Brilliant chess master, world-class eccentric Bobby Fischer dies

 

(CNN) -- Chess master Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players in history, has died, a spokesman for the World Chess Federation confirmed to CNN Friday. He was 64.

 

No cause of death was given.

 

Fischer became the first American world chess champion when he defeated Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a legendary encounter during the Cold War in 1972.

 

Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov said Fischer would be remembered as "the pioneer, some would say the founder, of professional chess" and called his death "very sad news."

 

According to media reports in Iceland, Fischer died at a hospital in the capital, Reykjavik. He moved to Iceland after being granted citizenship in 2005.

 

Fischer became almost as famous for his personality quirks and his renegade behavior as for his brilliance at chess.

 

He learned to play as a child in Brooklyn, New York, and quickly became a prodigy. He was only 15 when he reached the level of grand master in August, 1958.

 

His memorable and tumultuous defeat of Spassky in 21 games highlighted his eccentricity.

 

He forfeited the second game of the contest after he refused to play on, complaining that the presence of cameras was distracting him. The match was then moved to a back room.

 

Some suspected that Fischer's sometimes bizarre behavior throughout the match was intended to unnerve the highly disciplined Spassky.

 

Fischer never defended his crown, refusing a 1975 match against Anatoly Karpov, another Soviet. The WCF awarded the title to Karpov and Fischer dropped from sight for nearly two decades.

I

n 1992, he resurfaced to play Spassky in a rematch in Belgrade, a move that defied U.S. sanctions against the former Yugoslavia.

 

He won the chess match and the prize money of $3.5 million, but spent the next decade as a reclusive and somewhat mysterious figure who was regarded as a fugitive by American authorities.

 

....Fischer was arrested in 2004 at Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan, for traveling on a U.S. passport that was revoked after the 1992 Belgrade match. Japan detained him for nine months while he fought deportation to the United States.

In March 2005 Iceland invited Fischer to live there. Japan released him, and he promptly renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen and resident of Iceland.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/18/fischer.obit/?iref=mpstoryview

:cry:

 

My dad tried to turn me into some sort of a chess prodigy when I was little- about 3 or 4, I think. Never really worked. He was always telling me stories about Bobby Fischer's famous matches and how no one knew what happened to him.

 

Sad to see a great mind gone, and a childhood enigma dispelled for good.

RIP to the best chess player in history

R.I.P.

RIP .... man that's really sad.

That's sad news.. What turned him into a recluse?:confused:

i heard about this. RIP

That's sad news.. What turned him into a recluse?:confused:

Religion and the US government, and general vitriol against the US. God rest his soul :(

Chess master Bobby Fischer buried

 

Chess master Bobby Fischer buried

 

Reclusive chess genius Bobby Fischer has been buried in a private ceremony at a churchyard in southern Iceland, a television station has reported.

 

Fischer, who died of kidney failure on Thursday at the age of 64, was interred at Laugardalur church outside the town of Selfoss, parish priest the Rev Kristinn Agust Fridfinnsson said.

 

The funeral was attended by only a handful of people, including Fischer's companion, Miyoko Watai, and his Icelandic friend and spokesman Gardar Sverrisson.

 

A troubled chess genius, Fischer gained global fame in 1972 when he defeated the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in Reykjavik for the world championship.

 

The showdown, played out at the height of the Cold War, took on mythic dimensions as a clash between the world's two superpowers.

 

Fischer lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov.

 

He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, spending time in Hungary and the Philippines and emerging occasionally to make outspoken and often outrageous comments, sometimes attacking the US.

 

Fischer, born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, was arrested in Japan in 2004 and threatened with extradition to the US to face charges that he broke international sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by going there to play a chess match in 1992.

 

Fischer renounced his US citizenship and spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland, a chess-mad nation of 300,000, granted him citizenship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5O2XuOvKho

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-vTSbWmlPs

Thanks for the info.

 

That's sad news.. What turned him into a recluse?:confused:

 

 

Paranoia and the cold war.

 

Top chessmen have a long history of being a little... off balance. I don't know if it's the type of personality that is attracted to the game, or how tightly wound they have to be to play it, but he's not the only one, just the most well known. From what some people who knew him are saying (though they won't say it in so many words... it is a bit rude :embarassed:) he may have been a bit of a paranoid schizophrenic, at least at the end. Well, whatever it was, it's really sad the way great minds have a way of tearing themselves apart. :confused::(