Bobby Fischer Dies

[Spaceman Spiff]

Not sorry to hear he passed.....He was a bigot and will not be missed.

I wouldn't go that far.

While the last years of his life seem to have gone a ****ty route to say the least, it seems that his brilliance captivated and inspired a bunch of people.

I would say his brilliance on the chessboard would be missed.

[pjfootballer]

Check and Mate!!! So long weirdo!

[JMS]

I remember the ESPN piece on this. Dick Schaap apparently was really close with Fischer, but Fischer later shut him out and started lashing out about him in anti-semitic tirades. Jeremy Schaap confronted him about it a few years back and held his ground, and Fischer ended up looking like a nut.

Bobby Fisher was a nut. He was a paranoid schizophrenic who worked for a decade as a cable tv repairman while turning down millions of dollars to play Garry Kasparov. He was a man who extracted all of the teeth in his own head which had cavities because he believed they could recieve radio waves which would influence his thoughts.

He lived as a homeless man in Loss Angeles for a while and he had a police record for being picked up as a vagrant, spending time in jail over the charges. He gave all of the money several million dollars he earned in 1972 for playing Spaski to an end of the world cult, only to withdraw from the cult after the world didn't end on time.

Bobby Fisher was a ceirtifiable nutjob. He was also one of my earliest heros.

Before he went insane, he captured the imagination of the nation. He stood toe to toe with the Soviet superman and beat him at his own sport. He single handedly gave a sad nation questioning itself over Vietnam and on the eve of Watergate, reason to hope. Reason to Believe. Bobby Fisher in 1972 was Majic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Dr J; all rolled up into one man. He was the face of the nation. Young, brash, brilliant who dismantled the favored aponent much like the US Olympic Hockey team did almost a decade latter in defeating the dominant Soviets team. Only Bobby did it all by himself, and took everybody in the nation along for the ride.

In an era when Grand Master Chess champions were paid Three or four thousand dollars a tournament, Bobby Fisher commanded millions for a single match, such was his fame and his following. The TV networks were fighting over the rights to put Fisher's games on TV... CHESS!!!!... And the nations newspapers were coving his games on the front page center pannel. Even the cover of Time magazine went to the Chess matchup, such was the excitement sorounding the game. And Bobby didn't disappoint.

If you play chess today and you live in the United States, you likely have Bobby Fisher to thank for it. He was the fuel of the chess fad exploded the sport on the nation in the early 1970's.

[JMS]

Doesn't seem uncommon for men of that kind of brilliance though........

Two Americans have become the worlds grandmaster chess champion. Paul Morphy in 1858 and Bobby Fisher in 1972. They both came home to the United States and went insane. Neither defended their title.

[d0ublestr0ker0ll]

Two Americans have become the worlds grandmaster chess champion. Paul Morphy in 1858 and Bobby Fisher in 1972. They both came home to the United States and went insane. Neither defended their title.

Funny, Bobby thought Paul Morphy was the greatest chess player ever. Might have idolized him a little too much. :laugh:

[JMS]

To get a feel for what Bobby Fisher ment to the country in 1972 read Time magazine cover story July 31 1971.

Monday, Jul. 31, 1972

The Battle of the Brains

COVER STORY

THE negotiations were going so poorly, Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger revealed last week, that he felt compelled to intervene "for the good of the country." Kissinger was not referring to his latest secret maneuverings for peace in Viet Nam. He was talking about peace in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the confrontation between Bobby Fischer of the United States and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union for the world chess championship. After weeks of petty infighting, the stormy encounter of East v. West, of Boris the witty, urbane champion v. Bobby the temperamental, demanding challenger, had grown into an international incident. To avoid a stalemate, Kissinger, a chess player himself, put through a call to Fischer and implored him to play. Fischer agreed, but only with the reluctance of a pouty patriot who says: "If there is one thing I ask for and I don't get, then I don't play."

To those who know him best, Bobby was merely being Bobby. "He is," says U.S. Grand Master Larry Evans, "the most individualistic, intransigent, uncommunicative, uncooperative, solitary, self-contained and independent chess master of all time, the loneliest chess champion in the world. He is also the strongest player in the world. In fact, the strongest player who ever lived."

Fischer readily agrees with the best-ever claim. For the past decade he has considered himself the "unofficial champion," the maligned and misunderstood victim of a Communist conspiracy to keep him from the world title that is rightfully his. He refused to enter the past two world championships, which are held every three years, charging that the long, grueling play-off rounds favored the "Russian cheaters." Four years ago, unable to gain a title match outside the Fédération Internationale des Echecs, the governing body of world chess, he stormed into retirement to "plot my revenge." Then, 18 months later, he suddenly stormed right back with a "new sense of mission," entered the championship play-offs and demolished one grand master after another. Now the knight-errant of the royal game, rated a solid 5-to-2 favorite by British bookmakers, has at last won his audience with the king.

The first game was played across the $5,000 marble and mahogany chess table on the stage of Reykjavik's Sports Hall. On the 29th move, when it seemed that the game was destined to be a draw, Fischer boldly picked off an unprotected pawn with his bishop. A gasp of astonishment swept the 2,000 spectators in the hall. It was, as any amateur could see, a "poisoned pawn." Trapped behind enemy lines, the bishop fell six moves later, and Spassky, making the most of his advantage, went on to win. The second game, boycotted by Fischer in a dispute over the use of TV cameras (see box opposite), was won by Spassky on a forfeit. Fischer was now down two games and had to scramble.

Scramble he did. In the third game he seized the initiative on the eleventh move by swinging his knight to the edge of the board, a daring and unorthodox move for a piece that fights best in the center. Spassky pondered for a full 30 minutes, then, just as Fischer hoped he would, countered with a faulty line of attack. Before the game was adjourned for the day, Fischer scribbled his 41st move on a piece of paper, sealed it in an envelope and handed it to the referee. Afterward, he said, "I sealed a cruncher," and then went bowling. Spassky and his team of analysts, meanwhile, studied the position long and hard that night looking for a flaw in Fischer's assault. Next day, when Fischer was late in arriving, the referee opened his envelope and made the move: a bishop check on the king. It was indeed a cruncher, and Spassky, without bothering to reply, tipped over his king to signify his defeat.

In a reversal of roles, the champion stalked the challenger in the fourth game. Sacrificing a pawn early on, Spassky set up a double-barreled bishop attack on Fischer's cornered king. Staving off one mating threat after another, Fischer somehow managed to salvage a draw. In the fifth game it was Spassky's turn to make a beginner's booboo. Pressured by a knight foray, and more than an hour behind on the time clock, the champion dropped his queen back in hasty retreat. Fischer picked off a pawn with his bishop and challenged the queen, daring Spassky to take the unprotected attacking piece. If he had, Fischer would have had a two-move checkmate. Even if he moved elsewhere, Spassky's position was hopeless. After studying the board for a full minute, he stood up and shook Fischer's hand. The audience applauded and cried, "Bravo Bobby! Bravo Bobby!"

Late last week Fischer claimed that Spassky was close to a breakdown and had gone into seclusion.

The pressure befits the enormity of the event. At stake is not only a record purse of $250,000 (previous record: $12,000) but also the reign and reputation of Soviet chess itself. Since 1946, when the play-offs for the championship were first organized, the U.S.S.R. has so dominated the title that it seemed to be permanently engraved in Cyrillic script. No Westerner, much less a brash young American, has ever advanced to the finals. Never, that is, until now, and the resulting excitement among the estimated 60 million chess players round the world—and millions of others who do not know a double fianchetto from a double play—is of the kind usually reserved for an epic heavyweight championship fight.

Nyekulturny. Nowhere is the interest more widespread than in Russia. Following the lead of Lenin, a skilled tournament player in his own right, the Soviets have elevated chess into something more than the national pastime. Decorated and handsomely subsidized by the state, Russian chess masters are the "vanguard of Communist culture." There are 4,000,000 registered players in the U.S.S.R. (compared with only 35,000 in the U.S.), and 36 of the world's 82 grand masters are Soviets (compared with 13 in Yugoslavia, eleven in the U.S., six in Argentina and six in Hungary).* Russian youths, many of whom study the game as a standard course at grade school level, discuss the Nimzo-Indian defense the way U.S. kids talk about the Dallas Cowboys' front four. So many Soviet citizens play the game, in fact, that one chess writer contends the reason that service in Russian restaurants is so bad is because "the cooks are forever having at [chess] with the waiters instead of heating up the lyulya kebab."

The Russians have no trouble getting heated up about Fischer. The Soviet press calls him nyekulturny (uncultured), a "temperamental child" whose "endless whims" and "absurd accusations" create a "spirit of ill will and suspicion in the noble sports competition." His play is something else: not since Pianist Van Cliburn has an American been so widely renowned in the Soviet Union for his talents. Of late, though, the fascination with "Booo-bee" has been tinged with concern. "At home they don't understand," says one Soviet grand master of Fischer's success. "They think it means that there is something wrong with our culture."

In the U.S., chess ranks somewhere between mumblety-peg and logrolling in fan interest. Or at least it did until Fischer, the celebrated recluse, became a media happening. The scenes blur: Bobby swinging away in a sports-celebrity tennis tournament, Bobby receiving a letter of support from President Nixon, Bobby jetting to Bermuda for lunch with David Frost and the beautiful people, Bobby making the rounds of the talk shows (Dick Cavett: Do you honestly think that you are probably the world's greatest player? Bobby: Yeah, right.) There is even a new record called The Ballad of Bobby Fischer, a twangy ditty sung by Joe Glazer and the Fianchettoed Bishops: "He was born in nineteen forty-three/ And right away I knew he'd make history/ 'Cause he opened his mouth on the day he was born/ And instead of crying he said, 'Move that pawn.' " The song goes on to depict Spassky as already defeated and hustled off to Siberia.

The tempo of reality is a little more measured. The championship match, a best-of-24-game series, will likely go on for two months or more. According to the ground rules, three games will be played each week. Each player has 21 hours to complete 40 moves. A dual-faced, pushbutton clock times only the player who is "on move." If either player fails to complete 40 moves in the allotted time, he forfeits the game. If the game is not finished after 40 moves, it is adjourned (unless both players agree to continue) and resumed the next day in another session. One point is awarded for a win, ½ for a draw. Fischer needs 121 points to win the match; Spassky needs 12 to retain his title.

Whether played at the summit by grand masters or at the Y.M.C.A. by nine-year-olds, the game of chess offers both intricacy and infinite variety. As did Shakespeare's Cleopatra, it leaves hungry where most it satisfies. It has been calculated that if every man, woman and child in the world were to spend every waking hour playing at the superhuman rate of a game a minute, it would take 217 billion years to exhaust all the variations on the first ten moves. Chess is an endless labyrinth that can both mesmerize and anesthetize. Alone, perhaps, among the games of civilized man, its depths have never been fully plumbed, its possibilities calculated and codified. To Benjamin Franklin it taught "foresight, circumspection, caution and the habit of not being discouraged by our present affairs." For Lenin it was "the gymnasium of the mind," for Einstein a demon "that holds its master in its own bonds, fetters and in some ways shapes his spirit." Said H.G. Wells: "You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you want to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable. But teach him, inoculate him with chess. It annihilates a man."

Vital Juices. The annihilation theme is painfully familiar on the grand-master circuit. For all its sedentary appearance, chess is a brutally punishing game. A recent physiological experiment at Temple University showed that chess drained as much energy out of a player as did a comparable session of boxing or football. In the crunch of play, in fact, it is not unusual for a grand master to faint dead away, or lose 15 Ibs. or more during a tournament. Under stress, the late Latvian grand master Aron Nimzovich used to stand on his head between moves to keep the vital juices flowing. The Yugoslav chess team travels with a portable sauna and a trainer who leads them in daily calisthenics. In the 24-game grind of a world title match, says former World Champion Tigran Petrosian, "chess may start out as an art or science, but in the end it is an athletic event."

Appropriately enough, before the match Fischer spent seven months working out at Grossinger's, the Catskill resort that is a favored training site for contending boxers. Fischer passed part of every day swimming, playing tennis, lifting weights, skipping rope, riding an Exercycle, doing sit-ups and pummeling a 300-lb. bag. "You gotta stay in shape," he says, "or it's all over." For his part, Spassky retired months ago to a dacha outside Moscow with a team of handlers. His regimen included running, swimming, yoga and daily sessions with a chess-playing psychologist.

Both Spassky, 35, and Fischer, 29, are at the peak of their considerable powers. Both are walking Univacs in their book knowledge of chess, having long since memorized the basic strategies of games past. And both are classicists whose mature chess styles are broad, clean and lucid. Their major difference is in motivation. Spassky says, "Chess is like life"; Fischer says, "Chess is life." Thus, while Bobby lives only for the game and comes on charging, hell-bent on destruction, Boris affects an air of supreme detachment. "For me personally," he says, "it doesn't matter if Fischer wins."

Spassky further promotes this image by describing himself as a "lazy Russian bear." There is no bluster about him, no impatience, nothing restless. While waiting for an opponent to move, he gets up and strolls around with his hands folded behind his back, like a skater cruising over the ice on Lake Ladoga. "I like sports," he says offhandedly. "I swim a bit, and now I play a little tennis. I have other interests: reading, music and, yes, I do some chess." When he does, his remarkable calm makes him a formidable bear indeed. "Spassky's strength is his emotional stability plus his stamina," says Larry Evans. "His strength away from the board sustains him at the board."

Spassky seems to draw strength also from his near reverence for the game. "Chess brings out man's creative powers," he says. "It is not only struggle, it is a sphere where humans can fight for justice because there are strict laws." Those laws have served Spassky well. Before the match in Iceland began, Spassky had played Fischer, the highest-rated player of all time in the F.I.D.E. scoring columns (a statistical scale based on tournament results and strength of competition), five times and never lost. He won three times and gained two draws.

If Boris is the lazy Russian bear, then Bobby is the hungry Brooklyn wolf. Fischer still plays with the merciless intensity of the onetime boy wonder who said, "I like to see 'em squirm." And not just when the world title is at stake. In international play, where brain-saving draws are a routine matter, Fischer is the only grand master who rarely agrees to settle for a tie game. Even when he is far ahead in a tournament and could coast, he usually answers a request for a draw with a rueful, smiling refusal and then fights on until that magic moment when "I can see their ego crumbling." Says Bobby: "The game, not the tournament result, is the main thing."

Inner Fury. The effect is devastating. In Fischer's assault on the world title, each of his last three opponents asked for postponements because of nervous strain. Invariably, Bobby's victims say that they were defeated because they were playing "below strength." "People have been playing me below strength for 15 years," says Fischer scornfully. "There is some strange magnetic influence in Bobby," says Soviet Grand Master Yuri Aver-bakh, "that spiritually wrecks his opponents."

So it might seem. In tournaments he sits transfixed, his foot tapping rapidly to the beat of some inner fury. Playing through solitary games in his room, he slams home each move with cries of "Crunch!" "Chop!" "Smash!" "Crash!" U.S. Grand Master Robert Byrne suggests that the demon in him is his "pursuit of the Idea of the game, in the Platonic sense. All of us players have that ideal. But Bobby knows how to embody it. He has the ability to overcome the chaotic mess and the complexity of modern chess, the baroque scramble, and isolate a single theme, a single line of development and carry it through. How he does it is his secret. Nobody else can."

Fischer decimates rather than dazzles. He builds solid positional bases from which he launches attacks that are rarely devious and almost always total. When he has white, and thus the game's first move, he almost always opens with the centuries-old PK4 (moving the pawn in front of the king two squares forward). Though every grand master knows by rote the defenses against this stock opening, it is a part of Fischer's genius that he continues to fashion from it games that are freshly minted masterpieces of precision. "His judgment and feel for a position are un-equaled," says Grand Master Evans. "Chess is in his fingertips. That's the difference between a master and a truly great grand master like Fischer. The master will study for hours and perhaps make the right move. But Fischer will toss out the moves, on his fingertips, and they will be the unerringly correct ones. He has a sense for what is correct, what is beautiful and what is true."

Army Game. Chess probably began as a simple diversion. Its origins have been "traced" to everywhere from Ireland and Egypt to an Indian tribe in South America; its inventor was supposedly everyone from Aristotle and King Solomon to a Buddhist monk seeking a substitute for war. The facts seem to support Chess Historian H.J.R. Murray, who says that the game was the "conscious and deliberate invention of an inhabitant of northwest India." The generally accepted date of its origin: A.D. 600. The game, substantially like modern chess, was called chaturanga, or the army game. The pieces represented the four elements of the Indian army: chariots, elephants, cavalry and infantry; they evolved through the centuries into rooks, bishops, knights and pawns. In its travels, the Hindi word rajah, for king, became shah in Persian, which led to the Arabic phrase shah mat, meaning the king is dead, from which the term checkmate is derived.

The first book on chess appeared more than four centuries ago. Since then, the number of titles (Computers, Chess and Long-Range Planning; 1,234 Modern End-Game Studies; The Psychology of the Chess Player) has grown to nearly 20,000—or reportedly more books than have been written about all other games combined. There has been a lot to write about. One study of the qualities that make a good chess player, for example, shows that contrary to popular opinion, imagination and vision are more important than memory and concentration. Another study by Psychologist A.F. Cleveland concludes that "a considerable degree of chess skill is possible to one who is mentally deficient in almost any other line."

America's Paul Morphy, the unofficial world champion (1858-59), who is considered by many to have been the most brilliant player in history, retired from the game at 21 after only 18 months of tournament play. Refusing to play or even talk about the game, he failed as a lawyer and lived out the rest of his life in New Orleans as a paranoid recluse. Morphy was given to such eccentricities as arranging women's shoes in a semicircle in his room and prancing around his veranda reciting in French that "the little king will go away unabashed." He died in the bathtub, presumably of apoplexy, at 47.

World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz (1886-94), a mathematician and the so-called father of modern chess, suffered from a delusion in his later years that he could place a telephone call without wire or receiver, as well as move chess pieces at will by emitting electrical currents. He also claimed to be in touch with God, whom he offered a pawn handicap and the first move in a showdown chess match. He died a charity patient in 1900.

Many of the other men who once dominated the game make Bobby Fischer look like an Eagle Scout. Arrogance? World Champion Alexander Alekhine (1927-35, 1937-46), a Soviet expatriate renowned for his slashing attacks, was a Nazi collaborator who wrote a series of articles claiming that Jews spoiled the purity of chess. Once he appeared at the Polish border and declared: "I am Alekhine, chess champion of the world. I have a cat named Chess.

I do not need a passport." In his books he tampered with scores to make his efforts seem more brilliant. Upon losing a game, he would sometimes hurl his king across the room. Married five times and a heavy drinker, he appeared at one exhibition and urinated on the floor. He died destitute in 1946, clutching a pocket chess set.

Poor sportsmanship? Enraged over losing a game to Steinitz, British Master Joseph Blackburne reportedly threw the eminent mathematician out of a window. World Champion José Capablanca (1921-27), the dashing Cuban roue, was a notoriously bad loser; before he would admit defeat in one match in Havana, he demanded that the mayor clear the room of all spectators. After taking the title from Capablanca, Alekhine refused a rematch and would walk out of the room if the Cuban's name was mentioned in his presence. Upon losing one match, Latvia's Nimzovich jumped on the table and shouted: "Why must I lose to this idiot!"

Oneupmanship? Before the era of the time clock, delaying tactics were so common that in 1851 British Historian Henry Buckle wrote two chapters of his History of Civilization in England while waiting for his opponent to make a move. During a match with World Champion Emanuel Lasker (1894-1921), Steinitz slurped a glass of lemonade so noisily that Lasker moved to a separate table. Some of Lasker's victims claimed in turn that the champion stunned them with his foul-smelling cigars. World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik( 1948-57,1958-60, 1961-63) used to train for a match by having an aide blow smoke in his eyes. Matched against the U.S.S.R.'s Mikhail Tal, a former world champion (1960-61) who has been accused of trying to hypnotize rivals with his laserlike gaze, U.S. Grand Master Pal Benko wore sunglasses throughout the game. Says U.S. Grand Master Robert Byrne: "In chess I follow one rule: Don't trust anyone."

Into this tradition was born Robert James Fischer. His father was a physicist from Berlin, his mother a nurse born in Switzerland and raised in the U.S. They were divorced when Bobby was two. When his mother went to work, Bobby was left in the care of his older sister Joan. She kept him amused by playing board games with him in their three-room walk-up apartment in Brooklyn. When Monopoly and Parcheesi palled, Joan bought a cheap plastic chess set at the local candy store. She was eleven at the time and Bobby was six, and together they worked out the moves. Bobby took to the game instantly, trouncing his sister so handily that he soon began playing both ends of the board himself. His alter ego never had a chance. "I tried to be fair and play the best moves for both sides," he says, "but I usually won."

His absorption with the new game was so total that for long stretches he would not respond when spoken to. Worried, his mother sent him off to the Brooklyn Chess Club in the hope that he might meet some other children there. But prodigies were scarce that year; so Bobby ignored his peers, later joined other clubs and began haunting the chess tables in the parks, "crushing all these old guys." At twelve, he had mastered enough Russian to read his monthly copy of Shakhmaty v S.S.S.R. and pore over the games it reported. "I had heard the Russians were the best," he says, "and I wanted to be the best."

He soon was. A floppy young gangleshanks in corduroys, T shirt and sneakers, he hunched over the board cracking his knuckles, biting his fingernails and hushing kibitzers with cries of "Pleeze! This is a chess game!" Occasionally, when he lost a crucial game, he burst into tears. There were, however, more triumphs than tears. At 13, he became the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Junior Open Championship (open to those under 20); at 14, the youngest ever to win the U.S. championship; and at 15, the youngest ever to win the title of international grand master. The Mozart of chess had arrived.

Boy Robot. Interested only in his game, he abruptly left Erasmus Hall High School in his junior year, ending an academic career marked largely by lack of interest and poor grades. "School is for dumb bunnies," he said. "The teachers are all nitwits." He was a shy, secretive, suspicious kid who did not take to his new notoriety, in school or out. Nevertheless, looking back, he regrets leaving because "you should finish what you start." Then after a pause, he adds: "Besides, it might have helped me to be more rounded socially."

Fischer had other problems. Returning from a tour abroad, he found that his mother had put an ad in the New York Times offering Bobby Fischer chess wallets complete with his gold-stamped profile and signature. Acutely embarrassed, he demanded that she cancel the ad. Their relationship became increasingly strained. She was a political activist who had taken Bobby on civil rights marches when he was a child (one of his signs read END JIM CROW). To gain financial support for Bobby and the U.S. chess team, she went on hunger strikes, picketed the American Chess Foundation and at one point actually chained herself to the White House gate. When Bobby was 17, she left Brooklyn and later went on a peace march from San Francisco to Moscow, where she met a British doctor. She married him soon afterward and dropped out of Bobby's life.

That left Bobby to fend for himself. The rent on the Brooklyn apartment was only $53 a month, but he was occasionally in need of pocket money. Once, needing a dollar to go to the movies, he put on a crude, slouch-hat disguise and went into a chess parlor on 42nd Street to hustle the local patzers (unskilled players) into a money match. The "Boy Robot," as he was then called, was recognized immediately.

In 1962 Fischer went to Curasao, the Netherlands Antilles, on a more difficult mission: to hustle the Russians out of the world title. Fischer failed to qualify in the Candidates' Tournament, a competition between eight contenders. Storming back to the U.S., he bitterly accused the five Soviet players of "cheating" by playing for draws against one another and to win against the Western grand masters. Scoffed Izvestia: "Fischer is disturbed. He scarcely restrains himself from crying, and like a capricious child who cannot get sweets, builds up a string of accusations, one more ridiculous than the last."

The war was on. Doggedly holding to his conspiracy theory, Fischer accused the F.I.D.E. of being "Communist dupes." He claimed that the Russians hired photographers to harass him. He walked out of tournaments. He complained about the lighting, the scheduling, the spectators, the air conditioning, the living conditions, the purses. Sighed Chess Life in an article entitled "The Self mate of Bobby Fischer": "Finally the U.S. produces its greatest chess genius, and he turns out to be just another stubborn boy."

Not quite. Last year, to prevent any chance of collusion, F.I.D.E. ruled that after 1972, draws will no longer count in candidate and world championship matches. Chalk one up for Bobby. As for his other crusades, U.S. Grand Master Isaac Kashdan says: "He has improved the lot of all the grand masters. They didn't realize what he was doing at the time, but his demands for better lighting, better pay, more reasonable playing conditions have benefited all players." Other grand masters, however, refuse to grant that Fischer had anyone but Fischer at heart. Says one: "What he has done is good for chess, but that was not his intention."

His intention, then and now, is to win the world title. He thought a lot about that in 1968, when he went into seclusion in California with his chess books. Once hopeful of challenging the Russians directly, he soon realized "that it was unrealistic of me to think they would give me a match for the title. I thought that they had a lot of self-respect; you know, I thought that they were like me. I shouldn't have had to play all the qualifying rounds out, but world opinion didn't do it for me. I figured that I'd have to come back and do it myself."

Come back he did. On a March afternoon in 1970, he strode resolutely across the stage of the Dom Sindikata Theater in Belgrade, sat down behind two ranks of white chessmen, reached across the table and shook hands with former World Champion Petrosian, shoved the king's pawn two squares forward, punched the button on the dual-faced time clock, pulled a Parker Jotter from inside his black and white checked Hong Kong suit, scribbled the notation PK4 on his score sheet and dug in. Nearly five hours and 39 moves later, Petrosian surveyed the shattered remains of his Caro-Kann defense, stood up and shook Fischer's hand.

Slam! Chop! From that day on, Fischer has been a man possessed. Needing to place only sixth or better at the interzonal tournament in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to qualify for the next round of the world championship, he not only won by a wide margin but swept his last seven games in a row. That advanced him to a match against veteran Soviet Grand Master Mark Taimanov in Vancouver last year. Fischer defeated him in six straight games. Then, last July in Denver, Fischer took on Denmark's Bent Larsen, ranked second only to Bobby in the West, and stunned him by again winning six straight games. The 19 straight victories were without parallel in grand-master chess history. Declared Sovietski Sport: "A miracle has occurred!" Then nine months ago, Fischer tangled with Petrosian again in Buenos Aires and dropped him 61-21 to win the right to meet Spassky. After the Petrosian match, Fischer was reluctant to fly off in a private plane for a brief vacation. "I don't know about the plane," he said. "Suppose the Russians ... like, did something to the motor or something. I mean, people don't realize how important chess is to their image. They'd really like to get rid of me now."

At Moscow's Central Chess Club, however, the reaction was summed up by one player who observed: "Well, we've still got Spassky." Spassky himself is happy that chess has a Bobby. "It would be an awfully dull world without him," he says. Like Fischer, Spassky comes from a broken home and also had a games-playing sister. (Iraida went on to become the Soviet checkers champion.) During World War II, Spassky's parents were separated; he was evacuated from Leningrad and lived for a period in an orphanage in the Kirov Region. He learned the game when he was five. At ten, he played former World Champion Botvinnik in an exhibition match—and won. Said Botvinnik: "This boy will become world champion."

At 18, Spassky was named an international grand master (the youngest ever until Fischer won that distinction), and in 1969 he proved Botvinnik a prophet by winning the world title from Petrosian. "I never thought about making chess my life," he says. "It came suddenly upon me, and now the chess figures are like my relatives. I know the peculiarities of each one, but I do become discouraged when I see too much of them." For all his outward cool today, Spassky, like Fischer, was an intense, flashy competitor while he was on the way up. When he blundered away his advantage and lost one game in 1958, he wept openly. "You will understand Spassky better," says one friend, "if you know that his favorite writer is Dostoevsky."

Dostoevsky never had it so good.

Awarded the Soviet Badge of Honor and a medal For Valiant Labor, Spassky lives in a modern Moscow high-rise with his second wife Larisa, who is an engineer, and their son. Of his first wife he says: "We were like bishops of opposite color." His $500 monthly income from exhibition matches and as chess coach of Locomotiv, a railway-union sports club, is one of the highest in the Soviet Union. Despite these rewards, Spassky has refused to join the Communist Party. "If Boris were a writer or a composer," says one grand master from an Iron Curtain country, "he'd be in jail for anti-Soviet thinking. He is a freethinking man in many ways." Some of his freest thoughts are about chess. "I would be the happiest man alive if I were no longer world champion," says Boris. "Since I won the title my whole life has—well—stiffened. I like to play chess for fun and not fame, and my idea of a pleasant evening is to share some wine with friends and play chess."

Fischer's idea of a big evening is secluding himself in a hotel room and —slam! crash! chop!—working out a new king's side attack. He always requests a room without a view lest he be distracted from the game. If he ventures out, he always takes his trusty leather pocket set with him. On elevators, in taxis, between dinner courses—he is always at it, busily fiddling away like some old crone at her knitting. "Why should I bother with anything else?" he asks. "Chess is my profession, isn't it?"

20-to-1. Bobby Fischer is an American primitive. He has no home. He lives out of two enormous plastic suitcases and a couple of shopping bags crammed with transistor radios and chess periodicals in eight languages (English, Russian, Dutch, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, French). The radios are for digging the latest Motown sounds. The literature is for those little off moments. Like the time after his victory over Larsen in Denver, when some chess buffs dragged the two players off to a nightclub featuring operatic singing. While the performers trilled and boomed, Fischer sat buried in a chess book, oblivious to all else. "I don't mix well," he says.

When he walks, he gallops. When he eats, he gobbles down two and three full-course meals at a sitting. He wears suits made for him by a tailor in Zagreb, Yugoslavia; all dressed up, he is the picture of a Russian Deputy Minister of Power and Electricity. Bachelor Bobby does not have time for dating. He once said that when God gets ready, he will drop a girl in his lap. Most often, he rises late in a day that almost invariably ends with chess, chess, chess until dawn. Then he dozes off to the soothing swoosh of an electronic "white sound," sleep-inducing device he keeps near his bed. Also near his bed is the Bible he has carried with him constantly since he joined the Worldwide Church of God, a California-based fundamentalist sect.

Of late, Bobby has taken to musing about "Once I have the title..." "If" has never entered his mind. When pressed, he modestly rates himself as the "20-to-1 favorite." The prospect of earning more than $100,000 in Reykjavik has him talking about buying houses round the world. "You know, like what's-his-name—Onassis, who has his table set for him in places like London, Buenos Aires, New York." When he first started his all-out quest for the title in Belgrade two years ago, a reporter asked him what chess meant to him. He pondered for nearly a minute and then said it all: "Everything."

*The lifetime title of International Grand Master is achieved by winning a requisite number of points in tournaments approved by the F.l.D.E.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877942,00.html

[d0ublestr0ker0ll]

Here's a great documentary of Fischer vs. Spassky

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8110762384845644778&q=bobby+fischer&total=403&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

[JMS]

Here's a great documentary of Fischer vs. Spassky

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8110762384845644778&q=bobby+fischer&total=403&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

I forgot that Bobby lost the first game, and forfited the second; only to come back and win the match.

[zoony]

Here's a great documentary of Fischer vs. Spassky

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8110762384845644778&q=bobby+fischer&total=403&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

thanks for posting that

[EersSkins05]

"I don't play the old chess," [bobby Fischer] told reporters when he arrived in Iceland in 2005. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best."

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=3202460

What an ass... lol

[d0ublestr0ker0ll]

thanks for posting that

:thumbsup:

You know, with all the drama in that match you'd think it was some kind of elementary school fight where one of the kids didn't want to fight until a friend egged him on. Only for the kid to want to do it in another setting, without other kids watching, all while demanding another week of juicy juice from everyone's lunch.

Fischer was obviously such an annoying fellow. Even when he officially was crowned world champ, his friends were jumping for joy and knocked on Fischer's door only to be met by a calm Fischer telling them to get it on paper. Slam, the door closed on them. The guy was an impossible person and didn't deserve the brilliance of being one of the best chess players ever.

[zoony]

:thumbsup:

You know, with all the drama in that match you'd think it was some kind of elementary school fight where one of the kids didn't want to fight until a friend egged him on. Only for the kid to want to do it in another setting, without other kids watching, all while demanding another week of juicy juice from everyone's lunch.

Fischer was obviously such an annoying fellow. Even when he officially was crowned world champ, his friends were jumping for joy and knocked on Fischer's door only to be met by a calm Fischer telling them to get it on paper. Slam, the door closed on them. The guy was an impossible person and didn't deserve the brilliance of being one of the best chess players ever.

That's what struck me... the infinite patience of Spaasky, and how good a sport he was thru the whole thing. Most players would simply have walked away the moment Fischer started his shennanigans. It's sad how he was treated by his own government.

That said, the most brilliant minds also tend to be the most unstable. We've all met genius's in our personal life, and very rarely are they anything approaching normal. So I think "deserve" has nothing to do with it... it was simply a cause and effect of Fischers' brilliance.

That's my take anyways. Great documentary, I really enjoyed watching that.

[d0ublestr0ker0ll]

That's what struck me... the infinite patience of Spaasky, and how good a sport he was thru the whole thing. Most players would simply have walked away the moment Fischer started his shennanigans. It's sad how he was treated by his own government.

That said, the most brilliant minds also tend to be the most unstable. We've all met genius's in our personal life, and very rarely are they anything approaching normal. So I think "deserve" has nothing to do with it... it was simply a cause and effect of Fischers' brilliance.

That's my take anyways. Great documentary, I really enjoyed watching that.

Very true, luckily for Bobby, Spaasky didn't force resignation on him. He summed it up in there, saying something to the effect of it not being his style. He wanted to play, even though he was feeling unnerved.

I guess you could sum up Bobby as being somewhat savant-like. A person with an incredible talent that simply has shortcomings in other areas of their personality. The shortcomings with Bobby may have been aided by a stunted childhood/disease. It seems likely that the critizism towards Bobby may be unjust in a way, because sickness could be a large force in corrupting his brain. Who knows what medications he has refused, or what have you. One thing is for certain, he may be the most difficult grand champion to deal with personally or professionally in the history of sports - if you consider chess a sport.

[JMS]

That said, the most brilliant minds also tend to be the most unstable. We've all met genius's in our personal life, and very rarely are they anything approaching normal. So I think "deserve" has nothing to do with it... it was simply a cause and effect of Fischers' brilliance..

My father was a doctor. He always said, Dumb people don't go crazy, it's the really smart ones who do.

[Baculus]

I will again suggest to read "Bobby Fischer vs. the Rest of the World." It is a very keen insight into Bobby, who was a genius and extremely sensitive person. Also, it is a very, very funny book and very well-written, and describes the events leading up to the '72 match (and the difficulties surrounding Bobby).

One of my prized books is still "Bobby Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games." I used to study that book like mad, trying to get a glimpse into the thinking of a grandmaster. The thing that was beautiful about Fischer's games was his clarity: he could see the truth of a position. And his positions weren't always super, super complicated - he could just see through that position better than most GMs. He loved those open, attacking positions, which is why he preferred e4 as his primary opening as white.

This is one of his more memorable games, where a 13-year old Fischer beat Donald Byrne, one of the top U.S. masters at that time.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3434

Chess, even grandmaster chess, isn't always the most complicated thing, but it's how the positions are pieced together which often makes it extremely complicated. The key, once again, is clarity.

I also a big fan of Karpov and Kasparov, reading books by both of them, but Fischer will always be my primary chess hero.

It is interesting that someone mentioned Morphy, since there are some parallels between them. Before I really got into chess study, I spent time studying the history of the game, and I think that is one of the best approaches to learning. If you aren't familiar with great masters such as Morphy, Steinitz, Alekhine, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Lasker, among many others, then you're missing a lot of great chess and fascinating personalities.

And you will find that a number of great masters do end up having psychological issues later in life, for one reason or another. The pursuit of truth, on and off the board, can be difficult to achieve for brilliant minds.

[Riggins77]

Isn't he the guy that cheered or something after 9/11?

Yep, he was a piece of **** nut-job. **** him.

[d0ublestr0ker0ll]

I will again suggest to read "Bobby Fischer vs. the Rest of the World." It is a very keen insight into Bobby, who was a genius and extremely sensitive person. Also, it is a very, very funny book and very well-written, and describes the events leading up to the '72 match (and the difficulties surrounding Bobby).

One of my prized books is still "Bobby Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games." I used to study that book like mad, trying to get a glimpse into the thinking of a grandmaster. The thing that was beautiful about Fischer's games was his clarity: he could see the truth of a position. And his positions weren't always super, super complicated - he could just see through that position better than most GMs. He loved those open, attacking positions, which is why he preferred e4 as his primary opening as white.

This is one of his more memorable games, where a 13-year old Fischer beat Donald Byrne, one of the top U.S. masters at that time.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3434

Chess, even grandmaster chess, isn't always the most complicated thing, but it's how the positions are peiced together which often makes it extremely complicated. The key, once again, is clarity.

I also a big fan of Karpov and Kasparov, reading books by both of them, but Fishcer will always be my primary chess hero.

It is interesting that someone mentioned Morphy, since there are some parallels between them. Before I really got into chess study, I spent time studying the history of the game, and I think that is one of the best approaches to learning. If you aren't familiar with great masters such as Morphy, Steinitz, Alekhine, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Lasker, among many others, then you're missing a lot of great chess and fascinating personalities.

And you will find that a number of great masters do end up having psychological issues later in life, for one reason of another. The pursuit of truth, on and off the board, can be difficult to achieve for brilliant minds.

I guess the parallels stem from Fischer thinking Morphy was the greatest to ever play. Morphy was extremely great, but he never really had competition at his level when he played. Yet Fischer looks like the brainchild of Morphy, and succeeded to become a legendary player. Alekhine and Steinitz are two of my favorites in chess, but Fischer took another route and played without the depth those two would display. Like Botvinik with an attitude. Many of Bobby's opening positions remind me of games that I've had, he just executed attacks with such brilliance and ease. And while I have a special place in my heart for Alekhine (even though he avoided Capablanca), Fischer is the guy I probably study the most.

[zoony]

My father was a doctor. He always said, Dumb people don't go crazy, it's the really smart ones who do.

Theres definitely some truth to that in my opinion.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course... but watching that documentary it was pretty clear that Fischer already was well on his way to mental illness even at his prime.

I guess you could sum up Bobby as being somewhat savant-like. A person with an incredible talent that simply has shortcomings in other areas of their personality. The shortcomings with Bobby may have been aided by a stunted childhood/disease. It seems likely that the critizism towards Bobby may be unjust in a way, because sickness could be a large force in corrupting his brain. Who knows what medications he has refused, or what have you. One thing is for certain, he may be the most difficult grand champion to deal with personally or professionally in the history of sports - if you consider chess a sport.

In your opinion (and anyone else)... would Fischer have beaten Karpov?

....

[Predicto]

Nobody remembers Benedict Arnold for being a great American General that won several key battles for us, including Saratoga.

But he lost one signficant battle for us - the Battle of Quebec. Had he won there, Canada might have joined the American Revolution.

He was defeated at Quebec by my great great great great great grandfather, Sir Guy Carleton, first Baron Dorchester who went on to command the British army in the Americas after the War, get all the Tories and their families out safely to Canada (including freeing slaves), and then governed Canada, where he promoted religious freedom and gave the French the autonomy that plagues Canada to this day. :notworthy

This derailment is now complete. Return to Bobby Fischer.

[Baculus]

In your opinion (and anyone else)... would Fischer have beaten Karpov?

....

That is a tough question. Karpov was brilliant in his own right, and his method of chess was "modern chess," and the epitomy of the Soviet school of chess.

If Bobby was prepared, then yes, he could have beat Karpov. But Karpov became an immensely strong player after the mid-70's, when he would have played Fischer, and was a notoriously difficult player to beat.

I don't think Fischer could have held his crown for long, unless he had the dedication of Karpov or Kasparov, two of the longest reigning world champions of recent history.

Kasparov was even more brilliant then Karpov, so a Kasparov - Fischer match would have been a battle of titans.

[Baculus]

I guess the parallels stem from Fischer thinking Morphy was the greatest to ever play. Morphy was extremely great, but he never really had competition at his level when he played. Yet Fischer looks like the brainchild of Morphy, and succeeded to become a legendary player. Alekhine and Steinitz are two of my favorites in chess, but Fischer took another route and played without the depth those two would display. Like Botvinik with an attitude. Many of Bobby's opening positions remind me of games that I've had, he just executed attacks with such brilliance and ease. And while I have a special place in my heart for Alekhine (even though he avoided Capablanca), Fischer is the guy I probably study the most.

We have similiar taste in chess. I am also a fan of Smyslov, who had a style that was similar at times to Fischer, at least in his use of open systems.

My own personal style also felt very comfortable with Bobby's games and playstyle, which is why I gravitated towards him. It is similiar to drums: some musicians just naturally "sync" with a person and with their own personal manner of doing things.

I have TONS of old Chess Lifes that have great, unknown games in them. Going to bookstores and buying old chess books, besides player over the games, was probably one of my favorite things in the world.

[Corcaigh]

But I'm interested... what exactly did the Soviets do to manipulate the game?

Qualification for the World Championships was determined by an all-play all tournament among the top players in the world lasting many weeks. This is a very gruelling event, similar to taking final exams, but much tougher and over a longer period.

At the top level, draws are common. The Soviets would play short pre-arranged draws (or even losses) with each other and not reveal any of their innovations (i.e. playbook) until they played non-Soviets.

So in order to progress from this type of tournament, the non-Soviets would have to play at least a dozen very tough games over a short period of time, which the top Soviet players could save themselves for a handful of games that mattered.

[TrumanB]

i met him in Austria about 2-3 years ago. His breath was horrendous.

:laugh: I don't know why I found this so funny. :laugh:

[Corcaigh]

We have similiar taste in chess. I am also a fan of Smyslov, who had a style that was similar at times to Fischer, at least in his use of open systems.

My own personal style also felt very comfortable with Bobby's games and playstyle, which is why I gravitated towards him.

"My 60 Memorable Games" was one of my first chess books. There were so many different openings to choose in the various opening books so I just picked what Fischer played; Ruy Lopez as White and Sicilian Najdorf and Modern Benoni/KID as Black.

I played through My 60 Memorable Games and Tal's Best Games until the covers came off.

I still play both the Najdorf and Modern Benoni as Black when I play online. I'm trying to play the English in an aggressive style as white so that I don't need to keep up with all the theory.

[Corcaigh]

One of my favorite game from Fischer was this one against Tringov.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044603

A few of my best victories against big name players were with the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn variation.

All thanks to Bobby.