Bobby Fischer dead at 64

Bobby Fischer, the only American ever to hold the official FIDE World Chess Championship, died of kidney failure at his home in Reykjavik yesterday.  He was 64.

My grandfather was both a patriot and a chess enthusiast, and it’s clear from his writings, scrapbooks, and library that he thought the 1972 World Chess Championship rather important.  It was the cold, repressive Soviet Union (Boris Spassky) against the brash, free United States (Fischer).  He won the “Match of the Century,” 12.5 wins to Spassky’s 8.5.

Unfortunately, that was the last positive event in his life.  He was set to defend his title against Anatoly Karpov in 1975, but issued several non-negotiable demands concerning the playing conditions, and refused to play when they were not met.

Then, he disappeared.  Though he popped up occasionally (to behave strangely, mostly), his whereabouts has only been known “continuously” since 2004, when he was arrested in Japan for traveling on a revoked passport.  (He had played a rematch vs. Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, which the U.S. government had deemed a violation of the United Nations embargo against Yugoslavia at that time).  He asked for and eventually received Icelandic citizenship in 2005.

Fischer played brilliantly and made many contributions to chess, particularly in opening theory.  I’ve always been disappointed that he didn’t live more conventionally (and continue to play organized chess).  I would have loved to see how he would match up against today’s giants.  Conventional wisdom is that someone like Kasparov or Kramnik would take him apart, but absent an alternate history, we’ll never know for sure.

I’ve written before about whether chess attracts or makes lunatics.  It may be a combination, but there is little doubt to me that the tendency is there.  I think the whole of chess is too “large,” for lack of a better term, to fit into the human intellect—but not by much.  I think we can’t quite get it all in our brains, but we can see it all, and in that gap is madness.  The wrong sort of personality pursues it and perishes.

On the chessboard, Fischer was a master artisan.  Off it, he was batshit crazy.  In radio interviews, he applauded 9/11, and ranted of Jewish conspiracies and plots.  I vividly remember listening to a recording of one of his interviews out of curiosity several years ago, and immediately wishing I hadn’t.  His spittle-flecked screaming about the “fucking Jew bastards” is seared in my aural memory, and I’d unload it if I could.

Farewell and godspeed, Grandmaster Fischer.  I sincerely hope you died closer to peace and sanity than you lived.

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