man, that's it's
And it didn't seem to inhibit him when he was
in a Jewish delicatesster and to get his favorite sandwich

(30:57):
of pastrami on rye, or when he was talking to
Jewish chess players. One player will I didn't affect him. Yeah,
I don't know. This is like right after the Holocaust.
I honestly, it shouldn't have mattered if it was before
the Holocaust, Like you shouldn't be able to you shouldn't
be able to go anyway. I think cool, he's getting worse,

(31:19):
so at won't point. There was a player who gets
embarrassed when he walks it and you know, no, no,
he walks in this restaurant. Nobody says anything about it. Okay,
here's the worst off, just about who this this guy is.
In addition to the pen, Locks off in wore weather
permitting a small brimmed alpine fedora with a feather in
the band adorned with emblom. Some countries he traveled to

(31:39):
absolutely not okay. She she ostentatiously dressed in later hosing
at times, and for a few years even sported to
hit Larry and mustache. When he entered tournaments dressed in
cocky shirt and fans and dirt tie and displaying that mustache,
it was as if the Dopper game You're of Dear
Feury had been incardinated in his home, hung Nazi flags

(32:03):
and prominent locations and displays of airplanes, models of Mishmitz
and junkers, as well as semis and yeah, sorry, I'm
I'm not a I'm not a world. Look, the German
language is a cursed Yeah. He also has just like
a bunch of he's like a giant oil painting of

(32:23):
of Adolf Hitler in his house and like a bunch
of third red memor bilios. So this guy is great.
He sounds dope. Yeah. The next line from this book
was Lax was inarguably one of the most eccentric people
in the New York chess community, which, like I guess,
eccentric is a way that you could describe this guy
walking around in the Nazi pin with the Hitler mustache

(32:44):
and later hosen that is that is certainly eccentric, you know.
You know, so later on in his life, right, but
by the time he's about sixty, he's on this tour
when he's like, I think, like thirteen, When he's like
sixteen or seventeen, Bobby is gonna be like a very
series anti semi and you know, people are always like, well,
how did this happen? It's like, well, it might have
been the fact that he was hey, yeah, with this

(33:06):
Nazi guy, it's impact. And also on the trip to
Cuba is this guy named Norman T. Whittaker who quote
had also been in prison for car steff and for
raping a twelve year old when he was in his sixties,
he proposed marriage to a fourteen year old. So this
is a great crowd of chess players, real real luminaries

(33:29):
in the field. Best to the best. Yeah. Frank pretty
also notes quote Bobby sat up in front between the
fascist and the con man, which is this is this
is called foreshadowing. Sounds like Dad's doing a great job.
By the way, Yeah, well no, no, this is where
your kid's gotta be Yeah, came there. Well he's dead.
He's like fucked off somewhere. Yeah, it's it's it's it's

(33:52):
I don't know, it's it's good. No, this sounds fine. Um,
I can't wait to hear how well the rest of
this story goes. Well. The problem is he just keeps
winning a chess So at age thirteen, he wins the
U S Junior Chess Championship, which is like nuts And okay,
unfortunately I do have to talk about one game of
chess because there Bobby Fisher plays, I mean, he plays

(34:15):
a lot of famous games chess. He plays one very
famous one at age thirteen. Where okay, so this game
gets dubbed the game of the century. People talk about
it literally all the fucking time. I'm sick of it.
I'm very angry. This game is fine. He plays like
and he's playing like a very strong international master. Um,
and you know he he does. He plays a pretty
cool game where like he likes sacrifice. He famous like

(34:38):
sacrifices his queen and then uses his sack queen sacrifice
to like get this attack and does all this stuff
with his knights in his rooks and everyone is like
loses exactly unbelievable. Yeah, and you know, okay, on the
one hand, like this is a pretty good game of chess.
On the other hand, I can open YouTube right now
and find like a thousand games of chess that are

(34:58):
way cooler than this that aren't the product of like
domestic operation paper clip. So, uh, this is this is
this is this is Okay, this is the extent of
which I'm going to talk about the game of the
century because I'm sick of people talking about it. Okay, um, yeah,
but but unfortunately I do you have to mention the
chess people will like attempt to murder me in my sleep.
So yeah, chess people, you hope you're not I hope

(35:18):
you're now satisfied. I have briefly covered this one game. See,
I'm not worried about that at all. I feel like
I could beat the ship out of chess people in
a fight. Maybe chess books they have, I don't know,
they have suspiciously high level state contacts, which is not
I don't know, you you wouldn't think that was true,

(35:39):
But these guys know a lot of intelligence agencies. Yeah,
well that's fair. So at age fourteen, Bobby Fisher becomes
the American chess Champion, and Robert up asking how did
a fourteen year old win the US Open and become
the American chess champion? And part of it is just
that the Americans stuck at chess. Yeah that sounds right.

(36:02):
And the other thing that's going on here is that
Bobby Fisher, you know, Okay, so like he he realizes
that Americans aren't for good at chess, and so he
learns Russian in order to read Russian chess books. And
she just keeps doing this his entire life. He just
keeps learning languages, like specifically to read chess books that
are in other languages. And so, you know, he he
starts he starts reading like he's just like reading these things.

(36:26):
And you know what, while while all of this is happening,
Bobby Fisher starts getting investigated by the FBI. Okay, which okay,
so you don't want to get investigated by the FBI. Yeah,
I mean, he is being investigated by the FBI for
like a third of his life, but somehow it's the
third of his life where he doesn't think that he's

(36:47):
being investigated by the FBI, which is a very very
straight So the reason is this is happening is that
the FBI thinks that his mom was working for the Soviets.
And okay, it turns out that not only was she
not working for the Soviets actually gotten kicked out of
the Communist partie. But you know, it's the FBI that
they're not going to let something as petty as you know,
reality getting way of their sort of domestic like Espiona operations.

(37:09):
And this gets like so serious that like they are
the FBI is infiltrating TV shows like the Cruise of
TV shows that Bobby is going on to like see
if he's a Soviet spy. Um, his mom starts drilling
him about what to say if the FBI shows up
at your door, which is apparently, I have nothing to
say to you. Yeah, that is no, I mean, that

(37:31):
is the thing that you say if the FBI shows
up at your door, come back with the warrant. I'm
not speaking to you without a lawyer, nothing the funk else.
Uh No, I mean actually, honestly, this is the first
time mom has given him good advice. Yeah. Well, like,
you know, I feel really bad for her because it's
like she she well she she also She's also the
only person about your fish's life who ever attempts to

(37:52):
stop him from playing chess. But she does just by
going to like chess psychiatrists and being like, is he
addicted to chess? But they're all chess psychiatrists and like, no,
you're going to get good information from a chess psychiatrist.
So okay. Later on in life, the bally Fisher is
gonna get absolutely obsessed with the idea that he's being
spied on and people like coming to kill him. And

(38:12):
on the one hand, this is just like his own
sort of like the sent to the conspiracy conspiracy theories,
but on the other hand, like it's hard to argue
about the fact of the U. S Government was in
fact spying on him for a bunch of his life,
like did not play a role in this, I mean,
given the period of time that this is. If you
are someone who is even moderately prominent in the thing
that might put you in contact with people outside of
the United States, you're being spied on by the US government. Okay.

(38:36):
So on one of the big things happens is uh
bbbly Fisher is trying to go to the USSR to
play against the Russian chess players, and you know, so
the Americans hate this, but okay, so what the larger
backstory here is because Bally Fisher is now the US
chess champion. He got in fightedto this like tournament in Yugoslavia,

(38:56):
and if you place high enough in this tournament, you
get a chance to be in another turn him and
that and if you and if you win that tournament,
you can become the world You can play the guy,
you can play the world taken and become the world champions.
So he goes to this thing, right, and while he's
in yugoslav he has to go to US all way.
But he's like, okay, I'm gonna go to the Soviet
Union because it's like close. And the Soviets are like, sure, fifteen,
you have Bobby Fisher, like you you can come be

(39:17):
a guest in our country because you're good at chess.
So Fisher shows up to the USSR and like he
like steps off the plane and just immediately starts demanding
that the Soviets like bring out their best chess players
to play him. The Soviets are like, really, dude, like
we brought you here as a guest and you are
yelling at us to bring out your best chess players.

(39:38):
So eventually they bring out a guy named Petrosyan, who
is like, this guy is four years out from becoming
the world champion, Like he's a good he's like good
at chess, but Fisher's piste off because he's not the
current world champion. And then immediately Fisher starts asking how
much he's gonna get paid for playing petrosy In, and
patrosy is like, what the funk are you talking? What

(40:00):
what do you mean? You came like money? Oh day,
they have money. It's it becomes clear very quickly in
this story. They do in fact e body. But he's like,
He's like what what what do you mean? Like you
came to stay as a guest here, and now you
were demanding to get paid money for playing us, Like
what's happening here? And you know, And Fisher just gets

(40:21):
progressively more and more mad as this goes on, because
he wants to play like like like actual like tournament
games and they're just playing like speed chess, and he
just gets like progressively angrier and Okay, So there is
a very important event in the life of all the
Fisher that happens next, and there's there's a lot of
disputes over what exactly happens. Um. The claim at the

(40:43):
time was that Fisher like standing right next to his
like English, like his English translator starts yelling about like,
quote these Russian pigs. Um. This is the way that
I've seen it reported in a lot of the sort
of books and articles about him. Um, this is what
gets reported to the Russian press. Frank Brady, who who's
Fisher's biographer, claims that Fisher actually said pork and was

(41:05):
complaining about his food, but the translator got the confused
the word for pork and pig. But whatever happens, like
this turns into sort of like a firestorm, right because
you know, this American kid came here and then starts
screaming about Russian pigs, and the Soviets are like, okay,
you like can't stay here now and okay. So so
that this means a Bobby, Bobby still has time before

(41:27):
this tournament. He's like, okay, where am I gonna go?
And then from left field, by god, is that Tito's music?
Oh shit, oh ship is he coming in with a
steel chair? He is? He is about to beat the
ship out of who was who was empowered with the
Union at this point, I probably Krushchev. He's about he's
about hit trush chair from the high wire with a

(41:48):
steale chair. God man, I just every time Tito comes
into a story, you know things that are about to
get fun. But you know what else makes things fun?
Is it the services that support this podcast? And that's
your goddamn right. There's nothing besides buying products and services
that makes anyone happy. Um. And that's the truth. That's science,

(42:12):
that's mathematics, and we're back, all right, Please continue, Maya.
So Bobby is about is getting kicked out, so you
diot Yugoslavia, who is like the great socialist enemy of
the USSR, swoops in. It's like, hey Bobby Fisher, Yeah,
come here play our grand masters. It will be great.

(42:35):
And you know Fisher Fisher is like incredibly happy about this.
And I just gotta say this man, Tito, old buddy,
this man is going to do things to your country that,
if you found them out, would cause all of your
organs to explode simultaneously. Like you should have left him
to the Soviets. But unfortunately, Tito, Tito, Tito offers hospitality
to this this terrifying American man. And you know that

(42:56):
the product of this is that Fisher like goes to
Ugos of you and loves it there and for like
the rest of his life he's going to well, okay
and this and this is where we need to be
sort of careful. He's going to like, he's going to
like Belgrade a lot specifically. Yeah, this has becoming to
become important later. Y Belgrades dope city. Love it. Yeah.

(43:20):
If you want to get a pile of perfectly cooked,
processed meat walked to you by a waiter who was
actively smoking a cigarette over the plate and enjoy the
entire experience, Belgrade is the city for you. Um, I
mean that ironically great town. Love it. Yeah, Fisure, I

(43:41):
don't know, he he he and he just enjoys that
a lot and other stuff that he's doing their question work.
We'll get into that a little bit. Um. Okay. So
he's playing this tournament, right and everyone expects him to
just sort of bomb out because he's like fifteen. But
instead what he does he draws like a bunch of
the best players in the world, and you know, he
beats He beat some people. He draws like three of

(44:03):
the best Soviet players and somehow, you know, this like
fifteen year old kid from the from like the just
just the absolute provincial backwater United States, uh like, qualifies
for the champions Sernament and simultaneously becomes the youngest grand
master in history. And at this point that everyone starts
to lose their minds for Bobby Fisher. Like all over

(44:24):
the American chess scene, everyone suddenly talking about, like, oh
my god, there's this kid who could beat the Soviets
at chess. Like he gets he gets a full editorial
in the New York Times. Um, suddenly there's just like
there's like the great White hope against the Soviet chess machine.
And you know, every like from this point on, like
everything that he does just becomes like in layered and

(44:45):
like levels and layers and layers and layers and layers
of propaganda because the US had finally done the thing
that it always does when it used to fight communism.
They had found their own Nazi. So it's even at
like this age, Bobby is very very anti Semitic. Um,
he's better at hiding it than he's going to be
later on, but he is doing stuff like, for example,

(45:06):
the Encyclopedia Judica, I like put him in on their
list of like famous Jewish people because his parents are Jewish.
And he writes them a letter saying he is not
Jewish and they need to take him off his list,
and then he starts doing something he's gonna do for
the entire rest of his life, which is threatened to
whip out his dick to show that he's not circumcised
and thus not Jewish, which is like, I can't argue

(45:29):
with that. Perfect there, I don't know, I I have
nothing on this. It is a very, very weird kind
of anti Semitism, and I need everyone like, Okay, when
whenever you think of body Fisher, you need to understand
that he is, at old times two steps away from
just whipping out of his dick to prove how not
Jewish he is. Like he he's gonna like, there's gonna

(45:50):
being racism into the proud tradition of whipping out your
dick at a at a chess tournament. That's that's heartbreaking. Yeah,
it's he's I don't know, it's it's it's he's he
is a wildly weird anti semetic person. That there's there's
another story of a sort of early an early anti Semitism.

(46:11):
So in nineteen sixty two he's doing this interview. He's
I think, how does he like eighteen or nineteen at
this point? Uh. There there's Harper's Magazine interview where I
he says, quote, yeah, there are too many Jews in chess.
They have taken away the class of the game. They

(46:33):
don't dress too nicely. That's what I don't like. And
I want to remind everyone here, like, Okay, Bobby Fisher
is about to become like the like literally the symbol
of American chess, right, and you know, like a genuine
sort of geopolitical and moral hero of the US. And
this was just in Harper's magazine. Like he just said

(46:53):
that he's and that and that's and this isn't like
it's not like he's saying this to like, I don't know,
like a tiny village paper in like rural Idaho or
something like, like the journalists actually read this, right, But
you know, there is something that's gonna happen time and
time beginning the stories. It like the press. It's just

(47:13):
like they'll they'll see him say something like like this,
and then they're gonna see some pretty good chess, and
they're just instantly gonna forget about it, and everyone's gonna
go back to comparing him to like Mozart and like
Picasso and immediately forget what he thinks about the Holocaust. Yeah,
he's a literal Nazi, but he's good at chess, so
who can say if it's bad? Yeah? Yeah, so okay,

(47:35):
but back in being good at chess for a little bit.
Um Fisher qualifies for the Candidates Tournament, which is is
a tournament where like, if you win it, you get
the Red Challenge, the World Championship, and like almost immediately
after he gets there, he makes history of becoming the
first grand master ever to get into a fist fight
with another grand master at a chess tournament. Okay, now
that's dope. That's that. That's good. That's like, that's like
Adam Sandler and fucking happy Gilmore. Yeah so alright, so

(48:00):
I I respect that. Look, he's a Nazi, but that's
pretty funny. Yeah, and then he does he does another
there's another very famous Bobby Fishing thing that happens here.
I'm just gonna read this a endgame. Henry Stockhold, the
chess player who was covering the match for the Associated Press,
brought Bobby to a broth of one night and waited
for him. When Bobby exited an hour later, Stockholm asked

(48:23):
him how he enjoyed it, and Bobby's comment, which he
repeated other times, has been quoted, chess is better. Huh.
So this is a this is a a incredibly weird,
weird dude. Um. Unfortunately for Bobby, he just gets like
destroyed in this tournament, and this leads to basically what

(48:46):
what becomes the Bobby Fisher Chess Special. Uh. He immediately
starts dreaming about how the entire tournament was rigged, and
this is like enough that he gets an entire like
giant I think it was like a front cover piece
in Sports Illustrated called the Russians have fixed World Chess.
And okay, so this is kind of true. Um, what

(49:08):
was happening at these tournaments that the Soviets would play
these like fast draws against each other so that they
could like preserve their energy from they had to play
non Soviet players. But also there there's a bunch of
there's like there's endless analysis of this that's done and
by like people then and people now and basically what
they concluded was like, Okay, so the Soviets win every tournament,
but the Soviets win every tournament because they have more
good chess players than anyone else. Does I mean, yeah,

(49:31):
that that makes sense. Yeah, but Bobby, Bobby is convinced
it because they're just like cheaters and he this, he
this just like he gets really really angry at this,
and you know, he's already embissing this grudge from the
Soviets like kicked him out, and so at this point
he basically just like swears a turnover revenge on the
Soviet Union to the point where he refuses to play
any tournaments that the International Chess Federation puts on because

(49:53):
he's like the International Chess Federation is like a tool
of the Soviets. And I mean, here, man, yeah, well okay,
so this this is you know, as much as I've
been saying, this is where he starts to get really weird. Um.
So there's just like she's like, I guess it's like
that's like a little fucky what they were doing, but
that's not really it's not really right, Like if you're

(50:14):
playing them, you're still just playing a game of chess.
Like they haven't taken chess steroids. They're not They're not
hiding an extra queen up their sleeves. They're just like
kind of coming in a little fresher than you because
they sucked around slightly. But I don't know, cheating seems
like a weird way to phrase that. Yeah, and she
just gets he gets just utterly like he like on

(50:36):
his like deathbed, he is going to be yelling about
how the Soviets cheated him and like stuff like that,
and you know, okay, And partially she just gets like
like yeah, he she turns into a kind of guy
that is partly very recognizable and partly not so. He's
two favorite books in this period are ninety four and
Animal Form. This is a you know, these are going great. Um,

(51:00):
I'm gonna guess he didn't read a lot of other
or well, no, it's amazingly that those are like the
two most normal things he's going to read from Hugh
right out. He also like he starts listening to my My,
My ancient enemy, the evangelical preacher Billy Graham. Oh no,
and then he discovers a man named Herbert w Armstrong's

(51:25):
radio Church of God. Oh no. No, not Armstrong. Oh
we should talk about Armstrong a little bit. Armstrong is
he's cut from the same cloth. We've mentioned him once
or twice on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's like
he's like, I mean he said that, he's like, Okay,
he's I think he's technically Christian, but he's definitely technically Christian.

(51:47):
Here's the thing. Here's that he's not a Trinitarian. And
at that point I I started I started looking at
you real closely. When you deny the Trinity as to
whether or not you are actually a Christian. This is
this is the line that I he was someone who
was not Christian and imposed on Christianity. See see how
they like imperialism this once he's have no opinion on that.
But Armstrong is like a weird, real weirdo. He's like

(52:11):
a he's a British Israelite, which is just like, yeah,
I mean he's yeah, he's he's These are the folks
who believe that like British people are the real Jews,
and Jews aren't real, like the actual Jewish people are
not actual Jewish people, which you know, there's there's a
bunch of weird like it. This kind of feeds into
the creativity movement and oh good, yeah, yeah, you know,

(52:39):
so what what there There's a lot of things that
he like it gets involved with um Fisher. Fisher like, well,
he doesn't quite joined the church because there are some
like prescriptions on stuff that the church has rules about,
like you're not supposed to date and inside the church,
and Fishers like this is stupid, So he doesn't technically
joined the church, but he's like classifying, yeah, but also

(53:00):
picks up something that like he picks up Basically, these
guys are also sort of like I don't know if
proto is rusher, but they're basically like like Christian science people,
so they like don't believe in doctors and they don't
believe vaccinations, and Fisher like picks this up. He like
is really hardcore on this don't go to doctor's thing.
And he also starts tiping the church ten percent of

(53:21):
his income. And the other thing he starts doing around
this period is he starts carrying around this blue cardboard
box everywhere that he goes, and he would just refuse
to open everyone when I like he's he's just walking
about carrying his blue carbrot box. Everyone's like, okay, Fisher
like what what what is this blue carbet box? And
he just gets really mad when anyone asked him. And

(53:43):
one time he finally like relented to the pressure and
opened it, and inside of the box was the Bible, which,
oh my god, like this is something that like a
youth pastor with the story like a youth pastor would tell.
That's like one of those like this child's bab there, buddy. Yeah,
so he gets very weird. Um uh so okay, So

(54:05):
this goes on for like a couple He has a
couple of years of being wrapped in his like I'm
not gonna play for feed a, I'm not gonna He
plays like very little chess. But eventually Fee is able
to sort of like entice him back to like play
chess again by like changing the format of the World's
tournament so like people couldn't the candidates tournaments, people can't collude.

(54:26):
And so WII Fisher like goes into this tournament and
he just trivially easily destroys like three Soviet grandmasters, and
he you know, he's very very quickly and incredibly decisively.
He just annihilates them. And this means that he has
the right the challenge the world champion for Spassky, who

(54:48):
at this point Spasky is like one of the few
people on earth that Fisher has never beaten. But you know,
this is a sensation in the US suddenly, like you
know what, back back back back when you like qualified
for the candidate term like chest, like there was some
carbage of it and like chess people talking now like
everyone knows who Bobby Fisher is, like any entire country
that this is this is like everyone and something everyone's

(55:09):
in the chest too, Like it's on the front page
in New York Times every when people briefly cared about
hockey because because of that team fought the Soviets. Yeah yeah,
and like this this is this is this is basically
the seventies version of like the Hans the Magnus Carlson
Hans Neilman like cheating butt plug thing, and it sparks

(55:30):
like until basically literally this month probably like the greatest
chess boom America has ever seen. And you know, okay,
so this this is like nobody really cares about chess.
What was actually happening here? This is you know, this
is like this is basically American nationalisment sort of anti communism,
and Fisher is seen by everyone, like including himself, as

(55:51):
as a Cold warrior, a term that people took like
incredibly seriously at this time, and now it sounds like
the tag off for like a rip off Mortal Kombat character. Yep,
And you know, okay, Like the stated reason for this
is that, like chess is like a big deal to
the Soviets, is ideologically important, like Lenin like played chess
and wanted everyone to play chess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like yeah.

(56:19):
This is the thing you have to understand about the
Club Bar is every single person on the face of
the earth is completely insane during this entire period, right,
this match has literally no effect on the Cold War nothing.
It does nothing, and there was never a chance it
could even conceivably have done anything. And I want to
want to keep this in mind as we tell as

(56:41):
I tell the story of this World Championship, because by
the end of the story, the President of the United
States is going to be personally involved in getting Bouny
Fisher to play this game like this is this is
a game of chess. They're just playing chess. This is
everyone is completely deranged. So okay, on on not nothing,
although we've prefaced this with the fact that like, nobody,

(57:02):
nobody involved with this is even remotely saying um. Bubby
Fisher is like, okay, he's headed into his like World
championship match with Boris Spatsky. They're gonna play a bunch
of games. One of them is gonna win. Um. There's
a huge fight about the location that frankly doesn't matter
that they settle on Iceland and this tournament, you know

(57:23):
it's it's going to be a huge deal. It has
the largest prize pool of all time for a chess match,
and Bobby Fisher takes a look at the most money
a chess player has ever received for playing chess and
is like, no, I want a bigger cut of the
ticket sales. And they're like, Bobby, like if if you,
if you take money from the ticket sales, like we're
gonna lose money on this, and he's like, I don't care.

(57:44):
I literally will not play unless you give me money
from the ticket sales. And they think he's bluffing, but
he's not bluffing. He cancels his flight from New York
to Icelands because they won't like pay him more, and
This is also very funny because the head of Days
at Chess Federation, who's like the guy who's been organizing
this whole thing is a very hard core anti communist, right,

(58:06):
and he's you're trying to use this whole matches anti
commist propaganda. But you know, you get what you pay for, buddy, Like, yeah,
you want to do anti caap and anti communist propaganda,
have fun dealing with like this absolute capitalist asshole who
just keeps extorting you literally every five seconds. And okay,
so this this, this, this, this, this sort of saga
a Fisher Fisher like refusing to show up to Iceland

(58:26):
continues until a chess journalist calls this British investment banker
named Derek Slayter who puts like nine hundred thousand dollars
in today's money into the price pool in order to
get Fisher to play. And Fisher is still liking Yeah,
And at this point, Henry fucking Kissinger makes a personal

(58:47):
call to Bubby Fisher and says, you have to play
this game for America. The United States of America requires
you you played this chess game. And this finally infences
Bobby Bobby to play. Now, the other thing that's that's
very weird about this is okay, So this is like
this is like you know, high Cold war drama, right.

(59:09):
So you would expect that Fisher's opponent, who has Boris
Spassky like that, the darling of the Soviet chess machine.
You would expect him to be a communist. But no,
he's a czarist. Oh no, here's a quote from Spasky.
As for my views, I'm a Russian nationalist and there's
nothing scary about that. Don't be afraid. Some say that

(59:30):
Russian nationalist is a nasty thing, most definitely an anti
semit to racist and national Boshelvik. No, for a nationalist
God exists and that and nations that respect each other.
I'm a convinced monarchist. I remained a monarchistory in the
Soviet years and never tried to hide that. I believe
the greatness of Russia's connected to the activity of the
national leaders represented by our czars. Uh. Okay, you know,

(59:58):
I talked about this a bit earlier, but like this
was the moment where I I finally just became convinced
that I spent like a bunch of time trying to
find like a super grand master who has like normal
ish politics. And the thing that I realized, Yeah, there's
something about just spending all your time playing trust to
drives you completely bad. Like all of these people have
the most nonsense politics I've ever seen. Like it's like

(01:00:21):
looking through a poll board and you just find you
find ideologies are like how are you as czarist in
like two thousand and three? What? What what is happening here?
I mean there are still czarists today, Like there's there's
many many monarchists on Twitter at least that you can find.
And if you if you go to YouTube and you
look up like Russian imperial anthems and stuff from the area,

(01:00:45):
you will find people being like for the days of
Nikolaia the Second um. So, I don't know, I'm not so.
I'm also not surprised that a chess guy in specific
would be a monarchist. It is low key a monarchist,
is true. But but the thing that's word about this, right,
it's like all of the sort of like all of
the like every every single like major communists. I don't
know if actually talent did, but like every like major

(01:01:07):
communist person like Cheeto plays chess, Lenin plays chess. Che
Guevara at one point, like helps Fisher play a tournament
in Cuba, Like everyone plays chess, and then all of
their chess players are like weird fascists and none of
them are communists. It's it's, oh God, I don't know,
I'll never understand chess, so I I but but clearly,

(01:01:29):
if you like chess a lot, you're problematic. So I
think we can say that for certain. It's true. This,
this is this is how I get canceled. So all right,
this I'm just gonna read a quote about end notes
about what from Endgame, about what Bobby Fisher does when
he like finally shows up in Iceland after getting personally
called by Henry Kissinger several hours later. Coming home from

(01:01:52):
bowling in the early hours in the morning, before returning
to the hotel, Bobby sneaked into the playing hall to
check out the conditions. After an a minute expection, he
had a number of complaints. He thought the lighting should
be brighter, the pieces of the chess set were too
small for the squares of the custom built board. The
board itself was not quite right. It was made of stone,

(01:02:12):
and he thought wood would be preferable. Finally, he thought
that the two cameras hidden inside burlap covered towers might
be distracting when he began to play, and the towers
themselves looming over the stage like medieval battering rounds were disconcerting.
So he's showing up at like four in the morning
and he walks into the hall and he just starts
bitching about all like the chess pieces are the wrong size,

(01:02:37):
and so okay, the Torenament organizers are like, whatever, we
need this game to happen, and they're they're during they're
just destrove his match to happen, and you know, okay,
So chess starts to be played. But in the words
of John Boys, who cares about that, midway through game one,
Bubby Fisher starts complaining that one of the cameras in
the back is distracting, so that the game like adjourns

(01:02:57):
for the day. There's a there's a thing that created
were like you played four He moves and then everyone
leaves and goes home, and you come back and finish
the game the next day. So Fisher comes in, he
plays one move and then he stands up on live TV,
walks to the backstage, and spends thirty five minutes of
his own game time with his clock taking down, screaming
at the organizers to take down the camera and okay.

(01:03:19):
They eventually give in. But the next day, the game
is supposed to start and Fisher is nowhere to be seen.
Fish Fisher's team shows up his you know, his team
is sort of like lawyers and like advised. They show
up and they tell them that Bobby Fisher will not
play unless all cameras are removed from the venue. Oh
my god, Bobby, Jesus, what a fucking frame, Madonna, it

(01:03:41):
gets it. This is this is, this is we we are.
We are like baby in the early mid game of
Bobby of Bobby doing this ship in this tournament. Um, okay.
So he then refuses to even show up to the
hall to see if the accommodations organizers were like, okay,
well we'll move cameras, and he like he won't even
show up to like check if they're fine. So, you know,

(01:04:02):
he just he's not there. So that the game starts,
right especially is like okay, I'm going to start the
game clock and Fisher is just still in his bed,
like in his underwear in his hotel. And eventually the
organizers are like, okay, fine, for one game, we will
remove all the cameras, and Fisher goes, I'm not gonna
show up unless you give me back all of the

(01:04:24):
time on my chest clock that I spent yelling, like
arguing with you about removing these cameras. And the organizers
finally are like, come on, man, like that that there
has to be a line, like you can't just not
show up to your match and then demand we give
you all of your time back because you were arguing
with us. So and they everyone at every point in
the story like expects Fisher is gonna compromise. He just doesn't.

(01:04:47):
He just does not show up for this game. Okay, yeah,
so so we're we're not We're not on day four, right,
and the organizers are like Fish. Fisher is like, no,
we I we need to wipe this game from the record.
I didn't lose this game. You have to like forget
that I didn't show up. And they're like, come on, like,

(01:05:07):
you didn't show up to this game, And so Fisher
books a flight home to the US. So it is
now day four of the World Chess Championship. Fisher is
still refusing to play the New York Times on its
front page publishes an article begging him to play, like
that's sad. Yeah, she gets a second call New York Times.

(01:05:29):
Don't fucking simp for a fascist impossible challenge. Every Kisses
calls him again Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon personally invites him
to the White House. And that is the least the
least surprising part of this story. Also the fact that
Henry Kissinger would negotiate back. Yeah, it's and you know, okay,

(01:05:50):
we we we could reasonably ask yourselves at this point,
why is the Secretary of States and the President of
the United States getting involved to make sure some like
random massi Antis plays chess game? And the answer is that, like,
insofar as this game is is important anyway, it's because
you know, it's about like symbols and sort of myths
and spat Sky is like the representative of like the

(01:06:11):
bureaucratic like Terra rapp Artus of the Soviet Union because
being challenged, but like this like lone individual man manic
genius of the free world. But like, okay, if you
think you can take about two seconds to think about
what the US is doing while this is going on, right, Okay,
Like what what what is Kissinger doing? And the answer
is using one of the like literally one of history's largest,

(01:06:32):
most most like bureaucratic organizations to delivery munitions from Tennessee
to Tokyo in order to burn children alive in Vietnam
and Cambodia to you know, prop up an incredibly corrupt
and tyrannical narco dictatorship. So you know, in some sense, right,
Fisher is is like he's something. He is kind of

(01:06:52):
someone the Americans need, right, He's he's someone that, like
someone like Kissinger or someone like Nixon, deeds to be
the sort of like individualist hero to match the Soviets
collective hero, because otherwise everyone's gonna start questions about start
like asking questions about the fact that like we also
have our own terror bureaucracy. It's like murdering everyone in
the street. But like, no, hey, look it's Bobby Fisher.
We're gonna like wave this like like shiny trinket in

(01:07:15):
front of you and be like he is all of us.
And then meanwhile, like okay, like the great American collective
hero is sitting in his underwear refusing to play, like
refusing to play chess because there's cameras in the room,
and and even after all of this, Fisher is still
refusing to play. And what eventually convinces him is that,
like Boris Spatsky, who by all rights at this point

(01:07:38):
could simply have gone, I beat him, he refused to
play me again, I'm going home just like fine, I
will look like I will go talk to him, will
play a game like backstage where there's no cameras, and Fisher,
like finally having gotten literally everything that he wants out
of this temper trans ram like wait until ninety minutes
before the match is going to start, and finally angreased

(01:07:58):
to play. So the mass starts again, Fisher makes one move,
jumps out of his seat and starts screaming at the
organizers that there's a camera again. And at this point, Spassky,
who is like he has been putting up with Fisher's
bullshit for like months now, just like just snaps and
just like walks out of the room, and this one

(01:08:21):
referee has to convince both Spassky and Fisher that they
should actually play this game. And eventually, this guy who
like absolutely should have had Kissinger's job because he's apparently
just a miracle worker like manages to convince bothon to
play the game, and at this point, like the game
after like a litany of bullshit, two calls from the

(01:08:43):
Secretary of State, uh like, cash infusions from British bankers,
that the thing like finally gets going. And meanwhile in
the US, like this is such a big deal. It's
a good thing. There's no other problems happening in the
world at this these people focusing on like this was
the number one thing happening at the time. Yeah, well, okay, here,

(01:09:06):
we're gonna get something about that. So so PBS puts
together a special program specifically just to broadcast these games.
This is watched by over a million people. Um, here's
from endgame. So popular was to show that it crowded
out the baseball and tennis coverage normally seen in sports
bars in New York, and when the channel was covering
the Democratic National Convention in Washington, the stations were flooded

(01:09:27):
with thousands of calls to have them put the chess
match back on. Station officials gave into the viewers demands,
dropped the convention and went back to broadcasting the match.
Oh god, so okay, people love chess Badia. But like
back in the match, like nothing interesting happens, is not
a very good match. Both of them are playing kind

(01:09:48):
of badly. Fisher wins, and then he shows up to
his metal ceremony and then in order to complain that
there's not his name isn't engraved on the metal, and
that it is that that is that is Fisher winning
the Chess World Championship. You know he at this point,
you know, Fish Fisher is an American hero, right, like

(01:10:10):
all the stuff. He has a profoundly American figure, and
he comes back that is undeniable. He sounds extremely American.
It's it's amazing. So okay. So he comes back to
the US and he gets like he has a just
infinite number of sponsorship deals and like branding stuff, and
everyone wants talked to him, and she just turns them

(01:10:31):
all down. Um, here's here, here's here's one last thing
for mend game. The most fabulous offer came to Fisher
in nineteen seventy four, right after the Muhammad Ali George
Foreman fight known as the Rumble and the Jungle in Zaire.
The Ziari Government's offered Fisher five million dollars. I think
it's like, that's like forty million dollars or something in
modern money to play Anatoly Karpov in their country and

(01:10:54):
what would have been a month long championship chess match
too short, said Bobby. How dare they offered me five
million dollars for a month long match? This is like, yeah,
this is thirty million dollars in today's money. Alive received
twice much for one night. He didn't Mohammed Ali not
a ten million dollars, but also Mohammed Ali's the sport

(01:11:14):
that he played involved him destroying his brain by getting
his skull smash. So yeah, I understand why he might
get more money. Yeah, get get Get this fucking next line.
It was after that match that Ali became began calling
himself the greatest, and Bobby took issue with that too.
Alie stole it from me, said Bobby. I used the
greatest for myself on television before he ever used it. Okay, okay, Bobby,

(01:11:40):
you don't get to copyright the term the greatest. Yeah,
and you don't get complained that Mohammed Ali. No, no,
you know what, I think we should do a hybrid
chess boxing match between Ali murdered him. It would have
been a missing he would have that man would have
died in the ring. It would have been would have

(01:12:00):
been very funny. Unfortunately, chess boxing will not become a
popular thing until two months ago. So rest yeah, yeah, yeah,
And this is this is where we're gonna leave Fisher
here for today, at the absolute peak of his fame
and yell yelling at Muhammad a leave for calling himself

(01:12:21):
the greatest because he did it first. I think we
can all agree chess was a mistake. Yeah, yeah, um miya,
you wanna plug your plug doublets before we we write out. Yeah. So,
I I do a show called it Could Happen here
that Robert is also on sometimes and other people are
also on and it's good and you should listen to it.

(01:12:43):
And I'm also at it me hr three on Twitter
if you'd want to be there for some reason. Uh yeah, yeah.
I have a book called After the Revolution. You can
buy it by typing it into any place that sells books,
Amazon or the shop dot org or whatever that places,
or just go to the a K Press website. You

(01:13:04):
can buy After the Revolution everywhere. Um alright, folks, until
next week, go go go play Warhammer. You know, engage
with the true sport of strategic masters, the one that
has a lot of chainsaws in it. Behind the Bastards
is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from

(01:13:25):
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Bobby Fischer: Chess Nazi