Why Did the World’s Best Chess Player Go Insane?

hey 42 here some people are born to do just one thing and one thing only lionel messi was meant to be a footballer wolfgang amadeus mozart was made to write music and albert einstein was born to change our understanding of the universe robert james fisher he was placed on planet earth to play chess this man was quite simply a phenomenon he broke every record in the book during a meteoric rise to the top of his sport game well sport but also a game look i don't know what it is but he was really good at it so good that's at the peak of his powers american prodigy bobby fisher single-handedly took on the might of the soviet chess machine a state-sponsored juggernaut that had monopolized international chess for two and a half decades and won in doing so he demonstrated a level of dominance over the world's strongest players that had never been seen before and hasn't been seen since but fischer didn't only have to contend with his grandmaster opponents he also battled with his own inner demons having scaled the dizzying heights of the chess equivalent of mount everest to become the undisputed best player on earth fisher threw it all away as his growing paranoia and distrust saw him all but abandon the game he dedicated his life to as his behavior grew more and more erratic he eventually found himself a fugitive from the law and an exile from the country he'd brought so much glory to this is the remarkable true story of bobby fischer arguably the greatest genius chess has ever seen based on genes alone fischer was always going to be bright his mother regina held a phd in medicine and spoke seven languages fluently and his father hermann was a biophysicist or at least a man people thought was his father was a biophysicist it turns out there's an extremely good chance bobby was actually the product of an affair his mother had with hungarian mathematician and physicist paul nemeny either way it's safe to say nature was on his side though things were a bit complicated on the nurture front bobby was technically homeless when he was born in 1943 and with his parents separated he and his sister joan were brought up by their mother regina was a complex woman extremely politically active she was routinely investigated by the fbi for her suspected communist links bobby was never particularly close to his mum and when he was just 16 she left him to live on his own in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in brooklyn as she pursued her medical career which i'm guessing ahead of myself this story really begins when bobby was just six years old because that's when he discovered the game that would change his life it was his sister who bought the chess set and the two of them learned how the pieces moved from the instructions included in the box to begin with it was a bit of fun but over time bobby's thoughts turned to chess more and more often within a year what had started out as a hobby had turned into an all-consuming obsession at least it had for bobby his sister had largely lost interest leaving him with no one to play with not that he minded all that much he just played with himself not like that it was two years later that bobby fisher first showed up as the faintest of blips on the us chess radar noting her son's passion for the game but a little concerned about how much time he was spending playing alone regina placed an advert in a local paper seeking possible opponents and ideally friends for bobby what she got was even better he was invited to take part in a match against one of the strongest players in the us at the time max pavey it was to be a so-called simultaneous exhibition with pavi demonstrating his prodigious skills by playing against a large group of players all at the same time if you're expecting this story to start with a miracle victory against a chess master i'm afraid i'm going to have to disappoint you pavey put bobby away in about 15 minutes but whilst it was an easy victory the self-taught seven-year-old had acquitted himself remarkably well so well that the president of the brooklyn chess club also present at the exhibition decided to take bobby in under his wing offering a little tuition and introducing him to his club it was the break bobby had needed to take his game to the next level and surrounded by skillful coaches and strong players he began to improve at an almost unbelievable rate he won his first tournament at the age of nine and was soon more than a match for most players at the club the majority of whom were decades his senior in the summer of 1956 when bobby was just 13 he scored his first major victory becoming the youngest u.s junior chess champion in history it was an incredible achievement by any measure but fisher was just getting started later that same year he was invited to play an elite level competition featuring the 12 strongest players in the us at the time bobby was by far the youngest player in the field and hugely inexperienced compared to his opponents which is probably why he only managed to finish eighth but he didn't come away empty-handed he was awarded the so-called brilliancy prize for winning his game against international chess master donald byrne today that victory is known as the game of the century it was an attacking master class in which a 13 year old fisher playing as black sacrificed his queen before unleashing a devastating mating attack on white's king more than 60 years later it remains one of the most studied and admired chess games in history it was fast becoming clear that fisher was more than just a strong young player he was something truly special fisher was competing with men decades older than him who dedicated their lives to chess and he was winning by the following year he was u.s chess champion the youngest in history at just 14 a record that still stands to this day he will go on to play a further seven u.s championships over the next decade winning every single one of them by 15 fisher had earned himself the title of grand master once again becoming the youngest person in history to achieve that feat his dedication to the game of chess was mind-boggling he studied almost non-stop and played whenever he got the chance he even taught himself basic russian so that he could read soviet chess books and magazines he was actually still a schoolboy at this point of course but it's fair to say he didn't take his non-chess education particularly seriously fisher dropped out of the school system at 16. the earliest he could legally do so to focus on his chess full-time by the way in a completely unrelated and totally random bit of trivia it turns out bobby fischer went to school with barbra streisand and neil diamond streisand has even admitted to having a crush on the future chess champion who she considered to be a genius even then as it happens she was right fish's iq was later measured at over 180 which is astonishingly high even at this early stage of his career there were signs that not all was well with fisher he was temperamental and prone to making outlandish demands of tournament organizers when those demands weren't met and they often weren't he simply didn't show up he also had a bad habit of speaking his mind which wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing but unfortunately fischer's undeniably beautiful mind was home to some rather ugly ideas despite the fact his mother was jewish fischer was a fierce anti-semite for most of his adult life a prejudice that would later become an obsession and he's on record as having said some truly unforgivable things particularly as he got older but more on that later it was sad really because when he let his chest rather than his mouth do the talking bobby fisher's eloquence was unparalleled his combative approach to tournament officials had a severely detrimental effect on his career in the 60s and he went for long stretches without playing any competitive chess at all to give you an idea of how stubborn he was on one occasion he started a prestigious tournament then withdrew halfway through whilst in the lead because of a scheduling dispute not only did he forfeit a probable tournament win the decision directly prevented him from challenging for chess's ultimate prize the world championship for several years afterwards despite frequently pushing the self-destruct button fisher did eventually get his shot at the world championship in the early 70s the timing was perfect too because fisher was just coming into the form of his life he earned the right to play the world champion at the time soviet grand master boris spassky by winning the candidates tournament during which he annihilated grand master mark tamanov 6-0 in the quarter-finals then repeated defeat by sweeping danish gm bent larson 6-0 in the semis score lines like those basically don't exist at the top level of chess where the majority of games between strong players end in draws fischer had already been on a ridiculous winning streak going into the candidates tournament and after winning his first game against legendary soviet gm tigran petrosian in the final he'd won a total of 20 games in a row against the world's best players if you follow chess you'll know how absurd that number is at the time former world champion mikhail bodfinig described it as a miracle if you don't follow chess let me just put it this way nobody has come even remotely close to matching that kind of winning streak in the modern history of the game and there's a very good chance nobody ever will it should have been impossible it was impossible but bobby fischer did it anyway it's really hard to put into context just how insane fischer's performance was during this period but let me try norwegian grand master magnus carlson is the best chess player on earth today he's a five-time world champion and his head and shoulders above any other player in the world most people agree by the time he retires he'll avert the right to call himself the best chess player ever carlson currently sits a whopping 60 rating points ahead of the second highest ranked player in the world teenage sensation ali rizzer ferrugia it's a huge margin that accurately reflects carlson's dominance over the rest of the field but here's the thing bobby fisher was the highest ranked player in the world in the early 70s and after his 20-game winning streak he was 125 rating points ahead of his closest rival the man he would soon face in the world championship match boris baskey as i said carlson is on track to become the greatest chess player in history but there are close to 20 players within 125 rating points of him right now of course it's a different era and direct comparisons are difficult but the point is this at no point in chess history has any player been so much better than his rivals as fisher was in the early 70s it was like he was playing a different game despite the ratings gap the 1972 world championship match wasn't a foregone conclusion by any means just like fisher spassky is widely regarded as one of the best chess players ever and at the time he also happened to be one of the few players in world chess with a favorable record against the american they'd only played on five occasions but spassky had won three of them with the other games ending in draws spassky also had another huge advantage on his side he was backed by the state-sponsored soviet chess machine that had brought so much success in previous decades he went into the match with a whole team of extremely strong grandmasters working on his behalf analyzing fisher's games writing reports probing for weaknesses and preparing lines of attack designed to catch fisher off guard fischer had none of that just the help of his second american grandmaster william lombardi the chess world was buzzing in the build-up to the match not just a chess world actually for the first time and possibly only time in history chess was front page news helped by the fact the cold war was in full swing at the time adding a lay of political intrigue to the usa ussr face-off but before the match even got underway fisher was up to his old tricks arguing over where it should be held and demanding that the prize fund be significantly increased the start of the match was delayed by two days as fisher refused to play but luckily a wealthy british investment banker donated a large sum to bolster the prize fund and the venue was eventually agreed upon reykjavik iceland if anyone had been under any illusions about whether spassky could match fisher they were quickly dispelled spassky beat the seemingly unbeatable american in the very first game of a scheduled 24. he won the second game too but this time thanks to a forfeit after fischer surprising nobody refused to play there was huge media attention on the match and fischer felt the massed tv cameras recording the game for worldwide audiences had put him off he demanded that the second game be moved to a more private location when it wasn't he didn't show up the match would probably have ended right there had spassky not intervened in an admirable show of sportsmanship rather than simply take the title and move on the soviet champion asked that fish's demands be met so the match could continue the rest is history despite being two nil down which would typically be seen as a huge deficit in the finely balanced world of chess fisher won seven of the following 19 games losing only once and drawing 11 times it was a crushing victory that saw fisher crowned the 11th world chess champion his performance throughout was so remarkable that after a particularly brilliant win in game six even boris spassky stood to applaud his opponent along with the fans considering his playing strength at the time there's every reason to believe fisher could have dominated the sport for years perhaps even decades to come but nobody got the chance to find out just how far he could have gone in 1975 he was due to defend his world title against a young soviet grand master anatoly karpov but once again fischer issued a string of demands prior to the match some of which were fairly reasonable others of which not so much when only some of the demands were met fisher once again walked away this time forfeiting the title he wouldn't play another competitive game of chess in public for the next 20 years say what you want about fisher that guy really knew how to hold a grudge he practically became a recluse and not an awful lot is known about his movements over the following decades though he did get himself involved in a doomsday cult called the worldwide church of god the group believed the world would end in 1975 but when that year came and went with a notable lack of apocalypses fisher along with many other members moved on [Music] his first competitive game after two decades in the wilderness was a rematch with spassky held in 1992 in yugoslavia fisher won with relative ease but along with a huge paycheck he also got himself into trouble with the law at the time there was a united nations embargo against commercial activities in yugoslavia and the match was deemed to be a violation fisher knew full well what he was doing was illegal during a live news conference in the build-up he took out a cease and desist letter sent to him by his own government and spat on it in front of the world's press the us's response was equally emphatic though a little less unhygienic a warrant was issued for fisher's arrest not keynes who faced a fallout that awaited him in america fisher would never again return to his homeland living instead in hungary and japan though he did almost get himself deported after being arrested for traveling on an expired passport in 2004. the incident saw him imprisoned in japan for nine months during which time his old foe boris spassky made a personal plea for the then u.s president george w bush to intervene in the case when that failed spassky offered to join fischer in his cell on the condition that the two were given a chess set ultimately fisher managed to persuade the government of iceland to offer him full citizenship and he lived out the rest of his days in reykjavik the site of his great triumph over spassky he died there in 2008 at the age of 64. understandably fisher is still idolized by many as one of the true greats in the history of chess a genius and an enigma in equal measure fischer played the game in a way that had never been seen before but it has to be said that being really good at something isn't an excuse for doing or saying terrible things and bobby fischer was certainly guilty of that at times in his life you don't have to dig too deep on the internet to uncover some genuinely abhorrent quotes about jews women america and basically anything else that ended up in his crosshairs by the end of his life he was utterly convinced the world was run by an evil jewish conspiracy and that the us government was out to get him he also thought modern chess matches were all fixed and that computers had killed the game in what may be his most famous outburst just hours after the world trade center terror attacks in 2001 fischer gave a phone interview applauding the acts of the terrorists and celebrating the death and destruction they'd caused understandably considering his erratic and paranoid behavior and his extremist views many people believe fisher suffered from some form of mental illness it certainly seems possible but he was never formally assessed so we don't know for sure the people who knew him well and there weren't many mostly seemed to agree that he was misunderstood and misrepresented by the press though it has to be said that many of the worst things to come out of his mouth are a matter of public record setting aside the controversy for a moment there's no denying that fisher was a genuinely remarkable chess player gary kasparov won the world chess championship six times and magnus carlsen currently sits on five wins it's a testament to just how great fischer was at his best that his name is uttered alongside those legends of the game despite his relatively short career and single world championship victory you'll struggle to find many all-time best chess player lists that have fisher outside of the top three he may not have played for long but at his peak he was simply untouchable in a sport where draws are the expected result bobby james fisher blasted world chess opponents off the board like they were mere children whatever you may think of the man he became there's no denying he was made to play chess thanks for watching you

Channel: Thoughty2

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Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022