Edward Winter's Chess Explorations (81)

‘My friendship with Bobby started when he was 15 years old, and I was 35. It lasted about 40 years. During the two decades of his self-isolation I was one of the very few people who were in regular contact with him.

In 1992 Bobby arrived in Belgrade, several weeks before the beginning of his second match with Spassky. In advance of the match he asked for my help in delivering to him all games played during the 20 years of his absence from chess. I had a little-known computer, and Bobby was unpleasantly surprised by the enormous increase in the number of games with each opening variation which he had in his repertoire. That is when he began to think of reforming the rules of chess at all costs, removing the very tiring task of preparing openings in advance for each game. He spent a year or two trying to persuade me to write a book about Fischerandom chess. I eventually did so. My book, Shall We Play Fischerandom Chess?, was published in London in 2002, while he was still alive.

During Bobby’s stay in my country he asked me to be in his company all the time, and we went to Sveti Stefan together. He had plenty of time at his disposal and since he had not played chess for 20 years he probably felt uncertain about whether he had maintained his previous form. He therefore asked me to do him a favour: to play ten secret training games against him, with his new chess clock (now valid in the whole chess world), which was due to be used in the Spassky match. The games were played in Sveti Stefan, while we were waiting for Spassky’s arrival. Bobby and I had two bungalows close to each other, and he was in the best one, where Sophia Loren had stayed during an earlier visit. As far as I recall, we played our ten games there, one per day. It was agreed that there would be no spectators at all. Bobby did his best, after 20 years away from the board. He made no particular comments about his play but expressed satisfaction with several of the early games. Afterwards he had time to play a few games against Eugene Torre, following his arrival.

Unfortunately, I cannot be of much help now in deciphering Bobby’s handwriting or in providing other details about the game-scores. At that time my wife was seriously ill (she died in 1994), and I was rather absent-minded about chess matters. I remember very little about the ten games which Bobby and I played, except that I won as White in the final game. I think that Bobby had at least three wins. If I had kept my easily readable score-sheets, we would have no problems today, but after the match I gave them all to Bobby, without his asking, to show him that the material would never be used for any publicity purposes.

When Bobby departed from my country in 1993, moving to Budapest, he asked if he could leave many of his possessions in my house for safekeeping. I do not recall the exact date, but subsequently, before his departure to Tokyo, I hired a driver and a car, filled with Bobby’s belongings for delivery to him, but the Hungarian customs officials would not allow the car to continue its journey to Budapest without Bobby’s personal presence at the frontier. He was too lazy to come, and all the material was returned to me in Belgrade. I still have everything. There are many packages but, in accordance with Bobby’s wishes, I have never looked inside them.

My assumption was always that he had probably destroyed most of the game-scores, except the ones where he was particularly interested in the opening variation. I was surprised to learn from you that one score-sheet in my handwriting has been found.’