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Robert "Bobby" Fischer,(born on March 9, 1943) is a United States-born chess grandmaster and in 1972 became the only US-born chessplayer ever to win the World Chess Championship. In 1975 he officially lost the title when FIDE, the international chess federation, refused to accept his conditions for a title defense.

Fischer's victory over the Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in the "Match of the Century" not only sparked interest in the game around the world, but was seen as a symbolic victory for the capitalist West. Particularly in the United States, Spassky was portrayed as the product of an impersonal, mechanical, and oppressive system of state control, while Fischer was depicted as a solitary genius who had heroically overcome the Soviets' dominance: the American David who had slain the Communist Goliath. Ironically, the reclusive Fischer (the title of the popular film Searching for Bobby Fischer alludes to his legendary withdrawal from competition) is better known today for his anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, and anti-Semitism. However, Fischer's inflammatory statements have done little to diminish the professional and popular recognition of his singular achievements on the chessboard.

Robert James Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Regina Wender, was a naturalized American citizen, of German Jewish[1] descent, who was born in Switzerland, raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and later became a teacher, registered nurse, and physician.[2] Fischer's father was listed on the birth certificate as Wender's first husband, Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist; the couple married in 1933 in Moscow, U.S.S.R., where Wender was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute. However, a 2002 article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer suggests that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian physicist of Jewish ancestry, may have been Fischer's biological father.[3] Gerhardt and Regina Fischer divorced in 1945 when Bobby was two years old, and he grew up with his mother and older sister, Joan. In 1948, the family moved to Mobile, Arizona, where Regina taught in an elementary school. The following year they moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Regina worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse.

In May 1949, the six-year-old Fischer learned how to play chess from instructions found in a chess set that his sister had bought at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment. He saw his first chess book a month later. For over a year he played chess on his own. At age 7, he joined the Brooklyn Chess Club and was taught by its president, Carmine Nigro. When Fischer was 13, his mother asked John W. Collins to be his chess tutor. Collins had coached several top players, including future grandmasters Robert Byrne and William Lombardy. Fischer spent much time at Collins' house, and some have described Collins as a father figure for Fischer. Fischer attended Erasmus Hall High School together with Barbra Streisand[1], though he later dropped out. Many teachers remembered him as difficult. According to school records, he had an I.Q. of 180 and an incredibly retentive memory.

Fischer's first real triumph was winning the United States Junior Chess Championship in July 1956. In the same year, he played several brilliant games; his game against Donald Byrne, who later became an International Master, is often called "The Game of the Century".

In 1957, Fischer won the United States Open Chess Championship on tie-breaking points over Arthur Bisguier. Fischer was given entry into the invitational U.S. Championship. Many thought he was too weak, and predicted that he would finish last. Instead, he won, becoming in January 1958, at age 14, the youngest U.S. champion ever.

Fischer's victory qualified him to participate in the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal, the next step toward challenging the World Champion. The top six finishers in the Interzonal would qualify for the Candidates Tournament, but few thought the youngster had much chance of this. Again he surprised the pundits, tying for fifth place after a strong finish. This made Fischer the youngest person ever to qualify for the Candidates, and also earned him the title of International Grandmaster, making him at that time the youngest grandmaster in history.

At the age of 16, Fischer finished a creditable equal fifth out of eight at the Candidates Tournament held in Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1959. He scored 12.5-15.5 and was outclassed by tournament winner Mikhail Tal, who won all four of their individual games.

In 1961, Fischer started a 16-game match with frequent U.S. Champion Samuel Reshevsky, one of the world's strongest players. Despite Fischer's meteoric rise, the veteran Reshevsky was considered the favorite. After 11 games and a tie score (2 wins apiece with 7 draws) the match ended due to a dispute between Fischer and match organizer Jacqueline Piatigorsky.

In the next World Championship cycle, Fischer won the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal by 2.5 points, scoring 17.5-4.5, making him one of the favorites for the Candidates tournament in Curaçao. However, he had a disappointing tournament, finishing fourth out of eight with a 14-13 score. The result nonetheless established Fischer, at 19, as the strongest non-Soviet player in the world.

In 1962, Fischer said that he had "personal problems" and began to listen to various radio ministers in a search for answers. This is how he first came to listen to The World Tomorrow radio program with Herbert W. Armstrong and his son Garner Ted Armstrong; the Armstrongs' denomination, The Worldwide Church of God, predicted an imminent apocalypse. In late 1963, Fischer began tithing to the church. According to Fischer, he lived a bifurcated life, with a rational chess component and an enthusiastic religious component.

Following his failure in the 1962 Candidates, Fischer asserted that the Soviet players had a non-aggression pact and concentrated on playing against him. The top three finishers (Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres and Efim Geller) indeed drew all their games among themselves at Curaçao, but opinions differ on whether this was prearranged.

Fischer therefore decided not to participate in the Amsterdam Interzonal in 1964, thus taking himself out of the 1966 World Championship cycle. He held to this decision even when FIDE changed the format of the eight-player Candidates Tournament from a round-robin to a series of knockout matches. (In the previous two cycles, FIDE had sought to address complaints of Soviet collusion by limiting the number of Soviet participants, an approach that Soviet chess players considered extremely unfair.) In the next cycle, at the 1967 Sousse Interzonal, Fischer scored a phenomenal 8.5 points in the first 10 games. His observance of the Worldwide Church of God's sabbath was honored by the organizers, but deprived Fischer of several rest days, which led to a scheduling dispute. Fischer forfeited two games in protest and later withdrew, eliminating himself from the 1969 World Championship cycle.

At home, Fischer won all eight U.S. Championships that he competed in, beginning with the 1957-1958 championship and ending with the 1966-1967 championship. This string includes his 11-0 win in the 1963-1964 championship, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament, and one of only a handful of perfect scores ever in high-level chess tournaments.

The 1969 U.S. Championship was also a zonal qualifier, with the top three finishers advancing to the Interzonal. Fischer, however, had sat out the U.S. Championship because of disagreements about the tournament's format and prize fund. To enable Fischer to compete for the title, Grandmaster Pál Benkő gave up his Interzonal place, for which the United States Chess Federation (USCF) paid him a modest $2,000; the other zonal participants waived their right to replace Benkő. This unusual arrangement was the work of Ed Edmondson, then the USCF's Executive Director.

Before the Interzonal, though, in March and April 1970, the world's best players competed in the USSR vs. Rest of the World match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Fischer graciously agreed to allow Bent Larsen of Denmark to play first board for the Rest of the World team in light of Larsen's recent outstanding tournament results, even though Fischer had the higher Elo rating. [2] The USSR team won the match by a hair (20.5-19.5), but Fischer beat Tigran Petrosian, whom Boris Spassky had dethroned as world champion the previous year, 3-1, winning the first two games and drawing the last two.

The Interzonal was held in Palma de Mallorca in November and December 1970. Fischer won it with a remarkable 18.5-4.5 score, 3.5 points ahead of Larsen, Efim Geller, and Robert Hübner, who tied for second at 15-8. [4] Fischer finished the tournament with seven consecutive wins (one by default).

Fischer continued his domination in the 1971 Candidates matches, defeating his opponents with a lopsided series of results unparalleled in chess history. He crushed both Mark Taimanov (USSR) and Larsen 6-0 (+6-0=0).[5] The latter result was particularly shocking: Larsen had played first board for the Rest of the World team ahead of Fischer just a year before, and at the Interzonal had in their game handed Fischer his only loss.

Only former World Champion Petrosian, Fischer's final opponent in the Candidates matches, was able to offer resistance. Petrosian unleashed a strong theoretical novelty in the first game and had Fischer on the ropes, but Fischer defended with his customary aplomb and even won the game. This gave Fischer a remarkable streak of 20 consecutive wins, the second longest winning streak in chess history after Steinitz's 25-game streak from 1873 to 1882. [6] Petrosian won decisively in the second game, finally snapping Fischer's winning streak. After three consecutive draws, however, Fischer swept the next four games to win the match 6.5-2.5 (+5=3-1). The final victory allowed Fischer to challenge World Champion Boris Spassky.

Fischer's career-long stubbornness about match and tournament conditions was again seen in the run-up to his match with Spassky. Of the possible sites, Fischer preferred Yugoslavia, while Spassky wanted Iceland. For a time it appeared that the dispute would be resolved by splitting the match between the two locations, but that arrangement fell through. After that issue was resolved, Fischer refused to play unless the prize fund, which he considered inadequate, was doubled. London financier Jim Slater responded by donating an additional $US 125,000, which brought the prize fund to an unprecedented $250,000. Fischer finally agreed to play.

The match took place in Reykjavík, Iceland, from July through September 1972. Fischer lost the first two games in strange fashion: the first when he played a risky pawn-grab in a dead-drawn endgame, the second by forfeit when he refused to play the game in a dispute over playing conditions. Fischer would likely have forfeited the entire match, but Spassky, not wanting to win by default, yielded to Fischer's demands to move the next game to a back room, away from the cameras whose presence had upset Fischer. The rest of the match proceeded without incident. Fischer won seven of the next 19 games, losing only one and drawing eleven, to win the match 12.5-8.5 and become the 11th World Chess Champion.

Robert Bobby Fischer- Famous Quotes:"Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent's mind...Chess is life...I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves...I give 98 percent of my mental energy to chess. Others give only 2 percent...I prepare myself well. I know what I can do before I go in. I'm always confident..Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact...I like the moment when I break a man's ego...People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years...Genius. It’s a word. What does it really mean? If I win I'm a genius. If I don't, I'm not...It’s just you and your opponent at the board and you're trying to prove something...You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances...That's what chess is all about. One day you give your opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one...I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it...You know, I can beat all those guys...There's no one alive I can't beat...When I was eleven, I just got good"(Bobby Fischer)

"The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black should play to win instead of just steering for equality...If you don't win, it’s not a great tragedy - the worst that happens is that you lose a game...Don't even mention losing to me. I can't stand to think of it...The Russians have fixed world chess...I'm not as soft or as generous a person as I would be if the world hadn't changed me...I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically...Tactics flow from a superior position...I wanted to give them something to think about when they prepare for me in future tournaments...It's just a matter of throwing in a few sacrifices, then checkmate!...Concentrate on material gains. Whatever your opponent gives you take, unless you see a good reason not to...My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don't take these things into consideration...As Olafsson showed me, White can win... It's hard to believe. I stayed up all night analyzing, finally convincing myself, and, incidentally, learning a lot about Rook and Pawn endings in the process...I don't like American girls. They're very conceited, you know. In Europe they're more pleasant...Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that...I don't keep any close friends. I don't keep any secrets. I don't need friends. I just tell everybody everything, that's all."(Bobby Fischer)

"Yeah, I used to dress badly until I was about sixteen. But people just didn't seem to have enough respect for me, you know And I didn't like that, so I decided I'd have to show them they weren't any better than me, you know? They were sort of priding themselves. They would say, 'He beat us at chess, but he's still just an uncouth kid.' So I decided to dress up...Well, I'm not sure I know what you mean by a prima donna, but if something doesn't interest me or if someone bores me, or if I think they're a phony, I just don't bother with them, that's all ...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. You don't want to go, you don't go, that's all. It's ridiculous. I don't remember one thing I learned in school. I don't listen to weakies. My two and a half years in Erasmus High I wasted. I didn't like the whole thing. You have to mix with all those stupid kids. The teachers are even stupider than the kids. They talk down to the kids. Half of them are crazy. If they'd have let me, I would have quit before I was sixteen...Lots of the time I'm traveling around. Europe, South America, Iceland. But when I'm home, I don't know, I don't do much. I get up at eleven o'clock maybe. I'll get dressed and all, look at some chess books, go downstairs and eat. I never cook my own meals. I don't believe in that stuff. I don't eat in luncheonettes or Automats either. I like a waiter to wait on me. Good restaurants. After I eat I usually call up some of my chess friends, go over and analyze a game or something. Maybe I'll go to a chess club. Then maybe I'll see a movie or something. There's really nothing for me to do. Maybe I'll study some chess book."(Bobby Fischer)

"My sister bought me a set at a candy store and taught me the moves...It's the fault of the chess players themselves. I don't know what they used to be, but now they're not the most gentlemanly group. When it was a game played by the aristocrats it had more like you know dignity to it. When they used to have the clubs, like no women were allowed and everybody went in dressed in a suit, a tie, like gentlemen, you know. Now, kids come running in their sneakers. Even in the best chess club-and they got women in there. It's a social place and people are making noise, it's a madhouse...All my games are real...They have nothing on me, those guys. They can't even touch me. Some people rate them better than me. That really bugs me. They think that no Americans play chess. When I meet those Russian Patzer I'll put them in their place...I'm not afraid of Spassky. The world knows I'm the best. You don't need a match to prove it...I haven't had any congratulations from Spassky yet. I think I'll send him a telegram. Congratulations on winning the right to meet me for the championship"(Bobby Fischer)

"First of all, I'll make a tour of the whole world, giving exhibitions. I'll charge unprecedented prices. I'll set new standards. I'll make them pay thousands. Then I'll come home on a luxury liner. First-class. I'll have a tuxedo made for me in England to wear to dinner. When I come home I'll write a couple chess books and start to reorganize the whole game. I'll have my own club. The Bobby Fischer ... uh, the Robert J. Fischer Chess Club. It'll be class. Tournaments in full dress. No bums in there. You're gonna have to be over eighteen to get in, unless like you have special permission because you have like special talent. It'll be in a part of the city that's still decent, like the Upper East Side. And I'll hold big international tournaments in my club with big cash prizes. And I'm going to kick all the millionaires out of chess unless they kick in more money. Then I'll buy a car so I don't have to take the subway any more. That subway makes me sick. It'll be a Mercedes-Benz. Better, a Rolls Royce, one of those fifty-thousand-dollar custom jobs, made to my own measure. Maybe I'll buy one of those jets they advertise for businessmen. And a yacht. Flynn had a yacht. Then I'll have some more suits made. I'd like to be one of the Ten Best-dressed Men. That would really be something. I read that Duke Snyder made the list. Then I'll build me a house. I don't know where but it won't be in Greenwich Village. They're all dirty, filthy animals down there - lower than cats and dogs. Maybe I'll build it in Hong Kong. Everybody who's been there says it's great. Art Linkletter said so on the radio. And they've got suits there, beauties, for only twenty dollars. Or maybe I'll build it in Beverly Hills. The people there are sort of square, but like the climate is nice and it's close to Vegas, Mexico, Hawaii, and those places. I got strong ideas about my house. I'm going to hire the best architect and have him build it in the shape of a rook. Yeah, that's for me. Class. Spiral staircases, parapets, everything. I want to live the rest of my life in a house built exactly like a rook"(Bobby Fischer)

"When I win, I'll put my title on the line every year, maybe even twice. I'll give players a chance to beat me...Well, you know, in America everybody is interested in making the dollar fast. In Yugoslavia no matter how much you hustle you're not going to get rich, so you might as well play chess...I object to being called a chess genius, because I consider myself to be an all around genius, who just happens to play chess, which is rather different. A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he is like an idiot savant, outside of chess he knows nothing ....Maybe I should publish the book. The world is coming to an end anyway"(Bobby Fischer)

"Most people are sheep, and they need the support of others...I had some personal problems, and I started listening to a lot of radio ministers. I listened every Sunday all day, flipping the dial up and back. So, I heard just about every guy on Sunday. And then I heard Mr. Armstrong, and I said, "Ah, God has finally shown me the one, I guess...Our mind is all we've got. Not that it won't lead us astray sometimes, but we still have to analyze things out within ourselves..." (Bobby Fischer)