Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American-born chess Grandmaster, and the eleventh World Chess Champion.
As a teenager, Fischer became famous as a chess prodigy. In 1972, he became the first, and so far the only, American to win the official World Chess Championship (though Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world champion, became an American citizen while he was champion) defeating defending champion Boris Spassky, of the Soviet Union, in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland. The match was widely publicized as a Cold War battle. He is often referred to as one of the greatest chess players of all time.
In 1975, Fischer failed to defend his title when he could not come to agreement with the international chess federation FIDE over the conditions for the match. He became more reclusive and played no more competitive chess until 1992, when he had a rematch with Spassky, in which he won again. The competition was held in Yugoslavia, which was then under a strict United Nations embargo. This led to a conflict with the US government, and he never returned to his native country.
(March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008)
Bobby Fischer was born at
Michael Reese Hospital in
Chicago,
Illinois on
March 9,
1943. His mother, Regina Wender, was a naturalized American citizen of
Polish Jewish descent, born in
Switzerland but raised in
St. Louis,
Missouri. She later became a teacher, a registered nurse, and a
physician. Fischer's birth certificate listed Wender's husband, Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a
German biophysicist, as Fischer's father. The couple married in 1933 in
Moscow,
USSR, where Wender was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute. They divorced in 1945 when Bobby was two years old, and he grew up with his mother and older sister,
Joan. In 1948, the family moved to
Mobile, Arizona, where Regina taught in an elementary school. The following year they moved to
Brooklyn,
New York, where Regina worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse.
A 2002 article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of
The Philadelphia Inquirer suggests that
Paul Nemenyi, a
Hungarian Jewish physicist, may have been Fischer's biological father. The article quotes an FBI report that states that Regina Fischer returned to the United States in 1939, while Hans-Gerhardt Fischer never entered the United States, having been refused admission by US immigration officials because of alleged
Communist sympathies. Regina and Nemenyi had an affair in 1942, and he made monthly child support payments to Regina. Nemenyi died in March, 1952.
In May 1949, the six-year-old Fischer learned how to play chess along with his sister in instructions found in a chess set that was bought at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment. He saw his first chess book a month later. For over a year he played chess on his own. At age seven, he began to play chess seriously, joining the Brooklyn Chess Club and receiving instruction from its president,
Carmine Nigro. He later joined the
Manhattan Chess Club, one of the strongest in the world, in June, 1955. Other important early influences were provided by Master and chess journalist
Hermann Helms and Grandmaster
Arnold Denker. Denker served as a mentor to young Bobby, often taking him to watch professional hockey games at
Madison Square Garden, to cheer the
New York Rangers. Denker wrote that Bobby enjoyed those treats and never forgot them; the two became lifelong friends. When Fischer was thirteen, his mother asked the Master
John W. Collins to be his chess tutor. Collins had coached several top players, including future grandmasters
Robert Byrne and
William Lombardy. Fischer spent much time at Collins' house, and some have described Collins as a father figure for Fischer. The Hawthorne Chess Club was the name for the group which Collins coached. Fischer also was involved with the Log Cabin Chess Club. Another mentor and friend during those years was the broadcaster and author
Dick Schaap, who often took Fischer to
basketball games of the
New York Knicks.
Bobby Fischer attended
Erasmus Hall High School at the same time as
Barbra Streisand and
Neil Diamond. The student council of Erasmus Hall awarded him a gold medal for his chess achievements. Fischer dropped out of Erasmus in 1959 at age 16, the minimum age for doing so, saying that school had little more to offer him.
When Fischer was 16, his mother moved out of their apartment to pursue medical training. Her friend Joan Rodker, who had met Regina when the two were "idealistic communists" living in Moscow in the 1930s, believes that Fischer resented his mother for being mostly absent as a mother, a communist activist and an admirer of the Soviet Union, and that this led to his hatred for the Soviet Union. In letters to Rodker, Fischer's mother states her desire to pursue her own "obsession" of training in
medicine and writes that her son would have to live in their Brooklyn apartment without her: "It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he is probably happier that way."
Fischer's first real triumph was winning the United States Junior Chess Championship in July 1956. He scored 8.5/10 at
Philadelphia to become the youngest-ever junior champion at age 13, a record that stands to this day. In the 1956
U.S. Open Chess Championship at
Oklahoma City, Fischer scored 8.5/12 to tie for 4-8th places, with
Arthur Bisguier winning. He then played in the first
Canadian Open Chess Championship at
Montreal 1956, scoring 7/10 to tie for 8-12th places, with
Larry Evans winning. Fischer's famous game from the 3rd Rosenwald Trophy tournament at
New York 1956, against
Donald Byrne, who later became an
International Master, was called "
The Game of the Century" by
Hans Kmoch. At the age of 13, he was awarded the US title of National Master, then the youngest ever.
In 1957, Fischer played a two-game match against former World Champion
Max Euwe at New York, losing 0.5-1.5. He then successfully defended his US Junior title, scoring 8.5/9 at
San Francisco. Next, he won the U.S. Open Chess Championship at
Cleveland on tie-breaking points over
Arthur Bisguier, scoring 10/12. Fischer defeated the young Filipino Master
Rodolfo Tan Cardoso by 6-2 in a match in New York. He next won the
New Jersey Open Championship. From these triumphs, Fischer was given entry into the invitational
U.S. Chess Championship at
New York. He won, with 10.5/13, becoming in January 1958, at age 14, the youngest US champion ever (this record still stands).
In his later years, Fischer lived in Hungary, Germany, the Philippines, and Japan. During this time he made increasingly anti-American and anti-Semitic statements. During the 2004–2005 time period, after his U.S. passport was revoked, he was detained by Japanese authorities for nine months under threat of extradition. After Iceland granted him citizenship, the Japanese authorities released him to that country, where he lived until his death in 2008.
Fischer was suffering from degenerative
renal failure. This had been a problem for some years, but became acute in October 2007, when Fischer was admitted to a Reykjavík Landspítali hospital for stationary treatment. He stayed there for about seven weeks, being released in a somewhat improved condition in the middle of November. He returned home gravely ill in December apparently rejecting any further
Western medicine.
Fischer stayed in an apartment in the same building as his closest friend and spokesman, Garðar Sverrisson, whose wife Kristín Þórarinsdóttir happens to be a nurse and looked after the terminally ill patient. Garðar's two children, especially his son, were very close to Fischer. They were his only close friends and contacts during the last two years of his life.
Fischer did not believe in prolonging life at any cost – such as by the use of large amounts of pain killers or permanent dependence on a dialysis machine. When he was released from the hospital his doctors gave him a few months to live. His wife Miyoko Watai flew in from Japan to spend the Christmas season with him. She returned on January 10, 2008, just before Fischer's death, and so had to make another trip almost immediately after.
In the middle of January his condition deteriorated and he was returned to the hospital, where elevated levels of
serum creatinine were found in his blood. He died on
January 17,
2008, at home in his apartment in Reykjavík. Like his great predecessors
Howard Staunton and
Wilhelm Steinitz, he died at the age of . Magnús Skúlason, who stayed with Fischer until he died, said that his last words were, "Nothing soothes pain like the touch of a person."
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