Bobby Fischer--any thoughts?

Bobby Fischer, please comment. 

Jackass. What do I win?

I think I should go make some tea.  My tea is pretty tasty.

 I would send you my battered and tattered copy of My 60 Most Memorable Games (original edition), but I don't know where it is. 

As much as I appreciate your chess playing ability, eddiewsox, just send me your 5 most memorable games, if you don't mind

This thread....

 Trysts, I appreciate the compliment, but the fact is that I always have 100 to 150 games in progress and I don't remember any of them. It doesn't help my rating, but I like the action.

He loved chess, comics, asian prostitutes and money....

The greatest chess player who ever lived and one of my greatest idols. If you say he loved money - have you heard this story- in 1972 a corparation offered Fischer $1,000,000 to say he used this shampoo. When he said he said no and they asked why not he said "Because I don't use it." Money for him was just to put dignity into chess rather than a genius like himself having to chase the odd $200 on tournaments. He had a bad upbringing and was constantly through childhood away from home and in poverty. And as to his later life- I admit his statements were unforgiveable but that wassn't really Fischer - just the shell of his former self. When study 14 hours a day every day for something and then give it up what would happen? That's my thoughts anyway...

I have many thoughts, but I'm afraid none of them are about Bobby Fischer.

I think the thread needs to be retitled to "Bobby Fischer--any pics?"

I am currenlt reading "Bobby Fischer goes To War -The true storey of how the soviets lost the most extraordinary chess match of all time". Written by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. Published in 2004.

I am totally enjoying this read, and can't put the book down. I am getting to know things about Fischer that I did not know before.

Here is the part about money-

"...Fischer thought that his remuneration should have been on par with sporting superstars like Arnold Palmer or Joe Frazier. Never mind that chess had never been in the same league as table tennis, let alone golf or heavyweight boxing. Fischer always maintained that his ambition was to get rich. He would say so repeatedly and unabashedly, in a way that made even Americans blanch. "I am only interested in chess and money", he told a journalist from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. His incessant financial demands came across sill worst in Europe, where emphasis on money was considered embarrassing, even vulgar. In weighing up the rival cities' bids for the Taimanov, Larsen and Petrosian Candidate matches, Fischer declared that only one consideration should outweigh all other: which city paid the most. In a letter to Walter Browne in January 1971, in which he invited him to become his full-time manager and chess second, Fischer said he believed chess is merely a means of making money. The money-making possibilities were limitless he said. In what he calls "the chess business", he believed he could make $100,000 in the first year and double that in the next. He was however always reluctant to allow any marketing of himself by anyone, whatever the financial windfall, appalled at the notion that anyone else might make money from his name. Even when his mother wanted to make purses with his signature, Fischer refused. The money itself was all about status, about control and domination: if he was offered five, he wanted ten, offer him twenty, he wanted fifty. Perhaps his unwillingness to put his signature on a conract stemmed from a fear of losing that all important control."

Uh, I started this thread as a joke, I thought it would be spammed to death, enough about Bobby Fischer. Let"s try this--Monty Python's Flying Circus, any thoughts?

Good Grief, I spammed my own thread and still it lives on!

When it comes to playing chess he was one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all tim  es.  His sudden and totally unexpected moves and combinations looked more wizardery than chess.

As a man and a human being he is a wounded puzzle, somehow he ads up to less than the total of his individual parts.  The traits of a tragic hero.  He made chess what it is today, a big business.  Many players today should be grateful to him for their financial well-being. In the process, the game itself became cheaper and lost its magic.

His social views and statements were not what you expect from a smart man, or even a decent man.  He obviously did not care whether he was liked or hated and to play a game just "to crush the other man's ego"  says sonething about Bobby Fischer the man.  His views on women and Jews are infamous by their stink.  Personal opinion: I do not think he was healthy.

I wish some good psychiatrist would study him and give us a diagnosis.

I think he was a control-freak, a very unhappy man consumed and driven by many things most humans will never know.  His intellect made him superior and yet isolated him.  His love of control made him look like an awful child in a man's body.  He lived in a jail of his own making.

Yet he played the best chess of his time.

I do not believe that there is one man who is "the best ever" in anything.  Himanity is much richer than to allow anything like that in any field.

Yet Bobby Fischer comes closer to that in chess than his contemporaries.

 Exactly, Couldn't agree more!

Man you picked up some topic to tease us with. Fischer will never be fully understood.  Just like Monty Python.  If you are afraid of your threads succeeding pick up a less controversial subjects.

It was fun though, thanks

Little known fact: the only reason Neil Armstrong walked on the moon first was that Fischer refused to step down from the landing craft if there would be cameras there.