Chess champion and cold war icon Bobby Fischer succumbs to kidney failure early this morning in his Iceland home. Friends say “He was not a man who wanted to seek medical attention. He didn’t believe in Western medicine,” made world headlines by defeating Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in a celebrated Cold War chess showdown in Reykjavik in 1972, took Icelandic citizenship in 2005 to avoid being deported to the United States. He was wanted for breaking international sanctions by playing a chess match in Yugoslavia in 1992.

Although considered a genius with an IQ higher than that of Albert Einstein, it seems it was his eccentricities that made a lasting impression. He would make extravagant demands over matches, throwing regular tantrums over the position of cameras and the audience and succeeded in alienating himself from all but a small band of friends and chess enthusiasts. Fischer was an outspoken anti-Semite, using broadcasts at far-flung radio stations to accuse Jews of everything from his legal woes to an alleged conspiracy to kill off elephants.
In a phillipine radio interview Fischer accused the media of trying to “poison the public against me.” “They constantly use the words eccentric, eccentric, eccentric, weird,” Fischer said. “I am boring. I am boring!” This was shortly after his scruffy appearance caused him to be mistakeny identified as a suspect in a California bank robbery in 1981.

Fischer first learned to play chess by locking himself in a room for days on end facing off against himself. Though his name is obscure for this younger generation, his antics are certainly understood and appreciated by those outside of the media machine. I raise my glass to you Mr. Bobby Fischer!

~WC~