In 1972, I was a boy of seven with a passion for chess. Unfortunately, none of my schoolmates shared my love - it was a pleasure reserved for my father, my uncle, a couple of family friends and myself. Bobby Fischer changed all that. His match against the Russia World Champion, Boris Spassky, in Reykjavik that summer brought chess onto the front pages of newspapers everywhere.  

For the world at large this was a symbolic clash between the two superpowers at the height of the Cold War. Of course, all that meant nothing to me. Instead it was the validation of the game I loved, proof that chess could legitimately lead to fame and fortune. From that moment - the moment I knew it was possible - I decided that I would become a professional chess-player.  

Fischer's fame rose to still greater heights after he won the match - the lone American taking on the might of the entire Soviet chess establishment, who, he said, had "fixed world chess". His fame was perhaps all the greater because of eccentricity. He failed to show up for the second game of the match with Spassky because he decided that he did not want to play in front of television cameras, which thereafter bowed to his wishes and failed to record this historic event.  

Fischer's terror of the modern media was perhaps one reason why the newly-crowned world chess champion, following his awesomely easy victory over the hitherto rock-solid Spassky, simply disappeared for 20 years. No one even knew of his whereabouts, although most conjecture centred on Hungary, where, it was alleged, he had found - for the first time in his life - a girlfriend. Then, in 1992, lured by a prize fund of $5 million, Fischer suddenly emerged to play a 20th anniversary return match with Spassky in the then pariah state of Serbia.  

Having been warned by the US Government that he was violating the UN embargo of Serbia - a fact about which he would have cared less than nothing - Fischer was promptly indicted by a federal grand jury on the day he walked off with his $3.35 million prize for winning the match. Well, of course, he won: his play, to the astonishment of many, considering his 20-year absence from the game, was at times incandescently brilliant.  

And then he disappeared again - and once more, no one seems to know exactly, or even roughly, where he is. I don't know either. And yet I have been speaking to him. And I have been playing chess matches against him. At least I'm about 99% sure I have. If that sounds mysterious, let me explain.  

Even when I am not playing in official chess tournaments I am so hopeless an addict that I like to play or talk with my fellow Grandmasters. Thanks to the glory of cyberspace, one pleasant way to encounter them and while away the hours is at the Internet Chess Club, or ICC. There I can play three-minute games, or "blitz", as it is known in the chess world, against opponents from anywhere around the world, or simply chat if I am not in the mood for a game.  

Last year I was chatting at my favourite cyber haunt with the young Greek Grandmaster Ioannis Papaioannou when he told me, in great excitement, an improbable tale of playing blitz against Bobby Fischer at the Internet Chess Club. I could not help but burst into laughter, much as I would have done had my friend claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster. The idea that Fischer would miraculously challenge a relatively obscure Greek player to a few dozen friendly games, furthermore for no fee, was really too much to believe. Nevertheless, there was something in Ioannis' earnestness which planted a small seed of belief in my mind. After all, on the internet the notoriously reclusive Fischer could play chess, yet still remain invisible, untraceable.  

I thought nothing of it until a few weeks later when I was logged on to the ICC one evening. I was approached by a man claiming to be an intermediary who asked me if I was prepared to play against a guest, who, he assured me, was a very strong chess player but who wished to preserve his anonymity. He was out to dinner at that time, but perhaps we could play at a pre-arranged time later? He would use a code word so that I would know for sure that this was the right man.  

I thought that this "intermediary" was almost certainly a fraud or a time-waster (the internet is full of them) but, on the off-chance, of meeting the Loch Ness Monster of world chess, I agreed. The appointed hour for the challenge came... and went. I hung around for another hour or so, but there was no sign of Fischer, or anyone else for that matter.  

I forgot about the incident until some months later. I had just returned from the Chess Olympiad in Istanbul last October and idly logged onto the ICC in the evening. Suddenly I was approached by a guest using the pre-arranged code word. My heart jumped. Could this be Bobby Fischer? Before we started he suprised me by requesting me to log off, and then log on again as a guest.  

There were two purposes to that: one was that we would both be anonymous. When I enter the ICC under my real name there is an automatic announcement of my arrival to everyone else present. Should anyone wish to watch my games (there are usually dozens and occasionally hundreds of people doing this) they can thus do so easily. But the second and equally significant point is that the games would not be recorded by the system, as they are automatically when I appear as Grandmaster N.D. Short. I did as he requested, and the games began.  

The time limit was three minutes per player, per game. My unseen opponent began with some highly irregular, if not totally absurd opening moves - shifting all his pawns forward one square. These were moves that that no Grandmaster would ever play. I immediately felt that I was the victim of an elaborate practical joke. But then I became aware of something else.  

From this deliberately unpromising position emerged moves of extraordinary power. In this first game I was totally crushed. I took a little more care in the second game, but met with the same result. His openings became even more cocky - 1....f6 followed by 2...Kf7 and 3...Ke6, exposing his own king to immediate assault - was one of his bizarre and unprecedented gambits. It was as if he was deliberately trying to handicap himself. However, I was beaten again.  

After eight games and eight losses I apologised for my poor performance and left. I suggested we play again the following evening when I would be less exhausted. The next day we met on schedule. I was less tired and and played better, even winning a couple of games, but nevertheless my final result was still decidedly negative.  

My opponent moved with breathtaking speed. He typed extremely quickly too, for we chatted incessantly throughout these encounters. Often when I ran short of time he added seconds to my clock so that he could beat me on the position instead of on time. Of all my many hundreds of ICC opponents - including some of the world's leading Grandmasters - no one had ever done that before or since. He was polite, funny, and clearly an American., to judge from his spelling and pattern of conversation. He was also obviously very familiar in a gossipy way with the major figures in the chess world of the 1960s -Fischer's period of greatest activity.  

However, some doubt remained in my mind: how did I know that this was not a hoaxer using a  computer? Just possibly a fantastically strong computer program could play blitz chess at that strength. Well, I cannot be 100 per cent certain, but his play simply did not resemble that of any program I know of. And, anyway, computers don't make deliberate mistakes.  

I wanted to test my antagonist further so I thought of a number of tricky questions as we gossiped. For example, I asked him: "Do you know Armando Acevedo?" Senor Acevedo is an obscure Mexican player, not remotely of Grandmaster strength. My opponent's reply came instantly, if cryptically: "Siegen 1970".  

Now if you look in the tournament book of the Siegen Chess Olympiad of 1970 you will find that Bobby Fischer played a certain Armando Acevedo in a preliminary round. He was obviously trying to tell me something.  

I never confronted my opponent with the question, "Am I playing Bobby Fischer?" I did ask him, however, who was the strongest blitz chess-player he had ever played. His response was, "If I am who you think I am, I would answer Mikhail Tal." Tal, the brilliant Latvian former world chess champion, gave Fischer a number of painful beatings when the two played each other in the late 1950s.  

I described my experiences to the man who knows Fischer as well as anyone - his old foe, Boris Spassky - when I met up with the Russian in Zurich earlier this year. Boris considered it highly probable that I had come up against the elusive genius. When I said that, contrary to popular perception, he didn't sound mad, at all, Boris replied "Of course he isn't."  

I played the man I believe to be Bobby Fischer on a couple of further occasions - a total of 50 games, the last time in May - never getting remotely close to scoring 50 per cent. By comparison, I scored 50 per cent (six points from 12 games) the last time I faced Garry Kasparov at blitz chess, in France in 1995.  

Fischer is in my opinion, therefore, a much stronger speed chess player than Kasparov, which is incredible when one considers that at 58 he is virtually a geriatric in terms of the modern professional chess game. Still, Fischer was a prodigy of youth - he became US chess champion in 1957 at 14 - so he is clearly a genius which transcends normal biology.  

I was going to keep this story a secret, but it has become obvious that Fischer's activity on the ICC is slowly becoming known. (The English Grandmaster Jim Plaskett has told me that he, too, has played Fischer on the ICC. Jim also found that his opponent played fantastically weak openings in order to create a level playing field, or rather chess board. Alas, Jim, like me, was crushed like a beetle.) It was only a matter of time before someone else published something.  

I have discovered three or four others with a similar story to tell - although the reliability of some people's evidence is complicated by the fact that, according to one of the ICC's administrators, there are at least three Fischer hoaxers (two amateurs using computers and one Grandmaster).  

It would be wonderful to publish one of my games against Fischer. To me they are what an undiscovered Mozart symphony would be to a music lover.  

Unfortunately, I have no record of any of them and, even if I did, it would be a breach of etiquette to publish them. Fischer would doubtless be furious if they appeared.  

Sadly, I have probably already scuppered my chances of ever playing him again with these modest disclosures. I hope not. It was an honour and the greatest pleasure to spend a few hours with Robert James Fischer - even if we never actually shook hands.