He was born Robert James Fischer on the 9th March 1943 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. His father was a non-Jewish physicist. His mother was a Jewess, who was a nurse and schoolteacher. When he was two, his parents divorced, and shortly after, his father went abroad, never to see him again. He and his older sister (Mrs. Joan Trag) went to live with his mother in California, Arizona and then in Brooklyn. Fischer’s mother was a woman of great intellect, and strong character. She knew six languages, had a pre-med degree and was a pacifist. She was also known for her firm beliefs and stubborn nature.
At the age of six, Fischer learnt how to play chess and
immediately had a passion for the game. In 1957, he became the youngest
junior chess champion of the United States, by defeating International
Master, Donald Byrne. At the age of fourteen, became the youngest senior
American champion, by beating Samuel Reshevsky. When he was sixteen, he quit
school, so that he could play chess as a full time career.
His reasoning:
You don’t learn anything in school. It’s just a waste of time. You lug
around books and all and do homework. They give too much homework. You
shouldn’t be doing homework. Nobody's interested in it. The teachers are
stupid. They shouldn’t have any women in there. They don’t know how to
teach. And they shouldn’t make anyone go to school. I don’t listen to
weakies [Bobby’s term for non-chess players or for chess players who
are weaker than himself]. My two and half years in Erasmus high I wasted.
I didn’t like the whole thing. You have to mix with those stupid kids. The
teachers are even stupider than kids. Half of them are crazy. If they’d have
let me, I would have quit before I was sixteen.
In 1958, he became the youngest Grand Master and also won the United
States Championship. During 1970-1971, he won twenty games, lost one and
tied three games with the Soviet world champion Tigran Petrosyan. In 1972,
in Reykjavik, Iceland, he became the first American to receive the title:
Chess champion of the World, when he defeated Boris Spassky of the
former Soviet Union.
In 1975, he refused to challenge Anatoly Karpov in the Federation Internationale des Echecs, because he felt unready for the game, making Karpov the winner. In 1996, he created his own game called Fischerandom Chess. Bobby Fischer has a very awkward personality. After his dispute with the Russians, he disappeared for two decades. Fischer is very anti-social, because he is so into chess. He studies with his chessboard day and night, and his friends were those who he played chess with. Fischer is over six-foot tall, handsome with sharp features. He is as-xual; he is not very fond of women in today society or in any other way. He does not like communists, but is very fond of aristocrats. Fischer avoided military services, even though it was against communism.
His memory is so good he remembered every move of all his games. One time in his life, he tried to ring Icelandic chess player Olaffson. Unfortunately Olaffson was out, but his Icelandic-speaking daughter spoke. When Fischer later spoke to Olaffson, he was able to recounted what Olaffson's daughter had said, word by word, with an Icelandic accent, even though it was a completely foreign language to him.
Besides being 50% Jewish, Fischer is virulently
anti-Semitic. He believes that the Jews are dishonest people and that they
are out to get him. He even spoke publicly against Jews on Hungarian and
Filipino radio. He is pro-Palestinian, supporting all Arabs. Some of his
anti-Jewish quotes include:
"This is the Jewish mentality. These are a criminal people. They
torture their prisoners in the worst way. It’s even illegal! They don’t
even deny it hardly. Jews were always were always b------s throughout
history. They are liars, they are the worst pieces of s--- in the world.
They mutilate their own children...You know the Jews control the
courts...The United States is a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed
circumcised Jew b------s."
"...What's the difference between a good Jew and bad Jew?...The good
Jew f---s you slower."
It’s not clear why Fischer is anti-Semitic, but it seems likely that in
his past, he may have not had good relationships with Jewish people,
because of his non-Jewish side. Perchance, some Jews may have teased him
so much, that this caused his long term of Jew-hating. In 1992, Bobby
Fischer was arrested and sent to jail in Pasadena, California. Fischer
never sees himself as a Jew. "Part Jewish. My mother is Jewish."
Fischer also had Jewish friends like Bernard Zukerman and Boris Spassky.
Bobby Fischer is definitely the master of masters of chess. However, he is also known to have serious character flaws, such as, insulting people and calling people who are not as good as him in chess (which is most people) "weakies." As well as being s-xist, homophobic and Jew hating, this could be the result of never knowing his father. He maybe viewed by society as an outcast, and even a degenerate, but he is also a genius who longs for his father and has had quite a lonely miserable life.
By Caton Bishop, 2002