By ANDRAS GAL
Observer Staff
April 2, 2008

Friends of the late Chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer gathered recently for a memorial service in his honor, sweeping aside memories of his most controversial behavior in favor of kinder, gentler recollections.

Fischer, who became the youngest U.S. chess champion ever when he won the 1972 World Chess Championship, lived in virtual exile in Iceland since the 1990’s, when he violated international travel restrictions by competing in Yugoslavia and became a federal fugitive. He was most recently known for giving eccentric interviews in which he launched violent verbal attacks against the United States and Jews around the world.

Fischer’s memorial service was held at the New York-based Marshall Chess Club, where a then-13-year-old Fischer beat Chess Master Donald Byrne in what would be referred to as the game of the century. The commemoration, held on March 9, would have been Fischer’s 65th birthday.

photo by Andras Gal
A musical ensemble plays Fischer commemoration in New York.

Frank Brady, president of the Marshall Chess Club, reflected on Fischer’s persona in his opening remarks.

“A certain portion of the public, the non-chess players, didn’t want anything to do with Fischer because of his anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks. And, a sizeable portion of chess players feel the same way. I know several chess players who chose not to come to the event because of that,” Brady said.

Although the room was packed with chess enthusiasts and friends, Brady said Fischer’s remarks in his later life overshadow the chess grandmaster’s earlier accomplishments.

Fischer, the only American to break the age-old Russian-Soviet domination in chess, won not only a game, but also a symbolic victory at the height of the Cold War. He appeared as the lone American hero to beat the Soviet Union by defeating their champion Boris Spassky.

“It showed that we were intellectually as important as the Soviets,” Brady said at the memorial. He said Fischer’s other contribution to chess was the fact that he made it a business, a well-paid sport as opposed to just a popular game.

“He raised the standards for chess greatly by demanding money. And, he got, of course, on TV because of the U.S. versus Soviet Union dynamic,” Brady reflected.

Then Fischer walked away from the game, only to reappear twenty years later in the Spassky rematch.

“It’s hard to tell why he did this. Some people say he was afraid of losing. I don’t believe that. I believe he was never afraid of playing chess with anybody,” Brady speculated. “I think he had a sort of existential confrontation with himself in which he felt that he should become something else, excel in some other field. He was so super-intelligent and so disciplined I thought he was capable of mastering in some other field.”

International Women’s Chess Master Shernaz Kennedy is one of the few people who knew Fischer very well and remained friends with him for most of his life.

“People don’t understand that Fischer was a special-ed child. Had he been analyzed in this day and age, he would have gone to a special school and received special help. He wasn’t a normal person,” Kennedy explained. “He was very sweet, very kind, full of fun. When he did something, he would do it with all-consuming passion. … If anyone, say a journalist, would say something bad about him, he would never talk to them again. He considered that as a very deep betrayal.”

Dick Cavett, who attended the memorial, conducted some of the most memorable interviews with Fischer at the height of his career. Cavett interviewed him shortly before and after he snatched the world championship title from Spassky in Iceland in 1972. Forgotten interview footage from that time period was played at the memorial, showing Fischer in top form. Fischer’s charming persona in those interviews may be in sharp contrast with that of his later years in exile, when his violent anti-American rants dominated his radio interviews.

photo by Eva Bese
Grandmasters play Fischerandom–a Fischer invention.

Fischer became involved with the Church of God in the 1970s, a religious organization that, according to Kennedy, has taken Fischer’s money. He even gave them the prize money he received for the world championship. In exchange, the church offered him to stay on their premises in Pasadena, Calif. After years of generous donations to the church, Fischer was in financial trouble. He returned to the chess board after a 20-year hiatus, accepting a rematch with Spassky.

The high-profile match took place on an island in Yugoslavia, a country that was under U.S. sanctions at the time. Violating the law by playing under the U.S. flag, Fischer was indicted by U.S. authorities; a trauma that put his life on a totally different track.

“He got a letter from President Bush saying that you can’t play for breaking sanctions. Now what would a special-ed child think? That the U.S. government didn’t want him to play. But, he had to. He had no money. He needed to play chess,” Kennedy said.

The indictment was an extraordinary event. Kennedy noted that Bill Clinton said in his autobiography that people were profiting from selling drugs and arms to the warring groups in the Balkan region, yet none had been indicted but a chess player.

So, an already furious Fischer, upon receiving the warrant, spat on the letter at a press conference. After winning the $5 million match, he could never return to the United States.

“His friends [in Pasadena] betrayed him. He entrusted them to pay the $350 for his belongings, his books in storage. And, then when he moved to Hungary after the game in Yugoslavia, they sold all of his belongings on eBay,” Kennedy said. “I said, ‘go to Hungary and play one of the Polgar sisters.’ ”

So, he moved to neighboring Hungary.

Susan Polgar, the oldest of the three sisters and Women’s World Chess Champion from 1996 until 1999, remembered the encounters at the memorial.

“I’ve known him as a perfect gentleman, very friendly, very kind. We would go on excursions, do cooking with my family or play chess,” Polgar said.

By this time, seeds of anger toward the United States had been implanted in Fischer’s brain.

In what would become his recurrent public appearance, he started giving radio interviews, which he used as a medium to spread his anger against America and the Jewish people, fueled by overblown frustration that accumulated in his life. He told a radio station in Hungary that he had been persecuted by Jews. The fact that he was born to a Jewish mother — and possibly a Jewish father, too — didn’t really matter.

Fischer’s most infamous remarks were given during a radio interview following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

“This is all wonderful news. It is time to finish off the U.S. once and for all. All the crimes the U.S. has committed in the world. This just shows, what goes around comes around, even to the U.S.,” Fischer said from the Philippines.

Polgar said she tried to reason with Fischer.

“I tried to sway his absurd views, but realized that it was in vain. We avoided certain topics, and agreed to disagree,” Polgar said.

The last time Polgar saw Fischer was before she moved to the United States. She is currently the head of the Susan Polgar Institute of Chess Excellence at Texas Tech University.

Fischer was detained in Japan in 2004 on charges of traveling on an invalid passport. He was held there for six months. An Icelandic committee of Fischer’s friends succeeded in issuing him a new passport that allowed him to find refuge in Iceland.

Icelanders still grateful to Fischer for playing the World Chess Championship Match in Reykjavik, thus putting their country on the map, eventually granted Fischer Icelandic citizenship. Surrounded by caring friends, Fischer is said to have lived a reclusive life on an island until his death on Jan. 17.

Although regarded to be one of the greatest chess players ever, his eccentricities and vicious remarks may not be easily forgiven in America, even after his death.

Kennedy said he was never really understood as a special child.

“[Fellow chess players and friends] said they have been disappointed by Fischer. I said, ‘why don’t you look at what he did for you?’ He had a problem and no one seemed to have understood that.”

Kennedy, who has been teaching chess in private schools in Manhattan for many years, says she is now planning to write a book about Fischer that would eventually become a movie.

“I will be trying to reveal him to the world, that he was a person who could not take the whole picture in. People need to know why he behaved the way he did,” Kennedy said.