Bobby Fischer - The Player, Not the Man

Why do people insist on not reading the thread title? Bobby Fischer, the Player, not the man. As a chess player he was amazing. As a man, he was flawed. End of story. No-one's saying chess ability makes you a good person or excuses anything. People are just saying "well he was an amazing chessplayer, and that is not affected by any racism".

Tonydal, it's not an issue of balancing; it's a matter of distinguishing.  I'm not saying he had ANY excuses for being a dirtbag or whatever he was personally, so don't put that view on me.  I don't know if your generalization about the chess community is correct or not, but I'm definitely not "overlooking" Fischer's faults.  He was a horrible person.  (Shall I copy and paste that a hundred times before you realize that ... I think Fischer was a horrible person?)  I used the Hitler example to make the point that I'd admire his games if he played great ones -- that's just giving credit where it's due.  (This isn't quite the same thing, I know, but I actually do admire some of Karl Marx's games, even though one could argue his views led to some serious human suffering too.) 

What's this about our pastime being "above" anything?  You're really setting up the old straw man here.  It just so happens that on a chess site, people want to talk mostly about chess, not morality (uh, except when it comes to cheating, I guess).  And there's no problem if on the philosophy/morality sites, they'd prefer to focus on Fischer's negative moral traits rather than on his great record on the white side of the Exchange Ruy.

The sad thing about Fischer is that he could have been Chess' biggest promoter. Gary Kasparov was a big booster of chess when he was World Champion. Fischer had he kept playing would've advanced chess as no man ever could. He could've been the Michael Jordon of Chess. While he was a genius on the chessboard, I think he was more obsessed with getting to be World Champion, rather than being in love with chess itself. If he really loved playing chess he never would have left the game. 

fischer didnt love chess?! what are u talking about! how can he be better at it than everyone else in the world without loving it?! i think he loved chess far more than anyone else! far more than natural and/or advisable, infact! he left everything and devoted his whole life to chess...which might infact have been the cause of his madness!

Fischer not only loved chess he was obsessed by it. However once he became champion he had achieved his goal. Not uncommon among athletes--Borg quit at the top of his game and Lendl did as well. Many ball players keep hanging on for the money but look at how many Olympic athletes quit at the top --Bruce Jenner comes to mind.

Being gifted in any sphere is not enough to be a decent human being. It's also not enough to wildly condemn we do not know on any level. They do say there is a fine line between genius and insanity.

Fischer sacrificed everything for chess, even his sanity. Anyone who can say he didnt love the game doesnt have a clue.

You, I respect.

Fisher to me is the third greatest player of all time here are my personal top five

1. Garry Kasprov for getting a rating of 2851

2. Veslin Topalov for getting a rating of 2813

3. Bobby Ficher

4. Anand

5. Vladamir Kramink

Oh no that is not a straw man. That is a prevalent attitude among chess players - the idea that a to truly know "true chess" (rather than what? fake chess, lol) is to be obsessive about it and to see it as an all-consuming all-important endeavour above all others.... interestingly, I wonder how much the legend of Fischer himself has led to this attitude?

 tonydal,

  You did quote what I said as an example of "the sort of thing ..." that shows chessplayers think their pastime is so far "above" everything else.  Set aside the generalization you make for a second -- I suppose we can still disagree about that later -- and tell me why what I said is just that "sort of thing."  I made a distinction, and I NEVER said anything about chess being "above" anything else.  You gotta connect the dots for me, or else disconnect my statement from your complaint.

 Why so vindictive Tony ? 

 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 ?

Whoa. Are you kidding, man?

Fischer did not just say inane or nasty things (i.e., There was no Holocaust. The Jews are liars. it's time we took off the kid gloves with these parasites.) -- he also said thing like "and it's time we took care of these b*st*rds"-- which goes a bit farther than criticism and calls for action.

And why do you need to know who belongs to what group -- how does it affect your ability toput your argument forward?

 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 ?

Yes. I can. Do you actually believe that Fischer was unique in his troubles and woes? Sorry to inform you but I am sure I and dozens of others on this site can testify to knowing people on this planet who have suffered far worse and have not turned to hate mongering and the invocation of ethnic cleansing, to use the modern term, in order to face the world each day. And if you expect most people to equate heinousness of centuries-old hate speech and the history of attempted anihilation with Fischer's disturbing but ultimately ineffectual anti-Americanism, then you will wait a while to get a quorum of agreement there.

In the end, love his games if you will, but this attempt to say 'hey he was just a misunderstood fella, and I suspect you of being a member of an over-sensitive group if you feel the need to keep criticising him' - is just tredding in some ugly and muddy waters. You can get yourself dirty like that if you will, but I'm not diving in there with 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!

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.

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.