Why Bobby Fischer Turned Against Chess?

Hello dear readers, I hope you all are doing well! I'm back with another blog, this one is going to be a bit shorter than usual. Anyways, let's begin!

We all know that Fischer was known for his obsession with Chess, some say that there has never been a chess player as great as Bobby Fischer, then why all this hate towards chess? 

To understand this, let's have a look at Fischer's chess perspective: 

Bobby Fischer once said, "I hate chess, I know what chess is all about, It's all about memorization, It's all about prearrangement, creativity is lower down on the list? It is ridiculous! It gets harder and harder and harder, you need more computers, you need more people working for. You know, chess just the last few years has changed dramatically, with all this computer stuff. If you analyze chess objectively, it's been a lousy game. Now let me explain something about Fischer Random (Chess960). I never made any claim saying that this is perfect. It is much better than the old chess, but the point about Fischer random is, it's basically the same as the old chess, except you get rid of the theory, and it's very easy to remember the rules. There are a lot of games that you can come up with that have practical defects, in terms of discouraging people to learn them, not creative defects. You can learn Fischer Random in 5 10 seconds. People think i am anti-chess, no i am not anti-chess, i am pro-chess, i am trying to keep it all alive."

Now, this statement doesn't only show the hatred for chess, but it is more like a love-hate relationship towards chess for Fischer.  The fact is simple, Bobby believed that chess has become more like a memorization and computer assisted game rather than pure creativity and skill. He hated the concept of memorizing chess opening theories, because he felt that top-level chess was something different, it doesn't require such prearranged moves. Players relied too much on  pre-set stratgies and computer analysis than original ideas. This is the reason why he tried to bring the originality back by his Fischer Random (Chess960) chess variant. Simply, this variant has same rules as the regular chess, but the starting positions of the back-rank pieces (except pawns) are randomized, with 960 possible setups. You can see this variant on chess.com too. So, at the end of the day, his main motive was to promote creativity and reduce the memorization of opening theories. 

I hope you enjoyed this one. Don't forget to share your opinions on this in the comments. See you in the next one!