The vast majority of chess players know who he is, but, even if you are not a player, we are sure that the Bobby Fischer mystery will catch your attention. This is quite an interesting story of a person who won the title of world chess champion in 1972, at the age of 29.
One of the main reasons the name became known was because it ended the reign that the Soviets had had over chess since 1948. It was for this reason that Fischer was considered a sort of hero in the United States. United, while the Cold War was going on and these countries were fighting in every field possible.
Who is Bobby Fischer?
Robert James Fischer He was born March 9, 1943 in Chicago. He was the son of Gerhardt Leibscher (biologist) and Regina Wender (nurse), although it is important to know that his father was German and changed his last name to Fischer due to the aftermath of the Second World War. World War.
The couple married in Russia in 1933 and tried years later to enter the United States, but only their mother and older sister were accepted. His father continued his journey to Chile after being deported from the United States.
In 2000, after the FBI declassified Fischer’s secrets, it was revealed that his real father was actually Paul Feliz Nemenyi, one of the scientists who worked on building the first nuclear bomb.
The story of Fischer and chess
One day, his older sister Joana gave Bobby a plastic chessboard when he was six years old. His interest in the game was so great that his mother began looking for Chess coaches which will teach your child everything about this game.
As interest in chess grew, it continued to grow, since in fact, at the age of 16, he had already managed to become the United States chess champion. This was not surprising, given that on the test of intellectual ability he ranked even higher than Albert Einstein himself.
But we have to go back in time a little, since By the age of 15, he had already been named a chess grandmaster.. Thanks to this title, he was invited to the interzonal tournament in Yugoslavia, where the rival of the current Soviet champion, Mikhail Botvinnik, would be decided.
The Bobby Fischer mystery
The main reason why the Bobby Fischer case is so popular is that I was paranoidso much so that during the Cold War he removed amalgam fillings from his teeth because he believed his Soviet opponents had placed a transmitter on him. For the same reason He kept an antidote for the poison in his pocket and took no medicine..
In 1972, the Reykjavík match took place between Fischer and the world champion Boris Spansky, where after 24 chess games he managed to win the world champion title. However, five years later, he lost this title to Anatoly Karpov by failing to show up for the match.
The truth is that Fischer had started a confinement in cheap hotels which lasted 20 years, during which he only received the company of chess books. By then his life had already become a real mystery, until he was arrested in Japan for passport forgery, for which he was imprisoned for eight months.
At the age of 49, he faced Spasky again, but was easily defeated. Fischer said he simply participated to get the $150,000 for his participation. At 62, he requested asylum in Iceland and settled in Reykjavík, where he became champion. He died in this city two years later, at the age of 64. The paradox is that the chessboard has 64 squares.