However, Fischer’s wish to play there was granted the following year, when producers of the game show I’ve Got A Secret gave him two round-trip tickets to Russia. In 1958, his mother, who always supported her son’s efforts, wrote directly to Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev, who then invited Fischer to compete in the World Youth and Student Festival.īut Fischer’s invitation arrived too late for the event and his mother could not afford tickets. The stage - or the board - was now set for Bobby Fischer to face off against the Soviets who were some of the best chess players in the world. Wikimedia Commons 16-year-old Bobby Fischer goes head-to-head with U.S.S.R. And at age 15, Fischer cemented himself as the chess world’s greatest prodigy by becoming the youngest chess grandmaster in history.īobby Fischer was the best America had to offer and now, he would have to go up against the best other countries had to offer, especially the grandmasters of the U.S.S.R. Fischer won the match by sacrificing his queen to mount an onslaught against Byrne, a win lauded as one of “the finest on record in the history of chess prodigies.” It was his stunning game against International Master Donald Byrne that first marked Fischer as one of the greats. Junior Chess champion and played against the best chess players in the United States in the U.S. And he’d memorize everything.”īobby Fischer quickly dominated U.S. He would walk into a room where there were chess players and he’d sweep around and he’d look for any chess books or magazines and he’d sit down and he would just swallow them one after another. As his childhood friend Allen Kaufman described him: Fischer was determined to become a world chess champion. He was a regular in New York’s chess clubs by 11. His natural ability and unshakeable focus eventually brought him to his first tournament at just nine. While growing up in Brooklyn, Fischer started to play the game by six. March 31, 1956.īobby Fischer’s filial dysfunction did not hamper his love for chess. Bobby Fischer: Chess Prodigyīettmann/Getty Images 13-year-old Bobby Fischer playing 21 chess games at once. Pustan was forced to raise both her newborn son and her daughter, Joan Fischer, alone. Pustan and Fischer became estranged in 1945. It’s not a direct correlation or a cause and effect…but some of the same neurotransmitters are involved.” Joseph Ponterotto, “there’s some correlation between the neurological functioning in creative genius and in mental illness. While Nemenyi was brilliant, he also had mental health issues. It’s believed that while he was away during this time, Pustan and Nemenyi likely conceived Bobby Fischer. Pustan’s then-husband, Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, was listed on Bobby Fischer’s birth certificate even though he’d been denied entry into the United States on account of his German citizenship. Nemenyi wrote a major textbook on mechanics and for a time even worked with Albert Einstein’s son, Hans-Albert Einstein, in his hydrology lab at the University of Iowa. It’s believed Bobby Fischer was the result of an affair between his mother - who had been married to Hans-Gerhardt Fischer at the time of his birth - and a notable Jewish Hungarian scientist named Paul Nemenyi. His mother, Regina Fischer, was Jewish, fluent in six languages and had a Ph.D. Born in 1943, he was the progeny of two incredibly intelligent people. Photo by Jacob SUTTON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Régina Fischer, Bobby Fischer’s mother, protesting in 1977.īoth Fischer’s genius and mental disturbance can be traced to his childhood. The world would watch as its greatest chess genius played out every paranoid delusion in his mind. It seemed as if Bobby Fischer’s mind was every bit as fragile as it was brilliant. He has been likened to a computer with no noticeable weaknesses, or, as one Russian grandmaster described him, as “an Achilles without an Achilles heel.”ĭespite his legendary status in the annals of chess history, Fischer expressed an erratic and disturbing inner life. To this day, his games are scrutinized and studied. Some say there has never been a chess player as great as Bobby Fischer. But in 1972, Fischer would unseat the USSR’s greatest chess master, reigning world chess champion Boris Spassky. It saw its unbroken record as proof of the Soviet Union’s intellectual superiority over the West. had dominated the Chess World Championship since 1948. Though he would be celebrated for decades to come as a chess champ, Bobby Fischer later died in relative obscurity following a descent into mental instabilityīut in 1972, he was at the center of the world stage. seemed to have found an unlikely weapon in its Cold War struggle against Soviet Russia: a teen chess champion named Bobby Fischer. Bobby Fischer became the World Chess Champion after defeating Soviet Boris Spassky in 1972 - then he descended into madness.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |