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Tribute to an odd person who was the world’s greatest chess player

One of my "sort-of-childhood-teen-years-heros" died yesterday in Iceland. If you're a chess player, you must have heard of him and probably already heard about his death: International Grandmaster Former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. He was 64. His cause of death was not specified.

Fischer was a very complicated, strange sort of man who became very reclusive in recent years. For those of you who don't know him, he became something of a national hero in the U.S. after whipping Soviet Grandmaster Boris Spassky for the title in 1972. He was defrocked of the title in 1975 when he refused to defend it in Manila. He came out of retirement to battle Spassky again in 1992 in a special match in Yugoslavia. That nation was under political sanctions at the time and Fischer disappeared after the match.

He made some extremely anti-American remarks from the Philippines following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. He was allowed into Iceland (the site of his famous 1972 match with Spassky) in 2005 and became an Icelandic citizen.

Odd, perhaps even troubled, Fischer nonetheless has been hailed by many as perhaps the greatest chess player who ever lived. I'm not much of a chess player myself anymore, though I followed the game zealously in high school and college, I'm not qualified to say. But the few Fischer games I've played through seem absolutely brilliant.

Goodbye, Bobby, and I hope you've made peace with the emotions that were driving you to such a sad waste of your enormous gifts on the chessboard.
[tags]Bobby Fischer dies, chess champion, chess world, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]