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The irascible master of chess

With the death of Robert James Fischer (1943-2008), the chess world has lost a genius and a highly eccentric and controversial ambassador. Bobby Fischer gave the game a new identity in the 1960s. His epic triumph over Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in 1972 helped popularise chess round the world. At 15, he was the game’s youngest Grandmaster; and over the next decade, the American emerged as the biggest threat to Soviet hegemony. A self-taught student of the game, Fischer understood the consequences of a particular opening sequence better and faster than any of his contemporaries. Between 1970 and 1972, his genius was on incandescent display. On the way to challenging Spassky, he decimated three top-10 players — Mark Taimanov 6-0, Bent Larsen 6-0, and Tigran Petrosian 6.5-2.5. When, in 1972, Reykjavik hosted what is arguably chess’s most famous world championship clash, Fischer lost the opening game before a crowd of 5,000. He did not turn up for the second in the 24-game match. He returned for the third on condition that the game was played at the back of the hall with no spectator allowed. He even objected to the gloss on the table. Fischer won the third game and it was Spassky’s turn to refuse to play at the back. The American eventually won 12.5-8.5 and the chess world had a new champion.

If the first 30 years of Fischer’s life were notable for the counter-revolution he wrought in the chess world, the next three decades were in the nature of a Shakespearean tragedy. When, in 1975, he refused to defend his title against Russian Anatoly Karpov (after the International Federation declined to accept his over-the-top conditions), he was lost to the chess world. He lived secretly, mostly outside America; and on his emergence from long oblivion in 1992, pocketed $3.35 million by beating Spassky in a 30-game match in Yugoslavia. The United States maintained that Fischer had violated U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia and issued an arrest warrant against him. Never returning to his home country after that, he was bitterly critical of the U.S., whose ‘Cold War’ he once self-consciously waged on the chessboard. He made anti-Semetic remarks, praised the 9/11 terrorist attack, and wanted America “wiped out.” In 2005, after nine months of detention in Japan for attempting to leave on an invalid American passport, Fischer moved to Iceland, which mercifully offered him citizenship. He died a loner in Reykjavik, a city that had once made him the world’s chess icon. Most of the chess world did not miss the sexagenarian; it mourned the 28-year-old whose irascible genius made millions fall in love with the game.

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