Bobby Fischer and his sister Joan

I have been doing some reading about Joan Targ (nee Fischer), sister of Bobby Fischer.

As many here will know, it was Joan who taught Bobby the rudimentary rules of the game of chess in that apartment in New York city when they were kids at home awaiting their mothers return from her days work.

So for chess followers everywhere we owe a debt of gratitude to Joan for teaching Bobby how to play chess.

The information we have access to about Joan is limited. We know that Joan met and married Russell Targ, and they went on to have a family of their own and by all accounts they were an extremely talented family too. Joan and Russell's  daughter Elisabeth was, according to reports, extremely academic and was fluent in several European languages and was top of her profession (psychiatry).

Joan's husband, Russell Targ, is by all accounts anextremely intelligent person too.

But it is Joan's story which I find intriguing. It would appear that she was a very intelligent person too.

So both Bobby and Joan were very gifted people.

I don't wish to offend anyone when I ask this question.

My question is do we know whether or not, Bobby and Joan had the same father? 

I reiterate that I have no wish to insult Joan, the Fischer family, or the Targ family in asking that question. 

I am however intrigued to try to ascertain Joan's lineage.

"Smart people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, stupid people talk about other people."

               You don't want to insult??   TOO LATE!  you want ancestry.com

                   Here's what I can tell you about Joan. When Bobby left the country to play a rematch in Bolgaria. The Justice Dept had an embargo on that country. By playing there, Bobby was in violation of that. When he won, it was Joan who helped him set up a swiss bank account so that he could have access to his money from Iceland.

Why are you making this comment about other people?

Oh, wait....

It's very likely that Fischer's farther was Paul Nemenyi.  And Joan's father was indeed Hans-Gerhardt Fischer.  Note that Joan was five years older than Bobby.

I was quoting an idea.

But it was an idea about other people you were talking about....so talking about other people.

Me, on the other hand, I was talking about a thing. Specifically, your thing about talking about other people.

I thought this was pretty much a slam dunk.

It's ok if the idea concerns a generalization of people. The problem lies in discussing specific people.

Is talking about other people's ideas better than talking about other people?

What about talking about other people's things?

I think we need a flowchart. No, not a flowchart...whaddya call it..one of those pyramids.

"... we owe a debt of gratitude to Joan for teaching Bobby how to play chess ..."

Possibly more than we'll ever know. If he hadn't had chess to absorb his intellectual energies, who knows what degree of evil might have come from that disordered personality.

Yeah!  He might have become a postal worker or something.

Wow I didn't think about that at all. You know Hitler took up chess in his early days but one day decided to stop because it was too addicting.

Indurain : This has nothing to do with Bobby's sister, but gives info for you about address and date !    I hope I can find more.

When unreadable : that address is Mrs. R. Fischer, 1059 Union St., Brooklyn, N.Y. and the date is Januari 13, 1951.

Bobby's mother hat sent a postcard on November the 14th, 1950, asking for possibilities to play chess for, as the Chess Editor Hermann Helms wrote : "your little chess-playing boy"...

Indeed - look at the picture of Paul Nemenyi in the link above and make up your own mind...

Reminds me of a recent news story I saw which suggested Frank Sinatra "might" be the father of Mia Farrow's son Ronan - and not Woody Allen:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10350935/Mia-Farrow-Woody-Allens-son-Ronan-possibly-Frank-Sinatras.html

our mail could have been delivered by Bobby Fischer, the guy that could have been a world chess champion! cool.

Hmm, if Hitler had gone down the chess route he would still have been criticised... "that boy Adolf should have made something of his life instead of wasting it playing chess..."

Chess can be a tough road to go down. Defeating the enemy is too enjoyable for some, they try to quit and just end up down another rocky road.