Bobby Fischer: From Chess Genius to Legend

3.2/5 ( ratings)

World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer still perplexes us, what ifs us, still drives us crazy. A man of contradictions, naivete, complexity, simpleness, and profundity, we want to know how such a being survives in travails ranging from the U.S., to Iceland, to Jugoslavia, to Hungary, to Japan, to... Today, as in his past, his few "close" friends are subservient, his abandonment of traditional chess play complete, and his refusal to be enclosed in any type of box has created a virtual prison for him. The new generation doesn't know much about him but he is still a phenomenon among the boomers. Former Soviet Grandmaster Eduard Gufeld went back several decades to show the better times, the better Bobby; the kid from Brooklyn who took on the entire Soviet elite at their last bastion of supremacy, chess. Fischer once said that in a chess match he was afraid of nobody. Yet, after he won the world title he dropped nearly out of sight. When he reappeared in 1992 to fight his old nemesis, Boris Spassky, he still showed his spunk, his sporting acumen, and some rust. Other co-authors analyze Fischer's high-powered strength in strategy and tactics, as well as the ultimate in gamesmanship -- no compromise. Chess myths are demolished. You will find out what it is like to play the kingpin of chess. The "Troubled Genius" is essayed in new articles, new photos, and a perspective which has seldom been described as the reader discovers why Bobby Fischer still fascinates us, through thick and thin.