Bobby Fisher said he hated chess!

Bobby Fischer said it decades after he became world champion – at a time when he would perhaps have been in the world top 50 had he continued to play regularly after Reykjavik 1972 – but why do you think he said it? Probably, because he felt it was true. Let's face it, most of us probably wouldn't enjoy chess half as much as we do as amateurs, if we were professionals. Remember, Fischer dropped out of high-school and then spent the next decade and a half eating and sleeping chess. It consumed him completely (even after he'd won the World Championship, at the reception, he only participated in the event half-heartedly, and preferred bending over his pocket set analysing a position from the match).

Having taken stock of the situation, what was left for him? He was 100 Elo points higher rated than the next man. He knew he would trounce whoever came through as challenger in 1975, 1978, and 1981 (don't kid yourself about Karpov, a great player but he'd only been in with a chance in -81, not before) becase by then he'd still be in his absolute prime as a player, and his capacity for work has probably only been equalled by Kasparov and Carlsen. There were no mountains left to climb. He always said that he felt he could do almost anything he put his hands to because he was a smart guy (however, even back then university degrees mattered, if for no other reason to show that you actually held the qualifications required), and he probably realized that the train had left the station for anything else but chess. He wouldn't have been the first professional chess master to feel this way, and he certainly wasn't the last.

i agree he spent so much time doin chess he couldn't exceed too much in life, so you can see why he has regrets.

lol. it's cute to pretend it has to simply be sour grapes, allows you to completely ignore the point that memorization logically removes creativity from the game, and as something gets figured out to such a degree it's at the last interesting to consider whether creativity will leave the game. There is no comparison in Tennis because you cannot memorize how to run faster or swing harder, these are the type of skills that do not apply to chess. just a mix of strategy, which can increasingly rely on memorization rather than seeing possibilities in the moment. You can disagree with this, but to do so by simply saying 'sour grapes' is rather weak.

i get what he means, he spent most of his youth doing nothing but that, i would regret it as well

Agree with him, chess is a completely waste of time if you try to spend your life on it, a game that has become pure memorization with oppenings that take up to 30-40% of the game, what is the point of that, people have created so much theory around it that playing it competitively is just pointless, is just a competition to see who wastes more their time. That is it.

But in the end he conquered the whole ‘memorization of openings’ and ‘game databases’ downer by releasing Fischer Random Chess (AKA chess960) in 1996. It may ultimately be the future of chess.

History will be much kinder to Fischer than his personal demons were.