Bobby Fischer, the greatest American chess player of the 20th Century and possibly the most talented player of all time, died on January 17, 2008 in Reykjavik, Iceland after being ill for some time. The chess legend’s body recently was exhumed in order that DNA samples can be harvested in order to determine a paternity suit.
Fischer died at the age of 64. It was a symbolic age for there are 64 squares on a chessboard. Known for his eccentricities and stubbornness — both qualities that factored in the end of his playing career in 1975 when, as the reigning World Champion, he refused to defend his title — Fischer spent the last two decades of his life in exile. Those quirks that many thought were part of a psychological warfare arsenal were sadly revealed in the final years of his life to be likely manifestations of mental illness.
Opening Game
Robert James Fischer was born in March 9, 1943 in Chicago to Regina Wender Fischer, a Swiss-born Jew who had been raised in St. Louis and was a naturalized U.S. citizen. She listed her first husband, the German biophysicist Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, as Bobby’s father on her son’s birth certificate, but when Frau Fischer returned to the U.S. in 1939 after studying medicine in Germany, her husband had not accompanied her. Fischer’s actual father might have been the Hungarian physicist Paul Newmenyi, who also was Jewish.
Fischer would become a rabid anti-Semite late in life, and insist that he wasn’t Jewish.
Fischer’s mother formaly divorced Hans-Gerhardt Fischer in 1945. The young Bobby Fischer was raised in a fatherless home by his mother and an older sister. He discovered the game that would dominate his life at the age of six, after his older sister Joan purchased a chess set in a candy store located beneath the family’s apartment.
Bobby Fischer reportedly was possessed of an extremely high I.Q. in the “Super Genius” range of 180 (only 1% of all people have an I.Q. of 135 or higher). Blessed with a remarkably retentive memory, it was said that Fischer never forgot a game he had played, or any game analyses that he had read. His extremely high “chess intelligence quotient” was combined with a fierce determination to win and a monomania that made him the greatest chess player in the world.
Fischer lived and breathed chess, and he became a National Master at the age of 12. He won the U.S. Junior Chess Championship in July 1956 at the age of 13, making him the youngest-ever Junior Champion. He successfully defended the title the following year.
On October 17, 1956, 13-year-old Bobby Fischer, playing black, defeated 26-year-old Donald Byrne, the winner of the 1953 U.S. Chess Championship, in a game that has gone down in chess history as “The Game of the Century.” Byrne captured Fischer’s queen, but the teenager compensated by taking many pieces in return. In addition to his brilliance, Fischer displayed the innovation and improvisation that were to prove the twin fonts of his chess “genius.”
After winning the U.S. Open Chess Championship and the New Jersey Open Championship, he was invited to participate in the U.S. Chess Championship, held in January 1958. He won, two months shy of his 15th birthday, becoming the youngest U.S. champion in history. The victory brought him the title of International Master. He became a World Chess Federation Grand Master later that year, at the age of 15 years, six months and one day. He was the the youngest Grand Master in history at that point, surpassing Boris Spassky of the USSR, who had become a Grand Master at the age of 18 back in 1955. Fischer and Spassky’s names were fated to be forever linked in chess history.
Bobby Fischer dropped out of Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, New York after turning 16. He supported himself playing chess for the rest of his life.
Middle Game
Bobby Fischer first played Boris Spassky at a tournament in Argentina in 1960. Though Fischer lost the game to Spassky, the two young chess masters tied and were co-winners of the tourney. The loss to Spassky was the only loss Fischer had in the tournament. It would take 12 years before he finally beat Spassky.
In 1961, Fischer played a match against the U.S. Champion Samuel Reshevsky, then ranked as one of the best players in the world and 32 years older than Fischer. Fischer was tied with Reshevsky after 11 games (2 wins each & 7 draws), but dropped out of the match due to a dispute over scheduling with the match organizer. It was a sign of things to come.
“Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.” – Bobby Fischer
By 1962, Fischer had created a reputation for himself as the most talented non-Soviet chess player in the world, despite failing in that year’s Candidates Tournament, a preliminary for determining who will play for the World Championship. Five of the eight players in the tournament were from the USSR, and Fischer claimed that three of the Soviet players were colluding to draw their games so they could concentrate on playing against him. The Soviet players would declare draws early in their games, then involve Fischer in long games that were psychologically and physically draining. He began to hate the Soviet players.
At the 1966 Santa Monica super-tournament, Fischer finished second behind Boris Spassky, then won tournaments in Monte Carlo and Skopje in 1967. The cycle leading to the World Championship began in 1967 at the Sousse Interzonal, and Fischer scored 8.5 points in the first 10 games. However, he withdrew from the tournament due to a scheduling dispute after forfeiting two games in protest, and was eliminated from the 1969 World Championship cycle. Boris Spassky went on to win the World title.
Fischer entered and continued to win the U.S. Championship through 1966-67, resulting in eight straight titles since his first victory in 1957-1958. He continued to enter and win other major tournaments through 1968, but took a sabbatical for 18 months.
Bobby Fischer sat out the 1969 U.S. Championship because he did not like the format and was dismayed by the size of the prize money pot. Since the tournament was a qualifier for the World Championship cycle, with the top three finishers going on to the Interzonal that preceded the Candidates tournament, Fischer should have been eliminated from the 1969-72 Championship cycle. However, he was able to go on and play in the the Interzonal when one Grand Master surrendered his spot for him.
He played in the 1970 USSR v. Rest of the World tournament in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, which took place before the Interzonal. Fischer played second board, culminating in a victory over former World Champion Tigran Petrosian, who had lost his crown to Spassky in 1969. Though he had a higher rating, Fischer had allowed Bent Larsen of Denmark to play first board for the Rest of the World team, but the Dane lost to Spassky, the incumbent World Champ.
Fischer won the 1970 Interzonal with a score of 18.5-4.5 score, finishing the tournament with seven consecutive wins. He continued his winning ways in 1971, racking up 20 straight victories, the second longest winning streak in chess history. Former World Champ Petrosian finally broke the streak during a match with Fischer, but the American bested the former World Champion and won the right to challenge reigning World Champ Boris Spassky, whom he had never beaten.
LIFE Magazine called him “The Deadly Gamesman” in its 1971 cover story.
The Best Player in the World
“I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it.” – Bobby Fischer
The USSR gave special treatment to its Grand Master chess players, as it believed the Soviet mastery over the world’s most difficult game proved the superiority of communism over capitalism, at least for propaganda purposes. Bobby Fischer hated the Soviet team and its players with a vengeance, charging that the Soviet players conspired to draw each other so they could concentrate on beating him. (There was truth to his charges; because of his criticism, round-robin matches of the kind practiced for the ’70 Soviet tournament were replaced with elimination matches.) His enmity towards the Soviet players did not extend to Boris Spassky, though. They liked and respected each other.
By 1972, he had finally positioned himself to make good his objective of being recognized as the greatest chess player in the world. Beating Spassky was the only remaining obstacle.
Fischer had always been difficult when it came to establishing match and tournament conditions. For the world title, he wanted to play in Yugoslavia, but eventually Fischer agreed to Spassky’s choice of Iceland. Fischer also complained about the prize money, which was doubled to $250,000, an unprecedented pot.
The negotiations continued even after Fischer got to Iceland. Fischer’s demands included lighting, air temperature, the size of the table, and the board itself. Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s national security adivser, actually intervened, calling Fischer and urging him to take on Spassky. The match for the World’s Championship had become a surrogate for the Cold War being waged between the U.S. and the USSR. Fischer declared that the match was “the free world against the lying, cheating hypocritical Russians.”
The match between Fischer and Spassky was held in Reykjavik, Iceland, from July through September 1972. Fischer lost the first two games, the first game on a foolish end move and the second game by forfeit, when he refused to leave his room. He was close to forfeiting the match due to his eccentric demands, until Spassky agreed to Fischer’s request to move the third game to a different room. Fischer had been upset by the TV cameras, claiming they were too close to the players. They played the third game in back room, with no cameras. Fischer won.
It was Bobby FIscher’s first victory over Boris Spassky in 12 years. For the rest of their play in 1972 and 1992, Fischer never fell behind Spassky.
Fischer’s play surprised Spassky as the American chess master never repeated an opening line throughout the match and often played opening lines that had not been part of his historical repertoire. Having a phenomenal memory was a great aid in match play since Fischer remembered the repertoire of other players, but other players also studied Fischer. However, in Iceland, in 1972, this was of no use to Spassky, as Fischer was playing lines he had never played before during his chess career. It was highly unorthodox as most masters go with their strengths and continue to play to their strong suit that had benefited them historically. But this was part of Fischer’s genius as a player, the ability to improvise. It became a Cold War metaphor for the West, that our people could improvise, and the closed Soviet system created closed minds.
After half the match was over, Spassky tired to follow suit and did not play his establishing opening lines, but it didn’t help.Bobby Fischer won the match and became the 11th World Chess Champion by racking up 12.5 points to Spassky’s 8.5 with seven wins against one loss and 11 draws in 19 games.
Celebrity
Bobby Fischer’s win was touted in the American press as a great victory for the individualistic United States over the collectivist Soviet Union, whose chess players had dominated the game internationally since the end of World War II. The Fischer-Spassky match was front-page news in the U.S., a country previously not known to follow the sport. The U.S. Chess Federation reported that its membership doubled in 1972.
Bobby Fischer was now a celebrity, appearing on the covers of LIFE Magazine and Sports Illustrated. However, aside from appearing on a Bob Hope TV special, Fischer refused to cash in commercially. He turned down $1 million to endorse a chess board and went into seclusion.
Three years after his victory over Spassky, Fischer — who had not played competitively during that time — refused to defend his title when the World Chess Federation failed to meet one of his 64 demands (other sources put it at two of over a hundred) for a match. Fischer had stipulated that in case of 9-9 tie, he would retain his title. Under extant rules, the winner would have had to score 9.5. Since Fischer’s demand meant that the challenger would have to beat him with 10 games, the Federation refused. Fischer then declined to defend his title, despite the fact that the other 63 demands had been met. The World title went to Anatoly Karpov by default.
Bobby Fischer continued to insist he was the World Chess Champion, as he had not lost the title in a match.
To say that Fischer was odd is an understatement. The Grand Master who said, “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego,” also told a colleague of his admiration of Adolf Hitler, because “he imposed his will on the world.” It was a delicately balanced psyche poised to run amok.
End Game
Bobby Fischer reappeared in 1992 when, defying United Nations sanctions that imposed a ban on commerce with Slobodan Miloševiæ’s Serbia, he met Boris Spassky for a rematch on the resort island in Montenegro. He beat his “Match of a Century” opponent and pocketed $3.35 million in prize money, but faced with a 10-year jail sentence if he returned to the U.S., Fischer decided to remain in exile. He was a vagabond, living first in Hungary, then in the Philippines before winding up in Japan.
He renounced his U.S. citizenship in Japan after he was busted for traveling with an invalid U.S. passport. The Japanese prevented him from leaving the country. Eventually, Iceland — grateful that he had put then-little-known Reykjavik on the world map — granted him citizenship, and he moved back to where he had first beat Spassky and became part of world history.
During the second decade of his exile, Fischer became a well-established public lunatic, praising the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S. and becoming a rabid anti-Semite. He made broadcasts from the Philippines in which he denounced the U.S. He had evolved from a rabid anti-communist into a rabid hater of the U.S. and of Jews. He dropped the surname of “Fischer” and renamed himself Robert James. The newly christened Robert James insisted that he wasn’t Jewish.
Despite his eccentricities, his grave stone in Iceland reads “Robert James Fischer.” He died intestate, leaving behind a fortune estimated at $2 million and no last will and testament, a contrarian to the bitter end.
His body was exhumed, D.N.A. samples were taken, and the corpse reburied due to a lawsuit filed by the mother of nine-year-old Jinky Young, a Filipino girl who will become his legal heir if the D.N.A. tests prove his paternity. Other claimants to Fischer’s estate are Miyoko Watai, a Japanese citizen and the head of the Japanese Chess Association who claims she is Fischer’s wife, having married him in 2004; and his two nephews, Alexander and Nicholas Targ, the sons of his late sister Joan.
Bobby Fischer had never developed a life outside of chess, like most other grand masters; thus, the man who might have established himself as the greatest chess player of all time instead collapsed onto himself and lived the last years of his life deep in a well of paranoia and bigotry.
If Fischer does have a daughter, perhaps she will prove a better legacy to the world than the one he left behind in the wasted last four decades of his life.
Reference:
- New York Times, “Bobby Fischer is Exhumed” gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/bobby-fischer-is-exhumed/
- Time Magazine, “Chess Great Bobby Fischer Exhumed for Paternity Test” newsfeed.time.com/2010/07/06/chess-great-bobby-fischer-exhumed-for-paternity-test/#ix
- TMZ, “Searching for Bobby Fischer’s Illegitimate Daughter” www.tmz.com/2010/07/05/bobby-fischer-body-buried-chess-ireland/
