Bobby Fischer: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of a World Chess Champion
August 30, 2012 12:04PM
By Eudie Pak
Forty years ago this week, Bobby Fischer became the first American to win the World Chess Championship, dethroning the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in a nail-biting 24-game match in Reykjavík, Iceland. The competition unraveled as dramatically as its headlines: “The Match of the Century.”
Fischer’s victory in 1972 made the 29-year-old game player an intellectual rockstar. He made chess cool and ubiquitous, which was a welcomed distraction, considering the stubborn lingerings of the Cold War and the ongoing strain of Vietnam on the psyche of the American public.
However, at the apex of his popularity, Fischer suddenly disappeared from the public eye and did not play a competitive game of chess for the next 20 years. In 1992 he came out of obscurity and decided to rematch his old opponent Spassky in Belgrade, Yugoslavia—even though a United Nations embargo was in place. He ultimately won but at the cost of never being able to step foot on U.S. soil again. For the rest of his life, he hopscotched throughout Europe and Asia until he was granted citizenship from the same country where his international fame began—Reykjavík, Iceland. He died there in 2008 at the age of 64.
Although in his later years Fischer was known for his belligerent anti-Semitic and anti-American tirades, the world was unable to forget his contributions to the game of chess and his haunting genius. He inspired numerous books, songs, television shows, and films and is still considered one of the greatest chess players of all time.
Source: http://www.biography.com
Nakamura is cooler and stronger than Fischer. He’s trained by Rex Sinquefield and the St.Louis Chess Club. They made him who he is today.
No way to make a game that bears the cross cool. No one considered Fischer cool, or gave him that rock star treatment. Every one always knew he was a socially backwards, emotionally disturbed man, with a special skill for chess. People only loved that he defeated Russia. That love behind the politics of chess does not exist anymore, and unlikely it ever will again.
The only thing Fischer did was associate chess with mentally disturbed, reclusive people. The main reason chess isn’t mainstream today is because of fischer. He is the only name that the average person on the street knows and the association isn’t a positive one.