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Fischer's Price: Chess may have been the only thing that kept the champion in touch with reality. (GARRY KASPAROV, July 19, 2004, Wall Strett Journal)

The stunning news of Bobby Fischer's detention in Japan came at a moment in which the American former world chess champion was already very much on my mind. I am currently finishing the fourth of my six-volume series on the game's great players and it is precisely this volume of which Robert James Fischer, forever known as Bobby, is the star.

This project has involved going over hundreds of Fischer's chess games in minute detail. It also means trying to understand the man behind the moves and the era in which he made them.

Despite his short stay at the top there is little to debate about the chess of Bobby Fischer. He changed the game in a way that hadn't been seen since the late 19th century. The gap between Mr. Fischer and his contemporaries was the largest ever. He singlehandedly revitalized a game that had been stagnating under the control of the Communists of the Soviet sports hierarchy.

When Bobby Fischer rocketed to the top of the chess world in the early 1970s he was a fine wine in a flawed vessel.

Spasky wasn't exactly a vision of stability either.

MORE:
-Bobby Fischer's Pathetic Endgame: Paranoia, hubris, and hatred—the unraveling of the greatest chess player ever (Rene Chun, December 2002, The Atlantic Monthly)

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 19, 2004 6:30 PM