Bye bye Bobby

Last week, Robert James Fischer passed away in Iceland. Bobby Fischer, as he is generally known, was one of the greatest chess players the world has ever known. His life took a sad turn after he won the world chess championship in 1972. In his latter years, he become a paranoid lunatic as well as a raving anti-Semite. Considering the fact that his mother was Jewish, that would mean Bobby Fischer was Jewish too so his anti-Semitism makes little sense. But then again, Bobby made little sense the last decade of two of his life.

You can read about Bobby in many places including his Wiki page, his obituary in the NYTimes as well as his tribute on the US Chess website. All of those websites do not do justice to the man, the legend, the myth. Though if you have the time, you should look at the US Chess website because you too can go over some of his best games. I was not alive when he accomplished all the greatness he did over the chess board. Yet, I remember discovering him in my youth when I first learned to play chess.

I remember taking out the book, My 60 Memorable Games, from the local library and going over the games trying to learn as much as I could from his games. There were many books about Bobby and many of his games can be found in various collections. As a youth chess player, I like many others tried to emulate his style. There were attempts to play the chess openings he played with though with less than stellar results. My tries at using the Kings Indian as black resulted in one too many drubbings before I switched to something else. I also tried the "poisoned pawn" variation of the Sicilian Defense, as well as the black and white side of the Ruy Lopez. In fact, I tried just about every opening Bobby played and every opening associated with Bobby. Of course, I discovered that as much as I tried to emulate his style and hopefully his success, I had to find my own way at succeeding in the game. To this day, I still cannot shake off a bad habit I picked up from Bobby's games of grabbing as much material on the board as possible.

But after Bobby won the chess championship in 1972, something happened. He changed from an eccentric personality to a crazy nutjob to put it mildly. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he cared only about winning at chess. Or that he thought the Soviet Union's chess players were all against him. Or that he became paranoid or whatever. I like to think he became unbalanced when he became the best and realized that there was nothing left to conquer in the world of chess. Whatever happened, I will always remember him and his legacy as a great chess player. Probably the best the world has ever seen.