Born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois, Bobby Fischer was a child prodigy, and represented an earlier age of chess when humans played against humans rather than against computers. He has been called the “Mozart of Chess.”
Charles Krauthammer wrote in “Time Magazine” that Bobby Fischer was the “posterboy for the mad chess genius,” referring to previous world chess champions whose lives following their championship matches were less than ideal. A chess player himself, Krauthammer wrote this article, entitled “Did Chess Make Him Crazy?” which was published in Time on May 2, 2005. (Gale Power Search, retrieved January 18, 2008).
Bobby Fischer, who was also known as Robert James Fischer and Robert James Fisher, was an eight-time U.S. chess champion. He won his first U.S. chess title at age 13. At the age of 17, he received the title of international grand master. He was best known for the game which astounded the world, when he won the world chess championship in Reykjavik, Iceland against the Russian, Boris Spassky during a critical period of the Cold War era. The match was televised around the world.
Fischer was also temperamental and egocentric, causing controversy on multiple occasions. He sometimes failed to show up for scheduled matches and was known for anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. tirades. Following his historic match he became a recluse. In 1975 he lost the world title after refusing to play in that championship challenge match.
After two decades of self-imposed exile from the chess world, he accepted a challenge by Spassky to play in Sveti Stefan, Montenegro, in the former Yugoslavia. The challenge came in 1992, during a period of U.S. and international sanctions caused by the Yugoslav civil war and when Fischer accepted the challenge it resulted in his indictment by the U.S. Threatened with imprisonment, he did not return to the U.S., eventually renouncing his U.S. citizenship and ultimately settling in Reykjavik and being granted Icelandic citizenship.
Bobby Fischer died at the age of 64 in Reykjavic, Iceland, after a serious illness.
Web Sites
- BBC
- BBC News: Bobby Fischer Arrives in Iceland (March 25, 2005)
- World Chess Links
- Bill Wall’s Chess Master Profiles
- Atlantic Monthly Magazine (December 2002)
- Bobby Fischer Unofficial Home Page
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