WHY is Bobby Fischer still respected in the chess community???

We're not going to argue the Holocaust in the chess forums. Try instead

v3 link: https://www.chess.com/club/open-discussion   

v2 link: https://www.chess.com/groups/view/open-discussion

Any further such posting here may result in a mute, at least.

Keep it to chess.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Hang on a cotton-pickin' minute, there, ya whippersnapper!

In the 1950's-1970's, the Soviet chess machine included full-time paid professionals trained in full-time chess schools as full-time students, who masqueraded as amateurs for international competition purposes. They also fought short draws against each other to save their strength for the Rest of the World opposition.  Against this Goliath, a David of Lilliputian proportions leveled himself, virtually completely alone, with virtually no training, and no money to speak of...

Then, he began to earn his reputation:

In 1963, when he was 20, he won the US Championship with a score of 11. The nearest competitor had 7.5; that's a margin of nearly 50%!

In 1966, when he was only 23 years old, he came in 2nd in the Piatigorsky Cup amid a field of international Grandmasters. He was 0.5 points behind the World Champion, Boris Spassky.

In the 1970 Herceg Novi Blitz Championship, he came in first with 19 points, 11 pts ahead of the 2nd place winner, Mikhail Tal. That's more than double Tal's score! The rest of the field was another 5.5 pts behind Tal! If you excluded Tal, he had a score 5 times better than the rest of the field!

In 1970, he accomplished the following:

• He placed 1st in the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal 3.5 points ahead of the field! 
• He defeated Mark Taimanov 6-0 in the World Championship Quarter Finals
• He defeated Bent Larsen 6-0 in the World Ch Semi-Finals
• He defeated Tigran Petrosian 6.5-2.5 in the World Ch Finals, with 5 wins. Petrosian won only 1 game of the 9. That's a margin of 5:1 in decisive games!
• In the World Championship in Reykjavik, he defeated Boris Spassky 12.5-8.5. That's nearly 3:2!  And he forfeited one point over the conditions! If they had they played that game, there's a 66% chance he would have won it!

 Simply put, Fischer was astonishing in his time, when there was virtually no training outside of the Soviet sphere (he was almost completely self-taught).

 And it wasn't just that his play was astonishing; his play was astonishing all the time, against the strongest opposition the world could produce.

As for Stephen Hawking, I guess it's not surprising that you aren't aware of the reasons for his stature in physics and cosmology, but here are two:

• His was the first theory of cosmology to unify the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. To the physics novice, this is like predicting that while light acts like a wave most of the time, where frequencies and wavelengths explain behaviors like color, diffraction and interference (drop 2 rocks in a pond a little bit apart, and you'll see it), it also acts like a particle; during one eclipse, the Sun's light was observed to bend as it came past the Moon, just as Einstein predicted.
• He communicates the ideas of cosmology, time-travel, and physics in way that is comprehensible to the non-physicist. He wrote "A Brief History of Time", which was on the (British) Sunday Times' Bestseller List for 237 weeks. That's 4.5 years.
• So, as a combined author, teacher, and physicist, he's outstanding, and someone to whom geniuses the likes of Richard Feynman are only occasionally compared. 

When someone's a household name outside of entertainment and politics, it's not an insult. It's usually earned.

By the way, batgirl, I hope that last post answers your question. It's just a sample of what Fischer accomplished.

Are you kidding me...another anti jew? Seriouslly? sighhhhhh. Get the hell off this site.

All of your so called proofs have been debunked ...

over

and

over

again

Give it a rest dude.

[We don't allow political talk here in the chess forums or similar controversial subjects. Just chess in the chess foums, everyone. Please don't quote such talk either. That's not much better even if you are disagreeing. Thanks. Mod.]

I have absolutely no idea what question of mine you believe that answers, but thank you for educating me on Fischer's accomplishments.  I would have been totally lost without that.

My bad - thought you were the original poster of the q. Not so, of course.

But you're welcome. An American chessplayer can take some inspiration from RJF's fighting spirit (i like the word "indomitability", myself, but it ain't in everyone's lexicon), if nothing else.

There was an interesting situation once where I was talking with a small group of players. One of them mentioned Fischer's birthday was coming up, so we should so something special, maybe try to organize a tournament. After some awkward silence he tried suggesting it again. So the topic turned to Fischer's chess vs Fischer in general. The general consensus was we were all really impressed with the chess player, but because of his later years it didn't feel right to have an event honoring him.

I don't know if this makes a difference, but this was in the United States. Maybe other countries wouldn't mind as much?

A slight faux pas as Batgirl is something like chess.com's resident chess historian

Just so you people are aware, this is in no way meant to be a troll. 
And I don't think we should always talk about bobby fischer as a person at all. Never call him a god of chess, just talk about his games.

Hopefully, more people will comment on this forum

Well, I'd agree if I had been aware that Batgirl was not the original poster; I might have been more circumspect about how I answered. But given the (incorrect) assumption that she was the original poster, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that she did not know about all of these feats, which is what the poster suggests by asking the question in the first place.

I've also found that many amateur chess historians' knowledge is deep in select areas, and otherwise incomplete.  So, it would still be fair to assume that she was not aware of all of his accomplishments, unless she was a Fischer buff (which is a rarity, 40+ years after).

That said, apologies to Batgirl for not hearing the sarcasm in her comment.  Perhaps she could have made it more obvious; a first reading would not suggest it was anything but sincere, which is what I took it to be.