Who Was Bobby Fischer?

Bobby Fischer was an American who won the world chess championship in 1972. In a dramatic match with Boris Spassky in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, Fischer became the first non-Soviet citizen to take the title since the Second World War. Fischer refused to defend his title, however, and adopted a reclusive lifestyle, seemingly overcome by his own personal eccentricities, which had always been pronounced.

In 1992, a prize fund of $5 million persuaded Fischer to participate in a rematch with Spassky which was hosted in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was then under American economic sanctions so, in accepting money in this way, Fischer had committed a crime under U.S. law and thereafter became a fugitive from justice.

In recent years Fischer has attracted attention for a series of outlandish remarks he has made in radio interviews including some which praised the attacks of September 11th and others in which he claimed he was the victim of a Jewish conspiracy.

Fischer was apprehended in Japan in 2004 while trying to leave the country with an out-of-date U.S. passport. He remained in a legal limbo for some time before being allowed to leave for Iceland where the government had granted him citizenship.

There is no one quite like the mysterious, brilliant, wonderful, terrible, disposable hero of Bobby Fischer.

Bobby Fischer was a chess champion at very young age, a true chess prodigy.  He eventually became US number and played a legendary cold-war grudge match against Soviet number-one, Boris Spassky. Although the match had several false starts (Fischer wanted television rights and wouldn't come and then he would, and then he wouldn't!).  Finally the match began in 1972, with both sides employing some serious propaganda tactics.  An ever paranoid Fischer suspecting espionage at every turn.  Although the game began as a close match, eventually Spassky folded psychologically and Fischer became World Champion.  After that, he practically disappeared.

Fischer was arrested in Japan on the request of the United States of America, after breaking an UN Convention and playing against his old rival Boris Spassky in Bosnia.

Post-9/11, Fischer made very few friends with his anti-semitic comments and seeming delight at the trade centre atrocities.  The US Chess Authorities have recently tried to expunge Fischer from their records.  A rather pathetic attempt by lesser men at re-writing history.

When he was finally released (why exactly was he held again?), he was given citizenship in Iceland, where, as far as we know, he is still living.

Fischer is the bad boy of the sixty four squares, who knows what he could have accomplished had he not disappeared into a relative obscurity.