64-square wizard Who died at 64

Asked who was the greatest chess player in the world, Fischer once replied: “It’s nice to be modest, but it would be stupid if I did not tell the truth. It is Fischer.”

Fischer, a former child prodigy who once said he liked to watch his opponents squirm and who had become an Icelandic citizen, became world champion by beating the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky under the glare of Cold War publicity in Reykjavik in 1972.

The brilliant but eccentric American abandoned his title without moving a pawn by failing to meet a deadline to defend his crown in Manila in 1975. World chess authorities reluctantly awarded it to challenger Anatoly Karpov of the erstwhile Soviet Union, who was to hold it for the next decade.

Fischer withdrew into himself, not playing in public and living on little more than the magic of his name, although millions of enthusiasts regarded him as the king of chess.

He made headlines and fell foul of US authorities when he came out of seclusion to play his old rival Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, at a time when the country was the target of sanctions during Belgrade’s war with breakaway republics.

He vanished after the match, for which he won $3 million, and resurfaced only after the September 11, 2001, attacks. In an interview with a Philippine radio station, Fischer praised the strikes and said he wanted to see America “wiped out”.

One commentator said there was one constant through his life’s exceptional peaks and troughs — his “running battle with the rest of the human race”.

Category: Chess , GrandMasters