CORRESPONDENT Barry Hillenbrand was taught chess at an early age by his brothers, he recalls, so that they would always have someone to beat. During the past year he has had ample chance to brush up on his game while shadowing Bobby Fischer around the Western Hemisphere. His dogged pursuit produced the material for this week's cover story. The temperamental genius is as cool toward the press as he is toward his opponents, and Hillenbrand found that "getting him to talk was a complicated task calling for the patience of a snake tamer." They first met in Denver last July. In New York City, the two drank beer in an East Side tavern, then shared a few games of chess. "He showed no pity," says Hillenbrand. "He would come crashing down the board, picking off my pieces with cries of 'Crunch!' and 'Zap!'

They later went bowling in Philadelphia and tooled around the Catskill Mountains, with Fischer at the wheel of Hillenbrand's car, to help Fischer sharpen his driving skills. When Fischer went to Buenos Aires last September to compete against Tigran Petrosian, Hillenbrand was there, and the two went restaurant-hopping between matches. "I finally found that if I put away the notebook," says Hillenbrand, "Bobby would drop his guard and reveal an extraordinarily friendly, human side."

The correspondent discovered that Boris Spassky, Fischer's Russian opponent in the current world championship match, needed no such courting. "I met Spassky over breakfast in Vancouver during the Canadian open chess tournament," he says. "He was open and friendly -- the sort of guy you'd like to go fishing with."

To Ray Kennedy, who wrote the cover story, Fischer's rough edges and temperamental demands mean only that he is in fighting trim. Fischer is usually at his best while complaining, says Kennedy. Kennedy himself has been a chessophile since the age of nine, and still spends an occasional evening at an all-night chess parlor.

One result of the Fischer phenomenon has been the spread of chess fever through TIME'S ranks. Alexandra Mezey, who researched the story, uses a pocket chess set to brush up on her king's side defense during spare moments. Kennedy and Leon Jaroff, who edited the story, recently engaged in a cross-country match via telex with Hillenbrand and other Los Angeles bureau members. After 23 moves, when the West Coast wood pushers' victory seemed assured, they revealed that they had used former U.S. Champion Larry Evans to direct their game. This week, with Hillenbrand already at his next assignment in Saigon, Chess Expert Evans is in Reykjavik, Iceland, reporting for TIME the play-by-play drama of the Fischer-Spassky confrontation.

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