Bobby Fischer : An Eccentric Genius

Some say there has never been a chess player as great as Bobby Fischer. A leading Russian opponent described him as “an Achilles without an Achilles heel”. Fischer was not only known for being a chess genius but also for spiraling into insanity. This is the remarkable true story of Bobby Fischer arguably the greatest genius chess has ever seen.

    Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago on March 9, 1943, and raised in Brooklyn by a single

mother from Switzerland born to Jewish parents. They were poor. Regina Fischer didn’t even have the money to patch up Bobby's torn shoes when he was a kid. Regina was divorced from Hans Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist. But Bobby’s actual father was most likely the result of an affair with her friend Paul Nemenyi. A Hungarian-Jewish physicist.

    When Bobby was six, that's when he discovered the game would change his life.It was his sister Joanne bought him a chess set and taught him to play. He felt chess was more exciting than Monopoly because no luck was involved. And he found it far more challenging. His sister soon grew tired of the game and leaving him with no one to play with.  So, Bobby spent several hours every day playing against himself. He loved the thousands of possible moves and the complex strategy involved. It was two years later that Bobby Fisher first showed up as the faintest of blips on the US chess radar. Noting her son's passion for the game but a little concerned about how much time he was spending playing alone regina placed an advert in a local paper, seeking possible opponents and ideally better he was invited to take part in a match against one of the strongest players in the US at the time, Max Pavey. It was to be a so-called simultaneous exhibition with Pavey. If you're expecting this story to start with a miracle victory against a chess master I'm afraid i'm going to have to disappoint you. Pavey put bobby away in about 15 minutes.

    President of Brooklyn Chess Club also present at the exhibition decided to take bobby in under his wing offering a little tuition and introducing him to his club. It was  the break bobby had needed to take his game to the next level and surrounded by skillful coaches and strong players. He

began to improve at an almost unbelievable rate. He won his first tournament at the age of nine. In the summer of 1956 when bobby was just 13 he scored his first major victory becoming the youngest U.S Junior Chess Champion in history.

   Later in 1956 itself he was invited to play an elite level competition featuring the 12 strongest players in the US at the time. He faced 26-year-old Donald Byrne. Fischer played in black, Byrne in white. The “Game of the Century” - as it’s remembered - took place in New York City on October 17, 1956. Fischer’s moves looked like lethal art. He even dared to sacrifice his queen. Fischer got a thrill out of breaking his opponent’s ego. His opponent was outclassed and outmatched. Bobby by far the youngest player in the field and hugely inexperienced compared to his opponents which is probably the reason he finish eighth. But he didn't come away empty-handed. He was awarded the so-called brilliancy prize. 

       Donald Byrne vs Bobby Fischer

                                      

    The game put Fischer on the map. The world knew it had a genius on its hands. The following year, when he was still only 14 years old, he won the U.S. Championship. A year later, he became the youngest ever grandmaster. he studied almost non-stop and played whenever he got the chance he even taught himself basic russian so that he could read soviet chess books and magazines.

     And in 1972, he defeated the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky to become world champion. This was stunning: the Soviets lived and breathed chess. They were more obsessed than Canadians with hockey or the Chinese with table tennis. Then comes along a lone wolf from America who was up against the entire Soviet chess institution. It was a David versus Goliath matchup. Bobby Fischer singlehandedly beat the Soviets at their own game. This took place during the Cold War and the symbolism wasn’t lost on anyone. The world’s two superpowers battled it out on a chess board.

    He refused to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland for the tournament unless he got more money including

a guarantee of a slice of the lucrative TV revenue. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had to insist he “...get his butt over to Iceland." He finally flew there after a British investment banker offered to double the prize money to $250,000. Fischer was still in a foul mood when he arrived.

He played poorly during the first match and lost. He didn’t even show up for the second match, complaining that the TV cameras distracted him So he lost automatically. The tournament organizers conceded to demands for the third match to be played without TV cameras in the room.

From that point on, his playing got stronger.

    Fischer, the 29-year-old who dropped out of high school, would beat Spassky to become World Champion - single-handedly dismantling the Soviet Union’s 24-year hold on the game. 

 Spassky- Fischer

              

He became a hero to millions of Americans and inspired new interest in the game of chess. Some chess clubs saw membership double during the Fischer frenzy. He was a star and made the rounds of American television. He reportedly had an IQ of 181 which is said to be even higher than Albert Einstein’s.

    Although he scaled the heights of fame, Fischer wasn’t all that likable. He had a habit of saying controversial things though people tended to ignore it because he was the Cold War chess hero after all. This is what he once said about female chess players in an interview with the Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation. 

Bobby Fischer: The women aren't really very good players. I mean, I could give them a knight and still win easily.

Reporter: Why is this? Do women make bad chess players?

Bobby Fischer: Oh they're terrible chess players. I mean, some are better than others,

Reporter: Why do you think so? 

Bobby Fischer: And they don't play in men's tournaments. I don’t know why. I guess they're just not so smart.

Reporter: Would you call yourself a misogynist?

Bobby Fischer: Excuse me, what’s the definition of that word?

Reporter: A woman-hater.

Bobby Fischer: No.

Reporter: No? What do you think of women?

Bobby Fischer: When it comes to chess, not too much.

    He managed to offend everyone. During an interview with a Philippine radio station hours after 9/11, he said the attacks were “wonderful news. I applaud the act. The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians, just slaughtering them for years. I want to see the U.S. wiped out.” He never hid his hatred of Jews, repeatedly making anti-Semitic remarks - despite being Jewish ethnically. His anti-American, anti-Semitic comments coincided with his growing paranoia. He decided the U.S. government was out to get him. He also believed the Israeli national intelligence agency - the Mossad - was after him. He refused to defend his world championship title in 1975. 

    He complained that opponents were trying to poison his food, his hotel rooms were bugged, and he feared the Russians wanted to bomb his plane. For years, Fischer carried a blue cardboard box with him wherever he went and refused to say what was inside. Once, when he went to use a restaurant restroom, he left it on the table, and the friend he was with peaked inside. He saw a Bible. Religion appealed to his desire for logic and order. Except he later cut ties with the Worldwide Church of God - funded by a televangelist after complaining that Herbert Armstrong’s teachings made members lose their minds and become “zombies”. He later cut ties with the organization. One of the surest signs of his mental decline was that he insisted on removing his dental fillings!

    He explained that he didn’t want anything artificial in him and had heard of a guy wounded in WWII who had a metal plate in his head that picked up vibrations and even radio transmissions. His mental instability manifested in his physical appearance. Gone was the athletic young man who swam and played tennis to keep in shape for chess which requires enormous mental and physical endurance. He was unrecognizable. California police officers mistakenly arrested him because he resembled a man who was wanted for robbery. He spent 48 hours in jail and wrote a book about the alleged torture he endured. During his descent into madness, Fischer didn’t play a competitive game in public for twenty years. 

    But eventually, he had to. He had run out of money. In 1992, he agreed to a $5 million dollar rematch against his Russian arch-rival (arch) Spassky in Yugoslavia.

Rematch of  Spassky-Fischer

Except the U.S. government wasn’t too pleased about that. It defied UN sanctions against the war-tor country. Americans were forbidden from doing any business in Yugoslavia. Fischer was warned he’dface up to ten years in prison if he went ahead with his plans. But he didn’t care.  He won the tournament. Some believe he was coaxed into playing again by his teenage Hungarian girlfriend Zita Rajcsanyi who was also a chess player.

Zita Rajcsanyi

    She had apparently turned a pen pal relationship into a romance despite their 30-year age gap. Although, Fischer claimed he didn’t have time for women.

    He is said to have married a Japanese chess player Miyoko Watai and lived with her in Japan for a few years. He reportedly hoped that as the spouse of a Japanese citizen he could stay there as he had been on the run from American authorities for defying sanctions. But his attempt to stay in Japan was unsuccessful. Authorities arrested him for using a passport that had been revoked by the U.S. government. He begged Iceland to take him in, the country that made him famous in 1972. Iceland welcomed him by making him a citizen. He would spend the rest of his days there living in obscurity.

So, what caused his spiral into madness?

Some speculate that training in blindfold chess can cause mental strain as you can’t see or touch the pieces, so you’re forced to maintain a mental image in your head. However, there were signs something was not right with Bobby Fischer much earlier on. Legendary chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal picked up on it back in the fifties, mocking Fischer for being a “cuckoo”.  World-renowned chess grandmaster and psychoanalyst Dr. Reuben Fine described in his book on the chess master that Fischer’s mother had consulted him because she was concerned her teenage son was too obsessed with chess and felt he needed friends and other hobbies. Fischer reacted in a paranoid way.

    Perhaps school was a sensitive spot for him. He dropped out at the age of 16 to focus on chess.

He was always insecure about his lack of education and decided to trade his casual wear for suits

when playing chess in order to look more sophisticated. 

Some speculate Bobby Fischer could have had schizophrenia or Asperger's, though there is no evidence that he was diagnosed with any mental health disorders. It also does not appear that Fischer had any long-term treatment for mental health issues. One can only wonder if his life would have turned out differently if he did. 

    During the last years of his life, he stayed in close touch with a psychiatrist who headed Iceland’s hospital for the criminally insane. Dr. Magnus Skulason stayed in the hospital with Fischer as he lay dying of kidney failure. Fischer passed away on January 17, 2008 and, according to Dr. Skulason, his final words were: "Nothing is as healing as the human touch." Coming from a man who shied away from social contact, this was a rather remarkable thing to hear. It was fitting that having fallen in love with 64 black and white squares on a chess board, Bobby Fischer died when he was 64 years old.

    He asked to be buried as a Catholic. Bobby Fischer once wrote in an article for the Boy Scouts magazine: “With talent, study, and a positive attitude, there is no limit to how far you can go.”

Yet he failed to live up to his own words. If Fischer had stayed in the game longer, perhaps we would have seen a match-up with Gary Kasparov - arguably the two greatest chess players of all time. Though, they were 20 years apart. But it would never come to pass. The person who finally defeated Bobby Fischer was sadly himself.

Bobby Fischer 

"Nothing is as healing as the human touch"

- ROBERT JAMES FISCHER-