Scrantonian Tribune from Scranton, Pennsylvania • 77

4 chess whiz, but experts, his mother wants better report cards by PAUL ABRAMSON tabby heart hit mother (cold him lovingly about hit grader. much better. Bobby is a chess whiz, but Just why mystifies everyone who knows him. "When he was 7, says his sister Joan, 19, "Bobby could discuss mathematical concepts like infinity, or do all kinds of trfck problems. But ask him to multiply two and two and hed probably get it wrong.

This contradiction in Bobby's mental makeup has not made life any easier for his mother, Regina Fischer. Divorced from her husband, she has had to work hard at present as a registered nurse to support two children. And between times she's had to scurry from school to school with Bobby. "When he was in fourth grade, she says, "Id already taken him out of six schools, mostly because he didnt like them. Once I entered him in a class for especially bright children.

He walked out after the first day." Aware that Bobby is a child prodigy whose talent must be helped to grow, Mrs. Fischer has continued to try to get special training for him. I've visited university guidance centers and agencies for gifted children," she says. Mostly they BROOKLYN, N.Y. At local boy named Bobby Fischer is regarded as one of the 20 top chess players in the world.

He is the U.S. Open Champion, has been invited to compete at tournaments in Russia and England. "Players with Fischers ability," says Maurice Kasper, president of the Manhattan Chess Club, come along only once in a century. Yet Bobby Fischer, a boy of exceptional intellect, is the despair of his high-school teachers. Last year, as a freshman, he fell behind in all his subjects, and almost didnt pass.

This year the outlook isn't suggest I enroll him in a small private school, where he would get closer attention. But private schools are expensive." One thing I would suggest," says a tear her at the public school be attends, "is that Bobby spend more time studying and less time at chess. Mrs. Fischer nods helplessly. She feels that to ask that of a boy who won the 1957 ()en title, topping all but two of the best players in America, would be rather like asking Mkkey Mantle to play less baseball and more mah jongg.

Bobby, she says, plass chess even while eating, keeps a Continued on page 22 BaaaigMragigaaa: rwiMU ipiflumiuLi.