Chess Champ Bobby Fischer Dies

[trashtalkr]

Bobby Fischer Dies at Age 64

Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.

Fischer died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday of kidney failure after a long illness, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said Friday.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.

Garry Kasparov, the former Russian chess champion, said Fischer's ascent in the chess world in the 1960s and his promotion of chess worldwide was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game. But Fischer's reputation as a genius of chess was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.

An American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, Fischer dethroned the Spassky in 1972 in a series of games in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, to become the first officially recognized world champion born in the United States.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the World Chess Federation, called Fischer "a phenomenon and an epoch in chess history, and an intellectual giant I would rank next to Newton and Einstein."

Source: ESPN

[Highlander65]

Truly sad!The man was brilliant. R.I.P. Bobby!

[AYHJA]

Truly...Kinda caught me off guard with the news man...With his eccentric behavior, we'll probably never know how brilliant the guy really was...I mean, I'm not a chess master by any means, but to win consistently at that shit is hard...And at the peak of his career, he didn't only win, he pummeled the guy against him...Fuck all the weird behavior and Anti America sentiments, RiP Mr. Fish..