Chess Genius Bobby Fischer Dies at 64

Photograph of Washington Square Park chess table by Paulo C on Flickr

Brilliant, reclusive and eccentric, Chicago-born and Brooklyn-bred Bobby Fischer died at age 64 in Iceland. His spokesman said the cause was kidney failure, after a long illness.

Fischer, who grew up playing in chess clubs in Brooklyn and Manhattan, beat Boris Spassky in a 1972 match, becoming the first and only American to become world champion, a Cold War hero, and popularized chess with mainstream America. When called for comment, Boris Spassky said, "I am very sorry, but Bobby Fischer is dead. Goodbye." (Garry Kasparov told the AP, "The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess.")

His antics aside from chess added to the mystery of his persona. Though half Jewish and raised by a Jewish mother, Fischer made numerous anti-Semitic comments in recent decades, frequently discussing a Jewish conspiracy. From the NY Times' obituary:

On Sept. 11, 2001, he told a radio talk-show host in Baguio, the Philippines, that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were ”wonderful news,” adding he was wishing for a scenario “where the country will be taken over by the military, they’ll close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews and secure hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders.”

Fischer played a rematch with Spassky in Belgrade, defying U.S. sanctions against the former Yugoslavia, and was arrested by Japanese authorities when he was traveling on his revoked U.S. passport. When Iceland offered him citizenship, he moved there and renounced his U.S. citizenship.

You can watch this 36-minute British documentary about the famous Fischer-Spassky match, and here are the moves during the game. And the film Searching for Bobby Fischer intersperses clips of Fischer's life as a young New York chess prodigy deals with his talents.