On: Bobby Fischer

Like the finest of musicians, masters of chess often get their start early; Bobby Fischer was just six when he learned to play the game he would spend the next 58 years redefining. Mr. Fischer was to chess what Stanley Kubrick was to film, what Andy Roddick is to tennis, and what Joshua Bell is to classical music: a virtuoso of his field.

Forty years ago this Saturday, Mr. Fischer became the first (and, to date, only) American world chess champion. It could not have been accomplished at a better time, for it was 1972, during the throes of the Cold War, when Mr. Fischer forcefully wrestled the Soviet Chess Machine into submission.

Since 1948, the reigning world champion had hailed from the Soviet Union: Mikhail Botvinnik in 1948; Vasily Smyslov in 1957, Mikhail Tal in 1960, Tigran Petrosian in 1963 and Boris Spassky, the man who Bobby Fisher would later beat, in 1969.

There is no analogue in American culture for what chess was to the Soviets. Indeed, to draw a comparison between chess and baseball would do a disservice to the game (or, as the Soviets saw it, the sport) which one grandmaster would later call “mental torture.”

For the Soviets, chess was more than a pastime. The young and talented could be sent to elite training schools, and many institutions not only taught their students math and science, but chess as well. Professional players worthy of competing on the international stage not only received the enthusiastic backing of their culture, but the endorsement and money of their government.

For this reason, the young American’s rise was unlikely.  It was Bobby’s older sister, Joan, who taught her younger brother the game. The boy immediately became enthralled, and over time showed signs of obsession. Several years passed before Regina Fisher, Bobby’s mother, took her son to a doctor for psychological evaluation.

The psychologist told her not to worry, that there were worse things on which a child his age might fixate. It was, after all, chess, the game of kings, queens, intellectuals and elites, and new studies were emerging showing that those who played on a regular basis developed heightened math and critical thinking skills. Those studies have largely held up to this day, with many World Champions not merely being gifted in chess, but bordering on polymathic as well.

Bobby Fischer, though, was the exception which proved this rule. At age 16 he dropped out of high school because it was affecting his game; shortly thereafter, he became so detached and discourteous toward his mother that she left their apartment and subsidized her son from afar. The young Mr. Fischer was too immersed to care.  

No doubt it was this infatuation which would lead to his success.

Still, his apparent barbarism nearly ruined his chances at his ultimate goal of becoming world champion. During his match against the more loveable Boris Spassky, Mr. Fischer forfeited the first two games (giving Mr. Spassky a sizeable advantage in chess terms) due to what Mr. Fischer considered adverse playing conditions. He would frequently whinge about the harshness of the lighting and the closeness of the spectators. At one point he opined about the sounds of the television cameras, even though the noise they emitted could not be registered by the human ear.

Mr. Spassky could have refused to play the challenger given the absurdity of the demands, but he continued on. After many of Mr. Fischer’s conditions had been met (including searching the light fixtures for Soviet technology), Mr. Fischer went on to win the world championship candidly, while Mr. Spassky was exiled from his native land.

Mr. Fischer, too, would one day face exile from his home country, but not before forfeiting his hard won championship back to the Soviets just three years later by refusing to defend his title.

Immediately Mr. Fischer became a recluse, and only reemerged to play a rematch against Mr. Spassky in embargoed Yugoslavia, for which the US disowned him and put out a warrant for his arrest.

Later on, and for some unknowable reason, Mr. Fischer became immersed in Nazi literature. 

This was exemplified during September 11^th, during which Mr. Fischer took to Filipino radio to proclaim that the attack was “all good news” because it was an attack on America's Jewry. 

And yet, despite these atrocities, Mr. Fischer remains an American icon. He not only achieved his dream of becoming World Chess Champion, but instilled a deep love of chess in America: enrollment in the United States Chess Federation increased markedly, prize money in chess ballooned, and many talented players can now make livings not only playing the game, but teaching students as well -- students hoping, perhaps, to one day become the second American world chess champion.  

In 2008, Bobby Fisher died at the age of 64, fitting for a man who spent his life consumed with the 8-by-8 checkered board in front of him.