Chess Great Bobby Fischer Dies at 64

Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer died on Friday in Iceland at the age of 64. He was US Junior Chess champ at 13. At the age of 15, he was a grand master. At 29, he defeated Boris Spassky, and by extension the entire Soviet chess program, for the title of world’s greatest player. Russian chess great and would-be politician Garry Kasparov said Mr. Fischer was, “the pioneer, some would say the founder, of professional chess.” Let the world remember him for that, and not for his repugnant rantings.

To dispense with the ugliness first, one must note that Mr. Fischer was clearly an anti-Semite. In 2002, Atlantic Magazine reported him describing his enemies as “Jews, secret Jews, or CIA rats who work for the Jews.” He was delusional; “nobody has single-handedly done more for the US than me” by making America appear “as an intellectual country. But now I’m not useful anymore. You see, the Cold War is over and now they want to wipe me out, get everything I have, put me into prison.” And he celebrated the Al Qaeda murders of September 11, 2001, saying they were “wonderful news.”

One didn’t admire Mr. Fischer for his charm nor his solid grip on reality. One marveled at how he played chess. The 1972 meeting against Mr. Spassky, during the Cold War, pitted a single American kid against a Soviet chess industry that cranked out world champion after world champion from 1948 to 1972 (to this day, the difference in foreign policy is that Russians play chess while American’s play poker.) Like the Miracle on Ice in 1980, when the US Olympic hockey team beat the Soviets, it was political drama. Add in the fact that Mr. Fischer had complained that the Soviets used to agree to short draws among themselves in tournaments so the favored player could advance, and it got personal as well.

Mr. Fischer lost game 1 badly, forfeited game 2 because organizers wouldn’t remove TV cameras that he found disturbing. By the end of game five, the players were level at 2.5 games each. The final score was Mr. Fischer’s 12.5 to Mr. Spassky’s 8.5. A four game lead in such a match was a trouncing.

Mr. Fischer refused to defend his title, and he vanished from sight. He emerged to replay Mr. Spassky in Yugoslavia during that country’s break-up during a US trade embargo, winning again. He hid out in Japan and was eventually granted Icelandic citizenship in 2005 to prevent deportation to America. He lived a bizarre life in the real world, but maybe that was because he was only at home on a 64-square board.

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