(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
White to move and mate in two #633 - Profile of a Prodigy [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-27
The Life and Games of Bobby Fischer
…
Mrs. Fischer’s aim of finding Bobby a chess playmate was realized that every evening. Mr. Carmine Nigro, President of the Brooklyn Chess Club, was teaching his son Tommy the game, and offered to tutor Bobby also. But, as usual, Bobby was ahead of any plans his elders had for him and quickly outran this stage. At Mr. Nigro’s invitation he joined the Brooklyn Chess Club, and for the next few years he was rarely to miss a Friday evening. He played almost as frequently at the Nigro home and in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. He was by no means a consistently winning player, but his chess precocity probably helped him obtain a scholarship at a private school, Community-Woodward; at any rate his talent was encouraged there.
It was during these years too that he began the gigantic reading task that was to make him, for all his youth, one of the most knowledgeable living players in the United States. He devoured everything on chess that he could find, and that was merely the beginning. By now he has read nearly everything of chess significance in English, and he can make out the moves and analysis of a game in almost any language, including—or rather, especially—Russian. (A Soviet journalist who interviewed him in 1958 reports that Bobby’s own library—even then stretching toward eighty volumes—was over half Russian.) He doesn’t just read up on the last year’s events in Zagreb, but on all the events of all the other years. He often spends five hours a day just reading—more, if preparing for a tournament.
Toward the middle Fifties he was involved in tournaments at the YMCA and the Brooklyn Chess Club. He didn’t win any of these, but he had started winning games. “When I was eleven,” he has said, “I just got good.”
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/27/2301552/-White-to-move-and-mate-in-two-633-Profile-of-a-Prodigy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
