What Chess Owes Bobby Fischer

Because he was the greatest who ever played, many who revere chess, were willing to endure Bobby Fischer's eccentricities, paranoia, and weird behavior.

When Bobby Fischer died in Iceland in 2008, at age 64, it ended one of the most bizarre lives of our times; one that really has no parallels.

What most people know of Bobby Fisher is that he was a chess genius (IQ 180). That’s it. He was born in Brooklyn in 1943 to an erratic, nomadic Jewish mother and an uncertain father.

No one – not his friends nor fellow grandmasters – fully understood him. At the slightest provocation, real or imagined, he could end a friendship, never to talk to that person again.

More than a chess prodigy (he was U.S. chess champion at age 14), Bobby Fischer, in the opinion of many, was the greatest chess player who ever lived – in a class all of his own, without equal. Ever.

This fact alone made him special, and accounts for why grandmasters of all nationalities, and those who revere chess, were willing to endure his eccentricities, paranoia, weird anti-social behavior. And come back for more.

A new book about Bobby Fischer -- End Game, by his friend and founding editor of Chess Life, Frank Brady -- tells us more about him than has ever before been told. Few questions are answered, many are posed. Fischer remains a haunting mystery – unique and mesmerizing.

Brady warns readers that “paradoxes abound” in Fischer’s life: “Bobby was secretive, yet candid; generous, yet parsimonious; naïve, yet well-informed; cruel, yet kind; religious, yet heretical.” While his games were “filled with charm and beauty and significance, (his) outrageous pronouncements were filled with cruelty and prejudice and hate.”

A reason to pay attention to Bobby Fisher today is that his like has never before been seen, and likely never will again. While chess is not everyone’s forte, great chess players tend to be eccentric studies—Alekhine, Capablanca, Steinitz, up to the more recent Botvinnik, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov and Kasparov.

As a chess prodigy, Fischer more or less kept to himself in school, unaware that a classmate had a crush on him as “sexy – Barbra Streisand, whom he recalled as “this mousy little girl.”

That Fischer became world champion is one thing, how he did it another. Until Fischer, world champion tournaments included the top players in a round robin, each win worth one point, a draw ½ point. In event of a tie at the conclusion, the defending champion was declared the winner.

On his way to winning the world title in 1972 and cracking the Russians hold on international chess, Fischer first defeated Grandmaster Mark Taimanov 6-0, then crushed Denmark’s Bent Larsen 6-0, then beat Tigran Petrosian in the first game before succumbing briefly to stomach flu, and then finally beating Petrosian 6½ to 2½ .

Fischer put together 20 wins in a row against grandmasters—not one draw. This feat is the baseball equivalent of pitching a series of no-hitters.

As he grew out of his teens, the shy, abrasive, solitary Bobby became more demanding, more weird—witness his 1972 world championship match against Boris Spassky in Iceland.

The temperamental Bobby fussed, made demands, failed to appear. The match was delayed, the world waited impatiently and angrily. Henry Kissinger phoned Fischer urging him on behalf of America to play.

Fischer forfeited the first couple of games—then rebounded to annihilate Spassky – whose eccentricity was being the essence of decency and gentlemanly behavior. He became a true friend and admirer of Fischer.

After winning the title, Fischer dropped chess, didn’t play for 20 years, becoming something of a travelling recluse, living off the generosity of admirers, invariably offending them. He turned down millions to play Anatoly Karpov in 1975. He refused to be photographed or sign autographs.

He felt the Russian cheated in tournaments – later confirmed by grandmasters who defected. Bobby charged in tournaments Russians purposely drew games against one another, ensuring that Russians would be fit and primed against chess rivals. It worked until Fischer.

Bobby became a raging anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Anyone  – who did him wrong was “a dirty Jew.” This slur applied to anyone he disliked. Ironically, many of his closest chess friends and benefactors were Jewish – but weren’t included in his admonitions. “Jew” was his synonym for a bad guy. It cost him several friends, who threw him out.

After 20 years of living like a homeless person in one room, in 1992 Fischer  agreed to a $5 million rematch with Spassky in Montenegro -- defying the State Department’s economic sanctions against then-Yugoslavia.

Fischer won the match handily (both he and Spassky were rusty and made errors) and he got $3.5 million to Spassky’s  $1.5 million.

Fischer spewed hate towards America (the IRS was after unpaid taxes), and he called the 9/11 terrorist attack “wonderful news . . . I applaud the act . . .  I want to see the U.S. wiped out.”

When the U.S. sought his extradition from Japan, the only country offering him sanctuary was Iceland, where he was a hero for putting it on the map in 1972. By then Fischer verged on being a loony.

He’d given up chess, was embroiled in religious and political philosophy, was hooked on homeopathic medicine, felt medical drugs were poison, ate only natural foods, and had all the fillings in his teeth removed as he felt they were poisoning him. This caused problems as his teeth crumbled.

He died in Iceland of kidney failure, left no will for his estate of some $2 million (from the 1992 Spassky match). His estate is still being contested by a child he believed was his, but DNA indicates wasn’t; two nephews; a Japanese “wife” who can’t prove it; and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

At news of his death, Boris Spassky, now a French citizen, mourned: “My brother is dead.”

If one looks at his words, Bobby Fischer seems a nut case. It’s tempting to suppose he was schizophrenic, but psychiatrists who knew him say he wasn’t. Just obsessive, paranoid and hugely stubborn (the record shows even as an impoverished youth he’d turn down a $50 award if someone as making $5 for arranging it).

Before Fischer, a chess championship match would net $65 to the winner, $35 to the loser. Fischer made the pot worth millions.

I remember living in Moscow in 1965 and attending the chess club when Spassky beat Tigran Petrosian. The moves were shown to the crowded street on a board from a balcony, and Russians as one bowed their heads over pocket chess sets and analyzed the moves. I’d never before seen fervor of this sort.

Even then, every Russian knew of Bobby Fischer. Few Canadians or Americans had a clue who Boris Spassky was.

Now Fischer is gone, but what he did for chess will live forever.

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