Former chess champion Bobby Fischer has died at 64 (Associated Press, January 18, 2008)

Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, Robert James Fischer was a U.S. chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15. He beat Spassky in a series of games in Reykjavik to claim America's first world chess championship in more than a century.

The event had tremendous symbolic importance, pitting the intensely individualistic young American against a product of the grim and soulless Soviet Union. [...]

But Fischer's reputation as a chess genius soon was eclipsed by his idiosyncrasies. He 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, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish.

"The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.

Chess champion Bobby Fischer dies (David Batty, January 18, 2008, Guardian Unlimited)

Fischer, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, gained fame in his teens for his chess-playing ability. At 14, he became the youngest player ever to win the US championship; at 15, he became the youngest international grandmaster in history. He won the US championship eight times in eight attempts.

He gained international fame in 1972 when he beat the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in what was dubbed as the "match of the century" to become the first US chess champion for a century.

The match between the eccentric and highly individualistic American and Spassky, backed by the mighty Soviet chess establishment, captured the public imagination and became a huge news story.

But his reputation as a chess genius, with a ferocious attacking style, was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.

He refused to defend his title in 1975 when the World Chess Federation (FIDE) did not accept all his conditions for a title defence, so he forfeited the title to another Soviet, Anatoly Karpov.

Fischer then fell into obscurity before resurfacing to play an exhibition rematch against Spassky in 1992 on the resort island of Sveti Stefan off Montenegro.

Fischer won, but the game was played in violation of international sanctions imposed on Slobodan Milosevic, then president of Yugoslavia.

Fischer became a wanted man, but managed to evade authorities for 12 years until July 16 2004 when he was arrested and later detained in Japan. On March 22 2005, he was freed and granted Icelandic citizenship. He lived in Iceland until his death.

MORE:
BOBBY FISCHER:

    href=http://www.brothersjudd.com/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=%22bobby+fischer%22>-ARCHIVES:
"bobby fischer" (Brothers Judd Blog)

    -bobbyfischer.net

    -Match of the
Century (Wikipedia)

    -Bobby Fischer (Wikipedia)

    -Boris Spassky (Wikipedia)

    -World Chess
Championship 1972 Fischer - Spassky Title Match
Highlights (Mark Weeks)

    href=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1000237>-fischer-spassky
(Compiled by kevin86, chessgames.com)

    -Fischer-Spassky: The 1972
World Chess Championship (Jon Edwards)

    href=http://www.chessclub.demon.co.uk/culture/worldchampions/fischer/fischer_spassky_match.htm>-Fischer
vs. Spassky match, 1972: World Championship Match (Chess Club)

    -ESSAY: The chess match of the century (Dave Edmonds, 8/09/02, BBC)

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

    -ESSAY: The 30th
anniversary of the 1972 World Championship match in Reykjavik between
Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky (Ian Rogers, May 26, 2002, Canberra
Times)

    -ESSAY: A study of Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, the 1972 FIDE Chess Title Match, and their correlation (www.courseworkbank.co.uk)

    href=http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6901&AuthKey=3dec1d653b0c2b309d7790791011a76b&issue=506>-ESSAY:
Cold war chess: The rise and fall of chess in the 20th century was
intimately linked with the cold war and the Soviet Union's giant
investment in the game. But deprived of the atmosphere of menace that
characterised that era, chess has dissipated much of the capital it
built up over more than a century (Daniel Johnson, June 2005, Prospect uk)

    href=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040812f2.htm>-ARTICLE:
Spassky asks Bush to go easy on Fischer (The Associated Press, Aug.
12, 2004)

    -ESSAY: Searching
for Bobby Fischer's Platonic Form (Kenneth Silber, 04/06/2004, Tech
Central Station)

    -ESSAY: The
man who saved Fischer-Spassky (Chess Base, 13.05.2003)

    href=http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic04/NewsST121804.html>-ESSAY:
BOBBY FISCHER AND THE BOLSHEVIK UNDERSTANDING OF LAW (Srdja
Trifkovic, December 18, 2004, Chronicles)

    -Cultural Revolutions (Srdja Trifkovic, September 2004, Chronicles)

    -ESSAY: Bobby Fischer: Demise of a chess legend (Robert Plummer, 3/24/05, BBC News)

    -ESSAY: Bobby Fischer's strangest endgame: Arguably the greatest chess player of all time (and one of the weirdest human beings) is detained in Japan, wanted by the U.S. Will he escape an ignominious fool's mate? (Rene Chun, July 24, 2004, Salon)

    -ESSAY: The Hounding of a Chess Legend (Richard Wall, Lew Rockwell)

    href=http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060510242&tc=ai>-INTERVIEW:
with David Edmonds and John Eidinow: authors of Bobby Fischer Goes
to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All
Time (Harper Collins)

    -INTERVIEW: with David Edmonds and John Eidinow (Amanda Smith, 8/05/04, Book Talk)

    -REVIEW: of
Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary
Chess Match of All Time by David Edmonds and John Eidinow (Heller
McAlpin, CS Monitor)

    href=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E1DB1231F93BA15750C0A9629C8B63>-REVIEW:
of Bobby Fischer Goes to War (GABRIEL SCHOENFELD, NY Times Book Review)

    href=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803EED61F3CF932A35750C0A9629C8B63>-REVIEW:
of Bobby Fischer Goes to War (Janet Maslin, NY Times)

    -REVIEW: of Bobby Fischer Goes to War (Tim Wall, Moscow Times)

    -REVIEW: of Bobby Fischger Goes to War (Paul Gleason, Yale Review of Books)

    href=http://chess.about.com/cs/productpublishers/gr/edm_bfgw.htm>-REVIEW:
of Bobby Fischer Goes to War< /a> (Mark Weeks, chess.about.com)

    href=http://www.chessville.com/reviews/BobbyFischerGoesToWar.htm>-REVIEW:
Of Bobby Fischer Goes to War (David Surratt, Chessville)

    -REVIEW: of Bobby Fischer Goes to War (Seamus Sweeney, Nth Position)

    -REVIEW: of Bobby Fischer Goes to War (JAMES NEAL WEBB, Book Page)

    href=http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_js/js_no_regrets_fischer_spas.html>-REVIEW:
of NO REGRETS: FISCHER-SPASSKY 1992 MATCH By Yasser Seirawan and George
Stefanovic (Jeremy Silman)

    hrtef=http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_rb/rb_bobby_fischer_the_wandering_king.html>-REVIEW:
of OBBY FISCHER: THE WANDERING KING by Hans Bohm and Kees Jongkind
(Randy Bauer)

    href=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE5DA1E3BF935A1575AC0A96E948260>-REVIEW:
of Searching for Bobby Fischer The World of Chess, Observed by the
Father of a Child Prodigy By Fred Waitzkin (Christopher
Lehmann-Haupt, NY Times)

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 18, 2008 7:56 AM