• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Bobby Fischer Dead

Checkmite said:
No. Stop making excuses for him. Fischer did not suffer from any kind of "mental illness"; he was a dick, plain and simple. He is completely responsible for his actions and words.
Click to expand...
And you know this because...?

(I know you're an avid chess player...)
 
Beeps brings up an interesting point.

Great wit is sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do the bounds divide

said Mr. Dryden, probably not noticing that he was just uttering a folk belief. "He's so smart he's crazy!" was an exclamation I heard in my hayseed youth, and I doubt that Dryden first planted the idea.

You chess freaks will pardon me, but I don't think the word genius needs to include guys who are good at a board game. I'd rather require of a genius that he do something creative, i.e., leave an artifact behind that you have to call a work of genius. Darwin, Einstein, Tesla, Mozart, the guy who engineered the Buddha of Kamakura -- hell, we could all compile a list, and probably all agree on it.

But Bobby Fischer? Poor fellow. R.I.P.
 
When Fischer played Spasky in Iceland I was in grade school. I came home from school everyday and took out my little chessboard and followed the moves on the public television station. I may not be as strong a chess player as Shemp -- but I don't suck. Bobby Fischer was a heroic figure to me growing up. He may seem an easy person to mock -- but if you were a
young male American chess player in the early 70's he was a heroic figure as great as Randi. Chess is the greatest game and Bobby Fischer may be the greatest player.
 
Checkmite said:
Because he exhibited no signs of mental illness? Unless, of course, you want to classify Holocaust denial (for instance) as a symptom of mental illness.
Click to expand...
He just seemed so unstable and so angry, in so many ways. Maybe not bouncing-off-the-walls loonytoons, but certainly a very poorly-adjusted person. I remember when I was in college and he was playing Spassky for the world's championship, and everyone was saying the same thing: "How come the American has to be such an :talk034:? Makes me want to cheer for the Russkie..."
 
If I were Spassky, Fischer wouldn't have gotten away with the stunts he pulled in that tournament.
 
Good riddance. An anti-semite and Holocaust denier is dead. The world is just a little better than it was yesterday.
 
Last edited:
rtalman said:
Perhaps the best American player, but he would not be fit to shine Alekhine's shoes.
Click to expand...

Alekhine was much more spectacular, but was he better ?

Anyway, chess masters are much less fascinating to me these days, knowing that I can watch an equally deep (and soon much deeper) game if I put my computer to play against itself.

ETA: Go is today's "advanced chess".
 
Last edited:
Diogenes said:
Like beating him outright in 7 games .. ( only losing 3 )

Yeah, I wouldn't put up with stunts like that either...
Click to expand...

No, more like refusing to play (even forfeiting one game) unless all the cameras and spectators were removed. I wouldn't have let him get away with that nonsense.
 
rtalman said:
Perhaps the best American player, but he would not be fit to shine Alekhine's shoes.
Click to expand...

Since you've semi-Godwined the thread, I'll take it the rest of the way: Was Alekhine a Nazi? by Edward Winter

You're right, Fischer would not have shined Alekhine's shoes. Instead, Fischer would have mopped the floor with him. Alekhine had his own problems, especially alcoholism. By the time of WWII, he was a washed-up drunkard who played along with the Nazis in order to survive. Fischer was a better and far more creative player at his peak than Alekhine ever was. Had they been contemporaries, a match between the two, with Fischer railing against his imagined enemies, and Alekhine staggering around and pissing on the floor, would certainly have been interesting.
 
I'd like to point out that, on the few occasions that Fischer played Tal, Tal usually beat him. But then, Tal usually beat everyone, so...
 
Checkmite said:
No. Stop making excuses for him. Fischer did not suffer from any kind of "mental illness"; he was a dick, plain and simple. He is completely responsible for his actions and words.
Click to expand...


Fischer most assuredly suffered from a form of mental illness. According to his onetime close friend International master Bernard Zuckerman, he was paranoid and sadistic back in the early sixties.
 
Last edited:
pomeroo said:
Fischer most assuredly suffered from a form of mental illness. According to his onetime close friend International master Bernard Zuckerman, he was paranoid and sadistic back in the early sixties.
Click to expand...


"Most assuredly", based on this anecdote? I see nothing to suggest it wasn't simply Fischer's dickish personality, even back then.
 
BPSCG said:
Fischer reminds me a bit of the great Canadian classical pianist, Glenn Gould. Gould was also brilliant in his field. People argue whether Gould's two recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations are the greatest classical recordings ever, or merely the greatest recordings of that particular work (I have a friend who would argue the former). Gould was also in many ways a very eccentric, even troubled man, and like Fischer, died young, at only 50, though his eccentricities never plumbed the depths that Fischer's did. I have an old LP of Gould in a wide-ranging conversation about music with a Columbia Records producer, and he sounds like a perfectly rational, very intelligent, thoughtful, and engaging young man, far removed from the neurotic who wrote hourly diary entries about the color and shape of his bowel movements in his last years.
Click to expand...

I'm reminded of George Szell's comment about Gould: "That nut is a genius!"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom