Cold War Chess Champ Fischer Dies

Is he dead or has he simply moved to the other side of the xboard?

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Cold War Chess Champ Fischer Dies
Lionel Laurent, 01.18.08, 3:30 PM ET

LONDON -

Controversial American-born chess genius Bobby Fischer, who became United States champion at only age 14 and took the world title from Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky at 29, has died at the age of 64 in Iceland.

The cause of death was reportedly kidney failure, which Fischer had apparently been receiving treatment for in Iceland, his adopted home since 2005.

"I knew he had been slightly ill in hospital at Reykjavik," said renowned chess player and author Robert Wade, whose careful research on Soviet chess players helped Fischer prepare for the world championship title in 1972. "I also knew that he was leading a fairly lonely life in Iceland."

Fischer moved to the Scandinavian country in 2005 to escape deportation to the United States, following decades of antagonism with the American authorities. The rocky relationship came to a head when he was detained for eight months in 2004 in Japan, after allegedly using a revoked American passport. He subsequently renounced his U.S. citizenship, was granted an alien's passport by the Icelandic authorities and told reporters that President George Bush and Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi had "cooked up" the arrest.

According to Wade, now 86, Fischer's playing style was "hard-working" and "complex." He said that there had been nobody quite like him since, as chess playing had now become heavily involved in computer analysis. He added that out of three games he had played with the reclusive champion, Fischer had won the first and drawn the next two.

Fischer stunned the world when he became world champion in 1972, defeating the three times title-holder Boris Spassky and breaking the 24-year Soviet stranglehold on the game. Known as "the match of the century," the shock of an American upstart defeating the pride of the Soviet system captured the public's imagination at the height of the Cold War.

The U.S.S.R. ploughed resources, training and exacting standards into its players, and also produced the youngest-ever world champion: Mikhail Tal, who won the title in 1960 at age 23.

But even though the victory of an American player over Soviet dominance had symbolic value, Bobby Fischer's loyalty to his birthplace deteriorated over the years. In 1982 he wrote an account of his detainment in a Pasadena jail house after an apparent mix-up, comparing his treatment at the hands of the police to the torture of prisoners-of-war in North Korea.

His most famous act of political disobedience was his re-match with Boris Spassky in 1992, which was billed as "revenge match of the 20th century." The game took place in a resort off the coast of Montenegro, which incensed America at a time when civil war was raging in Bosnia. President George Bush had imposed strict sanctions on Yugoslavia, but Fischer openly spat on a government letter ordering him not to take part.

His final years only served to tarnish his reputation further, with reports of anti-Semitic diatribes and expressions of joy at the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Fischer was apparently of Jewish descent, but he would often speak of a Jewish-American conspiracy against him.

Wade repeatedly described Fischer as a "lonely" character. "I think he demanded being let alone," he said.