Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer (1943-2008), American chess player who in 1972 became the first American to win the world championship. Three years later Fischer was stripped of the title in a dispute, and he later became known as an eccentric, controversial figure.

Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father left the family when he was a toddler, and Fischer was raised by his mother, who in the late 1940s moved to New York City with her two children. Fischer learned to play chess when he was 6 years old. At the age of 13 he became the youngest national junior chess champion in the United States. A year later he became the youngest U.S. champion at 14. In 1958 Fischer achieved the level of international grandmaster, again becoming the youngest ever to do so (a record later broken). Soon after, the young prodigy left high school to pursue a chess career.

Fischer became known as an intense, brilliant competitor whose success derived mainly from daring attacks and counterattacks. He set a modern tournament record by capturing the 1964-65 U.S. championship with 11 wins in 11 games. By 1968 he had won the U.S. championship eight times. In the 1970-71 World Championship Candidate matches Fischer won 20 consecutive games.

In 1972 Fischer’s achievements earned him a world championship match in Reykjavík, Iceland, against reigning champion Boris Spassky of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Fischer won the highly publicized contest decisively, becoming the first non-Soviet world champion since the mid-1940s as well as a national hero and celebrity in the United States. However, his eccentric behavior also became apparent during the match. He forfeited the second game, objecting to the size of the room in which the contest was played and the noise of television cameras.

In 1975 the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE, also known as the World Chess Federation) refused to meet Fischer’s conditions for a match with Soviet challenger Anatoly Karpov. Karpov was awarded the title, and Fischer subsequently disappeared into obscurity.

In 1992, on the 20th anniversary of his world title victory, Fischer reappeared for an exhibition match against Spassky in the former Yugoslavia. Despite orders from the U.S. government not to violate United Nations (UN) sanctions by traveling to the region, Fischer played and won the match, with ten victories against five losses. Immediately afterward U.S. officials issued a warrant for Fischer’s arrest.

Refusing to face the charges, Fischer traveled the world and lived in various countries. He eventually settled in Tokyo, Japan. During this time he promoted his own line of chess clocks as well as a variant of the game he called Fischer Random Chess, but he refused to play in tournaments. Fischer also became infamous for his controversial statements, particularly denouncing Jewish people and the U.S. government, sometimes on radio shows he hosted.

In 2004 the Japanese government jailed Fischer and announced it would deport him to the United States. He was freed the following year when the government of Iceland granted him citizenship, and Fischer moved to that country. He died there in January 2008.

Fischer was the subject of many books. He was the author of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (cowritten by Stuart Margulies and Donn Mosenfelder, 1966) and My 60 Memorable Games (1969).