Bobby's Life

Bobby Fischer was born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois. His mother was Regina Wender, a naturalized American citizen of Polish Jewish background. His father was Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, of German descent. The couple divorced when Bobby was two years old and Regina largely raised Bobby by herself. Bobby learned to play chess when he was six years old in his Brooklyn apartment. A year later, he joined the Brooklyn Chess Club, soon moving onto the more prestigious Manhattan Chess Cub. John Collins would eventually become Bobby's official chess tutor and a father figure to Bobby. In 1959, Fischer dropped out of Erasmus Hall High School when he was 16 years old. He didn't believe school could provide him with any further education.

Bobby would move up the chess ladder very rapidly while he was extremely young. When he was only thirteen years old, he became the youngest-ever junior champion. In the same year, he would become a National Master. Just a year later, at the age of 14, Fischer would become the youngest ever US champion, winning the invitational US Chess Championship in New York. This record still stands to this day.

Remarkably, from the years of 1957 to 1966, Bobby Fischer would go on to win all eight U.S. Chess Championships in which he played. At his height, he was completely dominant on the American chess stage. During the 1963 U.S. Chess Championship, Fischer won with a perfect score of eleven victories in eleven games. This finish remains the only perfect score in this tournament's history, and one of only a few perfect scores among international elite chess tournaments. It wouldn't be long before Fischer would earn the grandmaster title at the age of 15. At the time, he was the youngest ever to become a grandmaster. Judit Polgar would break this record in 1991.

Despite his dominance within the American chess circuit, and strong showings internationally, Fischer wouldn't make a concerted effort to become World Champion until the 1972 cycle. With twenty consecutive wins against the world's top players, Fischer easily qualified to challenge the reigning world champion Boris Spassky. Going into the world championship match, Fischer had actually never beaten Spassky.

Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the 1972 world championship match between Fischer and Spassky became a media sensation. It was the largely self-taught American prodigy going up against the full might of the Soviet chess-training machine. The Soviets deeply wanted a Spassky victory to prove the superiority of their methodical state-subsidized chess training system. Historically dominant in the competition, the Soviets had possessed the World Chess Title the previous 24 years. In fact, an American had yet to claim the title of World Champion.

The match occurred in Reykjavik, Iceland. Fischer would lose the first two games of the match. The second one he lost by forfeit, refusing to play given certain playing conditions. Spassky then relented to Fischer's demands, playing the next game in a back room, away from the cameras. Winning seven of the next nineteen games, and drawing eleven, Fischer would go on to win the 1972 world championship match and become the first American World Chess Champion. This 1972 world championship was soon labeled "The Match of the Century" and would lead to a huge boon in chess popularity around the world. Fischer would return home to the United States a celebrity.

It remains perhaps one of the biggest tragedies to the game of chess that Fischer, arguably the greatest player ever, fell off the competitive chess scene at the peak of his career. He would forfeit his world championship title to Anatoly Karpov in 1975 when his strict demands weren't met by FIDE. Sadly, after his celebrated 1972 world championship victory, Fischer didn't play competitive chess publicly for almost two decades. The last time Fischer would publicly play competitive chess would be during a rematch against Spassky in 1992 - a match he won.

As a result of playing in this rematch in Yugoslavia, the United States issued an arrest warrant for him. Fischer was warned against playing in the match due to the United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia. Fischer would never return to the United States, as he would be a wanted criminal by the US government for the rest of his life. Living for a period of time in the Philippines and Japan, Fischer would eventually settle and live out his remaining years in Iceland. Fischer passed away on January 17, 2008 at the age of 64 of kidney failure.