Some say there has never been a chess player
as great as Bobby Fischer. A leading Russian opponent described him as
“an achilles without an achilles heel”. Fischer was not only known for being
a chess genius but also for spiraling into insanity. This video will take you through
his highs and his lows. Bobby Fischer was born in Chicago on March
9, 1943 and raised in Brooklyn by a single mother from Switzerland born to Jewish parents. They were poor. Regina Fischer didn’t even have the money
to patch up Bobby's torn shoes when he was a kid. Regina was divorced from Hans Gerhardt Fischer,
a German biophysicist. But Bobby’s actual father was most likely
the result of an affair with her friend Paul Nemenyi. A Hungarian-Jewish physicist. When Bobby was six, his sister Joanne bought
him a chess set and taught him to play. He felt chess was more exciting than Monopoly
because no luck was involved. And he found it far more challenging. His sister soon grew tired of the game, and
his mother was too busy working as a teacher and a nurse. So, Bobby spent several hours every day playing
against…himself. He loved the thousands of possible moves and
the complex strategy involved. After a year of this, his mother took him
to the Brooklyn Chess Club where he had lessons a couple of times a week from one of the club’s
best players, Carmine Nigro. Nigh-grow charged him a dollar an hour. But Bobby believes he wasn’t in it for the
money but simply to make sure he took the lessons seriously. And apparently, he did. He was utterly obsessed with chess. One might even say it was his best friend. Fischer didn’t have any real friends growing
up. He thought having friends was only important
for kids who had secrets and wanted someone to share them with. He had no secrets so, apparently, he didn’t
feel the need to have friends. Fischer would spend Sundays playing chess
with Nigro (Nigh-grow) in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park. He began spending less time with Nigro when
he started being tutored by Jack Collins, a master player who had once ranked as high
as #17 in the U.S. Collins spent his life in a wheelchair. He never quite fit in, just like Fischer. He was careful not to say he was Fischer’s
coach. That would be like saying someone had to coach
Beethoven, Shakespeare, or Leonardo da Vinci. He thought Fischer was a genius on the level
of those geniuses. Collins did have an extensive library collection
of chess books which Fischer devoured - spending five to ten hours a day reading and studying. He would need the preparation when he faced
older and more experienced opponents. When Fischer was 13 years old, he faced 26-year-old
Donald Byrne, one of the top ten players in America. Fischer played in black, Byrne in white. The “Game of the Century” - as it’s
remembered - took place in New York City on October 17, 1956. Fischer’s moves looked like lethal art. He even dared to sacrifice his queen. Fischer got a thrill out of breaking his opponent’s
ego. His opponent was outclassed and outmatched. The game put Fischer on the map. The world knew it had a genius on its hands. The following year, when he was still only
14 years old, he won the U.S. Championship. A year later, he became the youngest ever
grandmaster. And in 1972, he defeated the Soviet Union’s
Boris Spassky to become world champion. This was stunning: the Soviets lived and breathed
chess. They were more obsessed than Canadians are
about hockey, or the Chinese about table tennis. Then comes along a lone wolf from America
who was up against the entire Soviet chess institution. It was a David versus Goliath matchup. Bobby Fischer singlehandedly beat the Soviets
at their own game. This took place during the Cold War and the
symbolism wasn’t lost on anyone. The world’s two superpowers battled it out
on a chess board. Except Fischer nearly skipped the “match
of the century”. He refused to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland for
the tournament unless he got more money including a guarantee of a slice of the lucrative TV
revenue. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had
to insist he “...get his butt over to Iceland." He finally flew there after a British investment
banker offered to double the prize money to $250,000. Fischer was still in a foul mood when he arrived. He played poorly during the first match and
lost. He didn’t even show up for the second match,
complaining that the TV cameras distracted him. So he lost automatically. The tournament organizers conceded to demands
for the third match to be played without TV cameras in the room. From that point on, his playing got stronger. Fischer, the 29-year-old who dropped out of
high school, would beat Spassky to become World Champion - single-handedly dismantling
the Soviet Union’s 24-year hold on the game. He became a hero to millions of Americans
and inspired new interest in the game of chess. Some chess clubs saw membership double during
the Fischer frenzy. He was a star and made the rounds of American
television. On the Carson Tonight show, he showed off
his brilliance by solving a sliding puzzle in 17 seconds. This was not very well mixed up.
I want to say that it wasn't well mixed up. 17! Well, they didn’t mix it up too well.
Takes about 30 seconds. He reportedly had an IQ of 181 which is said
to be even higher than Albert Einstein’s. Although he scaled the heights of fame, Fischer
wasn’t all that likable. He had a habit of saying controversial things
though people tended to ignore it because he was the Cold War chess hero after all. This is what he once said about female chess
players in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The women aren't really very good players.
I mean, I could give them a knight and still win easily. Why is this. Do women make bad chess players? Oh they're terrible chess players. I mean, some are better than others, y'know. Why do you think so? And they don't
play in men's tournaments. I don’t know why. I guess they're just not so smart. Would you call yourself a misogynist? Excuse me, what’s the definition of that
word? A woman-hater. No. No?
What do you think of women? When it comes to chess, not too much. He managed to offend everyone. During an interview with a Philippine radio
station hours after 9/11, he said the attacks were “wonderful news. I applaud the act. The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering
the Palestinians, just slaughtering them for years. I want to see the U.S. wiped out.” He never hid his hatred of Jews, repeatedly
making anti-Semitic remarks - despite being Jewish ethnically. His anti-American, anti-Semitic comments coincided
with his growing paranoia. He decided the U.S. government was out to
get him. He also believed the Israeli national intelligence
agency - the Mossad - was after him. He refused to defend his world championship
title in 1975. He complained that opponents were trying to
poison his food, his hotel rooms were bugged, he feared the Russians wanted to bomb his
plane. For years, Fischer carried a blue cardboard
box with him wherever he went and refused to say what was inside. Once, when he went to use a restaurant restroom,
he left it on the table and the friend he was with peaked inside. He saw a Bible. Religion appealed to his desire for logic
and order. Except he later cut ties with the Worldwide
Church of God - funded by a televangelist after complaining that Herbert Armstrong’s
teachings made members lose their minds and become “zombies”. He later cut ties with the organization. One of the surest signs of his mental decline
was that he insisted on removing his dental fillings! a He explained that he didn’t want anything
artificial in him and had heard of a guy wounded in WWII who had a metal plate in his head
that picked up vibrations and even radio transmissions. His mental instability manifested in his physical
appearance. Gone was the athletic young man who swam and
played tennis to keep in shape for chess which requires enormous mental and physical endurance. He was unrecognizable. California police officers mistakenly arrested
him because he resembled a man who wanted for robbery. He spent 48 hours in jail and wrote a book
about the alleged torture he endured. During his descent into madness, Fischer didn’t
play a competitive game in public for twenty year. But eventually, he had to. He had run out of money. In 1992, he agreed to a $5 million dollar
rematch against his Russian arch-rival (arch) Spassky in Yugoslavia. Except the U.S. government wasn’t too pleased
about that. It defied UN sanctions against the war-torn
country. Americans were forbidden from doing any business
in Yugoslavia. Fischer was warned he’d face up to ten years
in prison if he went ahead with his plans. But he didn’t care He won the tournament. Some believe he was coaxed into playing again
by his teenage Hungarian girlfriend Zita Rajcsanyi who was also a chess player. She had apparently turned a pen pal relationship
into a romance despite their 30-year age gap. Although, Fischer claimed he didn’t have
time for women. He is said to have married a Japanese chess
player Miyoko Watai and lived with her in Japan for a few years. He reportedly hoped that as the spouse of
a Japanese citizen he could stay there as he had been on the run from American authorities
for defying sanctions. But his attempt to stay in Japan was unsuccessful. Authorities arrested him for using a passport
that had been revoked by the U.S. government. He begged Iceland to take him in, the country
that made him famous in 1972. Iceland welcomed him by making him a citizen. He would spend the rest of his days there
living in obscurity. So, what caused his spiral into madness? Some speculate that training in blindfold
chess can cause mental strain as you can’t see or touch the pieces, so you’re forced
to maintain a mental image in your head. However, there were signs something was not
right with Bobby Fischer much earlier on. Legendary chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal picked
up on it back in the fifties, mocking Fischer for being “cuckoo”. Another chess grandmaster, Pal Benko, once
remarked: “I am not a psychiatrist, but it was obvious he was not normal. “I told him, ‘You are paranoid,’ and
he said that paranoids can be right.” World-renowned chess grandmaster and psychoanalyst
Dr. Reuben Fine described in his book on the chess master that Fischer’s mother had consulted
him because she was concerned her teenage son was too obsessed with chess and felt he
needed friends and other hobbies. Fine described how, when he “...I started
a conversation at one point about what he was doing in school. As soon as school was mentioned, he became
furious, screamed, 'You have tricked me,' and promptly walked out. For years afterward, whenever I met him in
clubs or tournaments he gave me angry looks, as though I had done him some immeasurable
harm by trying to get a little closer to him." In other words, Fischer reacted in a paranoid
way. Perhaps school was a sensitive spot. He dropped out at the age of 16 to focus on
chess. He was always insecure about his lack of education
and decided to trade his casual wear for suits when playing chess in order to look more sophisticated. Social skills were not his forte. When CBS’ 60 Minutes spent his 29th birthday
with him and surprised him with a cake he actually REFUSED it. Happy birthday to you. You were worrying about this? Why were you worrying about it? You know, first of all, I don’t eat this
kind of cake. Second of all, I don’t go for these kinds
of things. Shall we take it away, please? Yah. It appears paranoia ran in his family. The FBI described Fischer’s mother Regina
as mentally unstable in their secret files on her. They had spied on her since the dawn of the
Cold War in the 1940s. The FBI suspected that the left-leaning political
activist was a Communist spy. Both she and her then-husband had lived in
Russia. The agency was also worried that the Russians
had tried to recruit Bobby. Bobby’s relationship with his mother was
strained. He resented her for abandoning him when he
was a teen so she could focus on her medical career. Although they hardly saw each other over the
years, he is said to have become distraught after she passed away in 1997 quickly followed
by his sister the following year. Some believe their deaths caused him to lose
whatever last grasp he had on reality. Bobby’s probable father was also believed
to be paranoid. Paul Nemenyi was highly intelligent. He even collaborated with Albert Einstein’s
son Hans Albert Einstein who was also a scientist. Nemenyi emigrated from Hungary to the U.S.
in 1939 but had trouble adjusting. He reportedly walked around with soap in his
pockets, paranoid about getting his hands dirty. Some speculate Bobby Fischer could have had
schizophrenia or Asperger's, though there is no evidence that he was diagnosed with
any mental health disorders. It also does not appear that Fischer had any
long-term treatment for mental health issues. One can only wonder if his life would have
turned out differently if he did. During the last years of his life, he stayed
in close touch with a psychiatrist who headed Iceland’s hospital for the criminally insane. Dr. Magnus Skulason stayed in hospital with
Fischer as he lay dying of kidney failure. Fischer passed away on January 17, 2008 and,
according to Dr. Skulason, his final words were: "Nothing is as healing as the human
touch." Coming from a man who shied away from social
contact, this was a rather remarkable thing to hear. It was fitting that having fallen in love
with 64 black and white squares on a chess board, Bobby Fischer died when he was 64 years
old. He asked to be buried as a Catholic. Bobby Fischer once wrote in an article for
the Boy Scouts magazine: “With talent, study and a positive attitude,
there is no limit to how far you can go.” Yet he failed to live up to his own words. If Fischer had stayed in the game longer,
perhaps we would have seen a match-up with Gary Kasparov - arguably the two greatest
chess players of all time. Though, they were 20 years apart. But it would never come to pass. The person who finally defeated Bobby Fischer
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