The Daily Oklahoman from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma • 6

Chess Whiz Bobby Fischer Out of Sight for 10 Years, But Not Out of Mind PASADENA. Calif. Fischer has never going to get $250,000 like they have every just in an appearance right in the world to see fee. He's always likes Mr. Fischer just like Las Vegas and Ceasars that!" She snapped her Palace In particular, so fingers for added cm- I thoueht.

'Great! This phasls. "Well, I'll tell you mis, sne aeciareu, indignant and full of contempt, "I know there are people, movie stars and all that in Hollywood, who would give their eye teeth for interviews. But what's in it for an individual like Mr. Fischer? It's just a feather in your cap! What's in it tor him?" (FIDE) over tournament rules, Fischer furiously (and, some say, spitefully) chose to forfeit his title to Karpov, rather than give in. Not incidentally, he also passed up a whopping winner's purse of nearly $3 million which President Ferdinand Marcos had mustered in order to lure the world match to the Philllpines.

Fischer then withdrew for good. But he did not return to church. When Christ did not return, Fischer was incensed that Armstrong did not at least apologize. Echoing the thoughts of many others who once knew Fischer, his former friend Gross guesses that, principles time we've got him, it's all But, at the last minute, he called up and said he wouldn't do it unless he got $1 million!" Now, Grumette said, she seldom even forwards an offer to Fischer who Insists that all mail to him be formally addressed to "Bobby Fischer, World Chess Champion," said Grumette. "Besides that," she added with a wry Mrs.

Mokarow, who is widely assumed to censor Fischer's mail, pass- aLw ing on to him only what she believes he will 1 $ljfcStm' Km I tf ftftft Zlr want to read, was asked $1,000 just to open a let- hQW outsiders g0 about U7hii. even contacting Fisher. and stubborness aside, being interviewed, the Her passion vanished as unexpectedly as Boris Spassky Bobby Fischer iscner is proDaDiy pn- woman who is apparent- vately afraid to play ly the central figure in professional chess any- Bobby Fischer's life un- more. expectedly arrived. "What if he loses? A husky, unadorned Now, he knows his place woman; her gray-blonde in history will always be hair pulled into a severe number one.

He'll al- bun, Claudia Mokarow ways be the world is somewhere in her 50s, champion. My guess is wife of a business con- came. "Well, I can only suggest this," she said cooly, "Make an offer, and perhaps Mr. Fischer will make a counter offer." How much? Mrs. Mokarow leaned forward in her chair he's afraid of tarnishing sultant.

Although she and offered a tight his reputation." and her husband, like smile. "Now you're talk-According to Lina Fischer, have since quit ing." she challenged. Grumette, who regular- in disgust, she first met "You want to meet Mr. Fischer at the World- Fischer? Well, you go to wide Church of God. She the top man at your has been Fischer's bene- newspaper and you tell factor ever since.

him, if he wants an ex- "Oh, I'm just his an- elusive let him make a swering service I op offer. A million dol- wouldn't say I support lrs? You tell him Mr. him," she said. Fischer will let him "All the pushy report- know." ers who call me and act Lo Ano' rm n.w. s.rvic United States' government's high hopes and best wishes.

Americans loved it. During the two-month match, Fischer became an overnight folk hero. Returning from Iceland, Fischer hardly toyed with his newfound celebrity and refused to play professional or tournament chess again. Instead, he vanished into the close, protective fold of Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God in Pasadena where he promptly tithed $61,000 of his prize money while he awaited for Christ to return in 1975 as Armstrong had predicted.

If Christ was not on schedule, the 1975 world chess championship match was. It was time for Fischer, already a near-total recluse, to come out of hiding and defend his title against another Soviet, Anatoly Karpov. Fischer refused. Deadlocked in yet another quarrel with the World Chess Federation ly passes on business propositions to Fischer through his Pasadena intermediary, his "demands" are becoming more unreasonable every year. And Fischer's ego is obviously as healthy as ever.

"I can tell you this, he's passed up hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in offers," said Grumette. "Once, for instance, around six years ago, we had a deal arranged with Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas (an exhibition match) and he was It is the sort of yarn, complete with lurid rumors and wild clues, to rival the talc or Howard Hughes. Turning his back on fame and a multimillion-dollar fortune, former world chess champion Bobby Fischer dropped out of sight nearly 10 years ago. Reporters, attorneys, bill collectors, fans and other assorted sleuths have been on his trail ever In vain. Fischer left almost no trace.

But, in chess circles, Fischer's legend remains passionately alive. Wherever two or more serious chess players gather, the latest Fischer gossip is exchanged, his greatest moves reverently replayed and, inevitably, the wishful question arises: Will Fischer, generally considered the greatest chess mind of all time and who in 1972 became the only American to win the world championship, ever play chess in public again? Generally speaking, nobody thinks so. On the other hand, now that dedicated chess players and reporters from throughout the world are converging on Pasadena for this weekend's scheduled U.S. Open Tournament and the world championship semifinals, a few dreamers admit to visions of Fischer walking through the door. Pasadena, after all, is known as Fischer's general hideout even skeptics vividly remember the chess player in another Pasadena tournament a few years ago who swore that, while the games were under way, Fischer was sitting in a coffee shop next door.

Disguised in a trench coat, dark glasses, beard and slouch hat. When the dumbfounded fan approached, Fischer reportedly got up and ran. It is not. improbable. Stranger stories about Fischer have been told.

According to former friends and others in a position to know, his current life style is unorthodox, not to say bizarre: He uses an alias, doesn't drive, has no phone, almost no money and only one remaining friend, a Pasadena matron, who allegedly censors his mail, pays his rent and is the only person who always knows where he lives. He reportedly has spent the last decade living in her comfortable hillside home's basement, in assorted cheap Pasadena apartments and, occasionally, in fleabag hotels in downtown Los Angeles. Secretive to the point of paranoia, Fischer, a bachelor, does not date for: fear of treachery and; has angrily cut off his -handful of former chess friends because they discussed him with the press. Fischer reportedly still suspects that he may be under Soviet surveillance and possibly the object of a KGB assassination been fond of reporters. Even before he went Into total hiding, he routinely cursed, threatened and sometimes threw rocks at them.

According to Junior high school history teacher Ron Gross, 47, the last of Fischer's old friends to see him (on a fishing trip to Mexico more than a year ago this summer), Fischer's day is (or was) most recently divided among three obsessions: physical fitness, chess and a political philosophy that a secret world government controlled by Jews and centered in Moscow runs the world. He goes to bed at dawn, sleeps until noon, then works out, either in a gym or in his apartment, Gross says. His apartment is littered with chess books, bags of fresh oranges, vitamin jars and a wide array of Indian herbal medicines. Fischer carries a stash of these health aides with him wherever he goes. He distrusts doctors and, consequently, refuses to have three large, hairy moles on -his face removed.

He then spends the rest of the day alone, playing chess with himself, browsing through old bookstores for conspiracy novels and chess books and researching his political theories in public libraries. Fischer's political theories now apparently fascinate him even more than chess. According to published reports, he has been spotted, in his trench coat disguise, skulking through a public parking lot in Pasadena at night, distributing leaflets he wrote, warning against the "Hidden Hand of a Satanic Secret World Government." "Bobby's so right-wing he's fascist," says Gross. Fischer's political Bible is an anti-Semitic tome called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." He has a prized selection of Hitler pictures, regularly refers to Jews as in invidious ways, and has an only slightly higher opinion of blacks, according to Gross. But Fischer, whose mother is Jewish, accepts Jews on an individual basis, adds Gross, Jewish himself: "Bobby says we're all victims of the conspiracy." Seemingly torn between embarrassment and pride, Gross says he chauffeured Fischer to Nazi-oriented bookstores.

Gross also took Fischer on an all-expense-paid fishing trip to Mexico last year. When he later discussed it with a chess journalist, he promptly joined the list of Fischer's ex-friends. Ruth Harring and her husband Peter Biyiasas, both chess personalities from San Jose, tired of entertaining Fischer when he visited their home for several days about 18 months ago. Rarities among Fischer's former friends, they did not DIAMOND SALE wait to be dropped they asked him to leave. Harring does not think Fischer is as financially strapped as people think, either.

When he visited her home, she said, "He seemed to have plenty of money for movies and restaurants. Maybe he invested some of the money he won or he still some royalties from his books." Harring allowed that Fischer does express some "pretty wild views." But, she added, sounding disgusted, "I think some of his old friends have encouraged him, just goaded him on. I can't tell whether he really believes all that stuff or, as I said, is just using it for shock effect, putting people on." Either way, as both Harring and Gross agree, Bobby Fischer, when last seen, was teaching himself to type because he plans to write two books: one on chess, but, first, a full-length volume he sees as infinitely more important, sharing his political views. Since then, Fischer the would-be author has been warming up. In his first word, to the world in years, he has written a 14-page booklet entitled, "I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jail-house!" At least, the booklet says in a loosely scrawled signature at the end that it was written, published and copyrighted by one "Robert D.

James (professionally known as Robert J. Fischer or Bobby Fischer, The World Chess Champion)." The booklet purports to be a factual account of Fischer's two-day experience with police when he was mistakenly identified as an escaping bank robber and arrested on a Pasadena street corner in May 1981. The language is simple but Fischer's message is dramatically grim. Fischer's booklet, being distributed for $1 per copy by his Pasadena lady friend, is a best seller in the chess world. Bobby Fischer is now 40 years old, wherever he is.

And, although a few former acquain-, tances insist that he is perfectly sane and probably even happy with his current, isolated lifestyle, most people only remember the career that was thrown away, the lost genius and one-time American hero, tempermental and always outrageously arrogant, dazzling the world in his days of glory. And glorified days they were, almost from the time Fischer was born in Chicago March 9, 1943, to a German father, a doctor who left home when Fischer was two, and a Jewish, politically active, leftist mother, who then moved her family to Brooklyn and, in middle age, went back to school to become a physician herself. Fischer's father has not been heard from since, his mother now lives in England and his older sister, Joan, in Northern California does not discuss her brother. It was she, however, who dictated the course' of Fischer's life when she gave him his first chess set for his sixth birthday. At 14, he quit high school and won the U.S.

chess championship, a title he held for the next decade, excluding one year when he was apparently too bored to compete. And, in 1972, to the surprise of no one, he defeated Russian champion Boris Spassky in Reykjkavik, Iceland, to become the first American world chess champion. It was the most-publicized, politically-charged match in chess history. Partly Fischer broke the traditional Soviet hold on world championship chess and partly because Bobby Fischer behaved like Bobby Fischer. Always unpredictable, stubborn and volatile, Fischer literally outdid himself in Iceland.

As the world looked on with amusement, indignation and increasing interest, he complained unrelentingly about everything from television cameras, the size of chess boards, Soviet tactics and tournament rules to the paltry size of the winner's purse which a wealthy British chess patron increased at the eleventh hour to $156,000, then unprecedented in chess. Fischer was not appeased. He continued to sulk in his hotel room, refusing to play until every last one of his demands were met. Friends pleaded with him. Match officials wrung their hands.

The Soviets fumed. Henry Kissinger, then President Nixon's national security adviser, called Fischer to convey the ct. s150 1 ct M600 y3 Ct. $225 VA Ct. M995 Ct s600 VAt Ct.

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(AP) The Soviet Union forfeited a semifinal match for the world chess crown Saturday when 20-year-old Garri Kasparov failed to appear. Victor Korchnoi, a 52-year-old Soviet defector who lives in Switzerland, was declared the winner after making his opening move. Referee George Koltanowski ordered that one hour be allowed for Kasparov to move after Kor-chnoi's gambit, but the young Soviet grandmaster did not appear. The Soviet Union also forfeited another semifinal match that had been scheduled to be held in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. That match would have pitted Soviet grandmaster Vasi-ly Smyslov against Zoltan Ribli of Hungary.

Winners of the semifinals will face each other to decide who gets to challenge 32-year-old world chess champion Anatoly Karpov of the Soviet Un- getting down to enjoying life. Call (405) 755-5775 cJRrement(Jnn The one choice everyone can live with. Trail Oaks Oklahoma City, OK 73120.