Mikhail Moisevich Botvinnik, 51, the then World Chess Champion and three time winner played a game of Chess against Bobby Fischer in Varna Bulgaria. When the game adjourned for the day Bobby held a definitely superior position and after a quick review of the days moves went to bed early feeling comfortable. However, Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, Paul Keres, Efim Geller, Semyon Furman and Yuri Averbach worked on the position until five-thirty the next morning. When play resumed Fischer was totally unaware that he was about to play against the analysis of the seven Soviet Chess Grandmasters and not solely against the skill of his one opponent. Bobby recognized a change in play as it unfolded before him and soon with fatalistic chagrin offered Botvinnik a draw. Botvinnik readily accepted. It was 1962 and Bobby Fischer was 19 years old!

Fischer was an adept player of Blitz Chess and Blindfold Chess. Blinfold Chess is played in the mind and not on a Chessboard where all positions, moves and pieces must be recorded and remembered in the head as play goes on and on and on and on.

Brady never says Fischer had an eidetic mind but he would study and analyze the play of Grand Masters hour after hour, day after day and year after year. To prepare for the 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland against Boris Spassky Fischer studied 355 games of Spassky from a "Games of The Champions" book. "Almost as a parlor trick, he (Bobby) would ask someone to pick a game at random from the book, tell him who played against Spassky and where the game was played, and he would then recite the game move by move. He had memorized more that 14,000 moves!"

This was an excellent book and filled with a lot of new information for me. I admired Fischer though he was a sad, selfish and tragic figure. I also came to have a much greater respect for Boris Spassky based on his relationship with and understanding of Fischer, and his seemingly lack of ideology.