Did anyone here ever meet Bobby Fischer?

It was another thread which inspired me to create this thread, namely "which grandmasters have you met".

Given that we have a lot of American members here, I wonder if any of them ever met Bobby Fischer?

Fischer was my childhood hero. I remember vividly 1972 because I was a 7 year old boy then and for me Bobby Fischer was up there with astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins as a superman, a cold war hero.

I had kept newspaper cuttings and magazine articles about Bobby throughout the years since 1972, and I had purchased books about him (remember this is all pre-interweb times).

Each year I'd watch the BBC's Master Game hoping that Bobby would one day appear to play.

I actually travelled to Iceland in 2006 to try to see if I could meet the great man. I went there in the hope that he might oblige me by signing a half dozen of the books I have about Bobby. 

Despite my best efforts I could not manage to track down Bobby in Reykavik. The locals there while sympathetic to me were very protective of Bobby. Despite showing them my passport as proof of my identity, they would still not divulge his whereabout to me. The closest I got was an offer from one Icelandic chess official who said that he'd bring my books to someone who knew Fischer and ask them to ask Bobby to sign them.

So I'd be very interested to hear from anyone here who got to meet the great man!

I never net him, but i do know people that knew him.  They would talk about how he would show up at there home, stay a coupple of days, and then he would be gone.  

I did meet Boris Spassky though, so thats kinda close...maybe...

Thanks for that reply. It must have been great to be in even close proximity to the great man.

Thanks for sharing this.

My dad saw him in Chicago in the 70´s, he told me he saw him walking on a street (probably to a chess tournament) and people were following him,  taking pictures and asking for autographs, he didnt know anything about his paranoia and he told me Bobby was like paranoic, looking at everywhere, the floor, the top of the buildings, everywhere, and was like "I gotta go, I gotta go!" When I told him about his paranoia and all that my dad was like "Ohh thats why!"

THE CLOSES I GOT TO FISCHER IS ACTUALLY KNOWN AND PLAYING AGAINST 4 CHESSPLAYERS IN ORDER IN MY CONTACT WITH INDIVIDUALS 01. MASTER RON FINEGOLD HE LOST TO FISCHER AT THE BAY CITY OPEN IN 1963 MICHIGAN(I PLAYED RON FINEGOLD IN AN UNOFFICIAL CHESS CLUB TYPE TOURNAMENT IN BLOOMFIELD TWP MICHIGAN 1976) 02.PAUL POSCHEL HE DREW FISCHER AT THE BAY CITY IN 1963 MICHIGAN)I LOST TO MASTER POSCHEL AT A OFFICIAL RATED CHESS TOURNAMENT IN YPSILANTI MICHIGAN IN 1977) 03.GRANDMASTER VICTOR KORCHNOI CONTENDER FOR THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP AGAINST KARPOV HIS SCORE AGAINST FISCHER FROM MY REMEMBERING CORRECTLY WAS +2=4-2 OR +4=2-4(I MET KORCHNOI AT A SIMO IN PONTIAC MICHIGAN IN 1978 WE HAD A BRIEF DISCUSSION ON SOME STRANGE INCIDENTS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY THE KGB COMING AFTER HIM)04. TOP AMATUER? PAUL DUBOIS HE DREW FISCHER IN A SIMO AT FLINT MICHIGAN IN 1964(I PLAYED MR.DUBOIS IN AROUND 2003-2004 WE PLAYED A FRIENDLY 3 GAME CHESS MATCH I WON +2-1 IN ANN ARBOR MICHIGAN)OUT OF THOSE 4 I GOT TO KNOW IN PERSON MASTER PAUL POSHEL NEVER FORGET THESE CHESS COMRADES NOW I WISHED IN MY HEART ALL I WANTED TO MEET THE GREATEST CHESSPLAYER IN HISTORY EITHERPLAY HIM A GAME OR SHAKE THIS MANS HAND I LOVE YOU MR.FISCHER AND JESUS CHRIST LOVES YOU TO BUT I NEVE R HAD THE CHANCE I SHOULD OF SEEKED HIM OUT TO HELP HIM OUT AND SHOW THAT I WAS HIS FRIEND FROM THE DA Y I KNEW WHO HE WAS FROM THE HE DIED MY SPIRIT WAS ALWAYS WITH HIM ITS DONE THE TRUTH HAS BEEN SAID

+ Win

= Draw

- Loss

Amen to that. I bet everyone here if they had the chance would have wish to have spoken with Bobby, to tell him we love him and we want him to come back to the board and simply play.

There's a woman here on this site that actually had dinner with Bobby in a quaint little restaurant with pretty little brown and white checkered table cloths and she said it took Bobby two hours to pass the salt.

Never met Fischer... but I met Tal in 1988 (in a simul, Sicilian Najdorf, I was Black, drawn by Bare Kings). Tal beat Fischer 4-0 in the Candidates, so I figure that counts!

I met a guy who almost met Fischer. He was a Soviet Master who sat next to Fischer (when Fischer was really young still) without knowing who he was.  Afterwards everyone on his team freaked out and kept asking him "Did you speak with him?" "No, of course not, I was playing.  Why?"  "That was Robert James Fischer." Unfortunately Fischer had already left, and he never got another chance to meet him.