In an article in the Daily News (dailymail.co.uknews/article- … z22PdLfSGv) published Aug 1, 2012, entitled, American ‘Game-ster’ John Gotti’s secret obsession that waged $600 bets in Scrabble and a $3,000 Monopoly buy in, it is written, “The mob boss idolised 1970s chess guru Bobby Fischer and looked up to him so much he called him the ‘Al Capone of chess’.
Gotti used to quote his catchphrases all the time and told his fellow gangsters to play the game because it ‘makes you think like a boss’.
It was chess however where Gotti really had his calling.
Polisi writes that his boss became inspired in 1972 when American Bobby Fischer was playing Russian Grand Master Boris Spassky for the world championship in Iceland, a match which took on huge significance given the Cold War had yet to thaw.
In his memoir he writes: ‘Wiseguys got into it like everybody else.‘We all liked Bobby Fischer. Gotti called him the Al Capone of chess…he used to quote him all the time: “The thing I like most about the game is crushing the other guy’s ego”.
‘John (Gotti) knew a lot about the history of the game. Experts are always saying that chess is like war, but John compared it to crime.
‘He said gangsters who want to get ahead should play chess because it makes you think like a boss.
‘It was a good way to develop your powers of concentration and learn how to see the big picture and think things through’.
Gotti also thought that chess gave players the kind of ‘mental discipline’ that would be handy for a mob boss too.
He supposedly got so into his chess that he used to beat everyone apart from Charlie Fatico, a Capo in the Gambino family who used to play with him at another mob haunt in New York called the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club.”
Armchair Warrior