Part One: Bobby Fischer: Chess Nazi

like to do. I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards, 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.

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 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. 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, 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 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. 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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, 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, 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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

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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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

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 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. 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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. 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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,

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

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 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 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, 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

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. 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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,

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

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. 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, 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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, 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

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, 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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.