Understanding Bobby Fischer – Part 1 : The Early Years.

No-one has had an impact on the world of Chess like Bobby Fischer, love him or hate him he still generates as much or more debate than any other player in history.

I have been thinking about starting this thread for a while, probably since I read the book “Endgame” a couple of months ago. I see on the Forums a lot of misconceptions & sometimes just plain bewilderment when it comes to explaining/understanding Bobby Fischer, so here is a chance to examine the man & his life in a way that gives us some insight.

I would like to avoid being too judgemental in this analysis but rather look at it in more clinical terms. What made him do & say the things he did (Both good & bad), how did his lifestyle & environment shape the man we saw achieve the Holy Grail of Chess & then let it slip away only to become an eccentric semi recluse.

So part 1 is to examine the early years, up to 1958 when he won the U.S Championship.

A number of questions arise from his early influences. What was it like growing up in a single parent home in Brooklyn in the 1940's/50's? Does anyone have personal experience or strong anecdotal evidence (From close family, friend or relative) on his childhood environment? What other environmental influences was he subjected to, this can range from Politics of the era to music that was in the early stages of a counter culture revolution that would change the world in the 1960's. The people who influenced him in Chess are pretty well documented but we can also examine their relationships with Fischer as well if it gains us more insight.

If you are quoting factual evidence please provide a link to the source material, opinions & anecdotal evidence are equally welcome especially if they generate further discussion & lines of investigation.

So lets get started, I'm preparing a post on my thoughts, analysis & insights, I look forward to seeing what others have to offer & what we can make of it.

I would love to learn more about the man behind the chessboard !!! Will be following this thread :)

Well I've never understood Bobby Fischer I heard he dropped out of school just to play chess Is that true or just a story

Plain and simple. He was a narcissist.

Possibly very true, but the idea of this thread is to work out why. He certainly wasn't a narcissist at age 6 when he learned Chess, so how & when did he become one & what were this influences on him to cause this?

@fla2lens

Nice pic, I've seen another with him playing chess in the pool with GM Larry Evans

The fact that he was a narcissist is widely accepted but the diagnosis does not make the man ... what is being looked at here as I understand it is who was he and how did he become that way?  And the why of some of his actions to which the answer can not always be attributed to narcissism....

An interesting training technique!!

Yes he left school at age 16 to persue chess - but keep in mind back then many women left school at that age and even younger to attend to the home and many men left at that age or younger to persue a trade.

Even when I went to highschool many kids left at 16 - the only ones that stayed were the ones who wanted to go to university and why stay an extra 2 years when you can start learning your perferred trade was the thought back then. I myself signed up for the Army at 16 but finished highschool I had basic training the summer of my 17th year. I could have left school if I wished.

FM not another bloody BF thread.

FM?

Thanks, I'll see if I can find a copy, I'm currently re-reading Endgame by Frank Brady, he seems to have some very good insights into Fischer

The Ralph Ginzberg interview gave Bobby a very negative impression of journalists, and was probably one of his early formative experiences.

I was part of the Fischer Boom, I was 20 when he won the title, it got me seriously into chess. I had learned to play at a School that had a strong chess club but Fischer's WCC win & all the press it generated got me into it at a higher level. Even here in Australia Fischer v Spassky was reported every night on the News & after that we started getting TV chess programs in particular a very good one from the BBC that ran a 30 min game format featuring Karpov (The eventual winner) & other top world ranked players.

Its interesting that we are still talking about Fischer so many years later, I remember vividly the 1992 rematch, it made the TV news here too. There was an Aussie GM at the match so he was interviewed about it a couple of times, it may have been GM Ian Rogers, I would have to do some digging to verify that but a couple of his comments have stuck with me to this day.

The first comment was after Game 1 or 2 & he was asked “How is Fischer playing after a 20 year absence” His reply was, “Fischer is playing with a mixture of Rust & Brilliance, we are all fascinated by it”

Next he was asked “Why is this match making world news when it is between a former champion who hasn't played for 20 years & his opponent who is no longer a World champion contender.

He replied “Are you kidding me!! to the Chess world this is like the 2^nd coming of Christ” How true, that was exactly how many of us felt & we all hoped it was the start of comeback but sadly that was not to be.

For me now it is still a measure of the man that he could beat a top 100 player when he hadn't played a game in 20 years.

Fascinating reading: http://www.bobby-fischer.net/Bobby_Fischer_Articles4.html

Fischer really comes across poorly, and yet Brady says that Ginzberg didn't misquote anything, so Bobby really had only himself to blame.

That an interesting interview, the sort of thing I hoped this thread would generate. It sets up this discussion on the early years nicely. The question for us at the moment is how did he get like that? At 18 he had achieved a degree of independance, a heap of fame & was trying to find himself as a person, obviously with limited success. Its easy for people to judge the final result but we are all products of our environment & our genetic heretage, nature & nurture if you like.

So I'm digging into the major influences the 1st of which is probably his Mother, followed by environment & then the other people who influenced him.

There is little doubt that Fischers worst enemy was Bobby Fischer.

It shows that at 18, he was already anti-semitic, homophobic, and sexist, and was extremely naive psychologically in not realizing the obvious effects his words would have. Fischer also reveals in this interview an obsession with class and status and the trappings of success that probably is a result of the scars resulting from growing up terribly poor.

Exactly, all the traits are there that became obsessions in later life & earned him lack of respect & even hatred as his Chess achievments became lost in the past & his embittered outlook on life took hold of him

Yeah, thats part of what I want to dig into. I also want to examine later the similarity to the crisis the Apollo 11 Astronauts encountered after the Moon landing. When you have achieved the greatest thing you will ever do in your life what the hell do you do next?

Part of Fischers problem was almost certainly a lack of ability to form close relationships, especially with women, that would certainly be a factor in the "empty inside" bit that you mention

I am studying Criminal Psychology and narrcisssism was a whole unit on it's own. Here is my analysis of the interview –

 I was interested to read "Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Player" ... It surprised me  because it is widely accepted that Bobby was a narcissist but at the time of this interview he would not be considered a narcissist. He makes statements against women with intelligence, Jews, people who do not dress up to his standards ect ect – but why does he feel this way?

We are looking at a boy who is trying to becoming a self made man. He wants nothing to do with his past so is trying to become like the only people he respects – Aristocrats. He resents his mother, poverty and anything that may be related in any way to his past.  Is he anti sematic? Yes but not because he hates Jews but because he is ½ Jewish and hates that part of himself so he distances himself. He won’t cook his own meals and only goes to restaurants with wait staff – the poor are not waited upon they do the serving so again – working to be as far from the miserable poor child he was.  At 10 he may have been a genius but in the interview we see a child who is struggling to not be everything he was and to do that he has set his sights on the Aristocratic. Cook?? Pffttt  Ready made clothes?? No way!!….Intelligent women??? No place in his life or in his view for them – a way to try to erase his mother from his past... and on and on.  So we have a boy who wants to wipe his history from his life so he becomes everything he wasn’t and turns his nose up at everything the he was or that reminds him of that time.

If he became a Narcissist then he made himself into one most likely not on purpose.

A major part of Narcissism  is using and discarding people… does anyone know of any reports of this happening? I haven’t heard of any but am fairly new to Bobby.  I will be interested to read more interviews and watch some !

You make some very interesting points that make a lot of sense. Fischers Mother was a very interesting woman, perhaps a generation ahead of her time. She was intellectual, spoke several languages, well traveled, politically active & well educated. Maybe the fact that the culture of the time & her own circumstances as a single Mother contributed to Bobbys personality disorder (for want of a better word) Despite all her education etc it would have been very difficult for her to get a job that would drag them out of poverty yet she still managed to travel & pursue her political activism. Maybe that is what a young Bobby Fischer resented