Hikaru Nakamura

All Things Chess
21

Perhaps you should’ve shot video of that conversation. :laughing:

Seriously, though, most people in one-on-one, personal settings are going to be more genial and approachable. Also, a lot of our communication is non-verbal. A great deal of meaning, emphasis and inflection that are easily expressed in a live discussion get lost in print/social media.

Of course it is. Welcome to the world of public perception. Everyone views things through his own lens. That’s why it’s so important to be careful with what you say - or be willing to deal with the blowback if you’re not going to be careful. This, of course, is even more true for people with higher public profiles.

22

I think Nakamura had a big mouth as a kid, got a reputation, and now everyone looks at every single tweet, every word, every nuance, every look. He’s under more scrutiny than any other GM. He had that one bad quote about Kasparov, which is so ridiculous I don’t know how anyone could even take it seriously. Besides that, he hasn’t said anything really bad in a few years, I’d say. And on ICC, he’s a real gentleman, who will answer even the low-rated players with respect.

23

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8343811/serena-williams-conqueror

Point conceded. And the Fischer boom did not happen because of Bobby’s winning personality.

24

Point conceded. And the Fischer boom did not happen because of Bobby’s winning personality.
[/quote]
And what do you know of Bobby Fischer’s personality, sir. How many times have you talked with him? Have you EVER met the man, or are you going on what others have said and written? Why don’t you read what his peers, the other top players of the day, have to say about the man? I am REALLY sick & tired of reading your latest bash of Bobby every chance you get, sir!

W. Michael Bacon

25

THE REAL BOBBY FISCHER

“Nothing eases suffering like the human touch.”

His last words.

RIP

26

I don’t think the Fischer boom had anything to do with Fischer’s personality. Or maybe it did, in a reverse psychology way.

No, I never met him, but I know quite a few people who did know him, and the stories they tell are fascinating.

He was a man who could, when he chose to, be very charming. And he could be a complete pain in the neck, seconds later. (That sounds like nearly every chess player I’ve ever met.)

These days sports and entertainment have thousands of celebrities whose personality is their worst asset, but it doesn’t seem to detract from their success on the playing field or at the box office. Fischer wasn’t the first enfant terrible, but he was one of the more famous ones at the time.

For those of us who joined the USCF during that era, Fischer was a role model, flaws and all. No, I take that back. He was THE role model!

The very first chess magazine I ever read, two years before I joined the USCF in 1967, had Fischer on the cover. The cover story, as I recall, dealt with his objections to the Russian chess community and what he felt was their plan to destroy him. It was the mid 60’s. The war in Viet Nam was starting to be a big issue. Rebellion against authority was in. And Fischer was the model rebel for chessplayers.

We lionized him. I even knew someone who had played him in an open tournament, one of the last open tournaments he ever entered. Fischer arrived at the board a good 15 minutes late and never spoke a word, blew his amateur opponent away in under 20 moves, and left. No handshake, no signing of the scoresheet. Did that make him any less of a hero figure to us? No.

When he became a symbol of the Cold War by beating Spassky, he became a role model for many more people, many of whom neither knew nor cared how the horsie moves. For a few years, chess was cool.

Larry Evans once told me that Fischer sacrificed his youth for chess, and then his sanity for the world.

And nobody, not Karpov, not Kasparov, not Kamsky and not Nakamura, has had the same impact on chess, chess players or the world at large since Fischer.

27

Most people didn’t meet him. All they knew of his personality is what was reported by the media, so that is what was used by the average person and player to make their decisions (there were a number of pastiches that gave his reported personality a level of, hopefully good natured, humor). The boom happened anyway.

28

Stop the presses - no more books or judgements about the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Napoleon, Edison . . . let alone chess icons like Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, etc. Yes, this is the new standard - rely only on those who have actually met and passed judgement. Very scholarly, that approach.

29

Hmm.

As long as we’re on this tangent…

30

Some folks like J. D. Salinger, Harper Lee and others had short periods of fame, then chose to be reclusive.

31

Same thing with Greta Garbo. When she died in New York in 1990, many of her neighbors had never seen her despite living in the same building for years.

IMHO Salinger and Lee were better representatives of their craft in silence than someone like Truman Capote, who did not have another significant literary success after “In Cold Blood”, but you could never have told that from the talk shows.

Joseph Heller took 8 years to finish “Catch 22” and his later works were tepid imitations of that classic, despite many years of work on them.

I took a screenwriting course once. Our instructor (a working pro) told us that there are writers who spend their entire careers writing the same novel/screenplay over and over, and those who spend their entire careers avoiding writing that one great novel or screenplay.

32

Nakamura is neither a reclusive introvert nor a limited one-hit wonder.

33

I made my post (#243295) because this person who goes by the handle of ‘billbrock’ continues to slight the Great Bobby Fischer every chance he gets, and it burns me up. He does so on the forum of the United States Chess Federation! And he has done it countless times…I cannot help but wonder what motivates any man to disparage one of the two greatest chess players born in the US (with Paul Morphy being the other). This person, ‘billbrock’ is not worthy of unzipping Bobby Fischer’s chess bag, yet he continues to disparage the man. According to the book by Frank Brady, Bobby’s natural father had mental problems later in his life. It is highly possible that Bobby was passed a bad gene from a parent. There is only one kind of person who would pick on someone like that; someone who would make fun of someone like that; and that is a BULLY! What a person like that needs is the opprobrium of the chess community. Instead he receives a post like #243336, proving that sometimes other weak-minded individuals will join the bully in order to make it a mob.
I ask you, rather than joining the scoundrels and making it a mob, would it not be better for the promotion of chess that we, as a community, do as the famous Johnny Mercer song says and:
You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between
Armchair Warrior

34

@ nocab

First off, IMO from everything I’ve ever read posted here or in his blog, have I ever seen Bill Brock disparage Fischer (or anyone else for that matter). It’s just not in him period full stop. I never MET the guy but he is the very embodiment of what I consider to be a “Mensch”.

You are just dead wrong.

Dan

35

Mr. Bacon, the person with the handle billbrock is… Bill Brock of Chicago.

Of course the post that you mention (243336) was not made by Bill Brock.

36

To be fair, I am correctly quoted in the cited post.

Fischer could be charming; generally (as his closest friends will attest), he wasn’t.

I really don’t have much problem with Mr. Bacon’s argument. Certainly the mentally ill don’t deserve to bear the full weight of their conduct. One may have zero tolerance for virulent antisemitism, but when the virulent antisemite is an ethnic Jew, it seems appropriate to make allowances. (I recall seeing the last minutes of The Man in the Glass Booth on TV as a child: the reveal of Maximilian Schell’s character makes me think of Fischer.) Ditto for the virulent anti-American from Brooklyn. I cried eleven years ago today; Fischer rejoiced and contemplated genocide. (Send an email to billbrock1958@gmail.com, and I’ll send you the audio of Fischer’s 9/12/2001 phone call to a Filipino radio station.) And yet I believe that RJF was not a fundamentally bad person, but a decent person who struggled with mental illness.

But an argument for mitigating circumstances is not necessarily an argument against accountability.

The history of Fischer is a complex one; we shouldn’t shy away from it. Suppressing the unpleasantness is ahistorical; suppressing Fischer’s brilliance diminishes his great achievement. Chess did not drive Fischer crazy; it kept a mentally ill man relatively sane, and allowed him to display his great genius to the world.

Finally, Mr. Bacon should consider the possibility that a poster who he proposes to shun as a pariah may in fact be mentally ill and therefore not at all accountable. :wink:

37

I think Mr. Bacon’s point was that the author of post #243336 was joining in on Mr. Brock’s alleged bullying of Bobby Fischer. Mr. Bacon would rather have seen that post reproaching Mr. Brock for his alleged poor behavior.

Having said that, I couldn’t disagree more with Mr. Bacon’s overall argument, which would have us completely ignore the well-documented negative aspects of Mr. Fischer. My personal preference would be to celebrate his many accomplishments, without turning a blind eye to his problems.

I further disagree with Mr. Bacon’s strident claims that Mr. Brock is somehow belittling Mr. Fischer, even though Mr. Brock did nothing more than acknowledge what most neutral observers - and, for that matter, closer acquaintances of Mr. Fischer who are still with us - would readily acknowledge as simple truth. Mr. Brock really only brought up Mr. Fischer as a chess parallel to an illustrative quote he provided about Serena Williams, a contemporary competitor in a different endeavor who, right now, is the best in the world at what she does. Ms. Williams has had a number of public relations issues in her own right, which makes the parallel apt. The mind reels as to how one could rationally call that “bullying”.

38

Winding our way back to the thread topic: Serena’s life choices are hers to make. But Venus is the better ambassador for tennis.

The person who’s really been treated unfairly by me in this thread is Hikaru Nakamura: I’ve compared him to a golfer who committed serial infidelities, to a tennis player who threatened to cram a ball down a line judge’s throat, and to Fischer, who… :smiley:

Hikaru the sports fan merely provided some good copy for journalists by failing to mouth the appropriate clichés in exactly the right way. No one was harmed. Narrowly, that “failure” doesn’t matter, and it’s none of my business.

But it still frustrates me, because if Hikaru managed his public image better, he could make even more money. (Also none of my business.) And USCF and American chess would also benefit, as it did from Fischer’s success in the years 1970-73. As a fiduciary of USCF, that IS my selfish interest.

39

Still trying to figure out what H. Nakamura said that was so wrong. Emotions of the moment.

It is a good thing that Fischer did not have a Twitter account. His other experiences in the media were a mixed bag. His best were the interviews with his wry, darkly funny comments on the old Dick Cavett show. He was rational, funny, and exuded the confidence of a professional athlete, not unlike another controversial athlete of his era, Muhammad Ali. It is a shame that after his high point that he devolved into the anti-semitic, recluse who trusted few. Some friends should have encouraged him to go back to school and expand his education. Perhaps they did. An older Fischer would likely have been a pain in the neck in a classroom as a graduate student, but it would have been good for him to work with other people and see other points of view. Imagine him as a history professor like the one in “Back to School.”

I know that some people felt betrayed by Fischer when he dropped out of the game and the public view, as if he owed it to them to keep playing. It went beyond hero worship to self-interest. They wanted the game to get bigger so that they could make something off it. Fischer seemed to despise that attitude from all of the accounts I have read about him. Is this why some are disappointed in Nakamura’s tweets?

40

Yes. :smiley:

From a marketing perspective, the edge of brashness (Ali, McEnroe) or even a bit over the edge (Sir Charles) sells.

One’s persona (“I’m taking my talents to Miami”) has little to do with one’s self.