Free Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin

a man wearing several cameras around his neck who had walked out of the faded building and was crossing the street. He ran off and spoke with the man, a photographer for a Russian magazine. When he returned a few minutes later, he had a ticket. Men standing nearby sighed and kept walking.
    I offered to go in and try to buy two more tickets. I felt bad about leaving Josh and Bruce walking around the block. But if Inever got in again, at least I’d be able to describe the hall with Karpov and Kasparov sitting across from one another. I walked up to one of the police manning the barricades, half expecting to be furiously waved down the block, but at the sight of the ticket he shrugged and motioned me inside.
    KARPOV AND KASPAROV played in the Hall of Columns, a majestic room with snow-white Corinthian columns, walls hung with silky crepe and newly waxed parquet floors reflecting sparkling crystal chandeliers. A century earlier it had been a ballroom for Moscow’s rich and famous, including Tolstoy, Pushkin and Turgenev. These days it is used for important trade union conferences, concerts and special political speeches, as well as important chess matches. Kremlin watchers in the United States gauge the importance of a Soviet political event by whether it is held in a site such as the Hall of Columns or at a less prestigious location.
    Immediately on entering the hall, I was aware of the noise. People were greeting old friends, chatting, coughing, walking in and out. Television cameras were mounted in the center aisle. Technicians adjusted their cables and walked about with their tools clanging. Fifty or sixty photographers were close to the stage, jockeying for angles and snapping away. Although pocket chess sets were officially forbidden inside, hundreds of people were holding them in their laps, analyzing the present position. Friends argued about the game and lustily cheered moves. It sounded like a dinner at the old Lüchow’s on 14th Street in New York City.
    Despite the beauty of the setting, Bobby Fischer would never have agreed to play under such conditions; the noise would have driven him crazy. Nor would he have accepted the simple straight-backed chairs provided for the two players, which were similar to the ones occupied by their fans. In Iceland Fischer had bickered over the proximity of the audience and the placement of television cameras: at first he wanted them out of his field of view; then he didn’t want them at all. A close friend of Fischer’s had said that if Bobby had had his way, he would have played his matches in a sealed room located in the middle of a desert, miles from the tiniest distraction. But Karpov and Kasparov didn’t seem to mind the commotion.
    Before a critical move, the large room was quiet except for a rustle of anticipation. People were on the edge of their seats, waiting to cheer the home run, the game breaker. Would their man push the c-pawn or the f-pawn?
    In the final minutes of a close game, when the players had to move quickly because of the pressure of the clock—each man had to make his first forty moves in two and a half hours—the crowd roared like boxing fans at Madison Square Garden. An indignant referee waved his arms and white lights signaled silence, but no one paid any attention. A young man with the job of moving the pieces on the large display board ran feverishly back and forth from the players to the board. Sometimes in his anxiety he posted a move incorrectly, and then the crowd would scream at him and the lights would flash again. The cacophony and the amateur staging gave tremendous urgency and dramatic appeal to the near-perfect chess being played.
    MANY PEOPLE IN the audience were able to speak a little English. I asked several whom they wanted to win. They seemed equally divided; both men were great heroes. Then I asked where I might buy two tickets, and although there were many empty seats, everyone answered that no tickets were available.
    I was