One of the world’s chess prodigies, Robert James Fischer, was born on March 9, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He became the World Chess Champion after he defeated Soviet Boris Spassky in 1972. Before he could climb further higher steps in his career, he descended into madness. He was an American chess grandmaster who also the eleventh world chess championship and won his first record eighth US championship when he was 14 years old.
In the year 1964, he won the championship with a perfect score of 11, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. In the 1972 World Chess Championship, he played matches against grandmaster Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen.
He won the tournament after he decided Boris Spassky of the USSR in Reykjavik in the finals. To reach in finals, he defeated grandmaster Tigran Petrosian in the qualifying round. Bobby was from the US, and Boris was from USSR; the match between them attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship ever has in history, and it was publicized as a Cold War.
In 1975 when a disagreement occurred with FIDE, International Chess Federation, over the match, Bobby Fischer refused to defend his title. Anatoly Karpov was named World Champion by default. Fischer started to disappear subsequently from the public eye, but reports of his erratic behavior came on an occasional basis. In 1992, he won an unofficial rematch against Spassky, which was in Yugoslavia.
His participation in the match led to a conflict with the US government. They warned him that his participation in the match would violate the president’s direct order imposing US sanctions on Yugoslavia, and the government issued a warrant against Fischer.
He started living as an èmigrè and, in 2004, was arrested in Japan. Fischer was held under jurisdiction for several months for using a passport that was revoked by the US government. After this incident, Bobby Fischer was granted Icelandic citizenship under a special act of the Icelandic parliament, which permitted him to live there until he died in 2008.
Bobby Fischer’s contribution to the field of Chess
Before Bobby Fischer’s death in 2008, he made numerous leading contributions to Chess, and his book, My 60 Memorable Games, which was published in 1969, is considered a necessary reading in chess literature. In the late 90s, he invented his own patented chess timing system that added a time increment after each move of the players, and this technique has now become a standard practice in the top tournament and match play.
He’s also the inventor of Fresher random Chess or Chess960. It is a chess variant in which the starting position of the pieces is randomized to one of 960 possible positions.
Numerous antisemitic statements and denied the Holocaust are also made by him only. Fischer’s antisemitism has been known since at least the 1960s and was a major theme in his public as well as private remarks. He was invited by Richard M. Nixon, former president of America, to the White House. He was also interviewed on television.
What Happened to Bobby Fischer and his death
Bobby Fischer is one of the best chess players the world has ever seen. His victories were widely seen as a symbolic triumph of democracy over the community. Before he could climb further steps in his career, he started descending into manners after defeating Boris Spassky.
It is said that there has never been a player like him in Chess, and his games are scrutinized and studied till now. His mind is not like another human, and he’s been likened to a computer with no noticeable weakness. Besides having an intelligent mind, his mind was also fragile.
Through Bobby Fischer, the US was having a winning streak in 2 matches against USSR. The Soviet Union started fearing for its reputation in Chess. After his most remarkable win in 1972, things started going downhill for him. After the match was finished, he boarded a flight back home and gave no speeches or autographs, and even turned down sponsorships worth millions of dollars and locked himself from the eyes of the public.
He didn’t play any competitive games for the next 20 years. He was stripped of his title and lost the title of World Champion without moving a single piece. For September 11, 2001 attacks, he said that he was happy that the attack happened in his live interview. In 2008 on January 17, Fischer was reported dead. He died at the age of 64 due to kidney failure. The chess board also has 64 squares.