Mortal Games
Waitzkin, Fred
G 4 hc ess," the former world champion Bobby Fischer explained, "is like war on a board. The object is to crush the other man's mind. I like to see 'em squirm." Current champion Garry Kasparov...
...A 'though Kasparov's political beliefs are democratic, he is typically tyrannical in his relations with others...
...Waitzkin asked Kasparov afterwards whether the two had, after all these years, made up...
...His first book, Searching for Bobby Fischer, was a captivating portrait of his son Josh, a chess prodigy...
...Josh was one of only two opponents to manage a draw...
...When you have to fight every day from a young age, your soul can contaminated," he confesses...
...The ghost of Bobby Fischer, who succumbed to insanity after winning the championship, haunted the book's landscape...
...The book poignantly described father and son's entrance into the chess world, in which eccentric men of recondite genius study such arcana as the Breyer Variation of the Ruy Lopez and Ljubojevic's NajdorfDragon variation of the Sicilian Defense...
...The public must see that chess is a violent sport...
...While the movie's Josh Waitzkin was a gentle soul, the real Josh, now a 16-year-old international master, admitted recently, "You do have to hate Craig S. Lerner is a third-year student at Harvard Law School...
...In a demonstration match in 1988, Kasparov played fifty-nine American schoolchildren simultaneously...
...Kasparov speaks his very name with "Miltonic distaste...
...The champion scoffed, "I wouldn't go to a restaurant with him, but who else can I really talk with about these games...
...Each wanted out of this hateful intimacy, but they seemed destined to battle one another forever...
...In Mortal Games, Fred Waitzkin continues his efforts to reacquaint Americans with the joys of chess...
...Josh plays only a bit part in Mortal Games, a profile of the 30-year-old world champion Garry Kasparov...
...And yet after one of their particularly complicated games culminated in a draw, the two remained at the board, chatting amiably, analyzing together, shuffling the pieces back and forth with mind-boggling speed...
...Having battled each other for years, they seemed to Waitzkin to be the inhabitants of "a walled kingdom of two...
...The world according to Kasparov is divided into men of championship caliber—women, he maintains, lack the competitive fire—and the humdrum, mediocre rest...
...While preparing for combat with Karpov, Kasparov also struggled with the autocratic International Chess Federation (FIDE...
...He strains to show Kasparov as more human, and humane, than the caricature of the monomaniacal chess wizard (portraying, for example, his loving relationship with his young wife, Masha), but the champion's smiling mask occasionally slips...
...His proclaimed interest in spreading the gospel of chess throughout the world is difficult to fathom, given that he is almost completely contemptuous of all the chess players he encounters...
...Waitzkin frequently breaks off his account of a chess game to describe Kasparov's ventures as editorialist, entrepreneur, and politician...
...Then it's work...
...He caters above all to himself and expects his circle of followers to do the same...
...Though his son's triumphs thrilled Waitzkin, his joy was tempered by a growing awareness that the pursuit of chess excellence necessarily excluded all other endeavors—with possibly calamitous psychological consequences...
...Kasparov views Karpov as a Communist collaborator whose recent conversion to liberal democracy is only further evidence of his deceitful nature...
...When you beat your opponent," he says, "you destroy his ego...
...0...
...under the auspices of a competing organization, he recently played and won a championship matchwith the English grandmaster Nigel Short...
...he accuses Gorbachev of instigating anti-Armenian pogroms in 1990 in order to solidify Soviet control over the non-Russian republics...
...If you're lucky in life, you're gifted in one or maybe two things...
...Current champion Garry Kasparov agrees...
...Every psychological power goes into, ripping your opponent apart...
...Upon being introduced to Kasparov at a Manhattan party over a year later, Waitzkin awkwardly mentioned the demonstration match...
...The only active player whose chess ability Kasparov respects is his long-time and much-detested foe Anatoly Karpov...
...Kasparov, who is half-Armenian, was in Baku at the time and narrowly escaped the bloodshed...
...Searching for Bobby Fischer was made consumer-friendly when adapted for the silver screen: God forbid that Hollywood disturb the sentimental belief that all good things are compatible, and that nice guys finish first...
...Kasparov, Waitzkin suggests, thirsts for battle on numerous fronts...
...After the completion of the book, Kasparov made good on his threats to break ranks with FIDE...
...Kasparov recalled not only Josh's name, but also the defense Josh had adopted, and the final position of the other drawn match...
...But not since Bobby Fischer's retirement in 1972 has the alleged violence and drama of chess competition drawn a mass audience of Americans...
...Soon thereafter, Waitzkin secured permission to play Boswell to Kasparov's Johnson, trailing the great man across the world...
...The book focuses on Kasparov's third defense of his crown, a 24-game match in 1990 with the Soviet grandmaster and former champion Anatoly Karpov, but Waitzkin also finds time to relate anecdotes and conversations from Martha's Vineyard to Paris to Moscow...
...Kasparov was also at the forefront of a rebellion against Mikhail Gorbachev...
...As for the movie's suggestion that a child need not specialize in chess in order to excel, Waitzkin the father told an interviewer, "If I had it to do over again, I'd probably encourage him to study [chess} a little more...
...your opponent during the game...
...Your son is Josh...
...the champion immediately responded...
Vol. 26 • December 1993 • No. 12
