About Chess

Bobby Fischer

I was taught to play chess in 1971, just before Bobby Fischer wrested the world title from Boris Spassky. I can't say that was the reason for my interest—I didn't even know it was about to happen.

I learned the moves from a workmate whose name was, appropriately, Dick. It was a long time before I realised he was just a chess bully. He taught me the moves and nothing more. During about 200 games—in which I managed only one win and a draw—he badgered me continually in best coffee-house style while thrashing me on the board. Far from discouraging me it made me determined to beat him and when he transferred interstate for six months I enlisted the help of a wonderful Hungarian friend, Steve Kaiser, who also worked with us. Steve coached me for a few weeks then persuaded me to join Sydney's Maroczy Chess Club.

I entered the Maroczy Cup and surprised nobody by achieving a perfect score—six straight zeros—but slowly it all started to come together and by the time Dick arrived back in the office he could no longer beat me. It wasn't long before he dropped out of the office chess group.

There was one interesting story to come out of my early attempts to learn the game. Before going to Brisbane Dick learned that Steve was a strong player (he had won his grade of the City of Sydney Championship) and challenged him to a game. Dick explained to everybody that if he didn't make any mistakes Steve wouldn't be able to win. That seemed to be a truism. What he didn't realise was that they had different ideas of what constituted a mistake. To Dick a mistake was leaving a piece en prise, while Steve would have thought it a blunder to place a pawn on the wrong square. The game was embarrassingly one-sided and Dick never asked for a re-match.

Steve returned to Hungary for a holiday when he retired from work and, sadly, died there. I'm indebted to him for all he taught me and remember him fondly.