2001-04-10 - 1:01 a.m.

Searching For Bobby Fischer, Or Not

Today was the last day of my chess class with the little Elementary School kids. That was the good news. The bad news was that since the first class had been cancelled due to a snow day, the last class was two hours long. The even worse news was that while my voice was a little better it was still raspy and barely audible. I was not looking forward to today at all.

However, I had a plan to make the time go by a little quicker - I was planning to show the movie "Searching For Bobby Fischer," which I happened to have on videotape.

When I mentioned this last week, two of the kids said that they'd already seen it. Well, tough. You're going to see it again, kids. However, I said that they could play chess with each other if they wanted to while the movie was going.

To my surprise Todd showed up this week but we got off to a rather rocky start. We were setting up the desks to put the chessboards on them, but none of the other three kids wanted to play with "Slow Todd," as they put it. Well, this made Todd start to cry.

Well, he is slow as a snail, but I felt sorry for the little guy. I crouched down until I was at his level and tried to cheer him up by telling him that I used to be a sort of a slowpoke too when I was his age. This made the other kids feel guilty and they started saying various similar comforting things until Todd stopped crying.

Then, I started the movie, and while it was running I'd occasionally pause it and explain some of what was going on. Also, I had something of an insider's view of the proceedings.

Searching For Bobby Fischer is based on a true story about Josh Waitzkin, a top scholastic chess player in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He's 24 now, but I played him back in 1988, when he was just eleven. This would have been a couple years after the time shown in the movie.

I had a good position against the little boy, but got a little too fancy and then he found a move that rocked my world. Even after that I wasn't lost, but I made a couple more mistakes and then had to resign. I think that may be the youngest person I've ever lost to.

So I was able to point out where the movie was factual and where it wasn't, and the various cameos by grandmasters and so on.

What the movie is about, basically, is the question: can you be really, really good at something as demanding as chess and still be a happy, well-balanced individual? The answer in the movie is yes, but the answer in real life seems to be no, at least for Josh Waitzkin. He's 24 and still only an International Master, the grade below Grandmaster. If he was really serious about the game he would have been a GM by twenty.

Still, I've met some grandmasters who seem to be pretty cool guys, but at the very, very top I think some sort of inhuman dedication is needed.

The title of the movie is a little misleading, it's really talking about searching for the NEXT Bobby Fischer.

At the halfway point a lady came around to hand out snacks to the kids. When she left, Todd went with her as her designated helper. That seemed to be more his speed than playing chess.

Anyway, the kids played each other, and when they got tired of that, they played me. Plainly the strongest of the three is Tim, and he's pretty cocky about it. However, I can still beat him every time, even giving him queen odds. That keeps him a little humble.

As the kids were leaving, the little girl, Christine, thanked me for running the class which was very sweet of her. Still I got the impression that she was kind of disappointed, and I was too. I really don't think I got through to them. Still, I was talking with the lady who ran the program, and she told me that a lot of the non-teachers had a hard time keeping the kids under control. There was one lady who was teaching hairdressing or something like that who was practically in tears by the end of the day.

A while back I was talking to Richard, who has been running chess classes for kids for quite a while. He frankly admitted that he didn’t really expect to teach them much, but rather amuse them for a while and make them like the game.

"Besides," he said, "It's the end of the day and they're restless. They just want to go home and have a cookie."

That last sentence would be funnier if you could hear Richard say it with his rather thick Chinese accent. However, he does have a point. I really shouldn't be crushed if my four little kids didn't act like perfect angels, and they didn't look up at me adoringly, hanging on my every word. It would have been nice, but children are not put on this earth to prop up my ego, sad to say.

The lady who ran the program asked me: did I want to do it again in the Fall?

Hmmmm. Let me see...

If you'd asked me the question this morning I would have said definitely NOT, but now the thing is over I feel more favorably disposed toward it. I also have a couple of ideas on how to improve my style and make things a little more kid friendly. However, I still recall the dread thinking about what I would talk about next Tuesday. I had to give up on several of my lesson plans halfway through because it was plain that I wasn't getting through to them at all.

I'll have to think about it.

You know, from what I said earlier you might get the impression that Josh Waitzkin was some sort of failure because he hasn't made grandmaster. I just think he's focusing his priorities on other things.

I met Josh again at a local tournament when he was seventeen, and I have to say he was about the politest, cheerful, most well-adjusted seventeen year old I'd ever met. No teenage angst here! He gave me an interview, and a game that I published in my column, which was rather kind of him.

When I'd asked him for the interview, I asked him if he remembered me, and he said he did, and gave me a charming smile. Yeah, he remembered me alright: he remembered kicking my ass. He didn't say it, but I could tell he was thinking it. Josh is a nice guy, but he's still a chess player.