Bobby Fischer's reasons for playing chess

I was watching a short interview with Fischer in 1971 and he was asked about the greatest pleasure in chess. His response was when he broke the other player's ego. Then, he was asked what else he would do if not chess, and he replied sports.

My question: Did Bobby actually love chess, or was it just his way to beat people?

When he won the WCC, there was no reason for him to play the game anymore. In his mind, he had beaten everyone.

I know, I'm playing psychologist.

I always thought that was the whole reason to play chess.

If you ask many other top players about their favorite thing in chess, they will often say something like "whenever I play a great game" or something along those lines. In other words, something about the game being beautiful or fun itself, not simply beating other people.

To me Chess is a sport, in which, if one practices enough he will be able to showcase to the world how much better he is than they. It is kind of a way for lazy people such as myself to show others that they are smart, even though it's based not on intelligence but on the amount of time devoted to studying. Most people just presume it's intelligence though so I'll do it anyway. Psychoanalyze me that.

I suspect that as much as Fischer professed that he emphasized the "breaking ego" aspect of chess, he valued the beauty of the game quite a lot. If breaking ego were the soul of chess for someone, it wouldn't be a sustainable thing.

That's a good point. I do think there was some part of Fischer that loved chess... but I still wonder...

It got him out of class.

That first statement, definitely agree. The rest is a unique perspective that I hadn't really heard before. Interesting...

(plmw) he was too afraid to return to the chess world and go through the rigorous almost torture-like studying conditions he imposed on himself.

But why was he afraid ?....I surmise he'd realized his preparation to win it all had driven him to near madness....and he had to step back to self-preserve. Interesting, nearly all people who have lost their mind, or in the process of, are consciously aware of their mental illness....especially those who somewhat had it together previously.

               Fischer didn't understand capitalism, and because of that, he was an awful business man. He was given all kinds of offers, books, movies, etc. He turned them all down.

Plus he gave away a huge amount of his world title prize money to the WorldWide Church of God.

Fischer's reasons for playing chess is anyones guess really. 

The reason he refused to play competitively, in my opinion, is because on one hand he loved the game, but his fear of losing superceded his love of the game.

Fischer himself admitted to analysing Kasparov-Karpov match to the nth degree. Why would you analyse something to that degree unless you had an interest in the game?

I'm convinced that Bobby loved the game for itself. The problem for him was that when he became world champion, the idea that he might lose even one game terrified him. And I can actually understand his point of view in that regard to some extent.