The Psychology of the Chess-Player
zackp93 began this forum thread about Fischer’s anti-Semitism and Fischer’s claim that Kasparov was KGB and never played an unfixed game of chess . . then said,
“I just wanted to see the reactions about this. Today has been quite the learning experience.”
. . . which sounds almost like gossip. However when it comes to Robert James Fischer, truth is stranger than gossip. Please take my remarks in full context. My thesis is that IF Bobby Fischer said it and it wasn’t an analysis of a chess board position, it is almost certainly a lie or a psychotic utterance. So Kasparov is, in my opinion, undoubtedly innocent of at least 98% of what Fischer’s saying or implying. I have no actual facts about Kasparov and the KGB or about how Fischer might have become privy to such esoteric knowledge but I do have plenty of other circumstantial evidence to offer you. If the total content of Fischer’s anti-Semitic and also his anti-American verbiage was laid end to end in twelve-point font it would probably circumnavigate the world 4-5 times . . . if you’re not aware of that, the rest of what I have to say is probably all new to you as well. Just one fact will suffice for now: Fischer openly denied the Holocaust ever occurred.
First, here is the full context of my words: I am an ex-Catholic, now an agnostic man. My dad quit the Church when I was seven because of a priest’s remark about no matter what our deeds on earth are we are doomed if we aren’t Catholics saved by Christ. The priest then mentioned Gandhi, by name. My father was highly upset and with me in tow, cornered the priest after the service and asked him if he really thought Gandhi was in hell because he wasn’t a Catholic. The priest got sad and said almost immediately, “Yes, I do.” Snorting something like, “Then MY God is way too big for YOUR tiny church,” dad scooted us out of there immediately. That’s who I am, in case who I am is important to your judgment of my words: I am my father’s son, an agnostic pretty tolerant of other folks’ beliefs . . . who judges people not on their declared piety, but upon their words and deeds and humanity.
The lesson with Bobby Fischer is that he makes Paul Morphy (so-called “the pride and sorrow of chess”) look like a simple garden-variety neurotic probably healthier than 95% of the folks walking the streets of NYC or LA, etc. right now. Morphy’s problems, after all, were Morphy’s problems and did not spread hate viciously hither and thither and yon; and Morphy remained pretty much a gentle, but lost soul, right up to his early death. Just as the priest mentioned above was a narrow, stunted sham of a man because of deeply-ingrained dogma . . . Bobby Fischer was a super-stunted sham of a truly hateful man because he attacked other people’s religion and other beliefs and had no tolerance within him. He had made the only world he could live in a mere 64 squares in area. Anything from the greater world he could not deal with he condemned mightily and immediately and never ceased to carp on for the rest of his life.
Fischer was all that was wonderful over-the-board and all that was hateful, small and sick about chess (once it becomes TOO IMPORTANT to the player rather than merely a wonderful game) in REAL LIFE. His mother was a Russian woman who’d recently emigrated from the Soviet Union. He had a serious problem with a Jewish father (I believe he only met once) who abandoned Bobby, his older sister and his Jewish but agnostic mother. (By the way in 2002 an FBI report on the communist anti-American tendencies of another man who was supposedly Fischer’s real again Jewish father was released -- so who knows?) Much like many politicians we know and do not respect, Bobby could not take responsibility for his own words, deeds and life but rather always needed to have someone to blame, whether that someone was a couple of dead flies in a light fixture or his Jewish, old man is immaterial. Reuben Fine (one of Fischer’s hated Jewry) who might have been world champ in the 40’s or shortly afterward but for the onset of World War II – lived a deeper life, well beyond the 64 squares and got a Ph.D. in psychology. About the time of Fischer’s dramatic ascendance onto the American and world chess scene (1955-56) Fine published his book The Psychology of the Chess Player (1956). Fine never mentions Bobby Fischer, then a 13 year old child but writes his book analyzing the psychology of the chess world champions Howard Staunton (not really a champ but the first to have that title placed beside his name in 1845 – the official world championship was established in 1886 -- but vital to the book nevertheless as the author of the most popular chess book extant in the days of Morphy and Anderssen); Adolf Anderssen, Paul Morphy, William Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, Jose Raul Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Max Euwe, and Mikhail Botvinnik.
Fine’s book bisects the chess world champions into two categories: “HEROES” and NON-heroes. The ones who had normal lives outside of chess were all healthy personalities and successful elsewhere and took great efforts to avoid the myths and rock-star status that many aficionados of the sport tried to throw upon them. The Heroes were all pretty sick samplings of humanity by the time they reached age 40 and beyond, sometimes earlier. I’m only going to talk about one of the heroes, Bobby Fischer, and one of the Non-heroes in any depth, but a quick comment on Fine’s world champions’ list first:
Staunton, despite his very shabby treatment of Paul Morphy was a fairly healthy individual and didn’t seem to manifest any severe psychosis; he worked as a book publisher. Anderssen was absolutely healthy and a gentleman and had a successful life as a professor. Max Euwe and Mikhail Botvinnik were extremely mentally-healthy individuals dedicated to the education field; and engineering and computer-science respectively. These are all Non-heroes with healthy psyches and accomplishments outside of chess.
As for the Chess Heroes, perhaps the sickest individual on the list, before Fischer, was Alexander Alekhine who apparently quite amicably and willingly allowed himself to be exploited by the Soviet Union’s communist regime and then by the Nazis. He wrote several anti-Semitic chess rants and one infamous series of articles on “On Aryan and Jewish Chess.” Alekhine had several psychotic episodes and some pretty harmless ones such as telling all who would listen, “I am Alexander Alekhine, world champion of chess. My cat’s named “Chess” and he can beat you.” Morphy’s problems as mentioned, were Morphy’s problems and he seems to have died a pathetic little man who never once tried to use his law degree and then totally dropped out of the world of chess as well and like Fischer and Alekhine retreated into his bony skull. Either Jones book or Fine’s book or de Groot’s study of chess-players can be looked up online if you want more info. There was a romance-novel about the Civil War featuring Paul Morphy as a Confederate spy operating mostly out of Havana . . . there doesn’t seem to be a single iota of truth in it.
Steinitz had lots of problems all dramatically complicated by nearly abject poverty. To his lasting credit he largely overcame them and many only showed up in the very last years of his life. He’s the one who first made the career of chess master potentially somewhat of a lucrative vocation. Though he is officially granted the title World Champion from 1886 on, spiritually Steinitz was WC since he beat Anderssen in the late 1860’s. Why? Because Anderssen, defeated by both Morphy in 1859 and by Steinitz less than a decade later, was clearly the strongest player in the world besides those two men (and later Zuckertort, whom Steinitz first defeated in 1886 and Chigorin). Jose Raul Capablanca might give us a snapshot of what Morphy would have been like if his desire for ultimate chess greatness had not been so severely frustrated by the pettiness of Staunton. He learned the game early as Morphy had, but really early: around his 4th birthday and studied very little and was considered the greatest “natural player” that ever lived. He was like Morphy, pretty much an aristocratic gentleman – but he finagled all sorts of opportunities to make a legend out of himself . . . including seeing to it that gossip about both his womanizing and his carelessness about chess (total lack of study??) dominated the upper-echelons of the chess world. The two WC’s, Capablanca and Alekhine, after Lasker (who defeated Steinitz in 1894 and reigned for 27 years) were petty individuals who dodged rematch clauses once they’d won by all types of infantile chicanery.
Basically Fine’s thesis was that chess might be the greatest game in the world. But it’s still a game after all and those who elevate it to high in their scheme of things suffer psychologically for doing so. The greatest of Fine’s Non-heroes and the most accomplished chess player of all time was Emanuel Lasker who, as mentioned, reigned supreme for 27 years. Lasker was a well-known mathematician with a couple texts to his credit; and a well-known philosopher whose one great work Kampf might have had a powerful effect on the world had its title not been so often confused with Mein Kampf written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Lasker’s courageous recreation of his estate after his wealth was totally lost in the Weimar Republic’s hyper-hyper inflation of 1921-24 is dramatically similar to much about American President Ulysses Grant’s dying creation of his two-volume memoirs after being swindled out of his entire estate within two years of his demise. Lasker was a superb fighter both on and off the chessboard.
Fischer in his Chess World article in 1964 The Ten Greatest Chess Masters in World History, pointedly left out Lasker; as well as Botvinnik and Fine – all Jews. He did omit himself but did include Sammy Reshevsky, Steinitz, and Paul Morphy. Reshevesky and Steinitz were Jews and Paul Morphy was probably nowhere near to the standards of 1964’s top twenty grandmasters . . . but he was only a 21-year old. However, after Fischer “resigned” the world championship in 1975, he seemed to have taken much of his anti-Soviet ranting (“The Russians have rigged World Chess”) and turned it totally into anti-Semitism without any seemingly causal event motivating his actions.
My conclusion: Bobby Fischer was a badly-failed human being albeit an utterly magnificent chess player on increasingly rare occasions when he allowed himself to be (like Morphy, Fischer dropped totally out of chess -- but not just on one occasion, but three separate times: in the early-mid 60’s; again after winning the Championship in 1972 and promising to be the “most active champion in the history of chess” and then again finally after his controversial 1992 “rematch“ with Spassky. Chess would be a more respected and respect-worthy sport if more of the world’s top chess players had real lives away from the 64 squares and showed the courage and accomplishment of Emanuel Lasker.
the yanks like to hate Fischer, they love the hating (or they know no better).