Was Bobby Fischer brilliant? Or an idiot....

Maybe everybody has a very special genetic gift, so that by discovering it too early, they run the risk of being a savant. I don't think Bobby Fischer was a savant, but some individuals have a will stronger than their judgement, which may eventually get them off the track.

Fischer should have just talked chess. This thread backs up the fact that when chess guys start thinking about anything else, the crap hits the fan.

The problem isn't when chess players talk about anything other than chess. The problem is when they turn into hateful, bitter old men who start calling for the deaths of millions of people who have done nothing to him, celebrating the deaths of thousands of people who had done nothing to him, and blaming pretty much everyone on the planet except themselves for their own largely self-created problems.

you guys should go to Iceland and dance on his grave. as they say "if the shoe fits".

Is the sun bright, hot and necessary for life?  Or is it just a ticking time bomb, that will one day explode, and COMPLETELY destroy our solar system?

Clearly. As evidenced by Bobby's incredible successes outside of chess and Kasparov's completely falling apart once his chess career ended. Oh wait....

hey man, I know a little history. you could have figured. Oh wait ............

By your own silly logic, you just insulted yourself.

Silly boy. 

I hope you feel good thinking that, it looks like a big thing on chess.com. "Excuse me but I just have to correct what you wrote there, bimbo, because I have a bad case of fischeritis, a condition which plagues chessplayers making them think they are very smart people". must be the premium website for inferiority complexes.

can hardly wait for the next pathetic comeback.

Fischer played great chess indeed, but In my opinion I would prefer the style of Kasparov.

        Not so.

Do you deny the well established savant syndrome?

I don't think Fischer had savant syndrome, either.
Who knows, maybe Fischer also had talent to, let's say, tibetian throat singing, he just didn't have the opportunity or the will to practise it.
Or maybe he'd have made a fine architect.
The fact he chose chess is basically irrelevant.
 

Definitely a no there.  He was just EXTREMELY smart(a genetic gift).  He had mentioned MANY times(back when he was still sane), that he wasn't an exceptional chess player 'by gift'(like Morphy), but that he was just really good at chess because he was SUPER smart, and that he loved chess A LOT(and had chosen to dedicate himself to the game).  He was COMPLETELY obsessessed with chess by age 6-7.  So much that his mother though he needed medical help, but Drs always told her he was fine.

And Carlsen. You forgot to include Carlsen in your list of of players Fischer was a patzer in comparison to.

He was brilliant. He could have done anything, but chess was what he chose. He was not a savant, and he was not an idiot. He was, however, HIGHLY intelligent, socially insecure, and an extreme example of monomania. Since everyone likes to speculate on his IQ- I'd posit he was in the 155-165 range. Right near the line where humans start to display increasing social ineptitude congruent to their mental capacity.

Oh, don't mistake me, I'm not claiming that Fischer was a savant. I'm simply disputing the notion that one cannot be an idiot and play chess.

As for Fischer himself - was he a savant? I don't know. I do believe, however, that he was probably somewhere on the austism spectrum.

He was an Aspie.

Aspergers is rife in the chess community.

No doubt BF was highly intelligent and talented.

But he also worked incredibly hard through study and practice too.

You can have all of the talent and ability, but if you don't put in the hours as well, chances are you won't succeed  

        Chess was the slender domain of Bobby Fischer's brilliance.  His life-style in virtually all else was pointless at best and idiocy in general.  Some divorces are particularly hard on the children, but the fact that his older sister seems to have turned out quite well implies, to me, that a great deal of Bobby's pain and problems were self-inflicted wounds that he never allowed to scab-over.  Notable, in Fischer's infamous Top-Ten greatest chess-players of all time list written for Chessworld magazine, he omitted 27-year world champion Emanuel Lasker yet included Staunton of England one of the weakest imaginable players (really a writer of chess books* and little more).  Later Bobby would talk about Lasker often predominantly using the term he thought most pejorative 'Jewish.'  Strangely, Bobby apparently didn't realize that Wilhelm Steinitz (world champion from 1886 to 1894, but far longer in many reckonings since he was unbeaten in match play for some 32 years and did beat Adolf Anderssen in 1866) was also$ a Jew.  Steinitz, I fear, only made Bobby's Top-Ten list by default (de-fault of not realizing the role Judaism played in Steinitz's life). Unfortunately, though an ultra-brilliant chess star, Bobby was a man with more problems than most of us will ever have to face.

*For instance, our American Reinfeld, who often played Fine and Reshevsky and won many tournaments in New York, was far better as both a writer and as a player . . . .

$ Reportedly, Bobby's absent father was a Jewish M.D.