Bobby Fischer

One of the most influential grandmasters, and also one of the most controversial, Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest chess players of all time. He had a unique way of playing the aggressive side of chess, and spent a great amount of time studying the game more than anyone else I know. Discuss Bobby Fischer! Ask questions, leave comments, I've read plenty of books on him to have the answer and still interested in discussing the World Champion of the 70's.

where is he now (Iceland?) and why did he go nuts?

Hey, Ok, so i was wonderin what good books are there to read about his stratigies? and what made him so good? I have heard that he is the best player ever, but why??

 

"what good books are there to read about his strategies"

I'd suggest Fischer his approach by Elie Agur great book.

 

 

ok ok so my answers to all your posts in order:

 

Yes. Bobby Fischer is currently in Iceland. After his claim of the world championship in the 70's (defeating Spassky in '72) He said he would agree to play the next world championship (because every champion must play a match to hold his title) but under his rules, which actually included a much more fair process of elimination for the tournament, but was declined by FIDE. he disagreed to play and went into "disappearance", losing his title. He had some wierd activity after which people believe to be the result of schizophrenia. He's a nutcase because he claims people don't believe his stories, including the confusing I Was Tortured In the Pasadena Jailhouse! What he did on his own since then, who knows, but he has become anti semetic and very secluded from others :(

 

Bobby Fischer actually had a good puzzle book, simply called Bobby Fischer teaches chess, and had an interesting book about his games and explains how he played in My 60 Memorable Games. One book that not many know about but is a great book about Bobby Fischer comes from the excellent coach Bruce Pandolfini, called Bobby Fischer's Outrageous Chess Moves: A study of 101 outrageous moves by the world champion. There are plenty more, such as Learn from Bobby Fischer's Greatest Games, The Complete Games of Bobby Fischer, and Bobby Fischer vs. the rest of the World. What made Bobby Fischer so good was his unique style of aggressive chess, and how he got that way. He studied chess more than any other chess grandmaster known, and was one of the most popular, due to his win in 1972 againt Boris Spassky for the World Championship during the Cold War. He was a national icon whose chess victory created what was known at the "Chess Boom" or "Fischer Boom" in the United States, and created a national popularity around the country, which sadly has died out. He beat so many great grandmasters, and was actually the US Champion at age 14, the youngest ever to win the title. Sure, being the best player ever varies among so many people, but mainly he was the greatest player ever because he ended the russian dominance of the sport of chess, and his style of play simply could not be defeated except with deep concentration and amazing ability to read the chessboard correctly. Bobby Fischer has been defeated, but his victories are closely examined and are called almost perfect.

Growing up without a father and mentally superior to schoolmates, B. Fischer matured during the "Cold War". He was as enigmatic as the closing era of the 20th. Century.  Symbolic as the ultimate individualist, Fischer did however, suffer terrible contradictions within himself.  Several times in his chess career he came close to wrecking his chances in pursuit of the World Championship.  Even in 1972 Spassky almost won by default when Fischer demanded even more money than Iceland promised as host of the Match !!  Fischer was supremely intelligent and worked hard, but would have been even more deserving of the "greatness label" had he defended his title against Karpov.  Sure Fischer made some valid remarks about the 'title' process, but he wanted all his proposals met. This goes back to his problem with his overweening sense of his own importance.

He cruised to Iceland? Last I heard he was in Japan. But I'm slow as you all know by now. 

He had been on the run since he played a re-match against Spassky in Belgrade in th '90s in defiance of a US ban on travel because of Serbian genocide. He had to leave what ever coutry he was last hanging out in  after issuing ecstatic anti-American statements shortly after 9/11 claiming that he hoped the whole rotten Zionist-American nation would soon collapse.

Japan agreed to accept him on a tourist visa, (you know how they love eccentric western celebrities) and I believe some kind Japanese lady(s) almost immediately offered to marry him to get him of the 90-day tourist visa hook......

But hey, Wikipedia must have that and more with all the wrinkles ironed out....

He's come a long way since being a hermit occasionally seen stapling anti-semitic tracts to various university and public building bulliten boards.

But I've got that "BF teached Chess" lying around here someplace. I bought it in the late '70s and hope to finish it someday. Nyuk.

ya Bobby Fischer was in Japan, and he was detained there when they found that he had a false visa i believe, and according to Bobby they "tortured him". But who knows what happened, anyway, after that, they were gonna send him back to the USA, but that would mean prison for Bobby Fischer because apparently he is still wanted in the US, which I think is totally ridiculous...can a country seriously have a person wanted for more than 15 years? Well Bobby fought, he asked all sorts of countries for citizenships and stuff, such as Germany, but was refused. Iceland however gladly accepted him, they sent him the papers, and he got on his merry little way to Iceland.

I am glad that Bobby got to go to Iceland. I couldn't bare the thought of him in jail.

Couchptato10 wrote:

Bobby Fischer actually had a good puzzle book, simply called Bobby Fischer teaches chess, and had an interesting book about his games and explains how he played in My 60 Memorable Games.

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This puzzle book helped me out so much, even though the first 70 pages are a little elementary, I highly, highly suggest that any one who wants to practice chess try this book.  Note:  not meant for very advanced to grandmaster players!

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess is a must have book. I also recommend downloading any of his games if you have ChessBass or Book Light. Chessmaster's software also has some of his games annotated. You can watch them and really see his genius. He is very misunderstood and I think the pressure of his genius really damaged him resulting in his falling apart for a number of years. Read any good biography of him and you'll see how he went back and forth, playing brilliant games and then falling apart at the board during the next tournament. He is and will always be a brilliant player.

"the World Champion of the 70's."

 

hmmm....maybe A World Champion of the 70's -  for 3 out of the 10 years, 1972-4. Karpov was World Champion from 1975 to the end of the decade and onwardand Spassky, 1970-2 (having attained his crown in 1969, of course).

 

 

"He has always accepted that he is ethnically half-Jewish"

 

I'm not sure there is such an animal as a half-jew. If I'm not mistaken, Regina Wender Fischer was Jewish; therefore, Bobby Fischer is Jewish.

batgirl wrote:

I'm not sure there is such an animal as a half-jew. If I'm not mistaken, Regina Wender Fischer was Jewish; therefore, Bobby Fischer is Jewish.

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 perhaps you didnt read the word "ethnically." or perhaps you aren't familiar with the concept of a person being half irish and half german for instance.

I wonder at what people call "fair rules" at what Bobby asked for his match against Karpov... as the rules did favor the title holder. It was the first to win 12 games and if it got to 11, Fisher was to retain the title. I really wonder what's so fair in this.

 

"I'm not sure there is such an animal as a half-jew."

If there is something as half black, there is something as half jew. But again this is only ethnically speaking. Do you claim that the jewish drop of blood cancel the others? And on top of that, Fisher wasn't jewish culturally at all, so it would be closer not to call him a jew but he only had jewish descendance, or perhaps even background.

A couple of weeks back, some of Bobby's personal belongings that were in a storage container out west (in Nevada I think) were on sale at eBay for a couple hundred dollars. There were score sheets and signed letters and such with some books. Very interesting. Something on wikipedia confirmed that he had some legal issues with a guy in the US who had rented him a space and Bobby had not paid. So I did a search and the items turned up on eBay. Nobody had placed a bid, though. It's still interested.

 

I have that Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess book, too. It's great. Well worth the $7-8 I paid. 

Can anyone please recommend a high quality biography about Fischer? One that addresses his "issues" in a reasonable way?  What an interesting person.  To be a genius with such controversial opinions...I read a few months ago that he never plays traditional chess anymore; that he stays with the variant he invented. 

LeviAJones wrote: batgirl wrote:

I'm not sure there is such an animal as a half-jew. If I'm not mistaken, Regina Wender Fischer was Jewish; therefore, Bobby Fischer is Jewish.

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 perhaps you didnt read the word "ethnically." or perhaps you aren't familiar with the concept of a person being half irish and half german for instance.

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I'm certainly not an expert on the subject and I'm not sure I want to get into all this but...

 

I was referring particualrly to ethnicity. Although there is some debate on the issue, and although different Jewish movements have somewhat different views on the matter, generally speaking a Jew is someone who has a Jewish mother. The father is irrelevant. This is a totally ethnic presumption since a Jew traces his ancestry back to the original 12 tribes. A gentile mother could say her child had a Jewish father, but there's no guarantee. But a child born of a Jewish mother, except for some infinitesimal possibility of deceit, knows his ancestry, his ethnicity, his birthright.

 

Germans and Irish, while they can refer to some ethnic groups, seldom do. They usually refer to countries or nations of origin, something that has little, or nothing, to do with ethnicity.

 

If Fischer's mother was a Jew, Fischer is a Jew. He can't change nor rationally deny his ethnicity. 

 

That said, there are more modern movements that do pander in the concept of half-Jews. I'm not sure of their logic but it seems an attempt at eccumenism and assuaging the increased number of couples in mixed marriages.

Huh? This notion of "jewism" being transmitted by the mother is quite news to me... ethnicity however is not determined by cultural convention and you have to make the dinstinction of ethnical jew (which real term would be semitic, and not jew, but the two are very much interwined now) and cultural jew. And by the way, most of the jews of today have no common ancestry with the original 12 tribes, as there was a massive conversion movement to judaism among the Kazak empire at the time of Mohammed. Which would account for the "white" jews.

Everyone is entitiled to their own opinion but debates about religion make me nervous.  Let everyone believe what they want to as long as no one gets hurt.

I am from Brazil, Fischer became world chess champion in 1972. I was a just a boy, (14) and I never had heard about chess before B. Fischer. 
  I remember that the cars stopped on street when the radio transmitted the moves of the  match Fischer against Spassky. Since  that time I interested myself about chess, I went to the book store and I found the Fischer's book named "Bobby Fischer teaches chess" . This book is very nice for the beginners, but unfortunately I am trying to learn chess until today :)