Just flew in and we were promptly seated.
Every chip was placed long in advance.
Then photographers swooped in, committed
To distracting, blinding me at once.

Wrestling me - a task that’s hard to manage.
These reporters cannot take me down!
Here the lack of skill is my advantage:
For that Fischer never can imagine
Moves I will be making in this round.

He will be the first to move - tough cookies,
For I’ve heard: he’s good at playing white!
Made a move: e2 e4. A bully!
But it looks familiar, all right.

It’s my move. I’m thinking where to venture.
Like at night in taiga - can’t see well.
Yes, the queen’s in charge, this I remember:
She moves back and forth and stays in center,
And the horses run a letter L.

Kudos to my friend, a skilled mechanic:
Taught me how to shuffle all these rooks.
As it turned out later, in my panic,
I had played the sequence by the book!

All his rooks and knights are mighty soldiers,
And his bishops are mobile and strong.
But my chessmen are all fools and jokesters:
Ladies, towers, officers and horses;
Elephants amidst the footmen’s throng.

Still, I’m trying to avoid the blunders,
Often thinking of our cook in woe.
Would be great to swap the pawns for tumblers,
Then it won’t look cluttered anymore!

I can see - he’s going for a skewer.
Or a fork... I’d like to eat his queen.
With such snacks, a bottle would be super!
But, alas, the players must stay clean.

Here they serve just coffee for the players,
So I’m starving now, to tell the truth.
Squares now look like circles and change places;
I mistake the kings and queens for aces,
Double check reminds me of a deuce.

Folk-belief is true - I take my chances -
My beginner’s luck is sure a thing!
I will torture him with checkmate dances,
I just have to make a flying king!

I feel soft as cotton, but I’m wary.
Now it’s time for action, time to fight!
What to hit him with? A rook? - Too scary.
Right hook to the jaw? A bit too early -
It’s our first chess match with him tonight.

My King’s Indian Defense is shattered:
In a moment time it’ll be no more.
It reminds me vaguely of a pattern
Of the Indo-Pakistani war.

But to me his jests have little meaning,
Since I have two countermoves instead:
When it looks like he is close to winning,
A hip wheel will quickly send him spinning,
Or my knight will move upon his head!

I turned up the pressure, started gaining,
All is not so gloomy as it seems:
In the world of chess, with proper training,
Any pawn can make it to a queen!

Schifer started hiding his ambitions:
First he dashes, then he sits entrenched.
He had offered to exchange our bishops -
Well, of course, he’s right to be suspicious,
When I press one fifty on a bench!

I sized up his delicate, slim stature,
And when he announced another check -
Flexing biceps, I took off my blazer
And removed the necktie from my neck.

In the silence, that was growing bigger,
I stood up, so he could not ignore -
Then he lost all interest for figures,
And notorious, much lauded Fischer
Settled in an instant for a draw.