Bobby Fischer

Sassky isn't a US citizen. We can't send him to jail. 

 There is some truth here, come to think of it. I think Fischer brought the consequences upon himself by giving outrageous statements, spitting on the letter of the US Gov in front of cameras and so on. The US GOv was actually doing very little about the war in Yugoslavia in 1992. but it wanted to make it look like it did. Fischer should have just ignored the letter probably, and it would have been shelved somewhere.

That said, it's well within the realm of absurd that there are people here who actually believe that a war that took tens of thousands of civilian casualties was less important than a game of chess between two ageing players. I don't mean that you believe this.

You've always given me the impression  that you think you're duty bound to dictate what opinions can be expressed on this site, by showing your contempt for people who dare to state things not in keeping with the way YOU happen to see it.

TheGrobe's comment was very fair though. It's just reckless to say that Fischer was a paranoid schizophrenic in the absence of a genuine diagnosis.

Some say he wasn't mentally ill at all, though there is some evidence that he was, as Fine was a psychologist, knew Fischer and observed him as a youngster at the Manhattan, and offered his services in earnest.

So, a less categorical label would indeed have been better.

Sometimes it doesn't manifest itself in childhood. Back when Fischer was a child, they knew far less about it than now.

Schizophrenia never manifests in childhood, it is an adult-onset disorder.

I think that we should respect him for his achievements. Saying bad things is very different from doing bad things.

Quite the opposite, actually, I think everyone should be able to express their opinions freely here, however that doesn't mean free from criticism and if I see a statement I think is unfair I will call it out as such.  It occurs to me that you've just done the same, as is your right as well.

lol :D.

Bobby Fischer's statement to the U.S. Government from Yugoslavia, 1992

"Im Bobby Fischer B%^$@!!!!!!!!!!"

I began playing serious chess back in 1961.  Obviously, I'm not that good.  I read Fischer's My 40 Memorable Games (think it was 40).  Point is, I like everyone else at the time, was a Bobby Fischer fan.  He had his quirks, no doubt.  They were overlooked because of his brilliant games.  He had his problems with the US government back in the 1960's.  He was not a critic of the Vietnam Conflict so much as he was a critic of the US anti communist postures keeping him from traveling freely.  He was too detached and self centered to care about what was going on in Vietnam (like the rest of the country was).  His life was all about the game of chess.  That is what made his games so great.  He has to be credited with making chess popular in America, and with raising the living standard of chess grandmasters.  We need ego to win at the game.  People can be great without being arrogant.  Personalities are different.  I think Yuri Averbach was arrogant, but without the talent of Tal and Fischer.  He did not like them because he found it difficult to accept the fact they were better players.  A world champion can be arrogant and no one really cares so long as he keeps playing grand games.  Bobby Knight, the Indiana basketball coach once said, " So long as I keep winning, I will be considered excentric.  When I start losing, I will be viewed as a detriment."

   I have said this here in the past.  My mother was paranoid schizophrenic for 40 years, and I know a paranoid schizophrenic when I see one.  That was Fischer.  When he was around 21 years of age Playboy magazine did one of their famous interviews with Bobby.  Hugh Hefner asked the question, " What do you think of girls, Bobby?"  Fischer's answer was, " They are not very good chess players."  I'll bet Hefner could not wait to have that issue of Playboy printed and on news stands.  I am not going to get clinical here because I am not a psychologist, but Fischer did not have the world in this thoughts. 

I am reminded of a quote from someone at CBS News, " Iraqis, and for that matter Arabs, are left in an information vacuum that they fill with their worst fears."  Buffy Sainte Marie understood that Nixon was going after her because of her anti war protest songs.  Fischer didn't understand that he was a stumbling block to the administration's Real Politic.  He filled the void with fear of Washington, mixed with a "no one tells me what to do attitude".   His life was more like, "What would Steinitz and Lasker have done?"  He was a celebrity, and he was a celebrity in the Soviet Block as well as the United States and Western Europe.  However, what really went on in the world was quite beyond him.  He never even graduated high school.  He had no knowledge of history.  He was a chess specialist.  That's all.  There were other Brooklyn geniuses who never finished high school.  The painter Frank Frazetta was one.  The folk singer Buffy Sainte Marie has a Ph.D.  It doesn't matter what we do in life if we are following our dream.  If we are making a contribution to society.  Fischer made many contributions, but he was more like the protagonist in the A Beautiful Mind film.  Some would call him crazy and others make allowances.  We have to make room for greatness, even madness. The are many examples, Mozart being another.

   Fischer was playing chess at a time when America was divided over Vietnam.  That was no consern of his.  He didn't care about it.  He sacrificed nothing to be an American at that time.  Another champion, Muhamed Ali (the heavy weight boxing champion of the world) refused to be drafted into the US Army.  Fischer wasn't sitting on the fence.  He didn't know there was a fence.  A lot of Americans sacrificed on both sides - veterans and protesters.  Some sacrificed too much.  Anti-war activists put their lives at risk.  The US government didn't give Fischer a free ride, and he didn't deserve one.  There was a whole world out there he never knew about, and didn't care about.  We can make Fischer out to be an advocate of freedom and democracy, but he was only interested in freedom and democracy for Bobby Fischer.  I still admire Robert Fischer very much as a chess player, but not as a human being.   He was just plain selfish.  I am not here to polish veterans' medals for them, and I am not here to polish Fischer's statue.  When he was young we thought he was cute.  When he was old, we thought he was a cranky street person.  Something like myself in fact.   My heros were Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, David Sarnoff and Harry Truman.  Chess is not life.  Chess is what we do after work.  In chess history Fischer is significant.  In world history he is insignificant.

   I come to bury Fischer, not to praise him.  The king is dead.  Long live the new chess king. 

   During the Vietnam Era we had a saying, " Just because you are paranoid that doesn't mean people are not out to get you."

Fischer had tha same kind of brain as Morphy, John Nash, and the large number of great mathemations who ended up going nuts. Schizophrenia is genetic, and there is evidense that the same genetic make up that causes schizo is what enables them to function at that high level. I know not all schizos are geniuses, and vice versa, but the evidense is still there. There is still lots to learn about it. 

There is some evidence for a corelation between schizophrenia and intellectual talents. However, achieving a world class level in any intellectual field requires a sustained effort over the years and it is very unusual for a schizophrenic to accomplish this. I knew a schizophrenic who was a talented programer and could also speak a few languages, but I doubt that he will ever even a get a decent job in programming let alone be world class in the field. I have known another schizophrenic who speaks several languages and has shown talent for music but again she is nowhere near being a world-class musician or linguist. This despite the fact that the medication today is considerably more efficient than it used to be. Schizophrenia typically manifests itself at around 20 and it is not decisively proven whether the causes are genetic or environmental.

Tell that to John Nash, who did Field Medal worthy in mathematics. Then tell it to his son, who inherited both his talent, and his mental illness. 

 That it may in some cases run in the family again does not prove whether it is environmental or genetic. Someone being raised by a schizophrenic who is also a successful mathematician is likely to be strongly influenced by them. You cannot draw scientific conclusions from a few cases while ignoring the other cases that don't fit the bill.

Let's just say for the record here, that the U.S. also broke the U.N. security charter by bombing former Yugoslavia in '95 WITHOUT this act of war being sanctioned by the U.N.'s Security Counsel. Therefore it amounted to unlawful agression against a sovereign country. Btw, in Nuremberg, after the 2nd world war, they were hanging German soldiers for the same offence.

And they repeated the same terror later, in the second war against Iraq (for the first one they did have the approval of the Security Counsel).

Hence the U.S. government had neither the right nor the moral ground to condemn Fischer for allegedly "breaching" U.N. sanctions.

Atos, it is lucky I guess that Njegos is not with us any more to read what you wrote. Because if he could, he would be spinning in his grave.

No kidding?!  Professional psychiatry is farcical enough.  The Bobby threads are always absurd.  I sure wish I had gotten the chance to get to know Fischer as well as most of the posters in these threads seem to have.

Fischer never touched them kids!

 I don't think that Njegos will be relevant to this debate, we don't know what he would have thought and just because I am from Montenegro it doesn't mean that I have to consider Njegos as a supreme moral authority.

About the Nato bombing of Serbia (not Yugoslavia) it took place in 1999., seven years after the Fischer match. It is true that it wasn't authorized by the Security Council; however, since Serbia had itself engaged in two unlawful acts of aggression a few years before, it was hardly in the position to raise a righteous complaint.

Hmmm, I'm new to using quotes on this forum, so somehow I messed up my comment to Atos' latest reply. In my latest posting, only the last 3 paragraphs relate to his comments (starting with the paragraph that states: "I accept...").