Tribute to Bobby Fischer !. Review on Bobby Fischer

A Genius, A Mastermind, A Maverick, A Psycho, An Eccentric, and

arguably The Greatest Chess Player Ever – one epithet wouldn’t suffice

to describe Bobby Fischer. A school dropout with an IQ of an

astonishing 180, he became US Chess Champion at the age of 14! This

was the guy who ended the Soviet domination of Chess and perhaps may

have been the harbinger for Chess to become popular world-wide(all

while he kept becoming more and more notorious).

Every sport produces a rebel. A rebel whose mind is wired completely

different compared to their peers and one who gives two hoots to what

the world thinks of him.

If Tennis has John McEnroe, Football has

Zinadine Zidane. It used to be a Herculean task for the organizers to

make Bobby participate in a tournament. He demanded humungous prize

amounts and stipulated hundreds of conditions which often ran into

paragraphs and pages. Conditions unheard of before like, children

should not eat chocolate while watching the tournament(because the

wrappers produce rustle), the size and color of the squares on the

chess board, that he should be allowed to wear dark glasses(so that

the opponent can’t see his eye movements), to the extent that even the

lavatory seats must be at a height that he wanted them to be! – things

if implemented would truly create the ‘Perfect Conditions for Playing

Chess’.

He had a lot of objections with the format of Chess itself – the player

playing with White pieces always begins the game giving that player a

very slight positional advantage. To eliminate this advantage, Bobby

proposed randomizing the positions of all the pieces behind the pawns.

Then there would be 960 different starting positions for the chess

pieces forcing the player playing White come out of his pre-prepared

opening variations. Also, it’s very common that a better player may

sometimes lose to a weaker player because of Time Pressure(while

playing with a Chess Clock with each player given say 2 hours of play

time). He patented an electronic Chess Clock which adds a few seconds

to ones kitty after a player makes his move – a gem of an idea. This

has now become an accepted international standard and is called the

‘Fischer Clock’.

He did crazy things like ‘bunking’ the inaugural ceremonies before

tournaments, turning up late for the rounds and running away

god-knows-where in between the tournament. He once called Garry

Kasparov a ‘Dog’! He was also chased by the FBI for he was to be

captured for some petty offences like tax evasion, and violating US

sanctions(he played a tournament in Yugoslavia, which was under US

sanctions) etc. The world didn’t knew where he used to live, whether he

was alive or not, for more than 20 years since he won the World

Championship after crushing the then soviet Champion Boris Spassky! The

day he won the world championship title he even went to the extent of

joining the Doomsday Cult – the Church of Worldwide God. There is a

rumor that he once came online anonymously on the Internet and defeated

Nigel Short, another chess prodigy, badly in a series of online chess

games! He even appeared on radio sometimes in praise for 9/11 and

addressing United States and Jews in all the possible abusive words

including the f-ones! He was once arrested for a short time in

Pasedena, California and was made to face extremely uncouth police

officers and underwent third degree of physical torture.

He could never

go back to US because he had a death penalty in his name.

I am quite poignant to write the article in the past tense as this

‘King of Chess’ got check-mated in life on January 17, 2007 due to a

kidney failure. It’s quite saddening to the Chess World that we can no

longer hear any more of his fascinating idiosyncrasies.