Did Bobby Fischer really retire from chess?

We all know the games between “Fischer” and short were a hoax (no matter how many times Agadmator tries to click bait us into watching his terrible vids by claiming they did in the title)

But he must have still played chess even into his later years. I’m not even a good player and find it hard to quit completely for more than a month. He must have played online. I know he kept up to date with chess enough to realise how rotten it has become. But I find it very hard to believe someone can get so good at something and then just walk away completely. Surely he must have still played occasionally against his “wife”. It’s just too addictive to turn your back on permanently.

He played Fischer Random.

We have no word on chess in the next life, so we do not know if he's still playing.

"Surely he must have still played occasionally against his “wife” " -OP

Only a chess player is capable of such bullocks !

There was a lot written about why- a good book is "Bobby Fischer goes to war", I think youd like it.  He basically made sure he would never have accept a challenge to his title, by making the challenger accept unreasonable terms in a match, and giving the champion (him) too big an advantage. They tried several times to put a match together, it fell apart, and FIDE stripped him of the title and held a match without him.. I think it was the book I mentioned that laid down some good groundwork as to why Fischer was being hard to get back on the board- namely, that in his mental state he couldn't bring himself to rise to meet a challenger, it was easier for him to hold on to the fact that he was the champion, it was his destiny, his whole lifes ambition, his whole focus, and afterall, no one was going to meet him on his terms, so that gave him his crutch to comfort him. To him, it was everyone else that was not reasonable, and he figured 'I'm still the champion'.  It was well known that he played chess with grandmaster friends afterward, always followed chess periodicals to try and keep up to date. The match with Spassky already showed that he was a bit unstable, he was playing mind games from the very start, once Fischer won a game though, he became more comfortable and settled in, but the drama at the front end is something to see

I hope you're not expecting a definitive answer on this forum.

I can give a definitive answer!  YES!  Fischer's dead!  When I'm dead, I'll be retired from chess!

He defended his "world championship" in 1992. No fear.

I prefer to think that his mental illness retired him.

I agree. He'd been hurtling toward a point of no return with his mental illness. Perhaps dropping out of chess slowed down the progression. It was clear that decades later, he still suffered from mental illness.