Bobby Fischer Dead at 64 of Kidney Failure

How crazy do you have to be to play chess? Perhaps not that much, if at all. How crazy do you have to be to play chess at Bobby Fischer's level? Apparently, toys in the attic, totally gone fishing?

Boris Spassky wasn't crazy but he didn't play at Bobby's level in their first match in Iceland in 1972. Bobby Fischer was the first person outside of the Soviet Union to achieve the right to play for the World Chess Championship title since 1948 and he won the match amid much controversy.

Another Russian Gary Kasparov played beyond Bobby's level. He played IBM's chess playing computer Big Blue at one time and won. He is politically noteworthy like Bobby was and at least for now doesn't appear to have any mental instability, just constructive political agenda in a frightening time in Russian politics. So where is the line of chess brilliance and madness drawn or can it be or should it be drawn at all?

Our popular culture revels in a brilliant mind on the fringe, being all redeeming and ultimately pure in the face of a chaotic world. Either through sympathy for the Rain Man character or empathy for John Forbes Nash "A Beautiful Mind". A grossly distorted screenplay be dammed, these people are brilliant and their mental aberrations are, after all, ours. So there is no line drawn here, actually there is a conscious attempt to smudge it with our feet while no one is looking. Medical science dabbles with the same lack of commitment on these matters to avoid the possibility of differing with an esteemed colleague.

So you end up dealing with Bobby as an individual case, as you should, but that doesn't mean there aren't thousands more minds like his. They can look into an evolved chess board 20 moves deep and find a solution, but they can't fathom the reaction to their simple, cruel or an inappropriate statements just one reporter deep.

Perhaps Bobby was normal for a time. When a mind like his, that cannot tolerate a moment of down time, had the free world looking up to him as proof their way of life was more intellectual and free than the evil Russians, he had purpose outside the world of chess. With the end of the cold war, Bobby may have sprung a leak. Those of us watching agree he had his idiosyncrasies well in place before he and Spassky sat down for their first move. But these can easily attributed to good gamesmanship, the same psyching out process that pro teams use by listing a perfectly healthy player as only probable before the game.

By the time of their historic 1992 rematch in Yugoslavia however, Spassky had simply aged and Fischer had apparently lost his mind. During a press conference he spat on the U.S. Treasury Departments written warning that he would face severe penalties if he played the match in Yugoslavia. That along with his anti-Semitic ranting had shown that at the time, while his chess mind was still relatively intact the rest of it had started on a long voyage. It finally docked at fantasy island when he claimed that the U.S. government and the Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Just as it is foolish to assume that someone like George Clooney, because of his looks, endless self promotion and his agents hard work in getting him involved in every financially worthwhile movie or media event is adroit at politics, it was foolish for our culture to expect so much from Bobby like we did. The chess world mostly appreciated him for what we should have, his place in the chess world. The rest of us who followed him expected everything great and powerful from the champion of the free world, when all we should have expected was a continuation of great chess matches. This is what a younger healthier Fischer probably would have wanted and without the pressure would have planned for at least 20 moves ahead.