Bobby Fischer
American Chess Grandmaster
| Date of Birth | : | 09 Mar, 1943 |
| Date of Death | : | 17 Jan, 2008 |
| Place of Birth | : | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Profession | : | Professional Chess Player, Author, Inventor |
| Nationality | : | American, German, Icelandic |
Robert James Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh world chess champion. A chess prodigy, he won the first of a record eight American championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won by a score of 11-0, the only perfect score in the tournament's history. Qualifying for the 1972 World Championship, Fischer swept matches with Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen 6-0. After winning another qualification match against Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War showdown between the United States and the USSR, the match attracted more global interest than any chess championship before or since.
In 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE, chess's international governing body, over match conditions. Consequently, Soviet challenger Anatoly Karpov was named World Champion by default. Fischer subsequently disappeared from public view, although occasional reports of erratic behavior emerged. In 1992, he resurfaced to win an unofficial rematch against Spassky. It was held in Yugoslavia, which at the time was under a United Nations embargo. His participation sparked a conflict with the U.S. government, which warned Fischer that his participation in the match would violate an executive order imposing U.S. sanctions on Yugoslavia. The United States government eventually issued an arrest warrant for him; Fischer subsequently lived as an emigrant. In 2004, he was arrested in Japan and detained for several months for using a passport that the U.S. government had revoked. Eventually, he was granted Icelandic citizenship by a special act of the Icelandic parliament, allowing her to live there until his death in 2008.
Early years
Bobby Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on March 9, 1943. His mother, Regina Wender Fischer, was a US citizen, born in Switzerland; her parents were Polish Jews. Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Regina became a teacher, a registered nurse, and later a physician.
After graduating from college in her teens, Regina traveled to Germany to visit her brother. It was there she met geneticist and future Nobel Prize winner Hermann Joseph Muller, who persuaded her to move to Moscow to study medicine. She enrolled at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, where she met Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, also known as Gerardo Liebscher, a German biophysicist, whom she married in November 1933. In 1938, Hans-Gerhardt and Regina had a daughter, Joan Fischer. The reemergence of antisemitism under Stalin prompted Regina to go with Joan to Paris, where Regina became an English teacher. The threat of a German invasion led her and Joan to go to the United States in 1939. Regina and Hans-Gerhardt had already separated in Moscow, although they did not officially divorce until 1945.
Paul Neményi as Fischer's father
In 2002, Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer published an investigative report which stated that Bobby Fischer's biological father was actually Paul Neményi.
Neményi, a Hungarian mathematician and physicist of Jewish heritage, specialized in continuum mechanics. His work applied geometrical solutions to fluid dynamics. Like Bobby, he was a child prodigy and won the Hungarian national mathematics competition at the age of 17.
Benson and Nicholas continued their work and gathered additional evidence in court records, personal interviews, and a summary of an FBI investigation written by J. Edgar Hoover, which confirmed their earlier conclusions.
Chess beginnings
n March 1949, six-year-old Bobby and his sister Joan learned how to play chess using the instructions from a set bought at a candy store. When Joan lost interest in chess and Regina did not have time to play, Fischer was left to play many of his first games against himself. When the family vacationed at Patchogue, Long Island, New York, that summer, Bobby found a book of old chess games and studied it intensely.
In 1950, the family moved to Brooklyn, first to an apartment at the corner of Union Street and Franklin Avenue and later to a two-bedroom apartment at 560 Lincoln Place. It was there that "Fischer soon became so engrossed in the game that Regina feared he was spending too much time alone." As a result, on November 14, 1950, Regina sent a postcard to the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, seeking to place an ad inquiring whether other children of Bobby's age might be interested in playing chess with him. The paper rejected her ad, because no one could figure out how to classify it, but forwarded her inquiry to Hermann Helms, the "Dean of American Chess", who told her that Master Max Pavey, former Scottish champion, would be giving a simultaneous exhibition on January 17, 1951. Fischer played in the exhibition. Although he held on for 15 minutes, drawing a crowd of onlookers, he eventually lost to the chess master.
The Hawthorne Chess Club
In June 1956, Fischer began attending the Hawthorne Chess Club, based in master John "Jack" W. Collins's home. Collins taught chess to children, and has been described as Fischer's teacher, but Collins himself suggested that he did not actually teach Fischer, and the relationship might be more accurately described as one of mentorship.
Fischer played thousands of blitz and offhand games with Collins and other strong players, studied the books in Collins' large chess library, and ate almost as many dinners at Collins' home as his own.
Young champion
In March 1956, the Log Cabin Chess Club of West Orange, New Jersey (based in the home of the club's eccentric multi-millionaire founder and patron Elliott Forry Laucks), took Fischer on a tour to Cuba, where he gave a 12-board simultaneous exhibition at Havana's Capablanca Chess Club, winning ten games and drawing two. On this tour the club played a series of matches against other clubs. Fischer played second board, behind International Master Norman Whitaker. Whitaker and Fischer were the club's leading scorers, each scoring 5½ points out of 7 games.
Wins first US title
Based on Fischer's rating and strong results, the USCF invited him to play in the 1957/58 US Championship. The tournament included six-time US champion Samuel Reshevsky, defending US champion Arthur Bisguier, and William Lombardy, who in August had won the World Junior Championship. Bisguier predicted that Fischer would "finish slightly over the center mark". Despite all the predictions to the contrary, Fischer scored eight wins and five draws to win the tournament by a one-point margin, with 10½/13. Still two months shy of his 15th birthday, Fischer became the youngest ever US Champion. Since the championship that year was also the US Zonal Championship, Fischer's victory earned him the title of International Master. Fischer's victory in the US Championship qualified him to participate in the 1958 Portorož Interzonal, the next step toward challenging the World Champion.
Grandmaster, candidate, and author
In 1957, Fischer wanted to go to Moscow. At his pleading, "Regina wrote directly to the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, requesting an invitation for Fischer to participate in the 6th World Youth and Student Festival of 1957. The reply—affirmative—came too late for him to go." Regina did not have the money to pay the airfare, but in 1958, Fischer was invited onto the game show I've Got a Secret, where, thanks to Regina's efforts, the producers of the show arranged two round-trip tickets to the Soviet Union, for Bobby and his sister Joan.
Once in Russia, Fischer was invited by the Soviet Union to Moscow, where International Master Lev Abramov would serve as a guide to Bobby and his sister, Joan. Upon arrival, Fischer immediately demanded that he be taken to the Moscow Central Chess Club, where he played speed chess with "two young Soviet masters", Evgeni Vasiukov and Alexander Nikitin, winning every game. Chess author V. I. Linder writes about the impression Fischer gave grandmaster (GM) Vladimir Alatortsev when he played blitz against the Soviet masters:
Back in 1958, in the Central Chess Club, Vladimir Alatortsev saw a tall, angular 15-year-old youth, who in blitz games, crushed almost everyone who crossed his path… Alatortsev was no exception, losing all three games. He was astonished by the young American Robert Fischer's play, his fantastic self-confidence, amazing chess erudition, and simply brilliant play! Vladimir said in admiration to his wife on arriving home: "This is the future world champion!"
Drops out of school
Fischer's interest in chess became more important than schoolwork, to the point that "by the time he reached the fourth grade, he'd been in and out of six schools." In 1952, Regina got Bobby a scholarship (based on his chess talent and "astronomically high IQ") to Brooklyn Community Woodward. Fischer later attended Erasmus Hall High School at the same time as Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond. In 1959, its student council awarded him a gold medal for his chess achievements. The same year, Fischer dropped out of high school when he turned 16, the earliest he could legally do so. He later explained to Ralph Ginzburg, "You don't learn anything in school."
1969–1972: Road to World Champion
In 1970, Fischer began a new effort to become World Champion. His dramatic march toward the title made him a household name and made chess front-page news for a time. He won the title in 1972, but forfeited it three years later.
Road to the World Championship
The 1969 US Championship was also a zonal qualifier, with the top three finishers advancing to the Interzonal. Fischer, however, had sat out the US Championship because of disagreements about the tournament's format and prize fund. Benko, one of the three qualifiers, agreed to give up his spot in the Interzonal to give Fischer another shot at the World Championship; Lombardy, who would have been "next in line" after Benko, did the same.
In 1970 and 1971, Fischer "dominated his contemporaries to an extent never seen before or since"
World Championship match
Fischer's career-long stubbornness about match and tournament conditions was again seen in the run-up to his match with Spassky. Of the possible sites, Fischer's first choice was Belgrade, Yugoslavia, while Spassky's was Reykjavík, Iceland. For a time it appeared that the dispute would be resolved by splitting the match between the two locations, but that arrangement failed. After that issue was resolved, Fischer refused to appear in Iceland until the prize fund was increased. London financier Jim Slater donated an additional US$125,000, bringing the prize fund up to an unprecedented $250,000 ($1.75 million today) and Fischer finally agreed to play.
Before and during the match, Fischer paid special attention to his physical training and fitness, which was a relatively novel approach for top chess players at that time. Leading up to this match he conducted interviews with 60 Minutes and Dick Cavett explaining the importance of physical fitness in his preparation. He had developed his tennis skills to a good level, and played frequently during off-days in Reykjavík. He had also arranged for exclusive use of his hotel's swimming pool during specified hours, and swam for extended periods, usually late at night. According to Soviet Grandmaster Nikolai Krogius, Fischer "was paying great attention to sport, and that he was swimming and even boxing.
Later life and death
Life as an émigré
After the 1992 match with Spassky, Fischer, now a fugitive, slid back into relative obscurity, taking up residence in Budapest, Hungary, and allegedly having a relationship with young Hungarian chess master Zita Rajcsányi. Fischer stated that standard chess was stale and that he now played blitz games of chess variants, such as Chess960. He visited the Polgár family in Budapest and analyzed many games with Judit, Zsuzsa, and Zsófia Polgár. In 1998 and 1999, he also stayed at the house of young Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko.
From 2000 to 2002, Fischer lived in Baguio in the Philippines, residing in the same compound as the Filipino grandmaster Eugenio Torre, a close friend who had acted as his second during his 1992 match with Spassky. Torre introduced Fischer to a 22 year-old woman named Marilyn Young. On May 21, 2001, Marilyn Young gave birth to a daughter named Jinky Young, and claimed that Fischer was the child's father, a claim ultimately disproven by DNA after Fischer's death.
Death, estate dispute, and exhumation
On January 17, 2008, Fischer died at age 64 from degenerative kidney failure at the Landspítali Hospital (National University Hospital of Iceland) in Reykjavík. He originally had a urinary tract blockage but refused surgery or medication. Magnús Skúlason reported Fischer's response to leg massages: "Nothing soothes as much as the human touch."
On January 21, Fischer was buried in the small Christian cemetery of Laugardælir church, outside the town of Selfoss, 60 kilometres (37 mi) southeast of Reykjavík, after a Catholic funeral presided over by Fr. Jakob Rolland of the diocese of Reykjavík. In accordance with Fischer's wishes, only Miyoko Watai, Garðar Sverrisson, and Garðar's family were present.
Personal life
Religious affiliation
Although Fischer's mother was Jewish, Fischer rejected attempts to label him as Jewish. In a 1962 interview with Harper's, asked if he was Jewish, he replied that he was "part-Jewish" through his mother. In the same interview he was quoted as saying: "I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree." In a 1984 letter to the editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Fischer demanded that they remove his name from future editions.
Fischer associated with the Worldwide Church of God in the mid-1960s. The church prescribed Saturday Sabbath, and forbade work (and competitive chess) on Sabbath. According to his friend and colleague Larry Evans, in 1968 Fischer felt philosophically that "the world was coming to an end" and he might as well make some money by publishing My 60 Memorable Games; Fischer thought that the Rapture was coming soon.
Antisemitism
Fischer made numerous antisemitic statements and professed a general hatred for Jews from at least the early 1960s. Jan Hein Donner wrote that at the time of Bled 1961, "He idolized Hitler and read everything about him that he could lay his hands on. He also championed a brand of antisemitism that could only be thought up by a mind completely cut off from reality." Donner took Fischer to a war museum, which "left a great impression, since is not an evil person, and afterwards he was more restrained in his remarks—to me, at least."
Speculation on psychological condition
While as far as is known Fischer was never formally diagnosed with a mental disorder, there has been widespread comment and speculation concerning his psychological condition based on his extreme views and unusual behavior. Reuben Fine, psychologist and chess player, who met Fischer many times, said that "Some of Bobby's behavior is so strange, unpredictable, odd and bizarre that even his most ardent apologists have had a hard time explaining what makes him tick" and described him as "a troubled human being" with "obvious personal problems".
Quotes
Total 0 Quotes
Quotes not found.
