Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, Monday, November 04, 2002 - Page 20
Chess distractions: Is anyone paying attention?
Bobby Fischer, America's only world chess champion, was as famous for his unrelenting demands for distraction-free tournament conditions as for his unrelenting style of play. Fischer insisted that tournament rooms be silent and that spectators watch from a distance. The United States Chess Federation, America's governing body, was obviously not influenced by Fischer. Consider conditions at two national tournaments they hosted.
The 2001 Supernationals drew 5,000 scholastic players and crowned national champions in elementary, junior high and high school sections. All players competed in a single room as thousands of spectators filed past playing areas (some on roller skates), socialized openly in earshot of players and played hackeysac and other ball games. The tournament director even participated in a television interview a few feet from a championship match. The venue more resembled a shopping mall than a chess tournament. Supernationals was super chaotic.
The 2001 U.S. Open drew 400 players competing for the crown of U.S Champion. All players and spectators entered and exited the playing room through a single narrow doorway only a few feet from dozens of players. Moreover, getting to the doorway meant moving between several crowded rows of players. Traffic was heavy. About 35 people went through that door every minute. If this was not enough, spectators crowded between rows and watched games over players' shoulders.
Such conditions are appalling. Chess players must fully concentrate as they plan strategy and calculate possible moves. Research on attention, though, tells us that we can focus on just one thing at a time and that our best efforts to stay focused are easily diverted by other sounds and movements in our environment. THis means that long, mental calculations, often involving dozens of possible moves, are easily disrupted by milling or noisy spectators — even a creaking door — so that calculations must begin anew. Chess organizers like the United States Chess Federation should heed Fischer's long standing demands and provide distraction-free conditions. Chess is hard enough to play when conditions are favorable.
The Journal Times, Racine, Wisconsin, Monday, November 18, 2002 - Page 2
Files reveal FBI feared chess master Bobby Fischer was recruited by Soviets
Philadelphia — Bobby Fischer, the eccentric chess prodigy who dueled Soviet grand masters and won a world title in 1972, was investigated by FBI agents who suspected his mother was a communist spy, according to the bureau's records.
FBI files obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer under the Freedom of Information Act show that the government watched the Fischer family for three decades, and at one point feared that Soviet agents had tried to recruit Fischer himself.
The bureau ultimately concluded that his mother, Regina Fischer, was not a spy, but only after years of researching her history, reading her mail, studying her canceled checks and questioning her neighbors.
“They made it hard for her to keep a job,” said her son-in-law, Russell Targ, a physicist in Palo Alto, Calif.
The FBI was especially interested in Bobby Fischer's 1958 trip to play chess in Russia.
An agent posed as a student journalist to interview producers of the TV show “I've Got a Secret,” which featured Fischer before he left and paid his plane fare.
Informants at the tournament said Fischer behaved badly and at one point called his mother to complain “It's no good here.”
“(I)t's possible that the Soviets may have made an approach to Robert Fischer to which the youth took exception,” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's office wrote to the FBI's New York field office in 1958. The theory was later discounted.
Fischer became a Cold War hero when he beat a Russian, Boris Spassky, for the world title in 1972.
Then, he stunned the chess world by refusing to play. As his personal behavior became increasingly bizarre, he forfeited his title in 1975 and virtually disappeared, living in secret outside the United States.
Now 59, Fischer makes only rare public appearances. In recent radio interviews, he has praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be “wiped out,” and has described Zionists as “thieving, lying bastards.”
Regina Fischer, a pediatrician who spoke eight languages, died of cancer in 1997.
The last entry in her 750-page FBI file is dated 1973 and notes her opposition to the Vietnam War.
In her teens, she moved from the United States to Germany and then Russia, where she lived from 1933 to 1938 and attended medical school.
She married a German bio-physicist in Moscow in 1933, then came to the United States in 1939, four years before the birth of her son. The FBI files pay attention to a Hungarian mathematics teacher who paid child support for her son but don't say if he was the father.