Bobby Fischer Enjoys Breaking Chess Players' Egos | The Dick Cavett Show

my next guest uh is prepared to take on the russians uh single-handed and he may win uh you know that russia dominates the chess world uh if you know even as little about chess as i do and bobby fischer is the an authentic genius who is uh stalking one russian chess master after another uh in pursuit of of the world championship and um the russians seem to have a patent on that but uh he recently annihilated two chess masters in a row he probably read about it in the papers in the world championship tournament uh he beat them both six to nothing which is six times um he beat each of them six times to zero it's unheard of most chess games end in a draw uh in big time chess and uh because a man can usually get into position as i understand it where he doesn't have to lose he can make it a draw and the sports people have been trying to find analogies for this like pitching 19 he's won those last 19 matches i think and it's like pitching 19 home runs or hitting 19 uh i mean pitching 19 no hitters are hitting 19 home runs if you know baseball was well as i'd um anyway only two russians now stand between mr fisher and the world's title tig grien petrosian is the next russian on his list and if he wins that he plays the great master um boris boski and he's a thrilling chess player for a long time as you know if you've read about him he was called the bad boy of chess because he would stomp out of matches if the lighting wasn't perfect and so on and then he kind of quit chess and it is said holed up with his favorite chess books and vowed revenge and a comeback and he's come back and is stomping his way to the top will you welcome a gentleman a bright boy from brooklyn mr bobby fischer all right i got everything into that introduction except legend in his own time i was trying trying to avoid that uh did did most of it sound factual well that's tough about spassky being the great master i didn't go for too much yeah i'm sorry the rest is okay uh isn't that his official title i wasn't it wasn't a value judgment there oh i know he's a grand master i'm a grand master too yeah well you'll mob the floor with it i'm sure and uh so forth where do you live now bob what is a chestnut planet i don't live anywhere actually uh just living in hotels you don't have uh permanently you just you follow chess the right surfers follow the sun and what's the money in chess the money uh you know could be better it's again it's getting better but you know it's not like what you're getting or something else it may be they would say my contract uh why is it that um the russians dominate the chess world what have they got well they're subsidized by the government and all their players are professionals so they keep at it we have a lot of talented players in this country but for one reason other than they just kind of fade out they lose interest because not that much incentive yeah and you've made some rather strong charges against them a couple of times involving um cheating cheating i think is the word that i was looking for yeah what was the evidence of that well yeah i came out well one tournament i played back in 62 was that was a specific one i was talking about they pre-arranged about a dozen games among themselves to eliminate me how did they pre-arrange it i mean they had the strategy worked out among each other right yeah that isn't legal though is it is that concern no it's against the rules but uh who is it yeah oh that's what i meant against yeah uh so that would be that would be the kind of cheating you mean oh well also sometimes they would discuss the games among themselves while it's in progress get advice from each other and a few little things like that i mean i complained a lot about it back then have you changed you know all the press about you has talked about your cantankerous period where you would go stomping out and say i cannot work under these lights and so forth and uh then after the period where you were away you came back milder yeah you could say that there's been all kinds of rumors like there's a certain woman who changed him or uh someone gave him a pill i don't know what the others are those are two of them i just sort of handle journalists a little better you know handle myself with people a little better i haven't changed that much you haven't changed that much you just know how to handle the press now right right is chess a gift could a guy who doesn't have a gift for it learning how to be a great chess player great no he could be good though yeah look a little good play a lot of the top players i don't think are that talented they just work like dogs you know is it inherited or do you come from a family of great chess players uh no i mean my mind isn't heard of it now but yeah and what is it what goes with a great chess ability are you terrifically logical in your thought processes can you see where an argument is going are you very neat in your uh personal life with your room do you leave your ties on the floor or any of the above i think i'm pretty logical now i'm not going to need a skyrocket but it does go with a kind of mental discipline right you have to you know i mean it seems to me in chess you have to have the talent but the guys who reach the top are the ones who keep at it they have the character they don't get distracted by other things in life until they got the title or whatever they wanted out of chest ceiling can you have any other life and be a great chess player not at the moment no you know first things first right get the title and uh and what's the pleasure what's the moment of pleasure for you is it when you see the guy in trouble where's the greatest pleasure what would correspond to hitting the home run in baseball oh the greatest pleasure well when you break his ego this is where it's at yeah really yeah and when does that occur when he sees that he's finished yeah you know he sees it's coming and breaks all up inside yeah and you like that moment of just crushing the guy what would you have been if you hadn't been a jazz player do you have any idea some kind of sport something you know it's a sport i mean i haven't gone into it much but i think i would might have gone for something like that yeah people expect to i know when they meet you they hear a guy who's been a prodigy you started playing chess when you were what yeah and they they for some reason they expect a frail little fellow with thick glasses and they're always surprised by the width of your shoulders and the fact that you look like an athlete or a swimmer or something like that are you good at those things too well i haven't really you know developed myself too much in sports but i like little swimming tennis just mainly i just use it to keep in shape for the chest that sounds funny yeah they laugh to keep them shaped for chest but where does it take strength well you're sitting there for five hours and uh how do you how do you develop that part of your body you know you got to have the blood coming into your head and this happened the reason that players fade out say in their 40s or 50s is because uh about the fourth or fifth hour of play they lose you know the concentration the stamina is gone you have a lot of stamina yeah that people do laugh at that but it does take it takes a terrific amount of stamina and told it another silly way to ask the question was a baseball player's legs go what goes first on a chess player but because there's no way you do sit an awfully long time now good day could uh could that be part of a strategy would a guy take extra time in a match that isn't time just to wear you out physically well you got the clocks you know you can't take too much time because you'll overstep and get forfeited but uh you can sort of pace your time not to move too rapidly not to move too slowly kind of just wear them down grind them down so it's not just the knowledge of what you do on the board but a little psychological oh yeah yeah warfare too right right yeah now when you used to walk out of matches what were the reasons for that these two terrible temper first of all i only dropped out of two matches in my whole life and i just looked it up the record i played in about 60 matches my whole life so it's been a little exaggerated but i was complaining about the lights spectators were bothering me a lot of noise they were using all kind of horrible lighting chandelier type lighting when i actually need really soft lighting for it it's a serious business you know five hours working with your eyes you know right because of the glare or the lights shining into your eyes yeah the light shining in your eyes can you wear a green uh ice shade yeah people suggested that to me they told me i should just you know go to any department store so i went to a few none of them had it you honestly think that you probably are the world's greatest chess player i mean there's no reason to be modest about it right yeah well there's no way that i could disprove that did you feel like a prodigy as a kid you know did other kids say he's in playing chess while we're out playing baseball uh no i'm not too much now yeah but you were a proud yeah [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 136,153

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show, Talk Show, Musician, Celebrities, Dick Cavett, United States, Chat Show, Interview, Bobby Fischer, chess, grandmaster, Ralph Nader, Sandy Duncan, 4th January 1972, #chess, #thedickcavettshow, Boris Spassky, Soviet Union, America, Chess championship, world chess championship 1972, Laugardalshöll arena, Match of the Century, Iceland, Reykjavík, how to play chess, learn chess, Bobby Fischer teaches, youngest grandmaster, Enjoys Breaking Chess Players' Egos, checkmate

Id: boyYKCr3T8w

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021