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The Nerve


Good nerves help make good moves. By GM ANDY SOLTIS


BOBBY FISCHER FAMOUSLY SAID HE didn’t believe in psychology: He believed in good moves. But in one memorable case he needed the former as much as the latter.


Pure theater GM Bobby Fischer GM Boris Spassky Olympiad, Havana, 1966


WHITE TO PLAY


water. When it arrived, he held it in the air, with one hand, at arm’s length, as if studying it. It was pure theater: Bobby wanted to


WHITE TO PLAY This occurred in a U.S.-USSR match,


which was always a tense affair during the Cold War. Fischer’s teammates were in trouble on two other boards so the American team’s chances for saving the match rested on Fischer winning this favorable position. There was more at stake from Fischer’s


viewpoint: Bobby’s previous score with Boris Spassky was two losses and a draw —out of three favorable positions. He des- perately wanted to score his first victory and, naturally, didn’t trust his winning chances in an endgame with a mere extra pawn, 36. Bxe5! Rxe5 37. Qxb8 Rxb8 38. Rxd7 Re7. He tried 36. Qxa6? and then 36. ... Rc8!


37. Rd6 Rxc3 38. Rxf6, only to discover to his horror that his rook was trapped after 38. ... Be6!.


(see diagram top of next column) When he realized he had blundered,


Fischer did something remarkable. He asked a tournament aide for a glass of


20 October 2014 | Chess Life


show his opponent that he wasn’t at all upset at the turn of events. My nerves are not shattered, he was saying, without words. (He coolly adjourned into a difficult endgame, 39. Rxe6 fxe6 40. Rd1 Qb7 41. Qxb7, and drew. Then, as if nothing had hap- pened, he scored 81


⁄2 -1 ⁄2 in his next nine


games.) “Every game of chess is a contest of


nerves,” Richard Reti said, and everyone gets nervous. As David Bronstein, a world championship contender in 1951, put it, the difference between masters and ama- teurs is that masters are better at controlling their nervousness. Samuel Reshevsky said his secret was pretending to be calm. “I was just a good actor,” he said. So is Magnus Carlsen. “I do get nervous sometimes, especially if I feel that I’m not well prepared,” he said in his Silicone Val- ley question and answer early this year. But, he added, “Often when I do get nerv- ous I try to put on a good face and not show it so much.” There have always been great players


whose nervousness limited what their talent might have achieved. Akiba Rubinstein, Vassily Ivanchuk, Max Euwe, Aron Nim- zowitsch and Reti are prime examples. A player “must have a clear head and iron nerves,” Euwe said, “otherwise he will lose any position no matter how good it is.”


Euwe lost the 1937 World Championship match because of nerves, according to his second, Reuben Fine. Euwe even hired a barber to give him massages during the match games but it didn’t relax him enough, Fine said. Robert Byrne managed to reach the


Candidates stage of one world champi- onship cycle but said he didn’t have the coolness under fire to become champion. “I didn’t have the nerves,” he explained. Throughout his career he “always thought I would get better at that as I got older— wait till I get to 40. Then it was wait till I get to 50, then 60!” It didn’t happen. So how can you deal with your nerves?


Among the ways that have been tried by masters:


Physical conditioning—Mikhail Botvinnik suf- fered so badly from tension during world championship games that it caused his gums to bleed, he said. But he felt he min- imized the impact of nervousness by doing physical exercises every morning. A nap followed by a brisk walk to the playing site before a game also helped. “My brain func- tions well only when I am relaxed,” he said in explaining his training methods.


Maintaining habits—Botvinnik said he had to take the same walking route to the playing site each day. By making the walk a mindless habit, he could reinforce calm- ness and eliminate outside annoyances. In the old days, many players smoked


during rounds. Some knew it was a very bad habit—but they felt that they risked endangering their equilibrium if they tried to stop during a tournament. One U.S. champion, Harry Pillsbury, smoked a dozen cigars a day and drank cups and cups of black coffee during games. Breaking his habits in the name of health would mean his “nervous system will collapse,” he said.


Sealing off the rest of the world—Many players fight tournament-room noise by using head- sets (when they are legal). Or they just stick their fingers in their ears. When the M-Tel Masters, a super-tournament, was held in


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