14) Fischer could not afford to go to the 1958 Portoroz interzonal, so the TV game show "I've Got a Secret" provided round trip tickets for him and his sister.
15) Tal was hospitalized during the 1962 Curaçao candidates tournament; according to Benko, Fischer was the only tournament participant who visited Tal in the hospital.
Bobby claimed he spoke a bunch of languages but it was just enough to get through the moves in chess books.
Yes, there is strong evidence his father was some Russian physicist or something, not Mr. Fischer that he took his name from.
After he whacked Spassky in 72, he got a bit cheesed off chess. Then this guy Karpof wanted to play with him, he said "please bobby, I'd really love to play ya, playin you might akshilly make me super duper chesser".
Bobby told him "gerroff man, yer a patzer!"
But in 92 he came back with a comeback special to whack Spassky all over again.
@OP some of your information is wrong , you should get the facts right before posting such things , its easy with google these days .
Because I dislike misinformation and so that it doesn't get spread any further I'd like to clear up some of the errors.
3) He did quit school at age 16. However, where are you getting the seven languages from? Fischer was known to be more or less fluent in Spanish, and certainly learned enough Russian to read chess literature, but where are you getting seven languages from? What were they? Source?
4) How did the Russians "dodge" him? Fischer met them over the board on dozens of occasions when they played in the same events. As for Botvinnik "dodging him" that's a huge piece of misinformation. This episode occurred during Fischer's trip to the USSR. He was US Champion, but he was not yet a world class player. He felt entitled to play Botvinnik but had no real claim for that. He was beating some run of the mill Soviet masters in blitz when the Soviets sent Tigran Petrosian to take care of things. Petrosian promptly crushed Fischer in a number of games.
5) He and his sister started playing on a $1 chess set following the instructions therein...Bobby was 6 years old.
7) Source? Fischer was not banned anywhere for his dress. Fischer had a habit of wearing corduroys and sweaters with sneakers which continued into the start of his international career. He was teased by some of the other players for dressing frumpily. Pal Benko, on a trip with Fischer back from Yugoslavia managed to convince Bobby to visit his tailor. From that point forward Fischer began dressing properly.
9) The winner of the match actually received $156,000 as British financier Jim Slater doubled the prize fund a few days before the match began.
11) He wasn't "rumored" to have married a Japanese lady. It is well documented that he married Miyoko Watai.
12) The arrest warrant issued for Fischer after the 92 match had nothing to do with taxes although he certainly didn't pay any. His warrant was due to the fact that he played the match in Yugoslavia. The US State Department did not allow Americans to travel there. Fischer's warrant was in relation to violating the travel ban.
Fischer banned for not wearing suits ? LOL Guess where this very famous picture was made .
Regarding 7), Arnold Denker claimed in "The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories" that Fischer was banned from the Manhattan Chess Club for improper attire. Denker interceded and got him reinstated. Around the same time, Benko talked Fischer into buying suits.
I find it interesting that Fischer is still controversial years after his death.
Fischer didnt start wearing suits until his late teens , this is well known . He attended the Manhattan chess club for years before reaching his late teens . Its possible that they changed the dress code about the time he reached his late teens but I find this doubtful .
@OP & ChrisW.: You are both wrong. It was not about taxes and not about travel. Because of the war NATO vs Yugoslavia there was an embargo on doing business there. Because the match of 1992 had a Yugoslav sponsor, US Gov. sent to Fischer a letter not to play that match, or his assets in US would be confiscated an he were to be arrested at return in USA. After that he never set foot in USA again.
Also there are some more errors, but I have not time right now to correct.
I have always suspected that the real reason Fischer failed to defend his world title was that he wanted to go down in history as an undefeated world champion.
I wouldn't be surprised if Denker exaggerated the incident. It is supposed to have occurred in 1959, and Denker's account was published in 1995, when he was about 80 years old.
I have always suspected that the real reason Fischer failed to defend his world title was that he wanted to go down in history as an undefeated world champion.
--- Interesting theory to be sure.
19) Many people make s+%# up about Fischer and write threads about it.
I dont know about fischer.but I am also in icc chess server.the place has become deserted due to lack of active user's and i guess bot's are replacing human in that field.they play like a chess engine, dont answer in chat.I think we are closer to a humanoid society where machines doing duty for a human.
1) He kept his prize Dubrovnik chess set in a safe...but it had to be sold later because he didn't pay the storage fee.
2) He may have had the Asperger's thing, if it exists at all. He was probably an illegitimate child; his father and mother both had high IQ's.
3) He quit school at age 16 to devote more time to chess, plus thinking school was a complete waste of time. He learned 7 foreign languages on his own after that.
4) The Russian chess players dodged him for most of his prime in his 20's. Bobby finally caught them at age 29.
Botvinik, Russian champion turned him down to play when Bobby a teenager...Bobby called him a pig for turning him down.
5) He and his sister started playing on a $1 chess set following the instructions therein...Bobby was 6 years old.
6) His first rated tournament, he got about a 1726 rating - he was 13. . . a year later, at age 14, he zoomed up to a 2231 rating, 500 pts up in about a year. Not much more than a year later, his rated zoomed again to 2626. And at age 19, to 2785.
7) He was once banned by the Manhattan chess club for not being properly dressed; he started dressing in suit and tie after that.
8) At age 38, he was arrested on suspicion of bank robbery...bail was set at $1000.
9) Bobby had played Boris Spassky a few times before the famous 1972 match, but had always lost to him before '72. The winner of that match got around $78,000.
10) Bobby went into hiding in California, Pasadena and San Francisco most of his 30's.
11) He traveled to the Philipines, Budapest and Japan, was rumored to have gotten married to a Japanese lady and rumored to have had a daughter named Jinky. He spent 6 months in a Japanese prison, supposedly for having an invalid passport. Bobby was steamed at the Japanese officials, calling them gangsters.
12) When he won the rematch in '92, and $3.5 million, the US government wanted taxes from his winnings; Bobby refused; they put out an arrest warrant on him. Bobby didn't think they should have any of his winnings. He never was afraid to speak his mind, tell it like he thought it was and speak the truth.
13) Bad luck, he died of renal failure at age of 64 - the same number of squares on a chess board.
RIP Robert James Fischer.