His reign started in Philadelphia

Posted on Sat, Jan. 19, 2008
Fischer started reign with a win in Phila.
By Peter Mucha, Robert Moran and Lea Sitton Stanley
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writers

The Philadelphia area gave chess wizard Bobby Fischer his first big win – and nearly played a role in orchestrating one last hurrah.

It was July 1956 when Fischer – who died Thursday at age 64 in Reykjavik, Iceland – arrived here from Brooklyn, N.Y., for the U.S. Chess Federation’s junior championship.

He was 13 and the youngest player at the event at the Franklin-Mercantile Chess Club in Center City. When he won, he was the youngest victor in the annual contest for the under-21 set.

“He was intense, yeah,” Herb Fisher said yesterday, remembering the thin teen. Fisher, 76, who dropped by the chess club with his Pekingese yesterday, said he shook the prodigy’s hand.

In November 2006, a Radnor entrepreneur, Ed Trice, met Fischer in Iceland while trying to set up a $15 million match between Fischer and the Russian to whom he forfeited his crown in 1975, Anatoly Karpov.

The game would not have been classic chess, but a Trice-patented variation called Gothic Chess, which uses two extra hybrid pieces on a board two squares wider.

Karpov had signed a contract to play, but Fischer was tough to deal with, ducking meetings and escalating demands for upfront money, Trice said.

Finally, Trice got to talk with Fischer in the corner of a restaurant in Reykjavik – for about five minutes.

The former champ had on “a leatherish cap” and a denim shirt. His beard was trimmed and his fingernails were long.

“When he spoke, he was matter-of-fact, direct. He seemed sharp. His responses were very quick,” Trice said.

But he also seemed bored, as if doing Trice a favor by meeting.

“He didn’t want to be there,” Trice said. “We had done something to press his button, and it wasn’t going to happen.”

Susan Polgar, a four-time women’s world champion and Texas Tech University’s chess coach, confirmed that she had been asked, if needed, to fill in for Fischer in the match.

“Both Karpov and I signed the contract, and Bobby was seriously contemplating. The money was there,” she said.

She and Fischer were friends, and she knew he had spurned multimillion-dollar deals before. “Money was not the most important thing in his life,” Polgar said. “He had his own ideas and principles. He had numerous offers.”

A few months ago, through a mutual friend, Fischer sent his fond regards. “I’m glad that was his last message to me and about me,” she said. “I think he was basically the king of chess, and the chess world lost one of the biggest heroes of all time.”

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