What would Fischer of Done if Not Chess

tournament arbiter

a butcher

a baker

a candlestick maker!

In an interview with Dick Cavett (can be seen on YouTube) he was asked that question and Fischer said he would have gone into some sport or become an actor but he said he hadn't given it too much thought.

Yay!

Astronaut.

Space cadet?

Israeli diplomat !!!

how about a checkers player

Gold medal, this one

young bobby would have devoted himself single-minded to whatever replaced chess and he would have excelled at it. he could have been anything really with his IQ and drive to succeed. later he still wouldve became a cult member and eventual derelict though.

Without chess, Bobby Fischer would not have seemed so dorky to his high school crush, and they would have eventually married. He would have moved to a small apartment in the Back Bay area of Boston, which at first was wonderful. They both liked the city, Bobby especially because of his patriotism. However, marital problems would ensue over the next three years. As a result he would increase his visits to Flaherty's Pub on Commercial Ave. There he would create a friendship with a wealthy investment banker who would later help him out with a mortgage for a flop in the then-mafia-controlled section of north Boston, when he finally got a divorce.

In time, he would come to be quite the player at go, but the limited popularity of the game led him to give it up. Meanwhile, he moved down to Edisto Beach for a while, thinking it would help him to write poetry, but he was disgusted by the development boom and all the sweating. He spent his last dime on a ticket to Wisconsin. Inspired by some pieces of foam in a dumpster, he started selling cheese hats before Green Bay Packers games. He managed to net a tidy profit before his idea was ripped off.

With this money and some scholarships that he had never used, he went to engineering school and became somewhat wealthy working for an oil company in Alaska.

When he retired, he decided to travel through Italy by car, which shows how little he knew of Italy. After losing a carabiniere in a high-speed chase, he got lost himself and ended up at Monte Cassino. He was interested by the history of the place and when he returned to the states, having little better to do, he invested himself into it.

He became obsessed with this little tidbit of American history, especially because so many historians seemed to call it a pointless waste of life. Every time he read this, his need to read another book increased, desperate for someone to say that it wasn't so. His father had died at Monte Cassino, after all. Staff Sergeant Fischer had played a game of checkers to see who would lead a night patrol, and lost. Checkers never had been his game; if there were some deeper, more complex alternative, he would have favored that, and he would have come home while Patrick Flaherty would never have returned to Boston.

Fischer unwittingly became a leading expert on the Italian campaign, and from the knowledge which obsession forced into him, he became depressed and overcome with grief. His father a dead veteran, he had always been a patriotic person. The discovery that thousands had been thrown against the anvil of Monte Cassino and other heavily fortified points in Italy, which contemporary generals kept referring to as the "soft underbelly of Europe," unnerved his trust in something that had been a solid, if not quite prominent, part of his concept of himself and the society in which he lived.

Perhaps helped along by old age, he became excessively cynical and even delusional. He moved on a whim to Reykjavik, after asking some random street person if Iceland had been involved in any major wars. He revoked his American citizenship and spoke out angrily against his former country. When he died, he was a man remembered by the Go-playing community as a pioneer and a great player, as well as a nutjob, or maybe a traitor (though he never actually committed harmful acts against his father's country). However, his greatness at one little game, one little mental construct of humanity, meant that, like all others who achieved great things, his flaws would be remembered only because of that memorable perfection in one small area of life.

Some things will never change.

Profound.

deep

Cat-napper.

that was a surprisingly pleasant read, though I cringed at Staff Sergeant Fischer.  thanks ivan.

I never go anywhere, but that is actually one place I have been (Monte Cassino) and it was something special. The road leading up to it is all twisty with a steep fall done one side - exciting stuff :)

nice story ivan.

he would have been a professional fischerman

Ended up in the laughing academy.

or in the Klu Klux Klan. 

Bobby Fischer would have probably achieved very little in life without chess.