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Bobby Fischer Is Dead At 64
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:08 AM
from the new-kind-of-chess dept.
from the new-kind-of-chess dept.
A number of readers wrote in to make sure we know that former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has died in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he had lived since 2005. No cause of death was given.
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Why such hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
That and a few other choice comments attributed to him make me want to say, good riddance. It is such a travesty to see such greatness overshadowed by blantant and raving bigotry. I don't care how good at chess he was anymore, the world doesn't need to celebrate assholes like this just because "they were once great"
It really sounds like he succumbed to hate and had to disappear at times simply because he knew he couldn't exist in the real world
Re:Why such hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the man succumbed to mental illness. Hopefully you're never in a position to pass any meaningful judgement on people who have these kinds of issues.
Or what would you tell the readers on this site that lay claims to having Asperger's syndrome or a close relative of such? Would you tell them that it serves them right and that they're just a bunch of misfits?
If anything Fischer's legacy outside of chess should be to show people that extreme talent and insight in a small area gives no one any special insight into anything else. Maybe actors and singers should take note of that.
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Re:Why such hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
And PHDs, Pastors, MDs or anyone else highly educated speaking of fields like an expert where they aren't.
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Re:Why such hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fischer's demise is oddly similar to that of Luzhin from The Defence [wikipedia.org] novel by Nabokov. The main character was also a genius chess player that was drifting between the clear mind and the insanity. What's even more odd is that the novel dates back to early 1930s.
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dealing with mental issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Every four years I vote in the American presidential election.
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Re:Why such hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
That and a few other choice comments attributed to him make me want to say, good riddance.
He was certainly a huge dick, and a bigot to boot. But AFAIK all he ever did was rant and talk. Not exactly someone you wish dead. In a word, "Mostly Harmless".
I have to say, the world is a slightly less interesting place with Bobby Fischer not in it.
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Re:Why such hate? (Score:4, Interesting)
It makes no sense at all to discuss his pronouncements on current events as if there were any possibility he would express any understanding of their human dimensions. It's not hate, it's indifference. And it's not really very far removed from the kind of indifference that is politically acceptable because its common. The only reason people don't sound so callous when they discuss war or economic policy is because they're tuned to the same wavelength as the others around them. They know what kinds of real things seem real and what kinds of real things seem unreal to the people they're talking to, hardly the kind of nuance you'd expect a mind like Bobby Fischer's to grasp.
Bobby Fischer had pretty good reason to hate the American government. The indifference to the suffering of others thrown in with that is not particularly shocking, and the fact that he let it show publicly just demonstrates his utter lack of tact, a quality that in all probability he never felt the need for. The antisemitism was just garden variety self-loathing, obviously ugly as well as bat-shit crazy, but not so incomprehensible.
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Re:Why such hate? (Score:5, Informative)
Fischer's mother was Jewish, which technically makes him Jewish. It is probable that his biological father was Jewish as well.
Therefore being an anti-semite is a form of self-loathing for him.
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Re:Why such hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
I never said anything bad about Bobby Fischer, but judging from the articles I'm seeing, he's said plenty bad about me as a Jewish-American. Why should I shed tears over the guy? Or is it somehow different when you spew rhetoric against groups rather than individuals?
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God (Score:4, Funny)
Truly Unfortunate (Score:5, Insightful)
From an admirable chess player early on, he showed signs of mental instability. But really, who hasn't from time to time? He made absurd demands to move Moscow closer to the ocean or make the sun set sooner for his convenience when he appeared at the famous game. I've read accounts that make him sound borderline autistic. Although he seemed to have much more cognitive powers
I wish I could erase the last half of Bobby Fischer's life from history. I wish he never touched a radio station's microphone. His proclamation that the September 11th attacks were "wonderful news [wikipedia.org]" and calling for the US to be destroyed, his several radio aired remarks against Jewish peoples and other disparaging remarks. Was this for attention? Was this really what he believed? I'm not sure what personally made him feel this way but living in Iceland under political asylum was not the way I wanted to see it end.
Unfortunate that he died. Even more unfortunate that he never came around to apologize and promote chess in schools and everywhere. We'll miss the young Bobby Fischer and always be a little confused about what happened to make him cross that fine line between ingenuity and insanity. Rest in peace, Bobby Fischer.
Re:Truly Unfortunate (Score:5, Interesting)
While two cases don't make a solid trend, you wonder how many slip under the radar.
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He should've played Go. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:He should've played Go. (Score:5, Funny)
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Cause of death - Kidney Related (Score:5, Informative)
here's his real homepage (Score:5, Informative)
mental illness is sad. 1 beer a day will not cure dementia.
Fischer was truly epic in his takedown of the Russian "machine". Then the American politicians screwed him for playing the immortal game during a temporal war.
In chess you don't have to die young to leave a good looking corpse you just have to get out of the spotlight while you're ahead. (Britney Spears take note.)
Well we have his radio rants happy about 11-9 but at least no bad chess games out of his prime.
Checkmate Indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
"Checkmate", from the Persian "shah mat" meaning, "the king is dead".
He had chess pains just before he died (Score:5, Funny)
He was just a Pawn in the struggle between Kings and Queens
thomasdz
One year for every square. (Score:5, Interesting)
Cause of death... (Score:4, Funny)
A story from Bobby's youth.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bobby was living in New York City as a teenager and playing chess at an amazingly high level. He was also, clearly, a mentally troubled young man, and many of his chess playing friends noticed the instability as well as the genius. A number of friends convened a meeting and discussed taking up a collection to try to get Bobby some professional psyciatric help, which it was clear he needed even then. The meeting is going along, and most agree to encourage Bobby to get help.
Towards the end of the meeting, someone asks "What if Bobby gets well and stops playing good chess?" The meeting then breaks up and nothing ever came of it.
In many ways, Chess is about black versus white. My former chess teacher always prefered that we use the terms "light" and "dark" squares, rather then black and white, and I think it makes a very apt metaphor for Bobby's life. He lived some of his life on the light squares, accomplishing one of the greatest mental-athletic endeavors of all time. For this, he is rightly lionized as one of the great geniuses of the 20th century. He also led many of his years on the dark side of the board as well. Homeless in Los Angeles. Travling around penniless and without recognition for over 20 years. Finally reaping considerable financial rewards in Yogoslovia at the cost of his freedom.
Finally, people note that Bobby in his later years was an anti-semite and said some truly disturbing things. Yet that's not how I see it. Rather than spiteful, his ramblings should be chalked up to the mental illness that clearly ravaged his brain throughout his later life. Just as the deranged homeless man on street should be pitied, so should Bobby. He lived in the largely Jewish chess community of New York for years, and while he may have had issues, his hatred of Jews only reached full blown proportions as his mental health declined. Clearly, he did not suffer fools. But I see no evidence that his dislike for stupid people was anything other than color/creed blind until later in life. Truly, these were the untreated manifestations of the illness that his chess colleagues recognized all those years ago in New York.
RIP Bobby, and I hope that you find the peace in the next world (whether that be in the big chess board in the sky or simply as worm food) that eluded you in this one.
Re:reason for death (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:reason for death (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Greatest player of all time (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't correct. From 1963-68 for a variety of reasons (some of them relating to his religious beliefs at the time), he rarely played, but he played well when he did play. Then in 1969 he got serious about competing for the World Championship and returned to full time active play. After winning the championship in 1972 he essentially permanently retired from chess by simply refusing to play again, coming out of retirement only in 1992 to beat Spassky (the guy he defeated in 1972 for the championship) again in a rematch. Spassky at this time had long stopped being a top notch player and was probably at best in top 70 or so chess players, possibly even lower than that. So to say that Fischer "would come out of obscurity to beat whoever was the current Grandmaster" is completely inaccurate, but he certainly did disappear again.
By the way, there are many "Grandmasters" in chess. While compared to average guy on the street they are chess playing geniuses, there are at any time multi-hundreds of grandmasters in chess. I've known of US ones who were quite good on the US scene and absolutely nothing in terms of their international standing.
While many Americans would love to believe that Fischer was the greatest chess player ever, certainly it was really Garry Kasparov. If some thought that Anatoly Karpov (the man that Fischer lost his title to in 1975 by refusing to play) was better than Fischer, I wouldn't argue it. Karpov was a truly great player. Fischer was truly excellent, but he only played a very limited number of openings with both the white and black pieces. Kasparov and Karpov excelled at all openings with white and black. One of Fischer's favorite defenses with black, the Benoni, has been mostly discredited since his championship title in 1972. The Benoni basically is a losing defense for black if white plays what is called the "Four Pawns Attack" against it. This method of attack by white has never been successfully answered by the black pieces. In fact, this attack is so fearful that most Benoni players will transpose into the Benoni from other openings only after it becomes impossible for white to use this method. No grandmaster is brave enough to start the Benoni from the first move for fear of white adopting the Four Pawns Attack against it. Fischer was a specialist in a very limited repertoire of white and black moves and Karpov and Kasparov could play anything. I'd personally place him 2nd of all time behind Kasparov.
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