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Remembrances, reactions, and comments from around the chess world. Robert James Fischer 1943-2008
GM Raymond Keene's Obituary of Fischer
GM Susan Polgar: In spite of his obvious flaws, he will be remembered as "The King of Chess", a genius on the board and the man who broke through the iron curtain chess. RIP Bobby. You will be missed by many.
IM Dr. Danny Kopec: Bobby Fischer was probably the greatest chessplayer of our time, certainly one of the two or three best. The mental illness that sadly befell him is reflective of our society, of the chess world and how he was never properly rewarded or recognized for his genius. It is also reflective of how the chess world is spoiled by politics, jealousies and business greed, especially by those who rarely or never play a move.
NM Dan Heisman (as reported in Philly.com): A few months after winning the 1956 U.S. Junior Chess Championship in Philadelphia, Bobby Fischer - then 13 - beat one of the leading American chess masters, Donald Byrne, in what was then dubbed "The Game of the Century." Byrne went on to play Fischer several more times, and later, when asked what he thought about the chess icon, Byrne would put his hand to his cheek and say: "He's a heckuva nice guy...but he's absolutely out of his mind." And that was before Fischer walked away from tournament chess and became a controversial recluse, recalled Dan Heisman, who learned advanced chess under Byrne at Penn State and later went on to become Philadelphia champion. Early on, Fischer was known for being hard to get along with, said Heisman, 57, a chess instructor in Wynnewood, PA. But Fischer also fought for better treatment and playing conditions for chess players. Despite his eccentricities, Fischer was a chess hero all the way up to his 1972 historic victory in Reykjavik over Russian world champion Boris Spassky, but his later anti-American and anti-Semitic rantings made chess players ambivalent. "We wanted to embrace him as an American champion, but we didn't want anything to do with his pronouncements or philosophies," Heisman said this morning as he scanned the Internet for breaking news on Fischer's death. Heisman never met Fischer, but he recalled the aura Fischer had among chess players: "Bobby Fischer was very charismatic. He was like Arnold Palmer. People were following him around." When Fischer beat Spassky, he was actually the rated as the favorite, but the drama of the match - from his first loss to his ultimate triumph - riveted many Americans who viewed it as a symbolic Cold War win. "But for us, it wasn't an east versus west thing," Heisman said. "This amazing talent, Bobby Fischer, was finally getting a chance to show his stuff at the highest level and win the world championship."
FM Eric Schiller (www.ericschiller.com): Bobby Fischer changed my life. Without him, I never would have decided to spend my life doing chess. My one regret is that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to play s few blitz games with him, as our acquaintance came just before the 1972 match and I didn’t think it would be proper to ask when he was getting ready to face Spassky, though his set always had a clock next to it and I knew he liked to play casual games, which he would win with the same determination as a professional contest. But as I was just approaching 1800 (and my 18th year), it just didn’t seem right. On my few visits he was very pleasant, though I was just a flunky delivering messages and such (as I was working at the Manhattan Chess Club at the time). I saw no hint of the troubled times to come, and had no idea what the next few years would hold. All I knew was that my hero was about to do battle with Boris Spassky, with the coveted World Championship on the line. I had only one contact with Fischer later, in 1981, when a TV network asked me to pass on an offer of $1 million for his participation in a tournament. I got a polite reply that he’d do it on two conditions: That it be a match, not a tournament, and that “his World Championship title be respected at all times.” The second was no problem, but the first was a deal-breaker. Because there were doubts he would actually show up and play, it had to be a tournament, which could go on without him. But no substitute match would be worth the money. So the project fell apart. Sadly, he remained in retirement until the 1992 Spassky match. The deterioration of his mental state was not just a personal tragedy for him, but also killed American chess. There was plenty of interest in sponsoring major chess events, but only if Fischer participated. Still, I forgive Fischer for all of what happened later because he was clearly mentally ill. But he has left us a small treasure trove of masterpieces and ended the Soviet domination of the World Championship. He will always be known as one of the greatest players ever, and his games guarantee his immortality long after everyone has forgotten his hateful words.
Daaim Shabazz, (The Chess Drum): Bobby Fischer has created an indelible mark on the chess world not only for his revolutionary play, but for his uncompromising and unrelenting approach to the game. Despite his high level of understanding, he was creative enough not to let his technical skill get in the way of his intuition. His life story is symbolic of David and Goliath... the lone Fischer against the Soviet machine and later the U.S. and Japan. Toward the end of his life, he had developed a deep sympathy for impoverished people who were fighting tremendous odds. He saw in these people his own plight and identified with their struggle. While it is regrettable that many have focused on Fischer's unpopular political views, the true beauty is the imagination he captured in his games and in his ideas. Chess owes him a debt of gratitude. He was a man of the future... a man ahead of his time.
NM Brian Wall: Bobby Fischer was 12 years older than me so his exploits were always on my mind. When he died I suddenly wanted to quit Chess. I think it's because I always wanted to have some kind of conversation with Bobby. The closest I came is a Chessmaster that traveled to Iceland talked to Bobby and the Chessmaster said that Bobby knew about me. I always wondered what that meant. Was he talking about my www.Walverine.com emails or trying to popularize the Free Bobby petition or maybe mentioning Fischer's website on ICC. I always imagined what it would be like to talk to Bobby. I saw Bobby play two Candidate matches against Larsen in Denver as a teen. When Bobby beat Spassky I was a busboy/dishwasher/waiter at Villae Inn and it made the front page of the Rocky Mountain news. I later read that Bobby's defeat of Larsen 6-0 was the single greatest rating feat in Chess. Bobby beat 20 GMs in a row. Kasparov said he only managed 5 in a row - Kasparov might be a better player but no one had Bobby's almost religious will to win. I heard Bobby's deep New York accent when he postmortemed with Bent. I also wondered if the time in jail weakened Bobby's body. Wardens don't care much about prisoner health, just prisoner control. One time I dealt with breaking up with a girlfriend by playing over all of Bobby's games in U.S. Championships. He only lost 3 games in 8 championships and those losses were very hard fought. His play was ultra sound and deeply thought out, a very high level of strategy and tactics combined with an obvious ego hatred of ever losing to anybody. People half my age like to talk about his decline but people my age remember the profound, electric, personal effect Bobby had on an entire Chess world. It's safe to say millions played Chess because of him. There was essentially nothing more exciting in Chess than Bobby. I read MY SIXTY MEMORABLE GAMES a thousand times to the point where I had to deliberately avoid using his chess phrases, so well worn were they in my mind. We had all waited so long that Bobby playing Spassky again was in the order of a miracle, like George Foreman boxing again after 20 years. My grandmother remembered playing with Sammy Reshevsky as a child. Bobby had that incurable honesty that you find in Kasparov or Nakamura. It seems if you spend so much time arriving at the truth in Chess, there is a carryover in Life. You have to analyze and report your findings, regardless of the circumstances. To do less would be to insult the position. When Bobby was younger and his mind was sounder, his outrageous statements were hilarious, almost like Diogenes or Nietzsche or Jesus had come down from the mountain and proclaimed the obvious folly of mankind. It was like the world was a fake dinner party and Bobby was the toddler making everyone howl with laughter by saying stuff like - Did Uncle Joe get drunk again and grab Mommy's dress? Dying at 64 somehow cements the legend. There were hints Bobby refused medical treatment that might have saved him. He hated the Chess position being out of his control so I imagine he hated his body being out of his control too. We all get excited when a man gets mad, like watching a gorilla have a tantrum. We spend millions to watch Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, John McEnroe or Phil Hellmuth lose their temper. Bobby's early tirades were fun to analyze and most people took his side. One of the most impressive things about Bobby was reported by IM John Donaldson. When Bobby was a 12 year old correspondence player he would inform his opponents that he intended to be the World Chess Champion. If you doubted that or scoffed at him, he wouldn't send any more moves. I was watching Nakamura take hits on ICC watching Corus 2008 and finally Hikaru said - When I get to FIDE 2700 maybe all you idiots will shut the %$#@ up. Anyone who gets between a genius and his dream/destiny will be steamrolled. Americans loved talking about Bobby. American Chessplayers had this - My dad can beat up your dad - hero worship. The most common question I got when I told random people I was a Chessmaster - What's Bobby up to now? Bobby was in everyone's imagination. He always made great press. When GM Dzindzichashvili lived in Denver for a year 5 years ago, I loved to ask him about Tal, Korchnoi, Petrosian, Botvinnik, Geller, Bronstein because those were the guys Bobby had to deal with. It was all the stuff of boyhood legends to me. Anyone could write the greatest Chess book in the world by holding a microphone to Dzindi for a day. Rest in peace, Bobby Fischer. You were the greatest.
GM James Plaskett: Fischer was, in many ways, the archetypal mad genius. His play, especially in the period 1970-1972, was simply fabulous. But the Russian psychologists who analysed him were, I think, right in concluding that he was a psychopath. William Hartston wrote of his pursuit of perfection that "He was not interested in merely being the best player in the world. He wanted to play chess as well as it could be played by a human being." And it may be argued that, in a pre-computer era, he achieved that quasi-spiritual goal. Then came the machines and the extensive analysis of the openings which so sickened Fischer. And not only Fischer. Opinions will always differ as to precisely what precipitated his descent into madness, but he died crazed, and the opinions that black people are "scum", Jews are "bastards" and his praise for the 9/11 terrorists ought not to be swept aside. Those remarks should be central to any total assessment of the man.
Tim Krabbé (Tim Krabbé's Open Chess Diary): If chess is still played ten thousand years from now, Bobby Fischer will be the only player of our times who matters.
D La Pierre Ballard - 3 time Oklahoma State Champion, retired: The Boy from Brooklyn Non-chessplayers will never understand that Bobby was one of the greatest American heroes of the twentieth century. He beat the Soviet chess machine and he was just a boy from Brooklyn who had no support from the government and very little support from elsewhere. The Soviets had been pouring millions in chess in their country since 1925. All of their top players were paid about the same as engineers. It is no wonder they had roughly twenty of the top twenty-five chess players in the world. The Soviet chess players claimed that their high success rate in chess was due to the superiority of the Soviet Man. This played extremely well among intellectuals the world over, especially those in developing countries. Of course, it was all hogwash. Bobby showed the world that the Soviets could be beaten and beaten badly. One prime example comes to mind, at Herceg Novi in 1970, Bobby played in a five-minutes chess tournament with three former world champions: Smyslov, Tal and Petrosian. The tournament also included: Bronstein, Korchnoi, Reshevsky, Uhlmann, Ivkov, Matulovic, Hort and Ostojic. Bobby scored 19-3 and so dominated the field that the other players are still, as of 2005 at least, coming up with excuses regarding why they did so badly against him. Bobby used hardly over half of his time for each game and played some theoretical novelties. This five minute tournament showed that he was already way above anyone else. In 1975 when he was world champion and getting ready to play a match against Karpov to defend his title, Bobby and the organizers agreed upon the general rules. Then the organizers began changing the rules. Bobby was never one for quiet negotiation. He refused to play. He always considered himself to still be world champion because the organizers of that match had gone back on what he thought was settled. In 1992 Bobby considered that the match with Spassky was to defend his world championship title. He played in what was then Yugoslavia to do so. My opinion is that if that was illegal to do then he should have been pardoned. Spassky was not prosecuted or persecuted and similar laws applied to him. Bobby told me, himself, on April 4, 1964 in Wichita, Kansas that Paul Morphy was the most talented player of all time and that Morphy would have dominated the chess world in 1964, had he lived then, as he did in 1857-1858. When I congratulated Bobby on winning the U.S. Championship by the score of 11-0 just a few months previously, I asked him how he did it. He shrugged his shoulders and held his hands with palms upward to tell me that he did not know. I talked to him for about 15 or 20 minutes just the two of us. I was rated as a Class-B player, but he referred to various games just as if I were a much stronger player and that I knew them. He was very friendly and polite to me. He had a quite strong Brooklyn accent.
IM Jack Peters (LA Times): I never met Bobby Fischer, but I felt that I knew him because I spent hundreds of hours studying his games and reading articles about him. And, like so many other youngsters in the 1960s, I wanted to be like him. Not that he was my hero, you understand - I was far too grownup to have heroes. Call him my role model. Some Fischer obituaries criticized him for his many disputes with chess officials. I think we must remember that Fischer often fought for the improved playing conditions that all grandmasters sought. He was the only one uncompromising enough to refuse to play when the conditions weren't up to his standards. Eventually, his intransigence produced fairer rules for the world championship. Despite his demands for top dollar, Fischer wasn't a greedy prima donna only out for himself. The last portion of Fischer's life horrified me. Fischer's statements were offensive, but the true horror was that people and governments could not make allowances for a man who was clearly deranged. Iceland showed admirable compassion in accepting Fischer.
IM Lawrence Day: Without much doubt Bobby Fischer was the most talented chess player ever born. Later champions like Karpov and Kasparov may have played better at their peaks, but they had benefits of training, computer assistance and state sponsorship which made their results more of a team effort than an individual accomplishment. At the same time the Soviet system insisted that its top grandmasters have other interests: Botvinnik the engineer, Smyslov and Taimanov musicians, Tal the journalist and so forth. Fischer's monomaniacal pursuit of chess rather obviously did not help him develop a balanced psyche. This left him rather unprepared for some challenges that were quite unique. For example the F.B.I. keeping his mother under surveillance. To notice it would seem 'paranoid' yet it was true. It should also be noted that the media treated Fischer most unfairly. The critical experience was probably Sports Illustrated misquoting him about drawn-by-agreement positions from Curacao, 1962. Mate in three, illustrated Sports Illustrated with a diagram. As they never bothered correcting the misinformation, Fischer wrote off the media. Yet they pursued him fanatically; paparazzi at their worst, for their ordinary targets such as recording stars, actors or royalty had the financial means to hire security. Fischer, in sharp contrast, was poor. In addition the media often exaggerated Fischer's eccentricities. For example, in 1979 Fischer had his silver-mercury teeth fillings removed. Implanting toxic mercury in one's skull may be a tad risky. Was that angle worth pursuing? No, Fischer was just 'paranoid' thinking the C.I.A. would be bugging him. The juicy myth interfered with the mundane truth. Likewise, as proof of Fischer's lunacy, the American public were told he was suing clock manufacturers. He had invented the clock that runs backwards. Even after increments became totally normal, the lunacy myth lived on. Watching the American obituaries I noticed a consistent reluctance to mention why Fischer had emigrated. No country is very enthusiastic about their expatriate dissidents; the U.S.A. had already dismissed Ezra Pound's criticisms as being merely the delusions of an insane man. But to tell Fischer's life story without mentioning the events leading up to his 1982 pamphlet "I Was Tortured in a Pasadena Jail House" is hardly good journalism. The Canadian network CTV did mention this, but dismissed it as "long-winded" and "paranoid" and repeated the police statement that if Fischer had properly identified himself then there wouldn't have been a problem. Perhaps, but he certainly didn't want the paparazzi nor the KGB knowing where he lived. Exerting his basic right to be left alone may not have been the wisest move, but it was certainly understandable. Ironically, the day Fischer died the headline in one Canadian paper was about our foreign ministry having the U.S.A. and Israel on its internal list of foreign countries where prisoners were at risk of torture. A copy of Fischer's article is online at http://www.anusha.com/pasadena.htm. The reader can decide for themselves how "paranoid" or "long-winded" it is.
JOHN B. HENDERSON, Director of Marketing & Chess Content, Internet Chess Club: Winston Churchill's famous description of wartime Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma could well have summed up the controversial life & times of the late, great Bobby Fischer - even right up to his chessic premature death last week at the age of 64. Love him or loath him, there was no denying he caused a worldwide interest in chess and influenced a whole generation of fans and players alike - and I was no different having being "seduced" into chess as a 10-year-old kid at the start of Fischer-Spassky 1972. From a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-raised child prodigy, he went on to become the unlikely all-American hero who shattered the belief of the leaders of Soviet chess that a world champion had to be cultured, well-rounded personality, made in the USSR. But it all turned sour when he became persona non grata in the U.S. following the breaking of UN sanctions in playing a 1992 ‘return match’ with Spassky in civil war-torn Yugoslavia, a move that ultimately led to him being imprisoned for almost a year in Japan on extradition charges back to the U.S. Despite all his imperfections, paranoia, anti-Semitic diatribes and expressing support for the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York, Fischer should be best remembered for his glittering career en route to his historic 1972 victory in Reykjavik over Spassky, rather than the sad and prolonged end-game of his personal life.
Kelly Atkins (Chessville Forum Host): I don't know of any normal person who would agree with Fischer's outlandish, hateful and irrational statements over the years. The widely held belief that he had severe mental problems didn't start with his 9/11 outbursts or wild accusations about the Jews though. Many of the people around him thought he was mentally ill as far back as the mid-Fifties when he was barely in his teens. It just got progressively worse over the years, especially after the mid-Seventies, then even more by the late Nineties. While his statements and behavior were offensive, bear in mind that he did indeed suffer from a severe mental illness and this often robs the sufferer of the ability to control what they say & do, realize it's wrong or its effect on others, or recognize their own illness and seek or accept help for it. Bobby was more to be pitied than condemned. There, but for the grace of God, could go any of us.
André Schulz (ChessBase GmbH): He was a poor soul. Grown up without a father, but with a mother with mental problems, he had a big handicap when he started his life. Then, infected with chess, the teenager fled into his own world, that finally he understood better than any other person. After he became the king of his world, he closed the door. Outside of his world he remained a child. In the history of chess, ten years, from 1962 to 1972, belongs to Robert Fischer. The existence of the current chess professional circuit is clearly the result of his efforts, as well as the big number of chess fans worldwide. Maybe Fischer was the only single individual, who had to battle against both super power nations of the world. First, he fought against the chess army of the USSR, in the end of his life he had to resist the pursuit of his former homeland USA. He died at the age of 64 - when else…
Dr. Frank Brady, President Marshall Chess Club, FIDE International Arbiter: The lecture that I gave at the Marshall Chess Club, "Bobby Fischer: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess," pretty much sums up my feelings about Bobby. He was the pride of chess not only because of his great accomplishments on the board, but his determination and perseverance to become the best player ever. He was the zeitgeist of chess, an icon of the game, and like Beethoven, Shakespeare, and Van Gogh, his artistic creations will last forever. He was the sorrow of chess because of his anti-Semitism, his anti-Americanism, and his deplorable comments about the tragedy of 9/11. I am saddened by his death - he did reach out to me through an intermediary just a few weeks ago - but I certainly think he shouldn't be deified as a man. How sad!
IGM ADORJÁN András: There are surprisingly lot I can tell concerning Bobby. To start with I begun the Spanish Exchange after the Olympic in Cuba (1966) where He beat Portisch, Gligoric, Jimenez. I'm pretty sure that in the higher circles I have the best score (between 75-80 %). But this is only to start with. The real unique is Bobby beat Spassky in 1992 with the weapon I used against Ivkov (Skopje) 1976 (!!). Another story: When Leko beat Kramnik (Tilburg) 1998 with the Adorján Gambit, Bobby, who at that time lived in Hungary, did nothing but analysed it. At least according to Lajos Portisch, who doesn't make up false fairy tales. Bobby kept connection with Lajos, Pal Benko, and "Uncle Lili" (that's Andor Lilienthal, who is now the eldest GM in the world - 97 years').
Bobby is Gone! The greatest chessplayer of them all has left us. Despite his outrageous behavior in his last years, during which he was an emotionally sick man, let us remember him as a true genius of the chess board and a brave soul who took on the Soviet chess machine and won by sheer perseverance and talent. Demanding and overbearing at times, he, more than any other player, strove for, and got better playing conditions and better prizes for all professional players. He was indeed a tragic figure in that he was his own worst enemy during the major part of his adult life. Had he not been totally fixated on himself, had he shown humility and grace to the hundreds of people who showered him with kindness, and had he understood that his talent for the game, however monumental, could not have overcome the many obstacles to stardom without that help, he would have raised the image of chess and chessplayers to new peaks of honor and respect. Instead he chose to spit on the country which spawned and sustained him, defied its laws, and lived in exile in the forgiving and gracious country where he scored his greatest triumph, all the time displaying a mean-spiritedness and defiance of every convention of reasonable behavior. But in making these statements, let us also acknowledge that in his early years Bobby was not dealt a good hand in the game of life. His father, whether he was a man named Fischer or his mother's Hungarian lover, chose to leave the family and thereby deprived a sensitive and highly intelligent child of the guidance, counsel, and example that might have made a supreme difference. Nature has a way of compensation for trying to protect individuals...up to a point. In Bobby's case he was home alone a lot in his younger days and thus by chance (his loving sister bought him a chess game) found an intriguing way to amuse himself. With time for his fertile mind to learn the intricacies of a famous game and with quick success in establishing a great skill that was soon recognized, this lonely child soon had a guiding light that in part must have compensated for the lack of a father.
The inner anger that the father's absence generated was transmuted by this
child into the form of a mental toughness and burning desire to excel that
enabled him to surmount the many barriers that he was to meet later both on
the chessboard and in life itself. What was missing was any behavioral model
that might have enabled a richer, warmer, and more human development to take
over when not engaged in the heat of battle. Bobby, deep down inside we know you didn't really mean the many intemperate statements you made. We love you anyway. Rest in Peace dear Bobby.
Pete Tamburro, in the Star-Ledger (New Jersey): The death of Bobby Fischer this past week went around the news wires of the world as quickly as when those same electrons used to breathlessly report the latest twist in the Great Chess Drama of 1972. Commentators of all stripes inadequately attempt to put this chess genius into an understandable portrait. We couldn’t do it when he was alive and shall fare no better after his demise. He was White Knight and Black Knight all rolled into one. We rooted for him and despaired of him almost all at the same time. In an interview with Frank Brady, Fischer’s biographer and early friend, the Marshall Chess Club president waxed nostalgic about how nice the young Fischer was and then almost in the same breath felt compelled to express his disgust at Fischer’s hateful words in recent years. There is no satisfactory solution to the chess puzzle that is genius. Back in 1946, Chess Review had commentary about Alekhine’s death, Reuben Fine describing the late world champ this way: “…his eyes and bearing had a strange intensity…The man loved chess, it was the breath of life to him.” I.A. Horowitz noted, “The evil he may or may not have done will soon be forgotten, but the beauty he created on the chessboard will live forever.” Although we have no explanation for Fischer, we have a lament. Must so many chess geniuses have problems as well? We think back about how great it was when Fischer was energizing American interest in chess in a way never seen and how great it could have been if he had done simuls, lectured at clubs, started a school for promising young players…all that sort of thing. Instead, we got a tortured human being not dealing particularly well with his personal demons. His only solace was the one place he could control: the chessboard. What he created there was magnificent. For years, my anger at Fischer’s anti-American and anti-Semitic comments led me to take his books off my personal library shelves. Oddly enough, just a few weeks ago, I put My Sixty Memorable Games back up with Alekhine and Capablanca and Lasker and Morphy and Marshall and all the “K’s” because, well, he belongs with them. His games belong with their games. It felt wrong to censor the art of a genius just as it did for Horowitz sixty plus years ago; yet, censuring the person is part of the necessary sadness for what could have been.
Jovan Petronic, Technical Director, Global Chess Academy: "Meeting Robert James Fischer in Beograd, 1992 was my dream-come-true."
Richard Hornor, President - Activityprograms.org: I am tired of hearing that Bobby Fischer was a madman. He was a genius, and few geniuses follow conventional norms. “Norm” or “Normal” are synonyms for mediocrity. While some may not agree with Fischer’s political or ethnic views, Bobby was entitled to his opinions, just like anyone else. And so, I will remember him both for his genius and for his rants, admiring him unconditionally. It is easy for mediocre citizens to criticize genius they cannot comprehend. Albert Einstein said “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.” I sneered when the initial Associated Press story about Bobby’s death crossed the wire, not focusing on his incredible genius, but reminding us of Fischer’s “anti-Semitism” and his defiance of U.S. law by his heinous crime of playing another match against Boris Spassky. And there was the weak mind that wrote about the great spirit. I make my living from chess, arranging chess programs in schools. My enthusiasm for chess started, like many others, during the prelude to the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match. I dated a Russian lady a few years ago; she told me that when she was a young Russian in the Soviet Union, the crowds cheered more for Fischer than for Spassky. She lived in a small town about 150 miles south of Moscow. There was a huge demo board set up, outdoors in the town square, and a man on a ladder with a stick moving the pieces as the moves were reported across the wire. Mobs were gathered around that demo board almost non-stop during the match. When Fischer would win a game, she said you could hear the applause and yells and whoops from the street indoors; everyone in the town was thrilled. The Russian citizens, like Fischer, were tired of the Soviet establishment rigging and distorting chess events and they saw this as a well-deserved slap in the face for the Soviet chess machine. My hopes are that another American will come forth to challenge for world champion. It was Bobby Fischer that put chess in my life. Bobby Fischer’s impact on chess was immense, and many regret he did not do more to promote the game. Such regrets are absurd. Fischer owed us nothing. He stood up boldly in face of a tainted FIDE. He won the world championship. He won many tournaments against grandmasters. He was the youngest person to ever become grandmaster. He accomplished what no one else ever had in chess, on numerous fronts. He was the greatest chess player in history. He did it all. Some of us wanted him to do it all over again. But there was nothing left to prove after 1972.
Curt Carlson, 4th US Correspondence Champion: Fischer's death, more than anything else, ended a dream that he might play again, like John Lennon getting shot in 1980 ended a dream that Beatles might get back together. I wish he had at least annotated some of his great games from the early 70's. Now we will never know what his opinions were of his first game with Larsen in 1971, his first game with Petrosian the same year, and his tenth game with Spassky from 1972, among many others. That will be left to computers and speculators! Reuben Fine was right when he said Fischer badly needed psychiatric help, and this was especially true towards at end of his life. But history will remember him for his greatness 35 years ago, not his madness at the end.
Bob (not Bobby) Long (Chessco): If you are a chessplayer of some renown, 64 would be a good "death" number, even if too soon. Fischer and I grew up in the same era, with decidedly different skills. This morning when checking my emails about 8 AM ET I noted two message from my friend Bragi Kristjansson (an attorney chess friend of mine who lives in Reykjavik). He told me Fischer had passed away. A stunner, just like when I had heard that Gene Pitney, one of my favorite singers, had passed away last year. When you get into your 60s this becomes more and more common. Fischer was 2 years older than I. I met him several times: Reykjavik and a year earlier in Denver as he was thrashing Bent Larsen. His talent as a true chess assassin was well known. I told my friend Bragi that had Fischer and Kasparov played speed chess within the last 10 years I would still put my money on Fischer. Although the numerous websites were short on details, Bragi told me that Fischer died in the hospital and not at home. He really didn't want doctor's care as he didn't trust them or Western medicine. He was "true Fischer to the very end." I've had a lot to say about Fischer over the years after talking with him briefly in Denver. He wasn't as 1-dimensional as the know-it-alls tried to portray him. These same types of people did the same thing in writing or talking about Marilyn Monroe. A few years ago we
published Eddie Gufeld's "Bobby Fischer, from chess genius... to legend."
It was composed of many articles from various sources including fotos which
were not well-known anywhere. It was always irritating to me that the government hounded him for playing chess in the embargoed Yugoslavia, but when I contacted my Congressman, Jim Leach, about all the US chess companies doing business buying Chess Informant's during that embargo time, they did NOTHING about it. I've always hated hypocrisy and many of those who wrote badly about Fischer were guilty of hypocrisies themselves. Yet, Bobby, like all of us, was flawed too much for "normal" society. But what's new? Look at the CNN headlines every day. Fischer was good
for business while he was involved in chess--after that all of us had to get
more creative. The photo was
taken by me after the first game in 1972 and reproduced on the back cover of
our Fischer book. The problem with Polaroid film was that over time
the chemistry tended to change and the colors would exhibit some "running."
I used a Nikon for B&W fotos but I think it was a Polaroid for the color
one. Ron Weick's article on Fischer in our SQUARES magazine was desired in a memorial issue by the editor of Chess Life. I have read many of the comments on the web about Fischer's demise. Surprisingly, most of them were not insane. Most wanted more of the good 'ole Bobby. It would have helped if the news media, early on, had called him Robert or Bob. Some people had called him Bob. When you get to be 12 or so, you don't like being called Bobby by your Dad or his friends or other friends. Take it from me, I know. But "Bobby" sounds so cutesy. He was a Northerner, not some kid from Georgia or Arkansas. When I was in the Petroleum Building in Denver for a party after the Fischer-Larsen match, someone had made a name tag for him and spelled his name: Bobbi Fisher. Now who's the nutcase here? Fischer, as troublesome as you could be, as exasperating, as funny, as smart, you no doubt are in a much better place. May you rest in peace.
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