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Chess Legend Bobby Fischer, 64, Dies

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By JOE HOLLEY, The Washington Post

Published: January 19, 2008

Bobby Fischer, the enigmatic American chess genius who became a Cold War hero with his 1972 defeat of Soviet champion Boris Spassky but later fell from grace when he became a recluse and fugitive known for his hate-filled rants, died Thursday of kidney failure in Reykjavik, Iceland. He was 64.

The only American of the modern era to win a world championship, Fischer learned the game at age 6, won his first U.S. championship at 14 and in 1958 became the youngest international grandmaster of chess.

He was world champion at 29. By then, the name Bobby Fischer, like Babe Ruth in baseball or Albert Einstein in physics, was synonymous with brilliance.

His 1972 world championship match against Russian master Spassky in Reykjavik focused world attention on the quietly insular world of international chess and transformed it in the process.

Fischer's epic victory made him not only a U.S. hero but also a reluctant pawn in the Cold War as the young American vanquished the Russian and brought home the nation's first world chess championship in more than a century.

Fischer's most formidable opponent was often himself.

Troubled, temperamental and eccentric, he developed a reputation as "the bad boy of chess," and over the years, his petulance and outbursts of temper spiraled into paranoia, antisocial behavior and virulent anti-Semitism.

Renounced Citizenship

Renouncing his U.S. citizenship in 2005, he settled in Iceland, site of his greatest triumph.

"I give 98 percent of my mental energy to chess," he said.

"If you were out to dinner with Bobby in the '60s, he wouldn't be able to follow the conversation," Don Schultz, a fellow player and early friend, recalled in 2002. "He would have his little pocket set out and he'd play chess at the table. He had a one-dimensional outlook on life."

Frank Brady, chairman of the mass communications department at St. John's University and a chess master, recalled meeting the 10-year-old Fischer at New York tournaments. Brady, recognizing the young man's genius, wrote the first Fischer biography, "Profile of a Prodigy," in 1964.

"He was always arrogant and self-centered," Brady recalled, "but it was only after he won the world championship in '72, after he sort of reached the summit of his life's goal, that he went bad."

Robert James Fischer was born March 9, 1943, in Chicago.

His sister bought him a cheap plastic chess set and taught him the rudiments of the game.

In 1957, in Cleveland, the gangly boy from Brooklyn won the U.S. open championship in a field of 175 players, tying with U.S. champion Arthur B. Bisguier.

As a player, he was known for his boldness and unpredictability. He did not wait for his opponent to make mistakes but attacked relentlessly and rarely repeated gambits.

In 1970, he won the unofficial world five-minute championship in Yugoslavia with 17 victories, 4 draws and 1 loss. After the tournament, he recalled from memory all of the more than 1,000 moves from his 22 games.

Living in a small walk-up apartment in Brooklyn at the time, Fischer said he would like to enter the real estate business after winning the world championship.

That opportunity came in 1972, when Fischer and Spassky sat across from each other at a marble and mahogany chess table in tranquil, out-of-the-way Reykjavik.

Constantly complaining about his chair, the lighting and the whirring noise of TV cameras, he defeated Spassky, breaking a 26-year Russian monopoly on the title.

In a game long dominated by Europeans, Fischer became the first U.S. champion since Wilhelm Steinitz, a naturalized American from Bohemia, reigned from 1886 to 1894.

Fischer received a record purse of $250,000 at Reykjavik. He also transformed a genteel game into an international sport comparable to professional golf or tennis. Membership in the U.S. Chess Federation nearly tripled.

Cold War Match

The match also glowed with symbolic geopolitical overtones, even for those who knew little about chess. Fischer versus Spassky, the lone American in a showdown with the product of the soulless Soviet machine, was the Cold War personified.

Reykjavik was the pinnacle of Fischer's career. From then on, his eccentricities overwhelmed his brilliance.

In 1975, he lost his title by default, refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov after a dispute over match rules.

Moving to South Pasadena, Calif., shortly after the Spassky match, he became increasingly reclusive.

He reportedly had the fillings removed from his teeth to prevent the Soviets from transmitting secret messages.

In 1992, his infatuation with a 19-year-old Hungarian girl and a Yugoslavian financier's monetary blandishments lured him into a rematch in Yugoslavia with Spassky, his 1972 foe. He got $3.5 million in prize money - and an indictment from the U.S. government for violating a United Nations embargo against the country.

Although his mother and perhaps his father were Jewish, his anti-Semitism grew more virulent as he grew older.

Asked on Sept. 11 about the attacks on the World Trade Center, he said, "This is all wonderful news."

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