Hopefully, he’s found the peace on the other side of the veil that eluded him here.
en.chessbase.com/post/bobby-fis … final-days
I’d say he’s been gone for 45 years. I think it’s better that way.
Let’s face it- he was gone when he was here.
His legacy amounted to little after he won the World Champion. In the end, I think those that bother to remember, will remember him as a bitter, sad, angry man. The rest of the world will have little care, if they’re even old enough to remember him.
All that’s left is a tombstone, with the seasons and weather it’s only companion.
The tone of the messages in this thread doesn’t reflect a careful reading of the excerpt from the book. Gardar depicts a guy who would have been an interesting and often pleasant companion. I’ve heard plenty about Fischer’s dark side, but evidently there was a lot more.
The Fischer I remember is the one who gave a simul in Toledo when I was 12. He was healthy, well dressed and groomed, gave an interesting and insightful lecture discussing one of his games, and was correct in his demeanor at the boards. He seemed at the time like an excellent “ambassador for chess”.
Bruce
Foonote: when I say “Gardar”, I’m not being weird. Icelanders don’t have the same system of first names and last names that we do. You’re just supposed to use “Gardar”, even if you’ve never met the guy (which I haven’t).
I agree that he had a different side or sides that could be quite different than what he became. What he became was dysfunctionally mentally ill. His legacy is his games. He was a truly great chess player for too short a time.
I guess you had to be alive during that time and follow the game. He was the best player in the World hands down and would have help the championship easy from 22 to 40 years old with no problem. He did more for chess in the USA than any other player ever and that is a fact. The USCF membership skyrocketed and in general many millions of people started to play chess and had interest in following the championship match.
He had a run against the best in the world that just annihilated them all. 6-0 6-0 6.5-2.5 in the candidates and a run against Spassky a player he never defeated before from game 3 to game 10 of 6.5-2.5 what a beating he gave them all. Karpov wasn’t even close to his talent.
Yes mostly after the championship his mental health was deteriorating. He did more for US Chess in the time he was active and the simuls he gave in the 60’s well if you were in one like Bruce you were very lucky indeed.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of serial killers and mass murderers who can carry on a pleasant conversation on a variety of topics ranging from the weather, to philosophical meandering with deep meaning. Yet, I’d still say many people, including myself, would find it rather repugnant to carry on such a conversation knowing what the person has done with their life.
Having rewritten this section of the Fischer Wikipedia article a decade or so ago, I think I’ve established a track record of not turning a blind eye of RJF’s various offenses against civil society. It’s true that listening to the MP3s of Fischer on Radio Bomba etc. (willing to provide link on request—PM me) is sickening. The 9/11/2001 broadcast suffices.
But the gentleman was (IMO) mentally ill. Fischer was an American of Jewish descent. His anti-American & antisemitic statements speak (in my opinion) more to his probable mental illness than any moral culpability.
Unlike the Alekhine of the Pariser Zeitung articles, it’s hard to identify anyone who may have been harmed in real life by Fischer’s ravings. The Pariser Zeitung articles are so offensive precisely because Alekhine, a cultured man, couldn’t have taken their gross antisemitism seriously. But their publication made life for Alekhine easier under Nazi collaboration, and also made Alekhine morally complicit in the Holocaust . If one could do moral math, would his allocation of cultural blame be less than 1/6,000,000? That’s irrelevant to me. And yet for some reason, Alekhine Memorial events are more popular than Fischer Memorials.
A man who battled mental illness his entire life became the best in the world at what he did. That’s a story worth celebrating. One could argue that the best film biography of Fischer is Scorsese’s The Aviator.
I agree with everything you’ve written with one exception. While I would agree that Fischer battled mental illness for most of his life, his mental illness during the years leading up to 1972 was not so severe as to keep him from becoming WC. It may actually have helped him achieve that goal. Post-1972 that illness likely would have increasingly made it difficult to retain his title over the board because a) he likely would not and did not make it to the board, and if he did, b) his playing strength could well have been compromised.
Interesting point. You’re pressing one of my buttons because I have played chess in the PA state prisons, and one opponent I remember well was a guy who had murdered his whole family.
Everyone in the prison was there for some fairly serious crime. It is kind of surreal to think about hanging out in that kind of company, but when I was actually there, they were all capable of carrying on a good conversation, and it didn’t bother me a bit. I even met a couple of them outside prison in later years, after they had been released.
Fischer wasn’t in the same league with these guys. The only “crime” he was ever accused of was playing chess in Serbia during the Yugoslavian civil war. His radio broadcasts, and his raving about the World Jewish Conspiracy – those were pretty repugnant. But if I had known him, he wouldn’t be the only person I knew who developed weird and repugnant prejudices. I even had a next door neighbor, a sweet old lady, who was anti-Semitic. I learned to take it in stride.
Prophylactic thinking (anticipating the plans of one’s opponent and playing against that unrealized plan) is applied paranoia.
It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you. 
Just because one is paranoid doesn’t means that person isn’t being followed.
This reminds me that I had a postal game going with an inmate who lost because he was killed by another inmate. Not a nice way to win…
I am entertained by all the amateur analysts that decide Bobby Fischer was mentally ill, not mentally ill, evil, not evil, normal or not normal. The guy has been dead for 10 years now and I certainly see no one expert in forensic psychology.
And even if some expert decides to analyze and put a label of any kind on Bobby Fischer, it really does not matter.
There have been a good number of people that were anti-Jew or otherwise racist in their beliefs and attitudes. They were not necessarily mentally ill, just racist.
Bobby behaved as Bobby did. And he said what he said. Just because people do not agree with the logic or intention of what he did or said does not mean he was mentally ill.
You see if I say he was not mentally ill, it has just as much impact on life as those that say he was.
Actually, I have not even begun to assess whether he was mentally ill or not. For one thing, we do not have all the accurate data to make such a decision and be accurate. For a second thing it really does not matter whether he was mentally ill or not. There is nothing valuable to be learned from this that would affect people’s lives in either case. It is all a futile exercise in nothing more than semantics.
Why did Bobby Fischer “resign” from playing in the World Championship against Karpov? Was he afraid of losing? Was he paranoid? Was he just being a stickler and perfectionist in wanting all his demands met? Was he being greedy and thinking FIDE would give in to his demands because he was the World Champion at the time? Who knows? And frankly, what does it matter? He did what he did. There is no way those things can be undone.
In my opinion, we should be looking at the games he played and the competitions he was in. This is Chess after all.
I was just into tournament Chess a few years when he played that 1992 match. At the time, I met an IM and took a few lessons from him. The IM would show me the games as they were printed in the Wall Street Journal. He would look at the games with a true master’s eyes and agreed they were of a good quality. Sure, this was the time Bobby was spitting on a letter from the US Government and pointing out to a reporter that this was titled as the World Championship when asked if he would challenge Kasparov for the championship. Was Bobby being extreme in attitude? The answer is, yes. Was he defying our government? Once again the answer is yes. Was he being crazy? It doesn’t matter. You see?
And to say that prophylactic thinking on the Chess board is applied paranoia is ridiculous.
That wouldn’t happen in ICCF play. When a player dies, his games are adjudicated. It is even possible to win when you die.
Alex Relyea
Something to look forward to…
In the movie “The Great Race” one character tossed away his car’s rear view mirroring proclaiming “What’s behind me does not matter” 
- Unfortunately, there have indeed been many antisemites. Relatively few of them were children of two Jewish parents.
Similarly, relatively few Brooklyn natives were happy about the 9/11 attacks. (NSFW link reluctantly given because facts matter.) Critics of U.S. imperialism might nod their heads at moments; sane ones would recoil from Fischer’s perverse wish list.
- Dry humor with a grain of truth.