Page 59 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

CHAPTER 7

CHANGING VOICE

When the film Searching for Bobby Fischer came out I was sixteen years old and

winning everything in sight. I became America’s younges t Int ernat iona l Master
that year, I won the U.S. Under 21 Cham pi ons hi p twice at sixteen and
seventeen, and I came within a hair’s breadt h of winni ng the World Unde r 18
Championship when I was seventeen. From the out side I may ha ve looke d

unbeatable, b ut inside I was a kid barely ho ldi ng ev erythi ng t oget he r.
While I adjusted to the glare of the media spo tlight , my relations hi p to
chess was slowly becoming less organ ic. I found myself pl aying to live up to
Hollywood expectations instead of for love of the gam e. I unde rstood the

danger of becoming distracted by the adul ation and I fought to ke ep focus ed.
But I was slipping. More and more fans came to my tour nam ents to watch me
play and get autographs. Beautiful girls smiled and handed me the ir pho ne
numbers. Grandmasters smirked and tried to tear off my head. I was living in

two worlds, and I started having a pecul iar sensation of detachm ent dur ing
tournament games. Sometimes I seemed to play ches s from across the room,
while watching myself think.
Around the same time I began training with a Rus sian Grandm aster who

urged me to become more conservative stylistically. He was a lovely man—
literary, compassionate, funny—as human bei ngs we connect ed but che ssically
we didn’t gel. He was a systematic strategist with a passion for slow, subt le
maneuvering. I had always been a creative, attacki ng player who loved the wild

side of chess. I liked to live on the edge in the spi rit of Bobby Fi sche r and
Garry Kasparov, and now my new coach had me immerse myself in the
opposite sensibility. We dove into the great pr ophy lactic players, study ing the
games of Tigran Petrosian and Anat oly Karpo v, ex-world champi ons who