Jeez, Reb, are you on drugs or something? (that's kinda like asking the Nuremberg tribunal why they were so vindictive).  If you are unacquainted with Fischer's comments online, google em up (only be sure to bring your barf bag).

 This is totally outrageous imo. Dragging in the nazis and murder when speaking of Fischer. Tell me, who did Fischer ever physically harm ? To my knowledge he never harmed anyone. He said some hateful things, yes  and BIG DEAL !  I am convinced had he said the same hateful things against say Germans and Christians no big deal would be made of it  and Germans and Christians would not be so vindictive. Its this idea that there are certain protected groups that are "off limits" to any criticism that irks me more than anything else. Are you a member of such a group perhaps? Fischer said hateful things about Americans too and as an American I dont let it bother me at all. But you really seem to have a problem with Fischer as I notice you never miss a chance to run him down and take a shot at him. Why not just avoid any threads about him if he bothers you so much ?

 I see you arent concerned at all about his nastiness towards America(ns), but this doesnt surprise me at all. I understand that Fischer was a sick man, especially in his last years and I also understand that he was done wrong by his own parents and others, which would explain a lot of his venom, apparently though lots of people dont understand this or simply have no sympathy for people who are ill.  I wonder who  could have endured the things he did and not be bitter/resentful/hateful ? Could you ?

Tonydal,

Well, I wasn't the original poster, but anyway, I think the title of the post is perfectly fine -- if anything, it further clarifies that he/she wanted discussion about Fischer that was chess-related.  [I won't go so far as to say that starting a form with the title "Fischer - the man, not the player" is not appropriate for this site, but certainly starting a forum on the player must be legitimate.]  The specific accomplishments like going 11-0 in the US Championship or winning 20 straight against GMs would fall under the umbrella topic of "Fischer the player."  So while I agree the mere name of Fischer provokes negative responses -- more in some than in others, apparently! -- I don't think there's anything wrong with the specification/clarification.

By the way, I can dig the Pink Floyd reference, but only if you mean "Pink Floyd - the music, not the drug use!"  :) 

i completely agree!

While I certainly don't condone hate speech, I have to agree with Reb that it's outrageous when people try and equate hate speech with hate crimes.  Hateful speech, while deplorable, is on a completely different plane than hate crimes.  I realize that the laws are different in other parts of the world but here in the US hate speech isn't even a crime.  You're free to espouse the most vile words you can muster regardless of how many people it offends because we understand that there's a fundamental difference between saying hateful things and doing hateful things.

To the best of my knowledge, Fischer never took a single action to harm any of the groups he "hated".  I don't condone what he did and I certainly don't agree with him but when I see people equating his actions with those of the Nazi's, they go to far.  Bigotry and genocide aren't interchangable, they're not the same sin.  If you can't see that bigotry is the lesser evil then you're not acting rationally and you're not being intellectually honest.

I don't think anyone here really meant to say that Fischer = Hitler. Nobody is that unreasonable, lol. The Fischer-Hitler comparison was made simply for the sake of argument:

Fischer: good chess player, but bad person

Hitler: good speaker, but bad person (much worse of course, but that's besides the point for the purpose of our argument)

We learn from Fischer's chess. We can also learn from Hitler's speeches. So, the main point of this comparison is: I don't care whether he's slightly bad or extremely bad as a person, if he has a skill that I can learn from, then why not?

In fact, Hitler was deliberately chosen for this argument because he was so extremely bad. The point was, even if Fischer was like Hitler, that doesn't change the fact that his games are useful to learn from, so given Fischer's actual reputation (which is angelic compared to Hitler), there's really no reason to not acknowledge his skills on the board.

By the way, this thread has gone in so many directions that any single comment by itself sounds provocative, but with each comment taken into context everyone here actually sounds pretty reasonable.

No, I'm not a heeb (if that's what you're asking).

I do by the way avoid most threads about Fischer.  What truly bothers me about the guy is not so much him as the willingness of most chess players to jump on the bandwagon and defend him, no matter what.  Let me ask you this:  if he wasn't a genius chess player (and was someone prominent in some other field) would you be so quick to rise to his defense?  Maybe so...but I doubt it.  And that's what I'm talking about:  chess players willing to forgive (or more accurately, ignore) anything as long as somebody is proficient at shoving wood around a board.

I do not agree that rating is a unique factor or criteria in determining the best player, that is your opinion and I respect it but cannot agree.

One has to consider the opposition at hand, how many very strong players are competing for the world titleat the time the contendant was playing?

I personally prefer to evaluate a player on what his accomplishment where at the time he was playing.

I realize you weren't the OP (thus the "ie").  And I meant PF - the guy talking in the grooves in Dark Side.

I still say...if you're going to start up such a topic, just bring up some great game or something.  The OP's prolegomena only drew more attention to what he presumably was trying to avoid.  It's like some tour guide passing by a train wreck, and trying to cover it up to all the people on the tour:  "Okay, keep moving!  Don't look, don't look, there's nothing there...let's get to the next attraction."  And meanwhile everybody on the tour is (inevitably) lingering back and saying:  "Whoa, look at that freakin train wreck over there."

So my counsel is:  don't even mention the train wreck.  As evidence of what I'm saying, look at what has become of this thread.  Is this likely what the OP was intending?  And yet what could he reasonably expect, given that title (and those introductory remarks)?  If you want to talk about Fischer the player (certainly more than ample grounds for discussion), just talk about that.  Leave the rest out of it.

The big problem right now is that most of us lived through the Fischer era. So most of us marveled at the brilliance of his chess games. We also knew about his bigotry in his later years. The thing is 100 years from now his reputation will improve as noone will realy know too much about the bad, & only see the chess games he left behind. I know the names of many of the best chess players ever to play the game Alekhine, Capablanca, Marshall, Morphy, Lasker, eyc.etc.etc. I really know nothing about the men themselves, only the games they played. Some of these players may have been rotten people too. But the longer the years go by from lives of anyone, the more we forget about the personalities of them. Pablo Picasso was a great artist, but a terrible person. But what we are left with are the paintings he left behind which we admire. The same will happen with Fischer. The games are his paintings that he left behind.

In my opinion, Fischer was the second best player of all-time, only beaten by Kasparov.

One can only imagine what a Fischer-Kasparov wolrd championship would've been like. My money would still have been on Fischer. 

 Sadly, that was possible.  They were alive at the same time...

Bobby was pure ego - anitsocial, rude, incredibly cocky, self-absorbed, self-entitled, inconsiderate, bratty when he didn't get his way, capable of cruelty, but he was the BEST - he strode in and CRUSHED everyone because he COULD.

Which is awesome.

He thought he was doing what he was supposed to - that if he was the World's Best he would get a kind of praise (money, women, etc) that was unrealistic - and the more and more the world disappointed these lofty expectation of reward for result the more it hurt him, and ultimately made him crazed.

Sure, he was ego, but he thought that was the game - the chess game of life; to be the best at the one thing he understood. So when he was tortured in jail, or when America didn't support him (their own hero! in his mind) it developed in him the deepest, broiling resentment - a resentment that needed to lash out so badly at the people who had wronged him, ignored him, when he was a genius in their midst... that yes, it bubbled over in the most inflammatory of possible language.

I don't blame him, not really. The world that doesn't support "the arts" but only praises genius once it's dead deserves the rancor that it's Greats flood back at it.

Fischer lost the chess game of life in the sense that he couldn't take the crushing pawn storm of rejection and disappointment, and the castle of his mind was cracked open, and he was reduced to a blubbering, frothing mess of anger that his soul never truly felt.

I know the mentality - if he was given what he wanted he would've been glowing, benevolent, magnanimous.

It's a sad story - nonetheless I'm loyal. He was also uncomprimising, clever, intellectually powerful, disciplined - pure, singular focus, an example of what dedicating ones life to a single thing at the expense of all else can achieve.

/I dunno, I just felt like writing a sketch
//carry on

 I hate to repeat myself

I agree with you but make number two Karpov and we'd be in total agreement. Maybe Fischer is fourth??

It's hard to compare people of different eras. You get into endless what-if scenarios. What if Philidor had access to Rybka? What if Morphy had been able to study the games of Kasparov? Chess accumulates knowledge, so play at the top is always improving. Trying to take the player out of his times is like asking whether Alexander the Great could have beaten Patton.

As for the OP, the article seems to state the obvious. It takes two seconds for a thinking person to understand that Fischer was one of the best chess players ever. It takes another two seconds to understand that he was troubled, mentally unbalanced, paranoid, and prone to disgusting outburts of hateful vitriol.

You know what my granddaddy always said about Patton?  "Our blood and his guts."

He is not exactly remembered as a great military strategist.  Maybe Alex vs. Monty or Alex vs. Ike would have been more appropriate.

That's no doubt true.  The funny thing is though that my attitude has changed about this sort of thing as I've gotten older.  Back when I was young I assumed that it was some sort of "triumph" that one's Truth and one's Art would ultimately will out; now it seems more to me like they're just a shell of life.  Indeed, it can be almost kind of callous in a way (even parasitic) to admire Van Gogh's works, despite all the agony he had to endure.  I can now understand why artistic types frequently cite the public as "leeches," only interested in their products and not themselves (on the other hand, obviously, it's the deal you enter into by becoming an artist in the first place).

Well, admittedly I guess this is somewhat off the topic.  At any rate, it's something I've thought about a bit recently.