Bobby Fischer (person)

(person) by Protector of Mankind

Wed Jul 05 2000 at 20:18:18

4 ¶, 13 s, 337 w, 2261 c

An American chess player, who in 1972 became the first American chess player to win the world championship (dominated after 1917 by the Russian Chess System). He was born Robert James Fischer in Chicago, Illinois. Fischer learned to play chess when he was 6 years old, and at the age of 13 he became the youngest national junior chess champion in the United States; at 14 he was the youngest senior champion. In 1958, after becoming the youngest international grandmaster in the history of chess, Fischer left high school and established himself as the only player in the Western countries to earn a living solely by playing chess. He became known as a brilliant competitor whose success derived mainly from surpise attacks and counterattacks.

Fischer set a modern tournament record by capturing the 1964-1965 US championship with 11 wins in 11 matches. By 1968 he had won the US championship eight times. In the 1970-1971 world Championship Candidate matches, Fishcer won 20 consecutive games. In 1972 Fischer, the first officially recognized American world champion, defeated titleholder, Boris Spassky of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 1975 the International Chess Federation refused to meet Fischer's conditions for a match with the Soviet challenger, Anatoly Karpov, and the title was awarded to Karpov.

Fischer did not compete publicly again unitl a 1992 rematch with Spassky. Defying orders from the US government not to violate United Nations sanctions against the warring republics of former Yugoslavia, Fischer traveled to the Adriatic island resort of Sveti Stefan and to Belgrade, Serbia, for the rematch. He won the match with ten wins to Spassky's five.

Editor's note: Bobby Fischer died in Reykjavik, Iceland on January 18, 2008

E2 nodes of interest
Bobby Fischer on September 11, 2001
Bizarre anti-Semitic interview with Bobby Fischer
Charles Mingus Meets Bobby Fischer in the Locked Ward at Bellevue
Searching for Bobby Fischer
A Bust to the King's Gambit
Bobby Fischer Goes to War
http://everything2.com/title/Bobby+Fischer http://everything2.com/node/639256