nytimes.com/2008/12/28/magaz … her&st=cse
Talks about his Donald Byrne game from 1956.
Russell Miller, Camas WA
Just shows you that mental illness is indiscriminate. Can attack the young, the old, the rich, the poor, high IQ and low IQ, those that are famous, and those that are not.
The article is a cliche . I say the author is lazy not mentally ill.
Bobby Fischer is the greatest chess player who has ever lived. – Ken Smith
I agree, but “if” there is an argument, there is or was a greater Chess Player, there can be no doubt Mr. Fischer was the greatest at finding a way to win. And I suppose that is what made him so Great. Just my take on it.
Yes, but Ken Smith is dead and it is difficult to say whether he might have altered his view since he died.
When you meet a chess player wearing a top hat you tend to listen carefully. Whatta Player!
No doubt in my mind that Fischer was the greatest ever. Just the streak of 20 (or is it 21) WINS in a row over grandmasters, in modern chess times, puts him easily as the best ever. I’m glad to have taken up chess in 1967, so I could enjoy some of the “Fischer years”.
However, I can’t understand people who defend his actions. Fischer was not a nice person. The best we can do is say he was mentally ill, At worst, he was mean-spirited and selfish. Sure, you can find isolated exceptions (visiting Tal in hospital, etc), but hey, let’s face it, he wouldn’t be the type of guy one would want to be friends with.
When non-chess fans ask me about Fischer, I try to keep my comments confined to his chess. In the same way Elvis and Lennon should be remembered for music, and not their eccentric antics, Fischer greatly enhanced the world thru his chess. And that should be how he is remembered.
I think that Bobby probably had Asperger’s Syndrome, which can account for much of his anti-social behavior.
Coupled with who knows what kind of “issues” he had towards his mother, whether he knew the real identity of his father, and all the rest, the twisted contours of his life are more readily understood, but not excused.
What I have always felt was particularly sad about Bobby was the haste on the part of USCF officials to distance themselves from someone who was obviously mentally ill long, long before September 11th. In their rush to the moral high ground, these self-appointed solons missed a great opportunity to further education about mental illness, not to mention acting charitably towards the one person of whom it can be said that they would not be where they were then if not for Bobby Fischer.
For all her faults as a board member, Susan Polgar has always recognized this about Bobby; and among all those who have had words to say about him, both before and after his passing, she has shown the most perspective and maturity. (In his memorial DVD, Dzindzi almost falls over himself – no small feat!-- in emphasizing his disagreements with Bobby’s politics, tastes in clothes and food.)
The identity of the greatest player who ever lived will always be a fun exercise for us to engage in. We all have our standards; and tossing around the names of Fischer and Kasparov makes for interesting conversation. But of one thing, there is no doubt: only one chessplayer in the history of the game attained such stature as to bring the world almost to a halt at certain moment in time. And he showed that he deserved this attention by the quality of his play. For those of us who loved him then, the depth of our admiration could only tell when he disaappointed us, again and again and again. Then the yawning gap between past glory and present gutter became almost unbearable, until, in our haste to be rid of him, we banished him into the darkness.
Until he died and we needed his name to recruit more members.
Politics makes shoddy business for us all.