Chess Legend Bobby Fisher has just died (2008) in Iceland (1 Viewer)

['79 Saints]

It is sad to see someone degenerate as he did into wild-eyed conspiracy theories and consumed with hatred/paranoia... he even grew to hate the game so many grew to love -chess.

I hope he is remembered for when he did as a chess player and not for the delusional, paranoid rants that he would be known for later in life.

 

[gavinj]

So would that be called a Jirt? Wonder if he has the matching Jorts?

Yeah, but I don't know if it's a short-sleeved jirt or a long-sleeved jirt so I don't know if its the kind you wear with jorts. I'm guessing he was going with full wrist-to-ankle denim protection since he was living in Iceland; never been there, but sounds cold.

 

[BullDawg]

Yes, he beat the Soviets in "their" sport. I think he became mentally ill. A good chess player former colleague believed Fischer one of the innovators of chess history.

So did Big Blue.

If he became mentally ill, the much vaunted social medicine of Europe should have tended to him no? (I already know your opinion of such so consider the question rhetorical at best). My personal belief is he was little more than a highly eccentric and even more hateful individual who ultimately betrayed/disowned his country.

Now the real Cold War sports heroes IMO wore ice skates and wielded funny looking sticks.

 

[RiverCitySaint]

Rest in peace, er, check mate.

 

[LSSpam]

He was a genius and an artist of sorts. It's always a little sad when those pass on, regardless of what sort of personnel monster they may have been.

 

[SoonerJim]

I'm not in the business of diagnosing mental illness from halfway across the Atlantic, but paranoid schizophrenia is a good match for Fischer. The criminal record clinches it.

 

[49erKiller]

Now the real Cold War sports heroes IMO wore ice skates and wielded funny looking sticks.

lus-un2:

"Do you believe in miracles?"

 

[superchuck500]

So I have just finished Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall — From America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness by Frank Brady. Brady knew Fischer well in Bobby's younger years and had access to materials and anecdotes that no other biographers would have. It's pretty solid writing and Fischer's life-story arc is fascinating.

From the NYT book review in 2011:

Brady is in a unique position to write about Fischer, having published the first biography of him in 1965 (“Profile of a Prodigy: The Life and Games of Bobby Fischer”), when Fischer was on his rise to the world title. At the time, Brady was a friend and confidant of Fischer’s, and he could offer insights few others had.

In the end you're left with wondering about the human mind more than anything else. What an absolutely brilliant chess player who became an absolutely horrible person. Certainly a strong streak of narcissistic personality disorder laid on top of sociopathy perhaps with a touch of functional paranoid . . . but the raving anti-semitism is so bizarre given that his parents were Jewish. Perhaps it does all come down to his being unable to handle his father not being in his life - at all.

I also think the incessant pursuit of him by the media fed to the worst of his psychology - I don't suppose that most of us can understand why this chess player would be seen as so newsworthy, even (or even moreso) after he went in seclusion and effectively retired from the game. But it was a different time, I suppose, and his eccentrism certainly fed the unhealthy relationship with the media.

I kind of can't stop thinking about it at the moment. It's also available on Audible, my dad is listening to it now.

But people were also fascinated by the mercurial Fischer — a prototypical genius whose incessant demands and unpredictability were more associated with the behavior of a diva than with what one expects from a master of a demanding game of logic. Fischer won the [Iceland '72] match in brilliant style, setting off a wave of enthusiasm for the game, particularly in the United States. It seemed that a new age of chess, with a handsome, charismatic champion, had dawned.

The euphoria quickly dissipated, however, as Fischer retreated into a self-imposed exile, spurning multimillion-dollar offers to play other matches and to endorse products. When he emerged for a rematch against Spassky 20 years later, spewing anti-American and anti-Semitic invective, the remaining milk of good will rapidly soured into disgust.

What happened? Why had such a promising talent veered so far off the path of fame and fortune?

Solving Bobby Fischer (Published 2011)

A biography of the admired chess master and reviled eccentric Bobby Fischer.

www.nytimes.com

 

[BroKV]

Jesus, Johnny

 

[nolaspe]

Superchuck out here finding old threads using the Dewey Decimal system...

 

[superchuck500]

Superchuck out here finding old threads using the Dewey Decimal system...

Resist redundant thread proliferation.

 

[superchuck500]

I'm not in the business of diagnosing mental illness from halfway across the Atlantic, but paranoid schizophrenia is a good match for Fischer. The criminal record clinches it.

(I don't care if y'all aren't interested anymore, I'm just adding to the discussion because I do what I want)

So SoonerJim's post had me thinking. After reading this intensely detailed biography, I actually don't think Fischer was schizophrenic. He was highly functional until the end of his life. He maintained lasting relationships (with those who would tolerate him) with various women and men in the international world of chess. He regularly dined out at restaurants in Hungary, Japan, and the Philippines socially with these people. They hosted him as their guests for weeks at a time in their homes in various places in Europe and Asia. His skill at analyzing chess continued to impress people until he died.

He did indeed suffer from a form of mental illness that led to delusions of sorts but it seems to me (also obviously not a psychoanalyst) they were more borne from severe narcissistic disorder rather than schizophrenia. Later in life he regularly ranted that the United States owed him, for he had done more for the United States than anyone alive (sound familiar?). And in this deep narcissistic delusion, he interpreted the lack of lavish state receptions in his honor after beating Spassky for the world title in Iceland in 1972 to be a massive insult. This perceived affront led him to begin to refuse paying taxes three years later, all of which leading to his deep hatred of the United States government and, in his narcissism, his belief that the feelings were mutual. (In fact, there is no evidence the US government had such contempt for him and quite a bit of evidence that it took a tolerant position toward his activities).

But that discussion leads to his "criminal record". Though he owed back taxes for years, he was never criminally prosecuted for it - probably because his financial status was so unknown and, in fact, he was quite destitute from about 1975 to 1992. Then, in 1992, he emerged from his self-imposed seclusion to play in the $5 million rematch with Spassky organized by a shady Serbian entrepreneur. Fischer's return to chess was major news in the chess world and the event's purse was going to rescue him from poverty (even the match's loser was to walk with $1.6 million). He went to Montenegro to train for the match, which was to be held in Montenegro and Belgrade, but 10 days before it was set to begin, the US State Department sent him a letter advising that if he played the match it would be considered conducting business in violation of the recently established US sanctions in the civil-war ravaged Yugoslavia.

In his narcissism and contempt for the US government, Fischer held a press conference and spat on the letter (he could have just ignored it without fanfare). The match went on as planned and Fischer won (perhaps in part due to Spassky's personal conviction that Bobby Fischer returning to chess was a good thing for chess), and thereafter deposited $3.4 million in a Swiss bank account. He remained in eastern Europe (Hungary for the most part) and then, several years later, a grand jury in D.C. convicted him of one count of violating the US sanctions in Yugoslavia.

Yet thereafter, he was allowed to obtain a new US passport in Bern and traveled quite freely (though never back to the US). It wasn't until 2003 that the State Department revoked his passport (perhaps due to his constant ranting on internet radio about how evil the US government was and his applauding the 9/11 attacks) . . . and this led to his ultimate arrest in Japan on charges of attempting to travel with an invalid passport (there's no evidence that Fischer received the letter informing him of the revocation, as required by law). The US never extradited Fischer from Japan - perhaps his maneuvering with his citizenship made it too murky but they probably could have if they really wanted to. During this period he married his partner, Miyoko Watai (president of the Japanese Chess Federation), who helped push Japanese authorities to allow him to stay in Japan or deport him to another country, and not hand him over to the US. Thereafter he was able to exile in Iceland where he continued what appear to have been meaningful, functional friendships with various people there including state officials and members of the chess community (including a well-known psychiatrist) until his death in 2008.

While that behavior is all wildly narcissistic and petulant, it isn't really "criminal" in the classic sense. And the US government's tolerance of his activities until his anti-US invective became so caustic that it was just embarrassing suggests the revoking of his passport may have been more about politics than prosecuting law-breaking.

Fischer's illness and delusions seem to me to have flowed entirely from his massively over-estimated sense of his own importance and a mistaken belief that he could make his own rules. (In fact, his $5 million 1975 world title defense never happened because he indeed insisted on having his own rules rather than the FIDE rules that had been in place). In the world of chess, he was revered almost like a god and he was allowed to do whatever he wished . . . and the press had a very unhealthy relationship with him. Perhaps his mind was unable to recognize that the rest of the world was not the chess world, and this was his primary delusion. Deep narcissists develop irrational contempt or hatred for those they perceive (often wrongly) to be their enemy - and this came to include Jews (clearly a very strange and disturbing delusion) and the United States government. But this kind of delusion and misplaced reality seems different than the kind of delusion and fractured reality (even fractured minds) that schizophrenia produce.

 

[Yatman]

irats ^^

thx chuckles

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Superchuck out here finding old threads using the Dewey Decimal system...

Microfiche

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

(I don't care if y'all aren't interested anymore, I'm just adding to the discussion because I do what I want)

So SoonerJim's post had me thinking. After reading this intensely detailed biography, I actually don't think Fischer was schizophrenic. He was highly functional until the end of his life. He maintained lasting relationships (with those who would tolerate him) with various women and men in the international world of chess. He regularly dined out at restaurants in Hungary, Japan, and the Philippines socially with these people. They hosted him as their guests for weeks at a time in their homes in various places in Europe and Asia. His skill at analyzing chess continued to impress people until he died.

He did indeed suffer from a form of mental illness that led to delusions of sorts but it seems to me (also obviously not a psychoanalyst) they were more borne from severe narcissistic disorder rather than schizophrenia. Later in life he regularly ranted that the United States owed him, for he had done more for the United States than anyone alive (sound familiar?). And in this deep narcissistic delusion, he interpreted the lack of lavish state receptions in his honor after beating Spassky for the world title in Iceland in 1972 to be a massive insult. This perceived affront led him to begin to refuse paying taxes three years later, all of which leading to his deep hatred of the United States government and, in his narcissism, his belief that the feelings were mutual. (In fact, there is no evidence the US government had such contempt for him and quite a bit of evidence that it took a tolerant position toward his activities).

But that discussion leads to his "criminal record". Though he owed back taxes for years, he was never criminally prosecuted for it - probably because his financial status was so unknown and, in fact, he was quite destitute from about 1975 to 1992. Then, in 1992, he emerged from his self-imposed seclusion to play in the $5 million rematch with Spassky organized by a shady Serbian entrepreneur. Fischer's return to chess was major news in the chess world and the event's purse was going to rescue him from poverty (even the match's loser was to walk with $1.6 million). He went to Montenegro to train for the match, which was to be held in Montenegro and Belgrade, but 10 days before it was set to begin, the US State Department sent him a letter advising that if he played the match it would be considered conducting business in violation of the recently established US sanctions in the civil-war ravaged Yugoslavia.

In his narcissism and contempt for the US government, Fischer held a press conference and spat on the letter (he could have just ignored it without fanfare). The match went on as planned and Fischer won (perhaps in part due to Spassky's personal conviction that Bobby Fischer returning to chess was a good thing for chess), and thereafter deposited $3.4 million in a Swiss bank account. He remained in eastern Europe (Hungary for the most part) and then, several years later, a grand jury in D.C. convicted him of one count of violating the US sanctions in Yugoslavia.

Yet thereafter, he was allowed to obtain a new US passport in Bern and traveled quite freely (though never back to the US). It wasn't until 2003 that the State Department revoked his passport (perhaps due to his constant ranting on internet radio about how evil the US government was and his applauding the 9/11 attacks) . . . and this led to his ultimate arrest in Japan on charges of attempting to travel with an invalid passport (there's no evidence that Fischer received the letter informing him of the revocation, as required by law). The US never extradited Fischer from Japan - perhaps his maneuvering with his citizenship made it too murky but they probably could have if they really wanted to. During this period he married his partner, Miyoko Watai (president of the Japanese Chess Federation), who helped push Japanese authorities to allow him to stay in Japan or deport him to another country, and not hand him over to the US. Thereafter he was able to exile in Iceland where he continued what appear to have been meaningful, functional friendships with various people there including state officials and members of the chess community (including a well-known psychiatrist) until his death in 2008.

While that behavior is all wildly narcissistic and petulant, it isn't really "criminal" in the classic sense. And the US government's tolerance of his activities until his anti-US invective became so caustic that it was just embarrassing suggests the revoking of his passport may have been more about politics than prosecuting law-breaking.

Fischer's illness and delusions seem to me to have flowed entirely from his massively over-estimated sense of his own importance and a mistaken belief that he could make his own rules. (In fact, his $5 million 1975 world title defense never happened because he indeed insisted on having his own rules rather than the FIDE rules that had been in place). In the world of chess, he was revered almost like a god and he was allowed to do whatever he wished . . . and the press had a very unhealthy relationship with him. Perhaps his mind was unable to recognize that the rest of the world was not the chess world, and this was his primary delusion. Deep narcissists develop irrational contempt or hatred for those they perceive (often wrongly) to be their enemy - and this came to include Jews (clearly a very strange and disturbing delusion) and the United States government. But this kind of delusion and misplaced reality seems different than the kind of delusion and fractured reality (even fractured minds) that schizophrenia produce.

yes, we all miss Oye