RIP: Bobby Fischer
The news has broken that Bobby Fischer died yesterday.
I’m very glad that he lived, and I’m almost equally glad that he died. His contributions to chess have hardly been rivaled by anyone in modern times. His contributions to insanity, hatred, antisemitism, anti-American propaganda, and general craziness have steadily grown in the last couple of decades.
Most people like to talk about the first half of his life while ignoring the last half. You can’t talk about the man without considering the whole man. That’s true of anyone, I guess.
The first half:
I learned chess when I was 7 years old from a step-father, and dabbled with it until I was a freshman in high school. At this point, I met Mr. Charles Vetter. He was my history teacher, and sometime during the first week of class, he announced that he would like anyone that knew how to play chess to join him after school on Tuesday of the next week. He was the sponsor and coach of the chess club at my school, and would like to keep the annual tradition of having a chess club going.
I’ve always enjoyed chess, and I always thought I was good at it. It’s also competitive in a mental way, and there’s not much of that in this world. Most direct competition is physical. This was my chance to flex my mental muscles. I joined the team, and quickly established myself as one of the top players. I spent hours in the public library (which has an impressive collection of chess books), and read every single one of them. For Christmas that year, all I asked for was chess books, and I received a good number of them. I still have most of them, and some of them were by Bobby Fischer.
During that school year, I spent an insane amount of time studying chess. I studied openings, middle games, end games, gambits, feints, sacrifices, and all of the strategies that go with it. I also studied the “greatest games in the world” to see what the best of the best did when pitted against each other. Many of these games were Bobby Fischer games. Some of the books just specified the moves of the game with no more details on why a move was good or bad. I had to figure that out for myself, and that was fine with me.
I’m not sure how much time I spent doing all of this, but it paid off. Near the end of my freshman year of high school, I entered the Texas State Chess Championships. Mr. Vetter had managed to get it hosted in my home town mainly because of the huge (about 30 students in our school, 25 in the rival school, and another 20-30 adults) number of people in the local chess club. Instead of busing almost 100 people across the great state of Texas, it was more feasible to have everyone else come to us.
The tournament was a weekend full of chess. I did quite well. I played 12 games in 2 days. I lost 2 games, and had a stalemate in another. The two that I lost were fair and square. I was playing a person better than me, and I didn’t do my best while they did. The stalemate was an embarrassment, though. I remember the guy’s name was Todd, and he was on my chess team near the bottom rungs of the rankings. I got cocky, stupid, and overconfident. I got him to the end game, and was up several pieces. Too many pieces. This makes a stalemate easier to fall into, and that’s exactly what I did. I should have won that game, but I didn’t.
In the end, I came in 4th place. Had I not had that stalemate, I would have been tied with another guy for 1st place, and it would have come down to a playoff game. That other guy was one of the two that had already beaten me, so I probably would have landed second place anyways.
How does Fischer tie into all of this? His mind and mine (at least as far as chess goes) seem to work in the same manner, though he is much more brilliant than I am. This allowed me to take his discoveries and ideas, and put them into play in a very effective manner. While Fischer was creating these ideas and using them to surprise everyone, I was merely following in his footsteps and trying not to stray from the path. I did my best to try to understand why I was doing the moves, and why they worked. Most of the time I did understand, but there were times that I knew that the best move was the best move, but I didn’t know why. Either way, it worked for me.
Now to the second half:
Sometime before 1992 Fischer decided that he didn’t like publicity, being American, or just doing what he loved any more and dropped off the face of the planet. Then he surfaced again in Yugoslavia to play in a tournament that was somehow banned by the United States (I’m still not quite sure about the legalities of that.) Fischer wanted to poke the USA in the eye, and he did so. Of course, when you poke someone larger and more powerful than you in the eye, you’re going to end up on the losing end of the exchange.
Which is what happened to Fischer. After many years of living incognito in the Pacific Rim (mainly Japan), he was discovered, detained (fancy word for thrown into prison without being charged with anything), and almost handed over the US government for playing a few games of chess in another country. Iceland came to the rescue with citizenship, a funky loophole in their extradition laws, and a plane ticket for Fischer.
If I sound sympathetic towards Fischer, I am. I feel sorry for someone that attained greatness in their field, and through a series of missteps, pushing from other entities, and just plain stubbornness they lose it all. Did he bring some of this on himself? Yes. Was some of it forced on him? Yes. Who’s fault is all this? The list is really too long to get into it here, but Fischer is near the top of the list.
My sympathy towards Fischer ended on 9/11. While buildings were still burning (and several still preparing to surrender to gravity and fall into rubble) in NYC, he was on the radio announcing how happy he was about the attacks, the deaths, the harm to the President, the harm to his former homeland, and so much more. I have no sympathy towards anyone, no matter how dire their straights, that exalts the sufferings of other people.
Fischer once again makes headlines with his death, but this will probably be the last time we see this. Unlike other famous dead (Diana, JFK Jr., Elvis, Monroe, etc.) Fischer did not die in controversy, but, rather, obscurity.
Bobby: Thanks for the education of the greatest game ever made. I hope you found peace before your final moments. If you’re in Heaven, set aside a game of Chess960 for me. I’d like to play a game with you.
