| Bobby Fischer | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Robert James Fischer |
| Country | United States Iceland |
| Born | March 9, 1943 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | January 17, 2008 (aged 64) Reykjavík, Iceland |
| Title | Grandmaster |
| World Champion | 1972–75 |
| Peak rating | 2785 (July 1972) |
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author. After ending his competitive career, he proposed a new variant of chess and a modified chess timing system: His idea of adding a time increment after each move is now standard, and his variant Chess960 is gaining in popularity.
Widely considered a "chess legend",[1][2] at age 13 Fischer won a "brilliancy" that became known as The Game of the Century. Starting at age 14, he played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a point. At 15½, he became both the youngest grandmaster and the youngest candidate for the World Championship up until that time. He won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship 11–0, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. In the early 1970s he became one of the most dominant players in modern history—winning the 1970 Interzonal by a record 3½-point margin and winning 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps in the Candidates Matches. According to research by Jeff Sonas, in 1971 Fischer had separated himself from the rest of the world by a larger margin of playing skill than any player since the 1870s.[3] He became the first official World Chess Federation (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) (FIDE) number-one rated chess player in July 1971, and his 54 total months at number one is the third longest of all time.
In 1972, he captured the World Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland, that was widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation. The match attracted more worldwide interest than any chess match before or since. In 1975, Fischer declined to defend his title when he could not come to agreement with FIDE over the conditions for the match. He became more reclusive and did not play competitive chess again until 1992, when he won an unofficial rematch against Spassky. The competition was held in Yugoslavia, which was then under a United Nations embargo.[4][5][6] This led to a conflict with the U.S. government, which was also seeking income tax from Fischer on his match winnings, and Fischer never returned to his native country.
In his later years, Fischer lived in Hungary, Germany, the Philippines, Japan, and Iceland. During this time he made increasingly anti-American and anti-Israel statements. He publicly expressed criticism of the U.S., stating his belief that, "Nobody has single-handedly done more for the U.S. than me. But now I’m not useful anymore, you see. The Cold War is over and now they want to wipe me out, get everything I have, put me into prison."[7] After his U.S. passport was revoked over the Yugoslavia sanctions issue, he was detained by Japanese authorities for nine months in 2004 and 2005 under threat of deportation. In February 2005, Iceland granted him right of residence as a "stateless" alien and issued him a passport.[8] When Japan refused to release him on that basis, Iceland's parliament voted in March 2005 to give him full citizenship.[9] The Japanese authorities then released him to Iceland, where he lived until his death in 2008.[10]
Bobby Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on March 9, 1943.[11] His birth certificate listed his father as Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist (who had been Regina Fischer's husband in Moscow, prior to her arrival in America). His mother, Regina Wender Fischer, was an American citizen of Polish-Russian Jewish descent,[12][13] born in Switzerland and raised in St. Louis, Missouri.[11] She later became a teacher, a registered nurse, and then a physician.[14] Regina had married Fischer in 1933 in Moscow, USSR, where Regina was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute, and the couple had lived together for a few years in Moscow. However, Fischer would never enter America himself, and Regina was a single parent, raising Bobby along with his elder sister, Joan. Regina lived an itinerant life, shuttling between different jobs and schools all over the country, and engaging in political activism.[15] In 1948, the family moved to Mobile, Arizona, where Regina taught in an elementary school. The following year they moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse.
Sources implying that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish physicist, may have been Fischer's biological father, were first made public in a 2002 investigation by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer.[16][17][15] During the 1950s, the FBI investigated Regina and her circle for her alleged communist sympathies and her previous life in Moscow. The files from that FBI investigation into the family identify Nemenyi as Bobby's biological father. Government documents show that Hans-Gerhardt Fischer never entered the United States, having been refused admission by U.S. immigration officials because of alleged Communist sympathies.[16][18][19] Regina and Nemenyi were reported to have had an affair in 1942. Additionally, Paul Nemenyi made monthly child support payments to her, and paid for Fischer's schooling until his own death in 1952.[20] Nemenyi also lodged complaints with social workers saying he was concerned about the way that Regina was raising the child, on one occasion breaking down in tears when making the complaints.[16] Separately, Bobby later told the Hungarian chess player Zita Rajcsanyi that Paul Nemenyi would sometimes show up at the family's Brooklyn apartment and take him on outings.[15] After Paul Nemenyi died, in 1952, Regina Fischer wrote a letter to Paul Nemenyi's first son (Peter), asking if Paul had left money for Bobby in his will: "Bobby was sick 2 days with fever and sore throat and of course a doctor or medicine was out of the question. I don't think Paul would have wanted to leave Bobby this way and would ask you most urgently to let me know if Paul left anything for Bobby."[16] Regina also told a social worker that the last time she had ever seen Hans-Gerhardt Fischer was 1939, four years before Bobby was born. On another occasion, she told the social worker she had traveled to Mexico to see Hans-Gerhardt in June 1942, and that Bobby was conceived during that meeting.[15] According to Bobby Fischer's brother-in-law, Russell Targ, who was married to Bobby's half-sister, Joan, for 40 years, Regina concealed the fact that Nemenyi was Bobby's father because she wanted to avoid the stigma of an out-of-wedlock birth.[15]
In May 1949, the six-year-old Fischer and his sister learned how to play chess using the instructions from a chess set bought at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment.[21][22] When the family vacationed at Patchogue, Long Island that summer, Bobby found a book of old chess games, and studied it intensely.[23] On November 14, 1950, his mother sent a postcard to the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, seeking to place an ad inquiring whether other children of Bobby's age might be interested in playing chess with him. The paper rejected her ad because no one could figure out how to classify it, but forwarded her inquiry to Hermann Helms, the "Dean of American Chess", who told her that master Max Pavey would be giving a simultaneous exhibition on January 17, 1951.[24][25] Fischer played in the exhibition, losing in 15 minutes. One of the spectators was Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn Chess Club, who introduced him to the club and began teaching him.[26][27] Fischer attended the club regularly, intensified his interest, and gained playing strength rapidly. In the summer of 1955, the then 12-year-old Fischer joined the Manhattan Chess Club, the strongest in the country.[28][29]
In June 1956, Fischer began attending the "Hawthorne Chess Club", which was actually master John W. Collins' home. Collins had earlier coached some of the country's leading players, including Robert Byrne, Donald Byrne, and William Lombardy. Fischer played thousands of blitz and offhand games with Collins and other strong players, began studying the books in Collins' large chess library, and ate almost as many dinners at Collins' home as his own.[30][31][32] Future grandmaster Arnold Denker was also a mentor to young Bobby, often taking him to watch the New York Rangers play hockey at Madison Square Garden. Denker wrote that Bobby enjoyed those treats and never forgot them; the two became lifelong friends.[33]
Fischer was also involved with the Log Cabin Chess Club of Orange, New Jersey, which in March 1956 took him on a tour to Cuba, where he gave a 12-board simultaneous exhibition at Havana's Capablanca Chess Club, winning 10 and drawing 2.[34][35] On this tour the club played a series of matches against other clubs. Fischer played on second board, behind strong master Norman Whitaker. Whitaker and Fischer were the leading scorers for the club, each scoring 5.5 points out of 7 games.[36]
Fischer attended Erasmus Hall High School at the same time as Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond.[37][38] In 1959, its student council awarded him a gold medal for his chess achievements.[39][40] The same year, Fischer dropped out of high school when he turned age 16, the earliest he could legally do so.[41][42] He later explained to Ralph Ginzburg, "You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time."[43]
When Fischer was 16, his mother moved out of their apartment to pursue medical training. Her friend Joan Rodker, who had met Regina when the two were "idealistic communists" living in Moscow in the 1930s, believes that Fischer resented his mother for being mostly absent as a mother, a communist activist and an admirer of the Soviet Union, and that this led to his hatred for the Soviet Union. In letters to Rodker, Fischer's mother states her desire to pursue her own "obsession" of training in medicine and writes that her son would have to live in their Brooklyn apartment without her: "It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he is probably happier that way."[44] The apartment was on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood that had one of the highest homicide and general crime rates in New York City.[45] Despite the alienation from her son, Regina in 1960 staged a five-hour protest in front of the White House urging President Dwight Eisenhower to send an American team to that year's chess Olympiad (set for Leipzig, East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain), and to help support the team financially.[46]
Fischer experienced a "meteoric rise" in his playing strength during 1956.[47] On the tenth national rating list of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), published on May 20, 1956, his rating was a modest 1726,[48] over 900 points below top-rated Samuel Reshevsky (2663).[49] Fischer's first real success was winning the United States Junior Chess Championship in July 1956. He scored 8½/10 at Philadelphia to become the youngest-ever Junior Champion at age 13,[50] a record that still stands. In the 1956 U.S. Open Chess Championship at Oklahoma City, Fischer scored 8½/12 to tie for 4th–8th places, with Arthur Bisguier winning.[51] In the first Canadian Open Chess Championship at Montreal 1956, he scored 7/10 to tie for 8–12th places, with Larry Evans winning.[52]
Fischer accepted an invitation to play in the Third Lessing J. Rosenwald Trophy Tournament at New York City 1956, a premier tournament limited to the 12 players considered the best in the country.[53] Fischer received entry by special consideration, since his rating was certainly not among the top 12 in the country at that stage. In that elite company, the 13-year-old Fischer could only score 4½/11, tying for 8th–9th place.[54] This was his first truly strong round-robin event, and he achieved a creditable result, certainly above what his rating predicted. He won the first brilliancy prize for his game against Donald Byrne.[53] Hans Kmoch christened it "The Game of the Century", writing, "The following game, a stunning masterpiece of combination play performed by a boy of 13 against a formidable opponent, matches the finest on record in the history of chess prodigies."[55] This game remains famous worldwide today.[56]
In 1957, Fischer played a two-game match against former World Champion Max Euwe at New York, losing ½–1½.[57][58] On the United States Chess Federation's eleventh national rating list, published on May 5, 1957, Fischer was rated 2231, a master – over 500 points higher than his rating a year before.[59] This made him at that time the country's youngest master ever.[60] In July, Fischer successfully defended his U.S. Junior title, scoring 8½/9 at San Francisco.[61] In August, he played in the U.S. Open Chess Championship at Cleveland, scoring 10/12 and winning on tie-breaking points over Arthur Bisguier,[62][63] making Fischer the youngest U.S. Open Champion ever.[64] He next won the New Jersey Open Championship, scoring 6½/7.[65] Fischer then defeated the young Filipino Master Rodolfo Tan Cardoso 6–2 in a match in New York sponsored by Pepsi-Cola.[66][67]
Based on Fischer's rating and strong results, the USCF invited him to play in the 1957–58 U.S. Championship.[68] The tournament included such luminaries as six-time champion Samuel Reshevsky, defending champion Bisguier, and William Lombardy, who in August had won the World Junior Championship with the only perfect score (11–0) in its history.[69][70] Fischer was expected to score around 50%. Bisguier predicted that Fischer would "finish slightly over the center mark".[69][71] He scored eight wins and five draws to win the tournament with 10½/13, a point ahead of Reshevsky.[72] Still two months shy of his 15th birthday, he became the youngest U.S. Champion in history[73]—a record that still stands.[74] Since the championship that year was also the U.S. Zonal Championship, Fischer's victory earned him the International Master title.[75][76]
Fischer played in eight United States Chess Championships, each held in New York City, winning every one.[77][78] His margin of victory was always at least one point.[79]
His scores were:
Fischer missed the 1961–62 Championship (he was preparing for the upcoming Interzonal), and there was no 1964–65 event.[81] His total score was 74/90 (61 wins, 26 draws, 3 losses), with the only losses being to Edmar Mednis, Samuel Reshevsky, and Robert Byrne.[82] For his career, he achieved 82.2 percent in the U.S. Championship.
His 11–0 win in the 1963–64 Championship is the only perfect score in the history of the tournament,[83][84] and one of about ten perfect scores in high-level chess tournaments ever.[85][86][87] David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld called it "the most remarkable achievement of this kind."[85]
Fischer refused to play in the 1958 Munich Olympiad when his demand was turned down that he, as the reigning U.S. Champion, play first board ahead of Samuel Reshevsky.[88] According to some sources, Fischer, then 15, was unable to arrange leave from attending high school in order to play in Munich.[89] However, he represented the United States on top board with great distinction at four Olympiads:
| Olympiad | Individual result | U.S. team result |
|---|---|---|
| Leipzig 1960 | 13/18 (Bronze) | Silver |
| Varna 1962 | 11/17 (Eighth) | Fourth |
| Havana 1966 | 15/17 (Silver) | Silver |
| Siegen 1970 | 10/13 (Silver) | Fourth |
Fischer's overall total was +40 −7 =18, for 49/65 or 75.4%.[90][91] In 1966, he narrowly missed the individual gold medal, scoring 88.23% to World Champion Tigran Petrosian's 88.46%. Fischer played four more games than Petrosian, faced stiffer opposition, and would have won the gold if he had accepted Florin Gheorghiu's draw offer in the penultimate round rather than declining it and suffering his only loss.[92]
Fischer had planned to play for the United States at the 1968 Lugano Olympiad, but backed out when he saw the poor playing conditions.[93][94]
Fischer's victory in the U.S. Championship qualified him to participate in the 1958 Portorož Interzonal, the next step toward challenging the World Champion.[67] The top six finishers in the Interzonal would qualify for the Candidates Tournament.[95] Prior to the Interzonal, he played two short training matches in Yugoslavia. He drew both games against Dragoljub Janošević. Then he defeated Milan Matulović in Belgrade by 2½–1½.[96]
Most observers doubted that a 15-year-old with no international experience could finish among the six qualifiers at the Interzonal, but Fischer told journalist Miro Radoicic, "I can draw with the grandmasters, and there are half-a-dozen patzers in the tournament I reckon to beat."[97] Despite some bumps in the road, and a problematic start, Fischer succeeded in his plan: after a strong finish, he ended up with 12/20 (+6 −2 =12) to tie for 5th–6th.[98] The Soviet grandmaster Yuri Averbakh observed, "In the struggle at the board this youth, almost still a child, showed himself to be a full-fledged fighter, demonstrating amazing composure, precise calculation and devilish resourcefulness."[99] Fischer became the youngest person ever to qualify for the Candidates. He also became the youngest grandmaster in history at 15 years and 6 months. This record stood until 1991 when it was broken by Judit Polgár.[100]
Before the Candidates' tournament, Fischer competed in the 1958–59 U.S. Championship (winning with 8½/11) and then in international tournaments at Mar del Plata, Santiago, and Zürich. He played unevenly in the two South American tournaments. At the strong Mar del Plata event, he finished tied for third with Borislav Ivkov, half a point behind tournament winners Ludek Pachman and Miguel Najdorf; this confirmed his grandmastership. At Santiago, he tied for fourth through sixth places, behind Ivkov, Pachman, and Herman Pilnik. He did better at the very strong Zurich event, finishing a point behind future World Champion Mikhail Tal and half a point behind Svetozar Gligorić.[101][102]
Although Fischer had ended his formal education at age 16, he subsequently taught himself several foreign languages, to gain access to foreign chess periodicals.[103]
Until late 1959, Fischer "had dressed atrociously for a champion, appearing at the most august and distinguished national and international events in sweaters and corduroys".[104] A director of the Manhattan Chess Club had once banned Fischer for not being "properly accoutered", forcing Denker to intercede to get him reinstated.[105] Likely, lack of money to buy better clothes was at least partially to blame. Now, encouraged by Pal Benko to dress more smartly, Fischer "began buying suits from all over the world, hand-tailored and made to order".[106][107] He boasted to journalist Ralph Ginzburg in 1961 that he had 17 suits, all hand-tailored, and that his shirts and shoes were also handmade.[108]
At the age of 16, Fischer finished a creditable equal fifth out of eight, the top non-Soviet player, at the Candidates Tournament held in Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1959. He scored 12½/28 but was outclassed by tournament winner Tal, who won all four of their individual games.[109]
Fischer published his first book of collected games at age 16, in 1959, entitled Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess, and published by Simon & Schuster.
In 1960, Fischer tied for first place with the young Soviet star Boris Spassky at the strong Mar del Plata tournament in Argentina, with the two well ahead of the rest of the field, scoring 13½/15.[110] Fischer lost only to Spassky, and this was the start of their relationship, which began on a friendly basis and stayed that way, in spite of Fischer's troubles against him over-the-board.[111]
Fischer struggled in the later Buenos Aires tournament, finishing with 8½/19 (won by Viktor Korchnoi and Samuel Reshevsky on 13/19).[112] This was the only real failure of Fischer's competitive career.[113] According to Larry Evans, Fischer's first sexual experience was with a girl to whom Evans introduced him during the tournament.[114][115] Pal Benko says that Fischer did horribly in the tournament "because he got caught up in women and sex. Afterwards, Fischer said he'd never mix women and chess together, and kept the promise."[116] Fischer concluded 1960 by winning a small tournament in Reykjavik with 4½/5,[117] and defeating Klaus Darga in an exhibition game in West Berlin.[118]
In 1961, Fischer started a 16-game match with Reshevsky, split between New York and Los Angeles. Despite Fischer's meteoric rise, the veteran Reshevsky, 32 years Fischer's senior, was considered the favorite, since he had far more match experience and had never lost a set match.[119] After 11 games and a tie score (two wins apiece with seven draws), the match ended prematurely due to a scheduling dispute between Fischer and match organizer and sponsor Jacqueline Piatigorsky.[120] Reshevsky was declared the winner of the match, and received the winner's share of the prize fund.[121]
Fischer was second behind former World Champion Tal at Bled 1961, which had a super-class field. He defeated Tal head-to-head for the first time, scored 3½/4 against the Soviet contingent, and finished as the only unbeaten player, with 13½/19.[122]
In the next World Championship cycle, Fischer won the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal by 2½ points, scoring an undefeated 17½/22.[123] He was the first non-Soviet player to win an Interzonal since FIDE instituted the tournament in 1948.[124]
Fischer's decisive Interzonal victory made him one of the favorites for the Candidates Tournament in Curaçao, which began soon afterwards.[125][126] He finished fourth out of eight with 14/27, the best result by a non-Soviet player, but well behind Tigran Petrosian (17½/27), Efim Geller, and Paul Keres (both 17/27).[127] Tal fell very ill during the tournament, and had to withdraw before completion. Fischer, a friend of Tal, was the only contestant who visited him in the hospital.[128]
Following his failure in the 1962 Candidates (at which five of the eight players were from the Soviet Union), Fischer asserted in an August 1962 article in Sports Illustrated magazine, entitled The Russians Have Fixed World Chess, that three of the Soviet players (Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, and Efim Geller) had a pre-arranged agreement to quickly draw their games against each other in order to save energy and to concentrate on playing against Fischer, and that a fourth, Viktor Korchnoi, had been forced to deliberately lose games to ensure that a Soviet player won the tournament. It is generally thought that the former accusation is correct, but not the latter.[129][130] Anatoly Karpov, later World Champion, wrote in his 1991 autobiography that Korchnoi had complained in the Soviet Union, shortly after the 1962 Candidates' event, about not being included in the colluding group of Soviets.[131] Fischer also stated that he would never again participate in a Candidates' tournament, since the format, combined with the alleged collusion, made it impossible for a non-Soviet player to win.
Following Fischer's article, FIDE in late 1962 voted a radical reform of the playoff system, replacing the Candidates' tournament with a format of one-on-one knockout matches; this was the format that Fischer would dominate in 1971.[132][133]
Fischer defeated Bent Larsen in a summer 1962 exhibition game in Copenhagen for Danish TV. He also defeated Bogdan Śliwa in a team match against Poland at Warsaw later that year.[134]
In the 1962–63 U.S. Championship, Fischer had a close call. In the first round he lost to Edmar Mednis, his first loss ever in a U.S. Championship. Bisguier was in excellent form, and Fischer caught up to him only at the end. Tied at 7–3, the two met in the last round for the championship. Bisguier stood well in the middlegame, but blundered, handing Fischer his fifth consecutive U.S. championship.[135]
In an interview in the January 1962 issue of Harper's, Fischer was quoted as saying, "I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree."[136][137]
Fischer's mother was Jewish. Fischer, however, disavowed having Jewish roots and joined the Worldwide Church of God in the mid-1960s. This church prescribed Saturday Sabbath, and forbade work (and competitive chess) on Sabbath. Fischer's religious obligations were respected by chess organizers, concerning scheduling of his games. Fischer contributed significant money over several years to the Worldwide Church of God.
The year 1972 was a disastrous one for the Worldwide Church of God, as prophecies by Herbert W. Armstrong were unfulfilled, and the church was rocked by revelations of a series of sex scandals involving Garner Ted Armstrong.[138] Fischer, who felt betrayed and swindled by the Worldwide Church of God, left the church and publicly denounced it.[139]
Fischer declined an invitation to play in the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Los Angeles, which had a world-class field. His decision was probably influenced by ill will over the aborted 1961 match against Reshevsky, which had been arranged by the same organizer.[140] Instead, he played in the Western Open in Bay City, Michigan, which he won with 7½/8.[141] In August–September 1963, he won another minor event, the New York State Championship at Poughkeepsie, with 7/7, his first perfect score.[142][143]
The 1963–64 U.S. Championship was expected to be exciting, particularly since Fischer had only narrowly won it the previous year. It was, but not as expected. "One by one Fischer mowed down the opposition as he cut an 11–0 swathe through the field, to demonstrate convincingly to the opposition that he was now in a class by himself."[140] This stunning result brought Fischer heightened fame, including a profile in Life magazine.[144] Sports Illustrated diagrammed each of the 11 games in its article, "The Amazing Victory Streak of Bobby Fischer".[145] Such extensive chess coverage was groundbreaking for the top American sports magazine.
Fischer, eligible as U.S. Champion, decided not to participate in the Amsterdam Interzonal in 1964, thus taking himself out of the 1966 World Championship cycle.[146] He held to this decision even when FIDE changed the format of the eight-player Candidates Tournament from a round-robin to a series of knockout matches, which eliminated the possibility of collusion.[144] He instead embarked on a tour of the United States and Canada from February through May, playing a simultaneous exhibition and giving a lecture in each of more than 40 cities.[147] His 94% winning percentage over more than 2,000 games is one of the best ever achieved.[148] Fischer also declined an invitation to play for the United States in the 1964 Olympiad in Tel Aviv.[149]
Fischer wanted to play in the Capablanca Memorial Tournament, Havana 1965, but the State Department refused to endorse his passport as valid for visiting Cuba.[150] Fischer instead proposed, and the tournament officials and players accepted, a unique arrangement: Fischer played his moves from a room at the Marshall Chess Club, which were then transmitted by teleprinter to Cuba.[151][152][153] Luděk Pachman observed that Fischer "was handicapped by the longer playing session resulting from the time wasted in transmitting the moves, and that is one reason why he lost to three of his chief rivals".[154] The tournament was an "ordeal" for Fischer, who had to endure eight-hour and sometimes even twelve-hour playing sessions.[155] Despite this handicap, he tied for second through fourth places, with 15/21, behind former World Champion Vasily Smyslov, whom he defeated in their individual game.[154] The tournament received extensive media coverage.[156][157]
Fischer began 1966 by winning the U.S. Championship for the seventh time despite losing to Robert Byrne and Reshevsky in the eighth and ninth rounds.[158][159] He also reconciled with Mrs. Piatigorsky, accepting an invitation to the very strong second Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Santa Monica. Fischer began disastrously and after eight rounds was tied for last with 3/8. He then staged "the most sensational comeback in the history of grandmaster chess", scoring 7/8 in the next eight rounds. At the end, World Championship finalist Boris Spassky edged him out by a half point, scoring 11½/18 to Fischer's 11.[160] Now aged 23, Fischer would win every match or tournament he completed for the rest of his life.[161]
In 1967, Fischer won the U.S. Championship for the eighth and final time, ceding only three draws.[162][163] In March–April and August–September, he won strong tournaments at Monte Carlo (7/9) and Skopje (13½/17).[164][165] In the Philippines he played a series of nine exhibition games against master opponents, winning eight and drawing one.[166]
In the next World Championship cycle, at the 1967 Sousse Interzonal, Fischer scored a phenomenal 8½ points in the first 10 games, to lead the field. His observance of the Worldwide Church of God's seventh-day Sabbath was honored by the organizers, but deprived Fischer of several rest days, which led to a scheduling dispute. Fischer forfeited two games in protest and later withdrew, eliminating himself from the 1969 World Championship cycle. Because he had completed less than half his scheduled games, all of his results were annulled, meaning players who had played him had those games cancelled.[132]
In 1968, Fischer won tournaments at Netanya (11½/13) and Vinkovci (11/13) by large margins.[167] He stopped playing for the next 18 months, except for a win against Anthony Saidy in a 1969 New York Metropolitan League team match.[168][169]
In 1969, Fischer published his second games collection, entitled My 60 Memorable Games, which was also published by Simon & Schuster. He was assisted by his friend, GM Larry Evans. The book of deeply annotated games immediately became a best-seller, and has remained continuously popular worldwide to the present day.
In 1970, Fischer began a new effort to become World Champion. His dramatic march toward the title made him a household name and made chess front-page news for a time. Chess statistician Jeff Sonas observes that "for about a year, Bobby Fischer dominated his contemporaries to an extent never seen before or since".[170] He won the title in 1972, but forfeited it three years later.
The 1969 U.S. Championship was also a zonal qualifier, with the top three finishers advancing to the Interzonal. Fischer, however, had sat out the U.S. Championship because of disagreements about the tournament's format and prize fund. Benko, one of the three qualifiers, agreed to give up his spot in the Interzonal in order to give Fischer another shot at the World Championship.[171][172][173]
Before the Interzonal, in March and April 1970, the world's best players competed in the USSR vs. Rest of the World match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, often referred to as "the Match of the Century". Fischer allowed Bent Larsen of Denmark to play first board for the Rest of the World team in light of Larsen's recent outstanding tournament results, even though Fischer had the higher Elo rating.[168][174] The USSR team eked out a 20½–19½ victory, but on second board Fischer beat Tigran Petrosian, whom Boris Spassky had dethroned as World Champion the previous year, 3–1, winning the first two games and drawing the last two.[175]
After the USSR versus the Rest of the World Match, the unofficial World Championship of Lightning Chess (5-minute games) was held at Herceg Novi. Petrosian and Tal were considered the favorites,[176] but Fischer overwhelmed the super-class field with 19/22 (+17 −1 =4), far ahead of Tal (14½), Korchnoi (14), Petrosian (13½), Bronstein (13), etc.[176][177] Fischer lost only one game, to Korchnoi, who was also the only player to achieve an even score against him in the double round robin tournament.[178][179] Fischer "crushed such blitz kings as Tal, Petrosian and Smyslov by a clean score".[180] Tal marveled that, "During the entire tournament he didn't leave a single pawn en prise!", while the other players "blundered knights and bishops galore".[180][181]
In April–May 1970, Fischer won easily at Rovinj/Zagreb with 13/17 (+10 −1 =6), finishing two points ahead of a field that included such leading players as Gligorić, Hort, Korchnoi, Smyslov, and Petrosian.[182][183] In July–August, he crushed the mostly grandmaster field at Buenos Aires, scoring 15/17 (+13 −0 =4) and winning by 3½ points.[184] In Siegen right after the Olympiad, he defeated Ulf Andersson in an exhibition game for the Swedish newspaper Expressen.[185] Fischer had taken his game to a new level.[186]
The Interzonal was held in Palma de Mallorca in November and December 1970. Fischer won it with a remarkable 18½–4½ score (+15 −1 =7), far ahead of Larsen, Efim Geller, and Robert Hübner, who tied for second at 15–8.[187] Fischer's 3½-point margin set a new record for an Interzonal, beating Alexander Kotov's 3-point margin at Saltsjöbaden 1952.[188] Fischer finished the tournament with seven consecutive wins (including a final-round walkover against Oscar Panno).[189] Setting aside the Sousse Interzonal (which Fischer withdrew from while leading), Fischer's victory gave him a string of eight consecutive first prizes in tournaments.[171]
Fischer continued his domination in the 1971 Candidates matches. First, he beat Mark Taimanov of the USSR at Vancouver by 6–0.[190] "The record books showed that the only comparable achievement to the 6–0 score against Taimanov was Wilhelm Steinitz's 7–0 win against Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1876 in an era of more primitive defensive technique."[191]
Less than two months later, he astounded the chess world by beating Larsen in their Denver match by the same score.[192][193][194] Just a year before, Larsen had played first board for the Rest of the World team ahead of Fischer, and had handed Fischer his only loss at the Interzonal. Garry Kasparov later wrote that no World Champion had ever shown a superiority over his rivals comparable to Fischer's "incredible" 12–0 score in the two matches.[195] Chess statistician Sonas concludes that the victory over Larsen gave Fischer the "highest single-match performance rating ever".[196]
In August 1971, Fischer won a strong lightning event at the Manhattan Chess Club with a score of 21½/22.[177]
Only former World Champion Petrosian, Fischer's final opponent in the Candidates matches, was able to offer resistance in their match, played at Buenos Aires. Petrosian played a strong theoretical novelty in the first game, gaining the advantage, but Fischer played resourcefully and eventually won the game after Petrosian faltered.[197][198][199] This gave Fischer an extraordinary run of 20 consecutive wins against the world's top players (in the Interzonal and Candidates matches), a winning streak topped only by Steinitz's 25 straight wins in 1873–82.[200] Petrosian won decisively in the second game, finally snapping Fischer's streak.[201] After three consecutive draws, Fischer swept the next four games to win the match 6½–2½ (+5 −1 =3).[202] The final match victory allowed Fischer to challenge World Champion Boris Spassky, whom he had never beaten (+0 −3 =2).[203] Soon after the Petrosian match Fischer appeared on the cover of Life.[204]
Fischer's amazing results gave him a far higher rating than any player in history up until that time.[205] On the July 1972 FIDE rating list, his Elo rating of 2785 was 125 points ahead of Spassky, the second-highest rated player (2660).[206][207]
Fischer's career-long stubbornness about match and tournament conditions was again seen in the run-up to his match with Spassky. Of the possible sites, Fischer's first choice was Belgrade, Yugoslavia, while Spassky's was Reykjavik, Iceland.[208] For a time it appeared that the dispute would be resolved by splitting the match between the two locations, but that arrangement fell through.[209] After that issue was resolved, Fischer refused to appear in Iceland until the prize fund was increased. London financier Jim Slater donated an additional US$125,000 to the prize fund, bringing it to an unprecedented $250,000 ($1,267,825.63 in 2009[210]), and Fischer finally agreed to play.[211]
Before and during the match, Fischer paid special attention to his physical training and fitness, which was a relatively novel approach for top chess players at that time. He had developed his tennis skills to a good level, and played frequently during off-days in Reykjavik. He also had arranged for exclusive use of his hotel's swimming pool during specified hours, and swam for extended periods, usually late at night.[212]
The match took place in Reykjavík from July through September 1972.[213] Fischer lost the first two games in strange fashion: the first when he played a risky pawn-grab in a drawn endgame, the second by forfeit when he refused to play the game in a dispute over playing conditions.[214] Fischer would likely have forfeited the entire match, but Spassky, not wanting to win by default, yielded to Fischer's demands to move the next game to a back room, away from the cameras whose presence had upset Fischer.[215][216] After that game, the match was moved back to the stage and proceeded without further serious incident. Fischer won seven of the next 19 games, losing only one and drawing eleven, to win the match 12½–8½ and become the 11th World Chess Champion.[213]
The Cold War trappings made the match a media sensation.[217] It was called "The Match of the Century",[218][219][220] and received front-page media coverage in the United States and around the world.[221][222] Fischer's win was an American victory in a field that Soviet players had dominated for the past quarter-century—players closely identified with, and subsidized by, the Soviet state.[223][224] Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman calls Fischer's victory "the story of a lonely hero who overcomes an entire empire".[225][226]
Fischer became an instant celebrity. Upon his return to New York, a Bobby Fischer Day was held, and he was cheered by thousands of fans, a unique display in American chess.[227] He was offered numerous product endorsement offers worth "at least $5 million" (all of which he declined)[228] and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.[229] With American Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz, he also appeared on a Bob Hope TV special.[230] Membership in the United States Chess Federation doubled in 1972[231] and peaked in 1974; in American chess, these years are commonly referred to as the "Fischer Boom". Fischer also won the 'Chess Oscar' award for 1970, 1971, and 1972. This award, started in 1967, is determined through votes from chess media and leading players.
Fischer was scheduled to defend his title in 1975. Anatoly Karpov eventually emerged as his challenger, having defeated Spassky in an earlier Candidates match.[232] Fischer, who had played no competitive games since his World Championship match with Spassky, laid out a proposal for the match in September 1973, in consultation with a FIDE official, Fred Cramer. He made three principal demands:
A FIDE Congress was held in 1974 during the Nice Olympiad. The delegates voted in favor of Fischer's 10-win proposal, but rejected his other two proposals, and limited the number of games in the match to 36.[234] In response to FIDE's ruling, Fischer sent a cable to Euwe on June 27, 1974:
The delegates responded by reaffirming their prior decisions, but did not accept Fischer's resignation and requested that he reconsider.[237] Many observers considered Fischer's requested 9–9 clause unfair because it would require the challenger to win by at least two games (10–8).[238][239]
In a letter to Larry Evans, published in Chess Life in November 1974, Fischer claimed the usual system (24 games with the first player to get 12½ points winning, or the champion retaining his title in the event of a 12–12 tie) encouraged the player in the lead to draw games, which he regarded as bad for chess. Not counting draws would be "an accurate test of who is the world's best player."[240] Former U.S. Champion Arnold Denker, who was in contact with Fischer during the negotiations with FIDE, claimed that Fischer wanted a long match to be able to play himself into shape after a three-year layoff.[241]
Due to the continued efforts of U.S. Chess Association officials,[242] a special FIDE Congress was held in March 1975 in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands in which it was accepted that the match should be of unlimited duration, but the 9–9 clause was once again rejected, by a narrow margin of 35 votes to 32.[243] FIDE set a deadline of April 1, 1975, for Fischer and Karpov to confirm their participation in the match. No reply was received from Fischer by April 3 and Karpov officially became World Champion by default.[244] In his 1991 autobiography, Karpov expressed profound regret that the match did not take place, and claimed that the lost opportunity to challenge Fischer held back his own chess development. Karpov met with Fischer several times after 1975, in friendly but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to arrange a match.[245]
After the World Championship in 1972, Fischer virtually retired from chess: he did not play a competitive game in public for nearly 20 years.[246] In 1977, he played three games in Cambridge, Massachusetts against the MIT Greenblatt computer program, winning all of them.[247]
On May 26, 1981, a police patrolman arrested Fischer while he was walking in Pasadena, saying that he matched the description of a man who had just committed a bank robbery in that area.[248] Fischer stated that he was slightly injured during the arrest.[249] He was then held for two days and—according to Fischer—was subjected to assault and various other types of serious mistreatment during that time.[250] He was then released on $1000 bail.[251] After being released, Fischer published a 14-page pamphlet detailing his alleged experiences and saying that his arrest had been "a frame up and set up."[252][253][254][255]
In the early 1980s, Fischer stayed for extended periods in the San Francisco-area home of a friend, the Canadian grandmaster Peter Biyiasas. In 1981, the two played 17 five-minute games. Despite his layoff from competitive play, Fischer won all of them, according to Biyiasas, who lamented that he was never even able to reach an endgame.[254][255]
After twenty years, Fischer emerged from isolation to play Spassky (then tied for 96th–102nd on the FIDE rating list) to a "Revenge Match of the 20th century" in 1992. This match took place in Sveti Stefan and Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in spite of a United Nations embargo that included sanctions on sporting events. Fischer demanded that the organizers bill the match as "The World Chess Championship", although Garry Kasparov was the recognized FIDE World Champion. Fischer insisted he was still the true World Champion, and that for all the games in the FIDE-sanctioned World Championship matches, involving Karpov, Korchnoi, and Kasparov, the outcomes had been pre-arranged.[256] The purse for Fischer's re-match with Spassky was US$5,000,000, with $3.35 million of that to go to the winner.[257]
Fischer won the match, 10 wins to 5 losses, with 15 draws.[258] Kasparov reportedly said, "Bobby is playing OK, nothing more. Maybe his strength is 2600 or 2650. It wouldn't be close between us."[259] Fischer never played any competitive games afterwards.[260]
Fischer and Spassky gave a total of ten press conferences during the match.[261] Yasser Seirawan wrote, "After September 23 [1992], I threw most of what I'd ever read about Bobby out of my head. Sheer garbage. Bobby is the most misunderstood, misquoted celebrity walking the face of the earth."[262][263] Seirawan wrote that Fischer is not camera shy, "smiles and laughs easily", and "is a wholly enjoyable conversationalist. A fine wit, he is a very funny man".[264]
The U.S. Department of the Treasury had warned Fischer beforehand that his participation was illegal as it violated President George H. W. Bush's Executive Order 12810 that implemented United Nations Security Council Resolution 757 sanctions against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia.[265] In response, Fischer called a conference and, in front of the international press, literally spat on the U.S. order forbidding him to play, announcing "This is my reply". Following the match, the Department obtained an arrest warrant against him. Fischer remained wanted by the United States government for the rest of his life and never returned to America.
After the match with Spassky in 1992, Fischer again slid into relative obscurity. Now a fugitive from the American legal system, he intensified his vitriolic rhetoric against the U.S. For some of these years Fischer lived in Budapest, Hungary, allegedly having a relationship with young Hungarian chess master Zita Rajcsányi.[266][267] He claimed to find standard chess stale and he played chess variants such as Chess960 blitz games. He visited with the Polgár family in Budapest and analyzed many games with Judit, Zsuzsa, and Zsófia Polgár.[268][269]
From 2000 to 2002, Fischer lived in Baguio City in the Philippines.[270] He resided in the same compound as the Filipino grandmaster Eugenio Torre, a close friend who acted as his second during his matches with Spassky.[270] Torre introduced Fischer to a 22-year-old woman named Marilyn Young.[271] On May 21, 2001 Marilyn Young gave birth to a daughter named Jinky Young.[272][273] Her mother claimed that Jinky was Fischer's daughter, citing as evidence Jinky's birth and baptismal certificates, photographs, a transaction record dated December 4, 2007 of a bank remittance by Fischer to Jinky, and Jinky's DNA through her blood samples.[272][274][275] On the other hand, Magnús Skúlason, a friend of Fischer's, said that he was certain that Fischer was not the girl's father.[276]
On August 17, 2010 it was reported that a DNA test revealed that Jinky Young is not the daughter of Bobby Fischer.[277][278]
Fischer, whose mother was Jewish,[16][17][15][137] and whose probable biological father was also Jewish,[15] made numerous anti-Jewish statements and professed a general hatred for Jews since at least the early 1960s.[137][279] In 1961, he "made his first public statements despising Jews," according to FM Mike Klein.[280] Jan Hein Donner wrote that at the time of Bled 1961, "He idolized Hitler and read everything about him that he could lay his hands on. He also championed a brand of antisemitism that could only be thought up by a mind completely cut off from reality."[113] Donner writes that he took Fischer to a war museum, which "left a great impression, since he is not an evil person, and afterwards he was more restrained in his remarks—to me, at least."[113]
From the 1980s and thereafter, however, Fischer's comments about Jews were a major theme in his public and private remarks.[281] He openly denied the Holocaust and announced his desire to make "expos[ing] the Jews for the criminals they are [...] the murderers they are" his lifework, and argued that the United States is "a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards."[282]
In 1984, Fischer denied being a Jew in a letter to the Encyclopedia Judaica, insisting that they remove his name and accusing them of "fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew [...] to promote your religion."[283] Although in an article he wrote as a teenager Fischer described his mother as Jewish,[137] Fischer was later reported to have denied his Jewish ancestry.[15]
In the last years of his life, Fischer's primary means of communicating with the public was via sometimes-outrageous radio interviews. He participated in at least 34 such broadcasts between 1999 and 2006, mostly with radio stations in the Philippines, but also in Hungary, Iceland, Colombia, and Russia. In 1999, he gave a radio call-in interview to a station in Budapest, Hungary, during which he described himself as the "victim of an international Jewish conspiracy". In another radio interview, Fischer said that it became clear to him in 1977, after reading The Secret World Government by Count Cherep-Spiridovich, that Jewish agencies were targeting him.[284] Fischer's sudden reemergence was apparently triggered when some of his belongings, which had been stored in a Pasadena, California storage unit, were sold by the landlord who claimed it was in response to nonpayment of rent.[285] In 2005, some of Fischer's belongings were auctioned on eBay. In 2006, Fischer claimed that his belongings in the storage unit were worth millions.[286][287]
Fischer's library contained anti-Semitic and white supremacist literature such as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and The White Man's Bible and Nature's Eternal Religion by Ben Klassen, founder of the Church of the Creator.[288][289] A notebook written by Fischer is filled with sentiments such as "8/24/99 Death to the Jews. Just kill the Motherfuckers!" and "12/13/99 It's time to start randomly killing Jews."[290]
Shortly after midnight on September 12, Philippines local time (approximately four hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.), Fischer was interviewed live by Pablo Mercado on the Baguio City station of the Bombo Radyo network. Fischer stated that he was happy that the airliner attacks had happened, while expressing his view on U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, saying "I applaud the act. Look, nobody gets...no one...that the U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years".[291][292][293] He also said "All the crimes the U.S. is committing all over the world ... This just shows, what goes around, that comes around even to the United States."[291][292] Fischer also referenced the movie Seven Days in May and said he hoped for a military coup d'état in the U.S., "[I hope] the country will be taken over by the military, they'll close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews and secure hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders."[294]
In response, on October 28, 2001, Fischer's right to membership in the United States Chess Federation was permanently revoked by a unanimous 7–0 vote of the USCF's Policy Board.[295]
Fischer drafted a letter to Osama bin Laden, which began:[296][297]
Dear Mr. Osama bin Laden allow me to introduce myself. I am Bobby Fischer, the World Chess Champion. First of all you should know that I share your hatred of the murderous bandit state of "Israel" and its chief backer the Jew-controlled U.S.A. also know [sic] as the "Jewnited States" or "Israel West." We also have something else in common: We are both fugitives from the U.S. "justice" system.
After Fischer's death, chess columnist Shelby Lyman, who in 1972 had hosted the PBS broadcast of that year's championship, said that "the anti-American stuff is explained by the fact that ... he spent the rest of his life [after the match in Yugoslavia] fleeing the U.S., because he was afraid of being extradited."[298] In Bobby Fischer: The Wandering King, authors IM Hans Böhm and Kees Jongkind write that Fischer's radio broadcasts show that he was "out of his mind ... a victim of his own mental illness".[299]
Fischer lived for a time in Japan.[300] On July 13, 2004, acting in response to a letter from U.S. officials, he was arrested by Japanese immigration authorities at Narita International Airport near Tokyo for allegedly using a revoked U.S. passport while trying to board a Japan Airlines flight to Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Philippines.[301] Fischer resisted arrest, claiming to have sustained bruises, cuts and a broken tooth in the process.[302] At the time, Fischer had a passport, originally issued in 1997 and updated in 2003 to add more pages, that according to U.S. officials had been revoked in November 2003 (due to his outstanding arrest warrant for Yugoslavia sanctions violation).[301] Despite the outstanding arrest warrant in the U.S., Fischer said that he believed the passport was still valid.[303] The authorities held Fischer at a custody center for 16 days before transferring him to another facility. Fischer claimed that his cell was windowless and he had not seen the light of day during that period, and that the staff had ignored his complaints about constant tobacco smoke in his cell.[302]
Tokyo-based Canadian journalist and consultant John Bosnitch set up the "Committee to Free Bobby Fischer" after meeting Fischer at Narita Airport and offering to assist him.[304] It was reported that Fischer and Miyoko Watai, the President of the Japanese Chess Association, with whom he had reportedly been living since 2000, wanted to become legally married.[301] (However, he was also reported to have been living in the Philippines with Marilyn Young during the same period.[270]) Fischer also applied for German citizenship on the grounds that his father was German.[305] Fischer stated that he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship, and appealed to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell to help him do so.[306][307] Japan's Justice Minister rejected Fischer's request for asylum and ordered him deported.[308]
Seeking ways to evade deportation to the United States, Fischer wrote a letter to the government of Iceland in early January 2005 and asked for Icelandic citizenship. Sympathetic to Fischer's plight, but reluctant to grant him the full benefits of citizenship, Icelandic authorities granted him an alien's passport. When this proved insufficient for the Japanese authorities, the Althing agreed unanimously to grant Fischer full citizenship in late March for humanitarian reasons, as they felt he was being unjustly treated by the U.S. and Japanese governments,[309] and also in recognition of his 1972 match, which had "put Iceland on the map".[310]
Shortly before his departure to Iceland, on March 23, 2005, Fischer and Bosnitch appeared briefly on the BBC World Service, via a telephone link to the Tokyo airport. Bosnitch stated that Fischer would never play traditional chess again. Fischer denounced President Bush as a criminal and Japan as a puppet of the United States.
Upon his arrival in Reykjavík, Fischer was welcomed by a crowd and gave a news conference.[311] He lived a reclusive life in Iceland, avoiding entrepreneurs and others who approached him with various proposals.[312]
On December 10, 2006, Fischer telephoned an Icelandic television station and pointed out a winning combination, missed by the players and commentators, in a chess game that had been televised live in Iceland.[313]
Fischer moved into an apartment in the same building as his closest friend and spokesman, Garðar Sverrisson, whose wife Kristín Þórarinsdóttir, a nurse, later looked after him as a terminally ill patient. Garðar's two children, especially his son, were very close to Fischer. Fischer also developed a friendship with Magnús Skúlason, a psychiatrist and chess player who later recalled long discussions with Fischer about a wide variety of subjects.[314]
On January 17, 2008, Fischer died from degenerative renal failure at the Reykjavik hospital.[315][316][317] He originally had a urinary tract blockage but refused surgery or medications.[318][319] Magnús Skúlason reported Fischer's last words as "Nothing is as healing as the human touch."[314][320] On January 21, he was buried in the small Christian cemetery of Laugardælir church, outside the town of Selfoss, 60 km southeast of Reykjavík, after a Catholic funeral presided over by Fr. Jakob Rolland of the diocese of Reykjavik. In accordance with Fischer's wishes, no one else was present except Miyoko Watai, Garðar Sverrisson, and Garðar's family.[321][322]
Fischer's estate was estimated at 140 million ISK (about 1 million GBP or US$2 million) and it quickly became the object of a legal battle involving claims from four parties with Miyoko Watai ultimately inheriting what remained of his estate after government claims. The four parties were Fischer's apparent Japanese wife Miyoko Watai, his alleged Philippine daughter Jinky Young and her mother Marilyn Young, his two American nephews Alexander and Nicholas Targ and their father Russell Targ, and the U.S. government (claiming unpaid taxes).[276][314][323][324][325] According to a press release issued by Samuel Estimo, an attorney representing Jinky Young, the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled in December 2009 that Watai's claim of marriage to Fischer was invalidated because of her failure to present the original copy of their alleged marriage certificate.[326] On June 16, 2010, the Court ruled in favor of a petition on behalf of Jinky Young to have Bobby Fischer's remains exhumed.[327][328] This was performed on July 5, 2010 in the presence of a doctor, a priest, and other officials. A DNA sample was taken and Fischer's body was then reburied.[329] On August 17, 2010, the Court announced that from the DNA sample it was determined that Fischer was not the father of Jinky Young.[277][278] On March 3, 2011, a district court in Iceland ruled that Miyoko Watai, as Fischer's widow and heir, was therefore entitled to inherit his estate.[330]
| This section uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves. |
Fischer was renowned for his deep opening preparation and made numerous contributions to chess opening theory.[331] He was one of the foremost experts on the Ruy Lopez.[332] A line of the Exchange Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.0-0) is sometimes called the "Fischer Variation" after he successfully resurrected it at the 1966 Havana Olympiad.[333][334] Fischer's lifetime score with the move 5.0-0 in tournament and match games was six wins, three draws, and no losses (83.3%).[335]
He was a recognized expert in the Black side of the Najdorf Sicilian and the King's Indian Defense.[336] He used the Grünfeld Defence and Neo-Grünfeld Defence to win his celebrated games against Donald and Robert Byrne, and played a theoretical novelty in the Grünfeld against reigning World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, refuting Botvinnik's prepared analysis over-the-board.[337][338] In the Nimzo-Indian Defense, the line beginning with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 Ba6 was named for him.[339][340][341]
Fischer established the viability of the so-called Poisoned Pawn Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6). This bold queen sortie, to snatch a pawn at the expense of development, had been considered dubious,[342][343][344] but Fischer succeeded in proving its soundness.[345] Out of ten tournament and match games as Black in the Poisoned Pawn, Fischer won five, drew four, and lost only one, the 11th game of his 1972 match against Spassky.[346] Following Fischer's use, the Poisoned Pawn became a respected line played by many of the world's leading players.[347]
On the white side of the Sicilian, Fischer made advances to the theory of the line beginning 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 (or e6) 6.Bc4,[345][348] which has sometimes been named for him.[349] In 1961, prompted by a loss the year before to Spassky,[350] Fischer wrote an article entitled "A Bust to the King's Gambit" for the first issue of the American Chess Quarterly, in which he stated, "In my opinion, the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by force."[351] Fischer recommended 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6,[352] which has since become known as the Fischer Defense to the King's Gambit.[353][354][355] Surprisingly, Fischer later played the King's Gambit as White in three tournament games (preferring 3.Bc4 to 3.Nf3), winning them all.[356]
Fischer had an excellent endgame technique.[357] International Master Jeremy Silman listed him as one of the five best endgame players, along with Emanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein, José Capablanca, and Vasily Smyslov. Silman called him a "master of bishop endings".[358]
The endgame of a rook, bishop, and pawns against a rook, knight, and pawns has sometimes been called the "Fischer Endgame" because of three instructive wins by Fischer (with the bishop) in 1970 and 1971 over Mark Taimanov.[359][360] One of the games was in the 1970 Interzonal and the other two were in their 1971 quarter-final candidates match.
In 1988, Fischer filed for U.S. Patent 4,884,255 for a new type of digital chess clock. Fischer's clock gave each player a fixed period of time at the start of the game and then added a small increment after each completed move. The "Fischer clock" soon became standard in most major chess tournaments. The patent expired in November 2001 because of overdue maintenance fees.
On June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fischer announced and advocated a variant of chess named Fischerandom Chess (later known as Fischer Random Chess or Chess960) intended to ensure that a game between players is a contest between their understandings of chess, rather than their abilities to memorize opening lines or prepare opening strategies.
Fischer Random was designed to remove any advantage from the memorization of opening variations by rendering it impracticable. Fischer complained in a 2006 phoned-in call with a radio interviewer that because of the progress in openings and the memorization of opening books, the best players from history, if brought back from the dead to play today, would no longer be competitive. "Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca", he said, merely because of opening-book memorization, which Fischer disdained. "Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative."[361] Fischer heavily disparaged chess as it was currently being played at the highest levels.[362]
Kasparov calls Fischer "perhaps the most mythologically shrouded figure in chess".[363] Some leading players and some of his biographers have ranked him as the greatest player who ever lived.[364] Other writers have said that he was arguably the greatest player ever, without reaching a definitive conclusion.[365] Leonard Barden wrote, "Most experts place him the second or third best ever, behind Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov."[366] Brian Carney opined in The Wall Street Journal that Fischer's victory over Spassky in 1972 left him nothing to prove, except that perhaps someone could someday beat him, and he was not interested in the risk of losing. Fischer's refusal to recognize peers also allowed his paranoia to flower: "The world championship he won ... validated his view of himself as a chess player, but it also insulated him from the humanizing influences of the world around him. He descended into what can only be considered a kind of madness."[367]
Fischer was a charter inductee into the United States Chess Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C. in 1985. After routing Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian in 1971, Fischer achieved a then-record Elo rating of 2785.[206][207] After beating Spassky by the score 12½–8½ in their 1972 match, his rating dropped to 2780.[207]
Although international ratings were just introduced in 1970, Chessmetrics.com has used modern algorithms to rank performances retrospectively and uniformly throughout chess history. According to the Chessmetrics calculation, Fischer's peak rating was 2895 in October 1971. His one-year peak average was 2881, in 1971, the highest of all time. His three-year peak average was 2867, from January 1971 to December 1973—the second highest ever, just behind Garry Kasparov. Chessmetrics ranked Fischer as the number one player in the world for a total of 109 different months, running (not consecutively) from February 1964 until July 1974.[368]
Fischer's great rival Mikhail Tal praised him as "the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens."[369] American grandmaster Arthur Bisguier, who won his first tournament game against Fischer, drew his second, and lost the remaining 13, wrote "Robert James Fischer is one of the few people in any sphere of endeavour who has been accorded the accolade of being called a legend in his own time."[370]
Kasparov wrote that Fischer "became the detonator of an avalanche of new chess ideas, a revolutionary whose revolution is still in progress."[371] In January 2009, reigning world champion Viswanathan Anand described him as "the greatest chess player who ever lived. He was a very special person, and I was fortunate to meet him two years ago."[372] Serbian grandmaster Ljubomir Ljubojević called Fischer, "A man without frontiers. He didn't divide the East and the West, he brought them together in their admiration of him."[373]
German grandmaster Karsten Müller wrote:[374]
Fischer, who had taken the highest crown almost singlehandedly from the mighty, almost invincible Soviet chess empire, shook the whole world, not only the chess world, to its core. He started a chess boom not only in the United States and in the Western hemisphere, but worldwide. Teaching chess or playing chess as a career had truly become a respectable profession. After Bobby, the game was simply not the same.
St. Louis philanthropist Rex A. Sinquefield offered a $64,000 Fischer Memorial Prize for any player who could win all nine of their games at the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship. By the fifth day of the championship, all 24 participants became ineligible for the prize, having drawn or lost at least one game.[375]
There have been numerous books, in many languages, that list Fischer as the author or as endorsing the book.[386] One of these is the 1972 book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess with Donn Mosenfelder and Stuart Margulies.[387] The book uses programmed learning to help beginners learn how to see elementary chess combinations. Although Fischer allowed his name to be used, he had little involvement with the writing of the book.[388]
| Year | Tournament | Location | Wins | Draws | Losses | Ranking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1955 | U.S. Junior Championship | Lincoln | 2 | 6 | 2 | 10–20 |
| 1956 | U.S. Amateur Championship | New Jersey | 3 | 2 | 1 | 21 |
| 1956 | U.S. Junior Championship | Philadelphia | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 1956 | U.S. Open | Oklahoma City | 5 | 7 | 0 | 4–8 |
| 1956 | Canadian Open | Montreal | 6 | 2 | 2 | 8–12 |
| 1956 | Rosenwald Trophy | New York | 2 | 5 | 4 | 8–10 |
| 1956 | Eastern States Open | Washington, D.C. | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2–4 |
| 1956 | Manhattan Club Championship, semifinals | New York | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| 1957 | Log Cabin Open | West Orange | 4 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| 1957 | Log Cabin 50–50 | West Orange | 3 | 2 | 2 | unknown |
| 1957 | New Western Open | Milwaukee | 5 | 2 | 1 | 6–12 |
| 1957 | U.S. Junior Open Championship | San Francisco | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 1957 | U.S. Open | Cleveland | 8 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| 1957 | New Jersey State Open | East Orange | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 1957 | North Central Open | Milwaukee | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5–11 |
| 1957 | U.S. Championship | New York | 8 | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| 1958 | Interzonal | Portorož | 6 | 12 | 2 | 5–6 |
| 1958 | U.S. Championship | New York | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| 1959 | Mar del Plata | 8 | 4 | 1 | 3–4 | |
| 1959 | Santiago | 7 | 1 | 4 | 4–7 | |
| 1959 | Zurich | 8 | 5 | 2 | 3–4 | |
| 1959 | Candidates | Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade | 8 | 9 | 11 | 5–6 |
| 1959 | U.S. Championship | New York | 7 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| 1960 | Mar del Plata | 13 | 1 | 1 | 1–2 | |
| 1960 | Buenos Aires | 3 | 11 | 5 | 13–16 | |
| 1960 | Reykjavík | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | |
| 1960 | U.S. Championship | New York | 7 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| 1961 | Bled | 8 | 11 | 0 | 2 | |
| 1962 | Interzonal | Stockholm | 13 | 9 | 0 | 1 |
| 1962 | Candidates | Curaçao | 8 | 12 | 7 | 4 |
| 1962 | U.S. Championship | New York | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| 1963 | Western Open | Bay City | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 1963 | New York State Open | Poughkeepsie | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1963 | U.S. Championship | New York | 11 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1965 | Capablanca Memorial | Havana | 12 | 6 | 3 | 2–4 |
| 1965 | U.S. Championship | New York | 8 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 1966 | Piatigorsky Cup | Santa Monica | 7 | 8 | 3 | 2 |
| 1966 | U.S. Championship | New York | 8 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| 1967 | Monaco | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 1967 | Skopje | 11 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| 1967 | Interzonal | Sousse | 7 | 3 | 0 | withdrew |
| 1968 | Netanya | 10 | 3 | 0 | 1 | |
| 1968 | Vinkovci | 9 | 4 | 0 | 1 | |
| 1970 | Rovinj/Zagreb | 10 | 6 | 1 | 1 | |
| 1970 | Buenos Aires | 13 | 4 | 0 | 1 | |
| 1970 | Interzonal | Palma de Mallorca | 15[390] | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| Year | Opponent | Location | Tournament | Wins | Draws | Losses | result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Max Euwe | New York | match | 0 | 1 | 1 | lost |
| 1957 | Rodolfo Tan Cardoso | New York | match | 5 | 2 | 1 | won |
| 1958 | Dragoljub Janošević | Belgrade | training match | 0 | 2 | 0 | tied |
| 1958 | Milan Matulović | Belgrade | match | 2 | 1 | 1 | won |
| 1961 | Samuel Reshevsky | New York & Los Angeles | match | 2 | 7 | 2 | unfinished |
| 1971 | Mark Taimanov | Vancouver | Candidates | 6 | 0 | 0 | won |
| 1971 | Bent Larsen | Denver | Candidates | 6 | 0 | 0 | won |
| 1971 | Tigran Petrosian | Buenos Aires | Candidates | 5 | 3 | 1 | won |
| 1972 | Boris Spassky | Reykjavík | World Championship | 7 | 11 | 3[393] | won |
| 1992 | Boris Spassky | Sveti Stefan & Belgrade | match | 10 | 15 | 5 | won |
| Year | Event | Location | Wins | Draws | Losses | Opponent | Board | Individual ranking | team ranking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | 14th Olympiad | Leipzig | 10 | 6 | 2 | various | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| 1962 | 15th Olympiad | Varna | 8 | 6 | 3 | various | 1 | 8 | 4 |
| 1966 | 17th Olympiad | Havana | 14 | 2 | 1 | various | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 1970 | USSR vs World | Belgrade | 2 | 2 | 0 | Tigran Petrosian | 2 | won individual match | team lost |
| 1970 | 19th Olympiad | Siegen | 8 | 4 | 1 | various | 1 | 2 | 4 |
Id.It was not only Fischer who did not like the conditions. This also applied to me and my colleagues. Imagine a hall, in which three thousand players, trainers and spectators are gathered, a hall without any ventilation and in addition with poor lighting. I have never complained about my eyesight, but I only needed once or twice in a game to think intensively over a move, and my eyes began to hurt.
Cafferty 1972, p. 102.It is hard to say how their match will end, but it is clear that such an easy victory as in Vancouver [against Taimanov] will not be given to Fischer. I think Larsen has unpleasant surprises in store for him, all the more since having dealt with Taimanov thus, Fischer will want to do just the same to Larsen and this is impossible.
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Boris Spassky |
World Chess Champion 1972–1975 |
Succeeded by Anatoly Karpov |
| Preceded by Arthur Bisguier |
United States Chess Champion 1958–1960 |
Succeeded by Larry Evans |
| Preceded by Larry Evans |
United States Chess Champion 1962–1966 |
Succeeded by Larry Evans |
| Achievements | ||
| Preceded by None |
World No. 1 July 1, 1971 – December 31, 1975 |
Succeeded by Anatoly Karpov |
| Preceded by Boris Spassky |
Youngest chess grandmaster ever 1958–1991 |
Succeeded by Judit Polgár |
|
|||||||||||||||||||