Chess master Bobby Fischer dies at 64
Chess master Bobby Fischer dies at 64
By GUDJON HELGASON, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago
REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.
ADVERTISEMENT
Fisher died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said Friday. Icelandic media reported that he died of kidney failure after a long illness.
Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.
Garry Kasparov, the former Russian chess champion, said Fischer's ascent in the chess world in the 1960s and his promotion of chess worldwide was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game. But Fischer's reputation as a genius of chess was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.
"The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.
He lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish.
Spassky said in a brief phone call from his home in France that he was "very sorry" to hear of the death of his friend and rival.
An American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, Fischer dethroned the Spassky in 1972 in a series of games in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, to become the first officially recognized world champion born in the United States.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the World Chess Federation, called Fischer "a phenomenon and an epoch in chess history, and an intellectual giant I would rank next to Newton and Einstein."
The match, at the height of the Cold War, took on mythic dimensions as a clash between the world's two superpowers.
Fischer played - and won - an exhibition rematch against Spassky on the resort island of Sveti Stefan, but the game was in violation of U.S. sanctions imposed to punish then-President Slobodan Milosevic.
In July 2004, Fischer was arrested at Japan's Narita airport for traveling on a revoked U.S. passport and threatened with extradition to the United States. He spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland granted him citizenship and he moved there with his longtime companion, the Japanese chess player Miyoko Watai. She survives him.
In his final years, Fischer railed against the chess establishment, alleging that the outcomes of many top-level chess matches were decided in advance.
Instead, he championed his concept of random chess, in which pieces are shuffled at the beginning of each match in a bid to reinvigorate the game.
"I don't play the old chess," he told reporters when he arrived in Iceland in 2005. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best."
Born in Chicago in March 9, 1943, Robert James Fischer was a child prodigy, playing competitively from the age of 8.
At 13, he became the youngest player to win the United States Junior Championship. At 14, he won the United States Open Championship for the first of eight times.
At 15, he gained the title of international grand master, the youngest person to hold the title.
Tall, charismatic and with striking looks, he was a chess star - but already gaining a reputation for volatile behavior.
He turned up late for tournaments, walked out of matches, refused to play unless the lighting suited him and was intolerant of photographers and cartoonists. He was convinced of his own superiority and called the Soviets "Commie cheats."
His behavior often unsettled opponents - to Fischer's advantage.
This was seen most famously in the showdown with Spassky in Reykjavik between July and September 1972. Having agreed to play Spassky in Yugoslavia, Fischer raised one objection after another to the arrangements and they wound up playing in Iceland.
When play got under way, days late, Fischer lost the first game with an elementary blunder after discovering that television cameras he had reluctantly accepted were not unseen and unheard, but right behind the players' chairs.
He boycotted the second game and the referee awarded the point to Spassky, putting the Russian ahead 2-0.
But then Spassky agreed to Fischer's demand that the games be played in a back room away from cameras. Fischer went on to beat Spassky, 12.5 points to 8.5 points in 21 games.
Americans, gripped in their millions by the contest, rejoiced in the victory over their Cold War adversary.
In the recent book "White King and Red Queen," the British author Daniel Johnson said the match was "an abstract antagonism on an abstract battleground using abstract weapons ... yet their struggle embraced all human life."
"In Spassky's submission to his fate and Fischer's fierce exultant triumph, the Cold War's denouement was already foreshadowed."
The victory made Fischer the first U.S.-born world champion. Paul Morphy, an American, was regarded as the world's best player from 1858 to 1862, and William Steinetz, an Austrian immigrant to the United States, was an official champion from 1886 to 1894.
___
By GUDJON HELGASON, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago
REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.
ADVERTISEMENT
Fisher died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said Friday. Icelandic media reported that he died of kidney failure after a long illness.
Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.
Garry Kasparov, the former Russian chess champion, said Fischer's ascent in the chess world in the 1960s and his promotion of chess worldwide was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game. But Fischer's reputation as a genius of chess was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.
"The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.
He lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish.
Spassky said in a brief phone call from his home in France that he was "very sorry" to hear of the death of his friend and rival.
An American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, Fischer dethroned the Spassky in 1972 in a series of games in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, to become the first officially recognized world champion born in the United States.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the World Chess Federation, called Fischer "a phenomenon and an epoch in chess history, and an intellectual giant I would rank next to Newton and Einstein."
The match, at the height of the Cold War, took on mythic dimensions as a clash between the world's two superpowers.
Fischer played - and won - an exhibition rematch against Spassky on the resort island of Sveti Stefan, but the game was in violation of U.S. sanctions imposed to punish then-President Slobodan Milosevic.
In July 2004, Fischer was arrested at Japan's Narita airport for traveling on a revoked U.S. passport and threatened with extradition to the United States. He spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland granted him citizenship and he moved there with his longtime companion, the Japanese chess player Miyoko Watai. She survives him.
In his final years, Fischer railed against the chess establishment, alleging that the outcomes of many top-level chess matches were decided in advance.
Instead, he championed his concept of random chess, in which pieces are shuffled at the beginning of each match in a bid to reinvigorate the game.
"I don't play the old chess," he told reporters when he arrived in Iceland in 2005. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best."
Born in Chicago in March 9, 1943, Robert James Fischer was a child prodigy, playing competitively from the age of 8.
At 13, he became the youngest player to win the United States Junior Championship. At 14, he won the United States Open Championship for the first of eight times.
At 15, he gained the title of international grand master, the youngest person to hold the title.
Tall, charismatic and with striking looks, he was a chess star - but already gaining a reputation for volatile behavior.
He turned up late for tournaments, walked out of matches, refused to play unless the lighting suited him and was intolerant of photographers and cartoonists. He was convinced of his own superiority and called the Soviets "Commie cheats."
His behavior often unsettled opponents - to Fischer's advantage.
This was seen most famously in the showdown with Spassky in Reykjavik between July and September 1972. Having agreed to play Spassky in Yugoslavia, Fischer raised one objection after another to the arrangements and they wound up playing in Iceland.
When play got under way, days late, Fischer lost the first game with an elementary blunder after discovering that television cameras he had reluctantly accepted were not unseen and unheard, but right behind the players' chairs.
He boycotted the second game and the referee awarded the point to Spassky, putting the Russian ahead 2-0.
But then Spassky agreed to Fischer's demand that the games be played in a back room away from cameras. Fischer went on to beat Spassky, 12.5 points to 8.5 points in 21 games.
Americans, gripped in their millions by the contest, rejoiced in the victory over their Cold War adversary.
In the recent book "White King and Red Queen," the British author Daniel Johnson said the match was "an abstract antagonism on an abstract battleground using abstract weapons ... yet their struggle embraced all human life."
"In Spassky's submission to his fate and Fischer's fierce exultant triumph, the Cold War's denouement was already foreshadowed."
The victory made Fischer the first U.S.-born world champion. Paul Morphy, an American, was regarded as the world's best player from 1858 to 1862, and William Steinetz, an Austrian immigrant to the United States, was an official champion from 1886 to 1894.
___
0
-
I remember when Fischer had his world championship matches in Iceland in 1972.
Chess is a national obsession in Iceland. Fischer was treated like a rock star from day one, and the matches lasted over a month.
Every day stacked blonde Icelandic girls snuck up to Fischer's room and tried to get friendly with him. Hard to understand in America, but in Iceland they have chess groupies and some are very good looking blondes.
Well Fischer was the nerd of all times and he got security guards to send all the girls packing. He would not have anything to do with them.
What a waste.0 -
He always "did it his way."
[8D]0 -
Little specifics on his "idiosycracies. Off the wall, sad. Joe Nameth gave his legs to his game, Fischer sacrificed his sanity; assuming he had it to begin with. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
I remember when Fischer had his world championship matches in Iceland in 1972.
Chess is a national obsession in Iceland. Fischer was treated like a rock star from day one, and the matches lasted over a month.
Every day stacked blonde Icelandic girls snuck up to Fischer's room and tried to get friendly with him. Hard to understand in America, but in Iceland they have chess groupies and some are very good looking blondes.
Well Fischer was the nerd of all times and he got security guards to send all the girls packing. He would not have anything to do with them.
What a waste.
And imagine of Bill Gates got laid in high school! Holy crap. I think it takes decades of rejection by the opposite sex to produce that kind of nerdy genius. I wonder where I went wrong.0 -
quote:He turned up late for tournaments, walked out of matches, refused to play unless the lighting suited him and was intolerant of photographers and cartoonists. He was convinced of his own superiority and called the Soviets "Commie cheats."
All of which may have been either "Psy-op" strategy used on the Russians. In 1992, he resurfaced to play Boris Spassky in a rematch in Belgrade, a move that defied U.S. sanctions against the former Yugoslavia.
He won the chess match and the prize money of $3.5 million, but spent the next decade as a reclusive and somewhat mysterious figure who was regarded as a fugitive by American authorities.
In recent years, Fischer became better known for his outspoken criticism of the United States. Interviewed by a Philippines radio station hours after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he allegedly called reports of a plane hitting the Pentagon "wonderful news" and said American foreign policy had provoked the attacks.
He also become known for virulent anti-Semitism, even though his mother was Jewish. In 2002, Atlantic magazine reported that during a Manila radio broadcast he described his enemies as "Jews, secret Jews, or CIA rats who work for the Jews."
Fischer was arrested in 2004 at Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan, for traveling on a U.S. passport that was revoked after the 1992 Belgrade match. Japan detained him for nine months while he fought deportation to the United States.
In March 2005 Iceland invited Fischer to live there. Japan released him, and he promptly renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen and resident of Iceland.
In the 60's he was a national hero, but died as a footnote to history, either forgotten or reviled by most Americans. At the very least he was a brilliant chess player, who decended into madness.0 -
Fischer to E4
Death to A7 - Checkmate.
RIP Bobby. You were a heck of a player.0 -
In 1984, Fischer wrote to the editors of the Encyclopedia Judaica, stating that he was not, and had never been, Jewish, and asking that his name be removed from the publication.[39] Encyclopedia Judaica complied with the request.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fisher0 -
quote:Originally posted by meunke
Fischer to E4
I figure he wAs at least GS-120 -
Social Security won with his contributions.
Never had to pay out.0 -
wonder what model Rolex he had? All the best CIA agents have Rolex's 0 -
quote:Originally posted by mrseatle
In 1984, Fischer wrote to the editors of the Encyclopedia Judaica, stating that he was not, and had never been, Jewish, and asking that his name be removed from the publication.[39] Encyclopedia Judaica complied with the request.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fisher
According to Jews, being Jewish is about ethnicity, not about religion. They need to make up their minds.0 -
I hope the snake meets the Satan he thought never existed. 0 -
If I was wanted by Fed authorities due to playing in a chess match, I'd be pissed at the U.S. too. 0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
13 comments