Network analysis can refer to:

Analysis of general networks: see Network theory.

Electrical network analysis see Network analysis (electronics).

Social network analysis.

Name	Garry Kasparov
Name	Garry Kasparov(Гарри Кимович Каспаров)
Country	Russia
Birth date	April 13, 1963
Birth place	Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster
Career	1976–2005
Worldchampion	1985–1993 (undisputed)1993–2000 (Classical)
Rating	2812
Peakrating	2851 (July 1999)

Garry Kimovich Kasparov (, ; born Garry Kimovich Weinstein, 13 April 1963, Baku, Azerbaijan) is a Russian (formerly Soviet) chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, and political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time.

Kasparov became the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at the age of 22. He held the official FIDE world title until 1993, when a dispute with FIDE led him to set up a rival organization, the Professional Chess Association. He continued to hold the "Classical" World Chess Championship until his defeat by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000. He is also widely known for being the first world chess champion to lose a match to a computer under standard time controls, when he lost to Deep Blue in 1997.

Kasparov's ratings achievements include being rated world #1 according to Elo rating almost continuously from 1986 until his retirement in 2005 and holding the all-time highest rating of 2851. He was the world number-one ranked player for 255 months, by far the most of all-time and nearly three times as long as his closest rival, Anatoly Karpov. He also holds records for consecutive tournament victories and Chess Oscars.

From 1984 to 1990, Kasparov was a member of the Central Committee of Komsomol and a CPSU member.

Kasparov announced his retirement from professional chess on 10 March 2005, to devote his time to politics and writing. He formed the United Civil Front movement, and joined as a member of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the administration of Vladimir Putin. He was a candidate for the 2008 Russian presidential race, but later withdrew. Widely regarded in the West as a symbol of opposition to Putin, Kasparov's support in Russia is low.

In 2007, he was ranked 25th in The Daily Telegraph's list of 100 greatest living geniuses.

He coached Magnus Carlsen from March 2009 through March 2010.

Early career

Garry Kasparov was born Garry Weinstein (Russian: Гарри Вайнштейн) in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Union; now Azerbaijan, to an Armenian mother and Jewish father. He first began the serious study of chess after he came across a chess problem set up by his parents and proposed a solution. His father died of leukemia when he was seven years old. At the age of twelve, he adopted his mother's Armenian surname, Gasparyan, modifying it to a more Russified version, Kasparov.

From age 7, Kasparov attended the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku and, at 10 began training at Mikhail Botvinnik's chess school under noted coach Vladimir Makogonov. Makogonov helped develop Kasparov's positional skills and taught him to play the Caro-Kann Defence and the Tartakower System of the Queen's Gambit Declined. Kasparov won the Soviet Junior Championship in Tbilisi in 1976, scoring 7 points of 9, at age 13. He repeated the feat the following year, winning with a score of 8½ of 9. He was being trained by Alexander Shakarov during this time.

In 1978, Kasparov participated in the Sokolsky Memorial tournament in Minsk. He had been invited as an exception but took first place and became a chess master. Kasparov has repeatedly said that this event was a turning point in his life, and that it convinced him to choose chess as his career. "I will remember the Sokolsky Memorial as long as I live," he wrote. He has also said that after the victory, he thought he had a very good shot at the World Championship.

He first qualified for the Soviet Chess Championship at age 15 in 1978, the youngest ever player at that level. He won the 64-player Swiss system tournament at Daugavpils over tiebreak from Igor V. Ivanov, to capture the sole qualifying place.

Kasparov rose quickly through the FIDE (World Chess Federation) rankings. Starting with an oversight by the Russian Chess Federation, he participated in a Grandmaster tournament in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina (then part of Yugoslavia), in 1979 while still unrated (He was a replacement for Viktor Korchnoi whom was originally invited but withdrew due to threat of boycott from the Soviet). He won this high-class tournament, emerging with a provisional rating of 2595, enough to catapult him to the top group of chess players (at the time, number 15 in the World). The next year, 1980, he won the World Junior Chess Championship in Dortmund, West Germany. Later that year, he made his debut as second reserve for the Soviet Union at the Chess Olympiad at La Valletta, Malta, and became a Grandmaster.

Toward the top

As a teenager, Kasparov twice tied for first place in the USSR Chess Championship, in 1980–81 and 1981–82. His first win in a superclass-level international tournament was scored at Bugojno, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1982. He earned a place in the 1982 Moscow Interzonal tournament, which he won, to qualify for the Candidates Tournament. At age 19, he was the youngest Candidate since Bobby Fischer, who was 15 when he qualified in 1958. At this stage, he was already the #2-rated player in the world, trailing only World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov on the January 1983 list.

Kasparov's first (quarter-final) Candidates match was against Alexander Beliavsky, whom he defeated 6–3 (four wins, one loss). Politics threatened Kasparov's semi-final against Viktor Korchnoi, which was scheduled to be played in Pasadena, California. Korchnoi had defected from the Soviet Union in 1976, and was at that time the strongest active non-Soviet player. Various political maneuvers prevented Kasparov from playing Korchnoi, and Kasparov forfeited the match. This was resolved by Korchnoi allowing the match to be replayed in London, along with the previously scheduled match between Vasily Smyslov and Zoltan Ribli. The Kasparov-Korchnoi match was put together on short notice by Raymond Keene. Kasparov lost the first game but won the match 7–4 (four wins, one loss).

In January 1984, Kasparov became the number-one ranked player in the world, with a FIDE rating of 2710. He became the youngest ever world number-one, a record that lasted 12 years until being broken by Vladimir Kramnik in January 1996; the record is currently held by his former pupil, Magnus Carlsen.

Later in 1984, he won the Candidates' final 8½–4½ (four wins, no losses) against the resurgent former world champion Vasily Smyslov, at Vilnius, thus qualifying to play Anatoly Karpov for the World Championship. That year he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as a member of which he was elected to the Central Committee of Komsomol in 1987.

1984 World Championship

The World Chess Championship 1984 match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov had many ups and downs, and a very controversial finish. Karpov started in very good form, and after nine games Kasparov was down 4–0 in a "first to six wins" match. Fellow players predicted he would be whitewashed 6–0 within 18 games.

In a strange period, there followed a series of 17 successive draws, some relatively short, and others drawn in unsettled positions. He lost game 27, then fought back with another series of draws until game 32, his first-ever win against the World Champion. Another 15 successive draws followed, through game 46; the previous record length for a world title match had been 34 games, the match of Jose Raul Capablanca vs. Alexander Alekhine in 1927.

Kasparov won games 47 and 48 to bring the scores to 5–3 in Karpov's favour. Then the match was ended without result by Florencio Campomanes, the President of Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), and a new match was announced to start a few months later. The termination was controversial, as both players stated that they preferred the match to continue. Announcing his decision at a press conference, Campomanes cited the health of the players, which had been strained by the length of the match.

The match became the first, and so far only, world championship match to be abandoned without result. Kasparov's relations with Campomanes and FIDE were greatly strained, and the feud between them eventually came to a head in 1993 with Kasparov's complete break-away from FIDE.

World Champion

The second Karpov-Kasparov match in 1985 was organized in Moscow as the best of 24 games where the first player to win 12½ points would claim the World Champion title. The scores from the terminated match would not carry over. But in the event of a 12–12 draw, the title would remain with Karpov. On 9 November 1985, Kasparov secured the title by a score of 13–11, winning the 24th game with Black, using a Sicilian defence. He was 22 years old at the time, making him the youngest ever World Champion, and breaking the record held by Mikhail Tal for over 20 years. Kasparov's win as Black in the 16th game has been recognized as one of the all-time masterpieces in chess history.

As part of the arrangements following the aborted 1984 match, Karpov had been granted (in the event of his defeat) a right to rematch. Another match took place in 1986, hosted jointly in London and Leningrad, with each city hosting 12 games. At one point in the match, Kasparov opened a three-point lead and looked well on his way to a decisive match victory. But Karpov fought back by winning three consecutive games to level the score late in the match. At this point, Kasparov dismissed one of his seconds, Grandmaster Evgeny Vladimirov, accusing him of selling his opening preparation to the Karpov team (as described in Kasparov's autobiography Unlimited Challenge, chapter Stab in the Back). Kasparov scored one more win and kept his title by a final score of 12½–11½.

A fourth match for the world title took place in 1987 in Seville, as Karpov had qualified through the Candidates' Matches to again become the official challenger. This match was very close, with neither player holding more than a one-point lead at any time during the contest. Kasparov was down one full point at the time of the final game, and needed a win to draw the match and retain his title. A long tense game ensued in which Karpov blundered away a pawn just before the first time control, and Kasparov eventually won a long ending. Kasparov retained his title as the match was drawn by a score of 12–12. (All this meant that Kasparov had played Karpov four times in the period 1984–1987, a statistic unprecedented in chess. Matches organised by FIDE had taken place every three years since 1948, and only Botvinnik had a right to a rematch before Karpov.)

A fifth match between Kasparov and Karpov was held in New York and Lyon in 1990, with each city hosting 12 games. Again, the result was a close one with Kasparov winning by a margin of 12½–11½. In their five world championship matches, Kasparov had 21 wins, 19 losses, and 104 draws in 144 games.

Break with and ejection from FIDE

in a publicity photo on top of the World Trade Center in New York.]] With the World Champion title in hand, Kasparov began fighting against FIDE—as Bobby Fischer had done 20 years earlier but this time from within FIDE. Beginning in 1986, he created the Grandmasters Association (GMA), an organization to represent professional chess players and give them more say in FIDE's activities. Kasparov assumed a leadership role. GMA's major achievement was in organizing a series of six World Cup tournaments for the world's top players. A somewhat uneasy relationship developed with FIDE, and a sort of truce was brokered by Bessel Kok, a Dutch businessman.

This stand-off lasted until 1993, by which time a new challenger had qualified through the Candidates cycle for Kasparov's next World Championship defense: Nigel Short, a British Grandmaster who had defeated Anatoly Karpov in a qualifying match, and then Jan Timman in the finals held in early 1993. After a confusing and compressed bidding process produced lower financial estimates than expected, the world champion and his challenger decided to play outside FIDE's jurisdiction, under another organization created by Kasparov called the Professional Chess Association (PCA). This is where a great fracture in the lineage of World Champions began.

In an interview in 2007, Kasparov would call the break with FIDE the worst mistake of his career, as it hurt the game in the long run.

Kasparov and Short were ejected from FIDE, and played their well-sponsored match in London. Kasparov won convincingly by a score of 12½–7½. The match considerably raised the profile of chess in the UK, with an unprecedented level of coverage on Channel 4. Meanwhile, FIDE organized a World Championship match between Jan Timman (the defeated Candidates finalist) and former World Champion Karpov (a defeated Candidates semifinalist), which Karpov won.

There were now two World Champions: PCA champion Kasparov, and FIDE champion Karpov. The title would remain split for 13 years.

Kasparov defended his title in a 1995 match against Viswanathan Anand at the World Trade Center in New York City. Kasparov won the match by four wins to one, with thirteen draws. It was the last World Championship to be held under the auspices of the PCA, which collapsed when Intel, one of its major backers, withdrew its sponsorship in retaliation for Kasparov's choice to play a 1996 match against Deep Blue, which augmented the profile of IBM, one of Intel's chief rivals.

Kasparov tried to organize another World Championship match, under another organization, the World Chess Association (WCA) with Linares organizer Luis Rentero. Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik played a candidates match to decide the challenger, which Shirov won in a surprising upset. But when Rentero admitted that the funds required and promised had never materialized, the WCA collapsed.

This left Kasparov stranded, and yet another organization stepped in—BrainGames.com, headed by Raymond Keene. No match against Shirov was arranged, and talks with Anand collapsed, so a match was instead arranged against Kramnik.

During this period, Kasparov was approached by Oakham School in the United Kingdom, at the time the only school in the country with a full-time chess coach, and developed an interest in the use of chess in education. In 1997, Kasparov supported a scholarship programme at the school.

Losing the title and aftermath

in the Botvinnik Memorial match in Moscow, 2001.]] The Kasparov-Kramnik match took place in London during the latter half of 2000. Kramnik had been a student of Kasparov's at the legendary Botvinnik/Kasparov chess school in Russia, and had served on Kasparov's team for the 1995 match against Viswanathan Anand.

The better-prepared Kramnik won Game 2 against Kasparov's Grünfeld Defence and achieved winning positions in Games 4 and 6. Kasparov made a critical error in Game 10 with the Nimzo-Indian Defence, which Kramnik exploited to win in 25 moves. As White, Kasparov could not crack the passive but solid Berlin Defence in the Ruy Lopez, and Kramnik successfully drew all his games as Black. Kramnik won the match 8½–6½, and for the first time in 15 years Kasparov had no world championship title. He became the first player to lose a world championship match without winning a game since Emanuel Lasker lost to Capablanca in 1921.

After losing the title, Kasparov won a series of major tournaments, and remained the top rated player in the world, ahead of both Kramnik and the FIDE World Champions. In 2001 he refused an invitation to the 2002 Dortmund Candidates Tournament for the Classical title, claiming his results had earned him a rematch with Kramnik.

Kasparov and Karpov played a four game match with rapid time controls over two days in December 2002 in New York City. Karpov surprised the experts and emerged victoriously, winning two games and drawing one.

Due to Kasparov's continuing strong results, and status as world #1 in much of the public eye, he was included in the so-called "Prague Agreement", masterminded by Yasser Seirawan and intended to reunite the two World Championships. Kasparov was to play a match against the FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov in September 2003. But this match was called off after Ponomariov refused to sign his contract for it without reservation. In its place, there were plans for a match against Rustam Kasimdzhanov, winner of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004, to be held in January 2005 in the United Arab Emirates. These also fell through due to lack of funding. Plans to hold the match in Turkey instead came too late. Kasparov announced in January 2005 that he was tired of waiting for FIDE to organize a match and so had decided to stop all efforts to regain the World Championship title.

Retirement from chess

After winning the prestigious Linares tournament for the ninth time, Kasparov announced on 10 March 2005, that he would retire from serious competitive chess. He cited as the reason a lack of personal goals in the chess world (he commented when winning the Russian championship in 2004 that it had been the last major title he had never won outright) and expressed frustration at the failure to reunify the world championship.

Kasparov said he may play in some rapid chess events for fun, but intends to spend more time on his books, including both the My Great Predecessors series (see below) and a work on the links between decision-making in chess and in other areas of life, and will continue to involve himself in Russian politics, which he views as "headed down the wrong path."

Kasparov has been married three times: to Masha, with whom he had a daughter before divorcing; to Yulia, with whom he had a son before their 2005 divorce; and to Daria, with whom he also has a child.

Post-retirement chess

On 22 August 2006, in his first public chess games since his retirement, Kasparov played in the Lichthof Chess Champions Tournament, a blitz event played at the time control of 5 minutes per side and 3 second increments per move. Kasparov tied for first with Anatoly Karpov, scoring 4½/6.

Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov played a 12-game match from 21–24 September 2009, in Valencia, Spain. It consisted of four rapid (or semi rapid) games, in which Kasparov won 3–1 and eight blitz games, in which Kasparov also won 6–2, winning the match with total result 9–3. The event took place exactly 25 years after the two players' legendary encounter at World Chess Championship 1984.

Kasparov has been coaching Magnus Carlsen since March 2009, in secret until September 2009. Under Kasparov's tutelage, Carlsen in October 2009 became the youngest ever to achieve a FIDE rating higher than 2800, and has risen from world number four to world number one; their arrangement will have Kasparov remain as coach at least through 2010. although this was put into different context by Carlsen himself in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel stating that they would remain in contact and that he would continue to attend training sessions with Kasparov.

In May 2010 it was revealed that Kasparov had aided Viswanathan Anand in preparation for the World Chess Championship 2010 against challenger Veselin Topalov. Anand won the match 6½–5½ to retain the title.

Also in May 2010 he played 30 games simultaneously, winning each one, against players at Tel-Aviv University in Israel.

Politics

Kasparov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1984 and in 1987 was elected to the Central Committee of Komsomol. But in 1990 he left the party and in May took part in the creation of the Democratic Party of Russia. In 1991, Kasparov received the Keeper of the Flame award from the Center for Security Policy (a US think tank) for his contributions "to the defence of the United States and American values around the world". Kasparov was in June 1993 involved with the creation of the "Choice of Russia" bloc of parties and in 1996 took part in the election campaign of Boris Yeltsin. In 2001 he voiced his support for the Russian television channel NTV. that Kasparov was a board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security Policy, He has vowed to "restore democracy" to Russia by toppling the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, of whom he is an outspoken critic.

Kasparov was instrumental in setting up The Other Russia, a coalition which opposes Putin's government. The Other Russia has been boycotted by the leaders of Russia's mainstream opposition parties, Yabloko and Union of Right Forces as they are concerned about its inclusion of radical nationalist and left-wing groups such as the National Bolshevik Party and former members of the Rodina party including Viktor Gerashchenko, a potential presidential candidate. But regional branches of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces have opted to take part in the coalition. Kasparov says that leaders of these parties are controlled by the Kremlin, despite the fact they are both strongly opposed to the president's policies.

On 10 April 2005, Kasparov was in Moscow at a promotional event when he was struck over the head with a chessboard he had just signed. The assailant was reported to have said "I admired you as a chess player, but you gave that up for politics" immediately before the attack. Kasparov has been the subject of a number of other episodes since.

in Saint Petersburg on 9 June 2007.]] Kasparov helped organize the Saint Petersburg Dissenters' March on 3 March 2007 and The March of the Dissenters on 24 March 2007, both involving several thousand people rallying against Putin and Saint Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko's policies. On 14 April, he was briefly arrested by the Moscow police while heading for a demonstration, following warnings by the prosecution office on the eve of the march, stating that anyone participating risked being detained. He was held for some 10 hours and then fined and released.

He was summoned by FSB for questioning, allegedly for violations of Russian anti-extremism laws. This law was previously applied for the conviction of Boris Stomakhin.

Speaking about Kasparov, former KGB general Oleg Kalugin in 2007 remarked: "I do not talk in details—people who knew them are all dead now because they were vocal, they were open. I am quiet. There is only one man who is vocal and he may be in trouble: [former] world chess champion [Garry] Kasparov. He has been very outspoken in his attacks on Putin and I believe that he is probably next on the list."

On 30 September 2007, Kasparov entered the Russian Presidential race, receiving 379 of 498 votes at a congress held in Moscow by The Other Russia.

In October 2007, Kasparov announced his intention of standing for the Russian presidency as the candidate of the "Other Russia" coalition and vowed to fight for a "democratic and just Russia". Later that month he traveled to the United States, where he appeared on several popular television programs, which were hosted by Stephen Colbert, Wolf Blitzer, Bill Maher, and Chris Matthews.

On 24 November 2007, Kasparov and other protesters were detained by police at an Other Russia rally in Moscow. This followed an attempt by about 100 protesters to break through police lines and march on the electoral commission, which had barred Other Russia candidates from parliamentary elections. He was subsequently charged with resisting arrest and organising an unauthorized protest and given a jail sentence of five days. He was released from jail on 29 November. Putin spoke briefly about the incident in an interview with Time Magazine later that year, saying: "Why did Mr. Kasparov, when arrested, speak out in English rather than Russian? When a politician works the crowd of other nations rather than the Russian nation, it tells you something."

On 12 December 2007, Kasparov announced that he had to withdraw his presidential candidacy due to inability to rent a meeting hall where at least 500 of his supporters could assemble to endorse his candidacy, as is legally required. With the deadline expiring on that date, he explained it was impossible for him to run. Kasparov's spokeswoman accused the government of using pressure to deter anyone from renting a hall for the gathering and said that the electoral commission had rejected a proposal that separate smaller gatherings be held at the same time instead of one large gathering at a meeting hall.

Kasparov is among the 34 first signatories and a key organiser of the online anti-Putin campaign "Putin must go", started on 10 March 2010.

Chess ratings achievements

Kasparov holds the record for the longest time as the #1 rated player.

Kasparov had the highest Elo rating in the world continuously from 1986 to 2005. However, Vladimir Kramnik did equal him in the January 1996 FIDE ratings list. He was also briefly ejected from the list following his split from FIDE in 1993, but during that time he headed the rating list of the rival PCA. At the time of his retirement, he was still ranked #1 in the world, with a rating of 2812. His rating has fallen inactive since the January 2006 rating list. In January 1990 Kasparov achieved the (then) highest FIDE rating ever, passing 2800 and breaking Bobby Fischer's old record of 2785. He has held the record for the highest rating ever achieved, ever since (as of 2010). On the July 1999 and January 2000 FIDE rating lists Kasparov reached a 2851 Elo rating, the highest rating ever achieved.

There was a time in the early 90s when Kasparov was over 2800 and the only person in the 2700s was Anatoly Karpov.

According to the unofficial Chessmetrics calculations, Kasparov was the highest rated player in the world continuously from February 1985 until October 2004. He also holds the highest all-time average rating over a 2 (2877) to 20 (2856) year period and is second to only Bobby Fischer's (2881 vs 2879) over a one-year period.

Olympiads and other major team events

Kasparov played in a total of eight Chess Olympiads. He represented the Soviet Union four times and Russia four times, following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In his 1980 Olympiad debut, he became, at age 17, the youngest player to represent the Soviet Union or Russia at that level, a record which was broken by Vladimir Kramnik in 1992. In 82 games, he has scored (+50 =29 -3), for 78.7% and won a total of 19 medals, including team gold medals all eight times he competed. For the 1994 Moscow Olympiad, he had a significant organizational role, in helping to put together the event on short notice, after Thessaloniki canceled its offer to host, a few weeks before the scheduled dates. Kasparov's detailed Olympiad record, from, follows.

Valletta 1980, USSR 2nd reserve, 9½/12 (+8 =3 -1), team gold, board bronze;

Lucerne 1982, USSR 2nd board, 8½/11 (+6 =5 -0), team gold, board bronze;

Dubai 1986, USSR 1st board, 8½/11 (+7 =3 -1), team gold, board gold, performance gold;

Thessaloniki 1988, USSR 1st board, 8½/10 (+7 =3 -0), team gold, board gold, performance gold;

Manila 1992, Russia board 1, 8½/10 (+7 =3 -0), team gold, board gold, performance silver;

Moscow 1994, Russia board 1, 6½/10 (+4 =5 -1), team gold;

Yerevan 1996, Russia board 1, 7/9 (+5 =4 -0), team gold, board gold, performance silver;

Bled 2002, Russia board 1, 7½/9 (+6 =3 -0), team gold, board gold.

Kasparov made his international teams debut for the USSR at age 16 in the 1980 European Team Championship and played for Russia in the 1992 edition of that championship. He won a total of five medals. His detailed Euroteams record, from, follows.

Skara 1980, USSR 2nd reserve, 5½/6 (+5 =1 -0), team gold, board gold;

Debrecen 1992, Russia board 1, 6/8 (+4 =4 -0), team gold, board gold, performance silver.

Kasparov also represented the USSR once in Youth Olympiad competition, but the detailed data is incomplete at http://www.olimpbase.org/1981k/1981in.html; the site http://www.chessmetrics.com, the Garry Kasparov player file, has his individual score from that event.

Graz 1981, USSR board 1, 9/10 (+8 =2 -0), team gold.

Other records

Kasparov holds the record for most consecutive professional tournament victories, placing first or equal first in 15 individual tournaments from 1981 to 1990. The streak was broken by Vasily Ivanchuk at Linares 1991, where Kasparov placed 2nd, half a point behind him. The details of this record winning streak follow: autobiography when still in his early 20s, originally titled Child of Change, later retitled Unlimited Challenge. This book was subsequently updated several times after he became World Champion. Its content is mainly literary, with a small chess component of key unannotated games. He published an annotated games collection in 1985: Fighting Chess: My Games and Career and this book has also been updated several times in further editions. He also wrote a book annotating the games from his World Chess Championship 1985 victory, World Chess Championship Match: Moscow, 1985.

He has annotated his own games extensively for the Yugoslav Chess Informant series and for other chess publications. In 1982, he co-authored Batsford Chess Openings with British Grandmaster Raymond Keene and this book was an enormous seller. It was updated into a second edition in 1989. He also co-authored two opening books with his trainer Alexander Nikitin in the 1980s for British publisher Batsford—on the Classical Variation of the Caro-Kann Defence and on the Scheveningen Variation of the Sicilian Defence. Kasparov has also contributed extensively to the five-volume openings series Encyclopedia of Chess Openings.

In 2000, Kasparov co-authored Kasparov Against the World: The Story of the Greatest Online Challenge with grandmaster Daniel King. The 202-page book analyzes the 1999 Kasparov versus the World game, and holds the record for the longest analysis devoted to a single chess game.

My Great Predecessors series

In 2003, the first volume of his five-volume work Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors was published. This volume, which deals with the world chess champions Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, and some of their strong contemporaries, has received lavish praise from some reviewers (including Nigel Short), while attracting criticism from others for historical inaccuracies and analysis of games directly copied from unattributed sources. Through suggestions on the book's website, most of these shortcomings were corrected in following editions and translations. Despite this, the first volume won the British Chess Federation's Book of the Year award in 2003. Volume two, covering Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov and Mikhail Tal appeared later in 2003. Volume three, covering Tigran Petrosian and Boris Spassky appeared in early 2004. In December 2004, Kasparov released volume four, which covers Samuel Reshevsky, Miguel Najdorf, and Bent Larsen (none of these three were World Champions), but focuses primarily on Bobby Fischer. The fifth volume, devoted to the chess careers of World Champion Anatoly Karpov and challenger Viktor Korchnoi, was published in March 2006.

Modern Chess series

His book Revolution in the 70s (published in March 2007) covers "the openings revolution of the 1970s–1980s" and is the first book in a new series called "Modern Chess Series", which intends to cover his matches with Karpov and selected games. The book "Revolution in the 70s" concerns the revolution in opening theory that was witnessed in that decade. Such systems as the controversial (at the time) "Hedgehog" opening plan of passively developing the pieces no further than the first three ranks are examined in great detail. Kasparov also analyzes some of the most notable games played in that period. In a section at the end of the book, top opening theoreticians provide their own "take" on the progress made in opening theory in the 1980s.

Other post-retirement writing

In 2007 he wrote How Life Imitates Chess, an examination of the parallels between decision-making in chess and in the business world.

In 2008 Kasparov published a sympathetic obituary for Bobby Fischer, writing "I am often asked if I ever met or played Bobby Fischer. The answer is no, I never had that opportunity. But even though he saw me as a member of the evil chess establishment that he felt had robbed and cheated him, I am sorry I never had a chance to thank him personally for what he did for our sport."

More recently, Kasparov has criticized Fischer in a lengthy book review of a Fischer biography.

He is the chief advisor for the book publisher Everyman Chess.

Kasparov works closely with Mig Greengard and his comments can often be found on Greengard's blog.

Kasparov is currently collaborating with Max Levchin and Peter Thiel on The Blueprint, a book calling for a revival of world innovation, due out in February 2012 from W. W. Norton & Company.

Chess against computers

Deep Thought, 1989

Kasparov defeated the chess computer Deep Thought in both games of a two-game match in 1989.

Deep Blue, 1996

In February 1996, IBM's chess computer Deep Blue defeated Kasparov in one game using normal time controls, in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1. However, Kasparov was still able to gain three wins and two draws and win the match.

Deep Blue, 1997

In May 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3½–2½ in a highly publicised six-game match. The match was even after five games but Kasparov was crushed in Game 6. This was the first time a computer had ever defeated a world champion in match play. A documentary film was made about this famous match-up entitled .

Kasparov claimed that several factors weighed against him in this match. In particular, he was denied access to Deep Blue's recent games, in contrast to the computer's team that could study hundreds of Kasparov's.

After the loss Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine's moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players, in contravention of the rules, intervened. IBM denied that it cheated, saying the only human intervention occurred between games. The rules provided for the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in the computer's play revealed during the course of the match. Kasparov requested printouts of the machine's log files but IBM refused, although the company later published the logs on the Internet. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM declined and retired Deep Blue, which has been viewed by Kasparov as covering up evidence of tampering during the game.

Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue inspired the creation of a new game called Arimaa.

Deep Junior, 2003

.]] In January 2003, he engaged in a six game classical time control match with a $1 million prize fund which was billed as the FIDE "Man vs. Machine" World Championship, against Deep Junior. The engine evaluated three million positions per second. After one win each and three draws, it was all up to the final game. After reaching a decent position Kasparov offered a draw, which was soon accepted by the Deep Junior team. Asked why he offered the draw, Kasparov said he feared making a blunder. Originally planned as an annual event, the match was not repeated.

X3D Fritz, 2003

In November 2003, he engaged in a four-game match against the computer program X3D Fritz, using a virtual board, 3D glasses and a speech recognition system. After two draws and one win apiece, the X3D Man-Machine match ended in a draw. Kasparov received $175,000 for the result and took home the golden trophy. Kasparov continued to criticize the blunder in the second game that cost him a crucial point. He felt that he had outplayed the machine overall and played well. "I only made one mistake but unfortunately that one mistake lost the game."

Notable chess games

Garry Kasparov vs Lajos Portisch, Niksic 1983 · Queen's Indian Defense: Kasparov-Petrosian Variation. Petrosian Attack (E12),1-0 Beast from Baku hunting his prey.

Anatoli Karpov vs Garry Kasparov, Karpov-Kasparov World Championship Match 1985·Sicilian Defense: Paulsen Variation. Gary Gambit (B44), 0-1 An extremely brilliant and creative masterpiece from Kasparov dubbed as "The Brisbane Bombshell".

Garry Kasparov vs Vladimir Kramnik, It (cat.19) 1994 · Sicilian Defense: Lasker-Pelikan. Sveshnikov Variation Chelyabinsk Variation (B33), 1-0 A gladiator ride from Kasparov.

Garry Kasparov vs Viswanathan Anand,Kasparov-Anand World Championship Match 1995 · Spanish Game: Open Variations. Karpov Gambit (C80),1-0 A world champion to future champion a drop of Garry Kasparov toxine.

Garry Kasparov vs Veselin Topalov, It (cat.17), Wijk aan Zee (Netherlands) 1999 · Pirc Defense: General (B06),1-0 One of the most famous games of Kasparov's account. Widely known as "Kasparov's Immortal". According to sources this is the most memorable game to Kasparov.

Garry Kasparov vs X3D Fritz (Computer), Man-Machine World Chess Championship 2003 · Semi-Slav Defense: Accelerated Meran Variation (D45),1-0 Taming the silicon beast. Highlighted game from Man Vs Machine contest.

Other

Welsh actor Michael Sheen portrays Kasparov in the music video for the Manic Street Preachers single "(It's Not War) Just the End of Love".

Kasparov has been credited with the invention of Advanced Chess in 1998, a new form of chess in which a human and a computer play together.

Kasparov has two European patent applications: EP1112765A4: METHOD FOR PLAYING A LOTTERY GAME AND SYSTEM FOR REALISING THE SAME from 1998, and EP0871132A1: METHOD OF PLAYING A LOTTERY GAME AND SUITABLE SYSTEM from 1995.

Kasparov is reported to be a supporter of Anatoly Fomenko's New Chronology.

Kasparov gets co-credit for game design of Kasparov Chessmate, a computer chess program.

Kasparov is a member of the International Council of the New York–based Human Rights Foundation.

Kasparov won the Marca Leyenda trophy in 1997.

Kasparov won the charity TV show "Who Wants 20 000" the Georgian analogue of the show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" in February 2011, beating all fifteen questions.

Books

The Test of Time (Russian Chess), (1986, Pergamon Pr)

World Chess Championship Match: Moscow, 1985 (1986, Everyman Chess)

Child of Change: An Autobiography (1987, Hutchinson)

London-Leningrad Championship Games (1987, Everyman Chess)

Unlimited Challenge (1990, Grove Pr)

The Sicilian Scheveningen (1991, B.T. Batsford Ltd)

The Queen's Indian Defence: Kasparov System (1991, B.T. Batsford Ltd)

Kasparov Versus Karpov, 1990 (1991, Everyman Chess)

Kasparov on the King's Indian (1993, B.T. Batsford Ltd)

Garry Kasparov's Chess Challenge (1996, Everyman Chess)

Lessons in Chess (1997, Everyman Chess)

Kasparov Against the World: The Story of the Greatest Online Challenge (2000, KasparovChess Online)

My Great Predecessors Part I (2003, Everyman Chess)

My Great Predecessors Part II (2003, Everyman Chess)

Checkmate!: My First Chess Book (2004, Everyman Mindsports)

My Great Predecessors Part III (2004, Everyman Chess)

My Great Predecessors Part IV (2004, Everyman Chess)

My Great Predecessors Part V (2006, Everyman Chess)

How Life Imitates Chess, (2007, William Heinemann Ltd)

Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess, Part 1: Revolution in the 70s, (2007, Everyman Chess)

Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess, Part 2: Kasparov vs Karpov 1975–1985, (2008, Everyman Chess)

Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess, Part 3: Kasparov vs Karpov 1986–1987, (2009, Everyman Chess)

Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess, Part 4: Kasparov vs Karpov 1988–2009, (2010, Everyman Chess)

See also

Kasparov versus the World

List of people who have beaten Garry Kasparov in chess

List of chess games between Kasparov and Kramnik

Committee 2008

Notes

Further reading

External links

Grandmaster Games Database – Garry Kasparov

The Other Russia, Civic Coalition for Democracy – Official site

Другая Россия – Official site Сайт «Марш несогласных» – March of the Discontented Итоговое заявление участников конференции «Другая Россия» Concluding statement by the participants, www.kasparov.ru

United Civil Front, a civic political movement to ensure Democracy in the Russian Federation, initiated by Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov, "Man of the Year?", OpinionJournal, 23 December 2007

Edward Winter, List of Books About Fischer and Kasparov

Garry Kasparov's LiveJournal

The Chess Master and the Computer article by Kasparov from The New York Review of Books

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:World chess champions Category:World Junior Chess Champions Category:Chess grandmasters Category:Armenian chess players Category:Russian chess players Category:Soviet chess players Category:Russian Armenians Category:Azerbaijani Armenians Category:Russian people of Jewish descent Category:Russian politicians Category:Athlete-politicians Category:Soviet chess writers Category:Russian chess writers Category:People from Baku Category:Chess coaches Category:Chess Olympiad competitors

Donald Byrne (June 12, 1930–April 8, 1976) was one of the USA's strongest chess players during the 1950s and 1960s.

Born in New York City, he won the U.S. Open Chess Championship in 1953, was awarded the International Master title by FIDE (English: World Chess Federation) in 1962, and played for or captained five U.S. Chess Olympiad teams between 1962 and 1972. His older brother, International Grandmaster Robert Byrne, was also a leading player of that time.

Byrne lost to a 13-year-old Bobby Fischer in the Game of the Century in 1956.

Byrne was a professor of English. He taught at Penn State University from 1961 until his death, having been invited there to teach and to coach the varsity chess team.

Byrne died in Philadelphia of complications arising from lupus. He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2002.

In the following game, Byrne beats perennial world championship contender Efim Geller:

Geller-D. Byrne, Moscow 1955 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 Nc6 8.Qd2 O-O 9.O-O-O Be6 10.Kb1 Rc8 11.g4 Qa5 12.Nxe6 fxe6 13.Bc4 Nd8 14.Be2 Nd7 15.Bd4 Ne5 16.f4 Ndc6 17.Bxe5 dxe5 18.f5 Nd4 19.fxg6 hxg6 20.Rhf1 Rf4 21.g5 b5 22.Bd3 Rcf8 23.Qg2 b4 24.Ne2 Qc5 25.Qh3 Rf3 26.Rxf3 Rxf3 27.Qg4 Rxd3 28.Rc1 Rd1 29.c3 Rxc1+ 30.Kxc1 Nxe2+ 31.Qxe2 bxc3 32.Qg2 cxb2 33.Kxb2 Qb4+ 34.Kc2 a5 35.Qg4 Qc5+ 36.Kb3 Qb6+ 37.Kc3 a4 38.h4 Qd4+ 39.Kc2 Qf2+ 40.Kd3 Qxa2 41.h5 Qb3+ 42.Kd2 gxh5 0-1.

External links

"Former chess coach named to Hall of Fame" - remembrance in a Penn State publication

Inductee Biography - at the Chess Hall of Fame

Statistics at ChessWorld.net

Category:1930 births Category:1976 deaths Category:American chess players Category:Chess Olympiad competitors Category:Pennsylvania State University faculty Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Deaths from lupus

Name	Bobby Fischer
Caption
Birthname	Robert James Fischer
Country	United StatesIceland
Birth date	March 09, 1943
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Death date	January 17, 2008
Death place	Reykjavík, Iceland
Title	Grandmaster
Worldchampion	1972–1975
Peakrating	2785 (July 1972)

Robert James "Bobby" Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess player and the eleventh World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author. After ending his competitive career, he proposed a new variant of chess and a modified chess timing system. Both ideas have received some support in recent years.

Widely considered a "chess legend", at age 13 Fischer won a “brilliancy” that became known as The Game of the Century. Starting at age 14, he played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a point. At 15½, he became both the youngest grandmaster and the youngest Candidate for the World Championship up until that time. He won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship 11–0, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. In the early 1970s he became the most dominant player in modern history – winning the 1970 Interzonal by a record 3½-point margin and winning 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps in the Candidates Matches. According to research by Jeff Sonas, in 1971 Fischer had separated himself from the rest of the world by a larger margin of playing skill than any player since the 1870s. He became the first official World Chess Federation (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) (FIDE) number one rated chess player in July 1971, and his 54 total months at number one is the third longest of all time.

In 1972, he captured the World Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland that was widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation. The match attracted more worldwide interest than any chess match before or since. In 1975, Fischer declined to defend his title when he could not come to agreement with FIDE over the conditions for the match. He became more reclusive and did not play competitive chess again until 1992, when he won an unofficial rematch against Spassky. This competition was held in Yugoslavia, which was then under a United Nations embargo. This led to a conflict with the U.S. government, and Fischer never returned to his native country.

In his later years, Fischer lived in Hungary, Germany, the Philippines, Japan, and Iceland. During this time he made increasingly anti-American and antisemitic statements, despite his Jewish ancestry. After his U.S. passport was revoked over the Yugoslavia sanctions issue, he was detained by Japanese authorities for nine months in 2004 and 2005 under threat of deportation. In February 2005, Iceland granted him right of residence as a "stateless" alien and issued him a passport. When Japan refused to release him to Iceland on that basis, Iceland's parliament voted in March 2005 to give him full citizenship. The Japanese authorities then released him to that country, where he lived until his death in 2008.

Early years

Bobby Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on March 9, 1943. His birth certificate listed his father as Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist. His mother, Regina Wender Fischer, was an American citizen of Polish Jewish descent, born in Switzerland and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. The couple married in 1933 in Moscow, USSR, where Regina was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute. They 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 she worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse.

A 2002 article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer argued that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish physicist, was Fischer's biological father. The article quoted an FBI report which stated that Regina Fischer returned to the United States in 1939, while Hans-Gerhardt Fischer never entered the United States, having been refused admission by U.S. immigration officials because of alleged Communist sympathies. Regina and Nemenyi were reported to have had an affair in 1942, and he made monthly child support payments to her, paying for Fischer's schooling until his own death in 1952. Fischer later told the Hungarian chess player Zita Rajcsanyi that Nemenyi would sometimes show up at the family's Brooklyn apartment and take him on outings.

In May 1949, the six-year-old Fischer and his sister learned how to play chess using the instructions from a chess set bought at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment. When the family vacationed at Patchogue, Long Island that summer, Bobby found a book of old chess games, and studied it intensely. On November 14, 1950, his mother sent a postcard to the Brooklyn Eagle, seeking to place an ad inquiring whether other children of Bobby's age might be interested in playing him. The paper rejected her ad because no one could figure out how to classify it, but forwarded her inquiry to Hermann Helms, the "Dean of American Chess", who told her that master Max Pavey would be giving a simultaneous exhibition on January 17, 1951. Fischer played in the exhibition, losing in 15 minutes. One of the spectators was Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn Chess Club, who introduced him to the club and began teaching him. Fischer attended the club regularly, intensified his interest, and gained playing strength rapidly. In the summer of 1955, the then 12-year-old Fischer joined the Manhattan Chess Club, the strongest in the country.

during the Eisenhower Administration Future grandmaster Arnold Denker was also a mentor to young Bobby, often taking him to watch the New York Rangers play hockey at Madison Square Garden. Denker wrote that Bobby enjoyed those treats and never forgot them; the two became lifelong friends.

Fischer was also involved with the Log Cabin Chess Club of Orange, New Jersey, which in March 1956 took him on a tour to Cuba, where he gave a 12-board simultaneous exhibition at Havana's Capablanca Chess Club, winning 10 and drawing 2. On this tour the club played a series of matches against other clubs. Fischer played on second board, behind strong master Norman Whitaker. Whitaker and Fischer were the leading scorers for the club, each scoring 5.5 points out of 7 games.

Fischer attended Erasmus Hall High School at the same time as Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond. In 1959, its student council awarded him a gold medal for his chess achievements. The same year, Fischer dropped out of high school when he turned age 16, the earliest he could legally do so. He later explained to Ralph Ginzburg, "You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time."

When Fischer was 16, his mother moved out of their apartment to pursue medical training. Her friend Joan Rodker, who had met Regina when the two were "idealistic communists" living in Moscow in the 1930s, believes that Fischer resented his mother for being mostly absent as a mother, a communist activist and an admirer of the Soviet Union, and that this led to his hatred for the Soviet Union. In letters to Rodker, Fischer's mother states her desire to pursue her own "obsession" of training in medicine and writes that her son would have to live in their Brooklyn apartment without her: "It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he is probably happier that way." The apartment was on the edge of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which had one of the highest homicide and general crime rates in New York City. Despite the alienation from her son, Regina in 1960 staged a five-hour protest in front of the White House (see photo) urging President Dwight Eisenhower to send an American team to that year's chess Olympiad (set for Leipzig, East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain), and to help support the team financially.

Young champion

Fischer experienced a "meteoric rise" in his playing strength during 1956. On the tenth national rating list of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), published on May 20, 1956, his rating was a modest 1726, over 900 points below top-rated Samuel Reshevsky (2663). Fischer's first real success was winning the United States Junior Chess Championship in July 1956. He scored 8½/10 at Philadelphia to become the youngest-ever junior champion at age 13, a record that still stands. In the 1956 U.S. Open Chess Championship at Oklahoma City, Fischer scored 8½/12 to tie for 4th–8th places, with Arthur Bisguier winning. In the first Canadian Open Chess Championship at Montreal 1956, he scored 7/10 to tie for 8–12th places, with Larry Evans winning.

Fischer accepted an invitation to play in the Third Lessing J. Rosenwald Trophy Tournament at New York City 1956, a premier tournament limited to the 12 players considered the best in the country. Fischer received entry by special consideration, since his rating was certainly not among the top 12 in the country at that stage. In that elite company, the 13-year-old Fischer could only score 4½/11, tying for 8th–9th place. This was his first truly strong round-robin event, and he achieved a creditable result, certainly above what his rating predicted. However, he won the first brilliancy prize for his game against Donald Byrne. This game remains famous worldwide today.

In 1957, Fischer played a two-game match against former World Champion Max Euwe at New York, losing ½–1½. On the United States Chess Federation's eleventh national rating list, published on May 5, 1957, Fischer was rated 2231, a master – over 500 points higher than his rating a year before. This made him at that time the country's youngest master ever. In July, Fischer successfully defended his U.S. Junior title, scoring 8½/9 at San Francisco. In August, he played in the U.S. Open Chess Championship at Cleveland, scoring 10/12 and winning on tie-breaking points over Arthur Bisguier, making Fischer the youngest U.S. Open Champion ever. He next won the New Jersey Open Championship, scoring 6½/7. Fischer then defeated the young Filipino Master Rodolfo Tan Cardoso 6–2 in a match in New York sponsored by Pepsi-Cola.

Wins first U.S. title

Based on Fischer's rating, the USCF invited him to play in the 1957–58 U.S. Championship. This invitation required no special consideration, and was achieved on merit. The tournament included such luminaries as six-time champion Samuel Reshevsky, defending champion Bisguier, and William Lombardy, who in August had won the World Junior Championship with the only perfect score (11–0) in its history. Fischer was expected to score around 50%. Bisguier predicted that Fischer would "finish slightly over the center mark". He scored eight wins and five draws to win the tournament with 10½/13, a point ahead of Reshevsky. Still two months shy of his 15th birthday, he became the youngest U.S. champion in history –- a record that still stands. Since the championship that year was also the U.S. Zonal Championship, Fischer's victory earned him the International Master title.

U.S. Championships

Fischer played in eight United States Chess Championships, each held in New York City, winning every one. His margin of victory was always at least one point.

His scores were:

1957–58: 10½/13

1958–59: 8½/11

1959–60: 9/11

1960–61: 9/11

1962–63: 8/11

1963–64: 11/11

1965–66: 8½/11

1966–67: 9½/11.

Fischer missed the 1961–62 Championship (he was preparing for the upcoming Interzonal), and there was no 1964–65 event. His total score was 74/90 (61 wins, 26 draws, 3 losses), with the only losses being to Edmar Mednis, Samuel Reshevsky, and Robert Byrne. For his career, he achieved 82.2 percent in the U.S. Championship.

His 11–0 win in the 1963–64 Championship is the only perfect score in the history of the tournament, and one of about ten perfect scores in high-level chess tournaments ever. David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld called it "the most remarkable achievement of this kind." According to some sources, Fischer, then 15, was unable to arrange leave from attending high school in order to play in Munich. However, he represented the United States on top board with great distinction at four Olympiads:

:{| !Olympiad !Individual result !U.S. team result |- |Leipzig 1960 |13/18 (Bronze) |Silver |- |Varna 1962 |11/17 (Eighth) |Fourth |- |Havana 1966 |15/17 (Silver) |Silver |- |Siegen 1970 |10/13 (Silver) |Fourth |}

Fischer's overall total was +40, =18, −7, for 49/65 or 75.4%. In 1966, he narrowly missed the individual gold medal, scoring 88.23% to World Champion Tigran Petrosian's 88.46%. Fischer played four more games than Petrosian, faced stiffer opposition, and would have won the gold if he had accepted Florin Gheorghiu's draw offer in the penultimate round rather than declining it and suffering his only loss.

Fischer had planned to play for the United States at the 1968 Lugano Olympiad, but backed out when he saw the poor playing conditions.

Grandmaster, candidate, author

Fischer's victory in the U.S. Championship qualified him to participate in the 1958 Portorož Interzonal, the next step toward challenging the World Champion. Prior to the Interzonal, he played two short training matches in Yugoslavia. He drew both games against Dragoljub Janošević. Then he defeated Milan Matulović in Belgrade by 2½–1½.

Most observers doubted that a 15-year-old with no international experience could finish among the six qualifiers at the Interzonal, but Fischer told journalist Miro Radoicic, "I can draw with the grandmasters, and there are half-a-dozen patzers in the tournament I reckon to beat." Despite some bumps in the road, and a problematic start, Fischer succeeded in his plan: after a strong finish, he ended up with 12/20 (+6=12–2) to tie for 5th–6th. The Soviet grandmaster Yuri Averbakh observed, "In the struggle at the board this youth, almost still a child, showed himself to be a fully-fledged fighter, demonstrating amazing composure, precise calculation and devilish resourcefulness." Fischer became the youngest person ever to qualify for the Candidates. He also became the youngest grandmaster in history at 15 years and 6 months. This record stood until 1991 when it was broken by Judit Polgár.

Before the Candidates' tournament, Fischer competed in the 1958–59 U.S. Championship (winning with 8½/11) and then in international tournaments at Mar del Plata, Santiago, and Zürich. He played unevenly in the two South American tournaments. At the strong Mar del Plata event, he finished tied for third with Borislav Ivkov, half a point behind tournament winners Ludek Pachman and Miguel Najdorf; this confirmed his grandmastership. At Santiago, he tied for fourth through sixth places, behind Ivkov, Pachman, and Herman Pilnik. He did better at the very strong Zurich event, finishing a point behind world-champion-to-be Mikhail Tal and half a point behind Svetozar Gligorić.

Although Fischer had ended his formal education at age 16, he subsequently taught himself several foreign languages, to gain access to foreign chess periodicals.

Until late 1959, Fischer "had dressed atrociously for a champion, appearing at the most august and distinguished national and international events in sweaters and corduroys". A director of the Manhattan Chess Club had once banned Fischer for not being "properly accoutered", forcing Denker to intercede to get him reinstated. Likely, lack of money to buy better clothes was at least partially to blame. Now, encouraged by Pal Benko to dress more sharply, Fischer "began buying suits from all over the world, hand-tailored and made to order". He boasted to journalist Ralph Ginzburg in 1961 that he had 17 suits, all hand-tailored, and that his shirts and shoes were also handmade.

At the age of 16, Fischer finished a creditable equal fifth out of eight, the top non-Soviet player, at the Candidates Tournament held in Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1959. He scored 12½/28 but was outclassed by tournament winner Tal, who won all four of their individual games.

Fischer published his first book of collected games at age 16, in 1959. Entitled Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess, and published by Simon & Schuster, the book sold well and made him likely the youngest author in the history of chess to that stage.

1960–61

In 1960, Fischer tied for first place with the young Soviet star Boris Spassky at the strong Mar del Plata tournament in Argentina, with the two well ahead of the rest of the field, scoring 13½/15. Fischer lost only to Spassky, and this was the start of their relationship, which began on a friendly basis and stayed that way, in spite of Fischer's troubles against him over-the-board.

Fischer struggled in the later Buenos Aires tournament, finishing with 8½/19 (won by Viktor Korchnoi and Samuel Reshevsky on 13/19). This was the only real failure of Fischer's competitive career. According to Larry Evans, Fischer's first sexual experience was with a girl to whom Evans introduced him during the tournament. Pal Benko says that Fischer did horribly in the tournament "because he got caught up in women and sex. ... Afterwards, Fischer said he'd never mix women and chess together, and kept the promise." Fischer concluded 1960 by winning a small tournament in Reykjavik with 4½/5, and defeating Klaus Darga in an exhibition game in West Berlin.

]] In 1961, Fischer started a 16-game match with Reshevsky, split between New York and Los Angeles. Despite Fischer's meteoric rise, the veteran Reshevsky, 32 years Fischer's senior, was considered the favorite, since he had far more match experience and had never lost a set match. After 11 games and a tie score (two wins apiece with seven draws), the match ended prematurely due to a scheduling dispute between Fischer and match organizer and sponsor Jacqueline Piatigorsky. Reshevsky was declared the winner of the match, and received the winner's share.

Fischer was second behind former World Champion Tal at Bled 1961, which had a super-class field. He defeated Tal head-to-head for the first time, scored 3½/4 against the Soviet contingent, and finished as the only unbeaten player, with 13½/19.

1962: success, setback, collusion accusations

Dominates Interzonal

In the next World Championship cycle, Fischer won the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal by 2½ points, scoring an undefeated 17½/22. He was the first non-Soviet player to win an Interzonal since FIDE instituted the tournament in 1948.

Problems at Candidates'

Fischer's decisive Interzonal victory made him one of the favorites for the Candidates Tournament in Curaçao, which began soon afterwards. He finished fourth out of eight with 14/27, the best result by a non-Soviet player, but well behind Tigran Petrosian (17½/27), Efim Geller, and Paul Keres (both 17/27). Tal fell very ill during the tournament, and had to withdraw before completion. Fischer, a friend of Tal, was the only contestant who visited him in the hospital.

Accuses Soviets of collusion

Following his failure in the 1962 Candidates (at which five of the eight players were from the Soviet Union), Fischer asserted in an August 1962 article in Sports Illustrated magazine, entitled The Russians Have Fixed World Chess, that three of the Soviet players (Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, and Efim Geller) had a pre-arranged agreement to quickly draw their games against each other in order to save energy and to concentrate on playing against Fischer, and that a fourth, Viktor Korchnoi, had been forced to deliberately lose games to ensure that a Soviet player won the tournament. It is generally thought that the former accusation is correct, but not the latter. (This is discussed further in the World Chess Championship 1963 article.) Anatoly Karpov, later World Champion, wrote in his 1991 autobiography that Korchnoi had complained in the Soviet Union, shortly after the 1962 Candidates' event, about not being included in the colluding group of Soviets. Fischer also stated that he would never again participate in a Candidates' tournament, since the format, combined with the alleged collusion, made it impossible for a non-Soviet player to win.

Following Fischer's article, FIDE in late 1962 voted a radical reform of the playoff system, replacing the Candidates' tournament with a format of one-on-one knockout matches; this was the format that Fischer would dominate in 1971.

Fischer defeated Bent Larsen in a summer 1962 exhibition game in Copenhagen for Danish TV. He also defeated Bogdan Śliwa in a team match against Poland at Warsaw later that year.

In the 1962–63 U.S. Championship, Fischer had a close call. In the first round he lost to Edmar Mednis, his first loss ever in a U.S. Championship. Bisguier was in excellent form, and Fischer caught up to him only at the end. Tied at 7–3, the two met in the last round for the championship. Bisguier stood well in the middlegame, but blundered, handing Fischer his fifth consecutive U.S. championship.

Religious transitions

In an interview in the January 1962 issue of Harper's, Fischer was quoted as saying, "I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree."

Fischer's biological parents were likely both Jewish. Fischer renounced his Jewish roots, but joined the Worldwide Church of God in the mid-1960s. This church prescribed Saturday Sabbath, and forbade work (and competitive chess) on Sabbath. Fischer's religious obligations were respected by chess organizers, concerning scheduling of his games. Fischer contributed significant money over several years to the Worldwide Church of God.

The year 1972 was a disastrous one for the Worldwide Church of God, as prophecies by Herbert W. Armstrong were unfulfilled, and the church was rocked by revelations of a series of sex scandals involving Garner Ted Armstrong. Fischer, who felt betrayed and swindled by the Worldwide Church of God, left the church and publicly denounced it.

Semi-retirement in the mid-1960s

Fischer declined an invitation to play in the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Los Angeles, which had a world-class field. His decision was probably influenced by ill will over the aborted 1961 match against Reshevsky, which had been arranged by the same organizer. Instead, he played in the Western Open in Bay City, Michigan, which he won with 7½/8. In August–September 1963, he won another minor event, the New York State Championship at Poughkeepsie, with 7/7, his first perfect score.

The 1963–64 U.S. Championship was expected to be exciting, particularly since Fischer had only narrowly won it the previous year. It was, but not as expected. "One by one Fischer mowed down the opposition as he cut an 11–0 swathe through the field, to demonstrate convincingly to the opposition that he was now in a class by himself." Sports Illustrated diagrammed each of the 11 games in its article, "The Amazing Victory Streak of Bobby Fischer". Such extensive chess coverage was groundbreaking for the top American sports magazine.

Fischer, eligible as U.S. champion, 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, which eliminated the possibility of collusion. His 94% winning percentage over more than 2,000 games is one of the best ever achieved. Fischer also declined an invitation to play for the United States in the 1964 Olympiad in Tel Aviv.

Successful return

Fischer wanted to play in the Capablanca Memorial Tournament, Havana 1965, but the State Department refused to endorse his passport as valid for visiting Cuba. Fischer instead proposed, and the tournament officials and players accepted, a unique arrangement: Fischer played his moves from a room at the Marshall Chess Club, which were then transmitted by teletype to Cuba. Luděk Pachman observed that Fischer "was handicapped by the longer playing session resulting from the time wasted in transmitting the moves, and that is one reason why he lost to three of his chief rivals". The tournament was an "ordeal" for Fischer, who had to endure eight-hour and sometimes even twelve-hour playing sessions. Despite this handicap, he tied for second through fourth places, with 15/21, behind former World Champion Vasily Smyslov, whom he defeated in their individual game.

Fischer began 1966 by winning the U.S. Championship for the seventh time despite losing to Robert Byrne and Reshevsky in the eighth and ninth rounds. He also reconciled with Mrs. Piatigorsky, accepting an invitation to the very strong second Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Santa Monica. Fischer began disastrously and after eight rounds was tied for last with 3/8. He then staged "the most sensational comeback in the history of grandmaster chess", scoring 7/8 in the next eight rounds. At the end, World Championship finalist Boris Spassky edged him out by a half point, scoring 11½/18 to Fischer's 11. Now aged 23, Fischer would win every match or tournament he completed for the rest of his life.

In 1967, Fischer won the U.S. Championship for the eighth and final time, ceding only three draws. In March–April and August–September, he won strong tournaments at Monte Carlo (7/9) and Skopje (13½/17). In the Philippines he played a series of nine exhibition games against master opponents, winning eight and drawing one.

Withdraws while leading Interzonal

In the next World Championship cycle, at the 1967 Sousse Interzonal, Fischer scored a phenomenal 8½ points in the first 10 games, to lead the field. His observance of the Worldwide Church of God's seventh-day 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. Because he had completed less than half his scheduled games, all of his results were annulled, meaning players who had played him had those games cancelled. He stopped playing for the next 18 months, except for a win against Anthony Saidy in a 1969 New York Metropolitan League team match.

In 1969, Fischer published his second games collection, entitled My 60 Memorable Games, which was also published by Simon & Schuster. He was assisted by his friend, GM Larry Evans. The book of deeply annotated games immediately became a best-seller, and has remained continuously popular worldwide to the present day.

World Champion

In 1970, Fischer began a new effort to become World Champion. His dramatic march toward the title made him a household name and made chess front-page news for a time. Chess statistician Jeff Sonas observes that "for about a year, Bobby Fischer dominated his contemporaries to an extent never seen before or since". He won the title in 1972, but forfeited it three years later.

Road to the world championship

from his round 3 game against Miguel Najdorf in the 1970 Chess Olympiad in Siegen, Germany.]]

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. Benko, one of the three qualifiers, agreed to give up his spot in the Interzonal in order to give Fischer another shot at the world championship.

Before the Interzonal, in March and April 1970, the world's best players competed in the USSR vs. Rest of the World match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, often referred to as "the Match of the Century". Fischer allowed 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. The USSR team eked out a 20½–19½ victory, but on second board 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.

After the USSR versus the Rest of the World Match, the unofficial World Championship of Lightning Chess (5-minute games) was held at Herceg Novi. Petrosian and Tal were considered the favorites, but Fischer overwhelmed the super-class field with 19/22 (+17=4–1), far ahead of Tal (14½), Korchnoi (14), Petrosian (13½), Bronstein (13), etc. Fischer lost only one game, to Korchnoi, who was also the only player to achieve an even score against him in the double round robin tournament. Fischer "crushed such blitz kings as Tal, Petrosian and Smyslov by a clean score". Tal marveled that, "During the entire tournament he didn't leave a single pawn en prise!", while the other players "blundered knights and bishops galore".

In April–May 1970, Fischer won easily at Rovinj/Zagreb with 13/17 (+10=6–1), finishing two points ahead of a field that included such leading players as Gligorić, Hort, Korchnoi, Smyslov, and Petrosian. In July–August, he crushed the mostly grandmaster field at Buenos Aires, scoring 15/17 (+13=4) and winning by 3½ points. In Siegen right after the Olympiad, he defeated Ulf Andersson in an exhibition game for the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Fischer had taken his game to a new level.

The Interzonal was held in Palma de Mallorca in November and December 1970. Fischer won it with a remarkable 18½–4½ score (+15=7–1), far ahead of Larsen, Efim Geller, and Robert Hübner, who tied for second at 15–8. Fischer's 3½-point margin set a new record for an Interzonal, beating Alexander Kotov's 3-point margin at Saltsjöbaden 1952. Fischer finished the tournament with seven consecutive wins (including a final-round walkover against Oscar Panno). Setting aside the Sousse Interzonal (which Fischer withdrew from while leading), Fischer's victory gave him a string of eight consecutive first prizes in tournaments. "The record books showed that the only comparable achievement to the 6–0 score against Taimanov was Wilhelm Steinitz's 7–0 win against Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1876 in an era of more primitive defensive technique."

Less than two months later, he astounded the chess world by beating Larsen in their Denver match by the same score. Just a year before, Larsen had played first board for the Rest of the World team ahead of Fischer, and had handed Fischer his only loss at the Interzonal. Garry Kasparov later wrote that no world champion had ever shown a superiority over his rivals comparable to Fischer's "incredible" 12–0 score in the two matches. Chess statistician Sonas concludes that this victory gave Fischer the "highest single-match performance rating ever".

In August 1971, Fischer won a strong lightning event at the Manhattan Chess Club with a "preposterous" score of 21½/22. This gave Fischer an extraordinary run of 20 consecutive wins against the world's top players (in the Interzonal and Candidates matches), a winning streak topped only by Steinitz's 25 straight wins in 1873–82. Petrosian won decisively in the second game, finally snapping Fischer's streak. After three consecutive draws, Fischer swept the next four games to win the match 6½–2½ (+5=3–1). The final match victory allowed Fischer to challenge World Champion Boris Spassky, whom he had never beaten (+0=2–3). Fischer appeared on the cover of Life.

Fischer's amazing results gave him a far higher rating than any player in history up until that time. On the July 1972 FIDE rating list, his Elo rating of 2785 was 125 points ahead of Spassky, the second-highest rated player (2660).

World Championship Match

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's first choice was Belgrade, Yugoslavia, while Spassky's was Reykjavik, 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 appear in Iceland until the prize fund was increased. London financier Jim Slater donated an additional US$125,000 to the prize fund, bringing it to an unprecedented $250,000 ($1,267,825.63 in 2009), and Fischer finally agreed to play.

Before and during the match, Fischer paid special attention to his physical training and fitness, which was a relatively novel approach for top chess players at that time. He had developed his tennis skills to a good level, and played frequently during off-days in Reykjavik. He also had arranged for exclusive use of his hotel's swimming pool during specified hours, and swam for extended periods, usually late at night.

The match took place in Reykjavík 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 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. After that game, the match was moved back to the stage and proceeded without further serious incident. Fischer won seven of the next 19 games, losing only one and drawing eleven, to win the match 12½–8½ and become the 11th World Chess Champion. It was called "The Match of the Century", and received front-page media coverage in the United States and around the world. Fischer's win was an American victory in a field that Soviet players had dominated for the past quarter-century — players closely identified with, and subsidized by, the Soviet state. Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman calls Fischer's victory "the story of a lonely hero who overcomes an entire empire".

Fischer became an instant celebrity. Upon his return to New York, a Bobby Fischer Day was held, and he was cheered by thousands of fans, a unique display in American chess. He was offered numerous product endorsement offers worth "at least $5 million" (all of which he declined) and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. With American Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz, he also appeared on a Bob Hope TV special. Membership in the United States Chess Federation doubled in 1972 and peaked in 1974; in American chess, these years are commonly referred to as the "Fischer Boom." Fischer also won the 'Chess Oscar' award for 1970, 1971, and 1972. This award, started in 1967, is determined through votes from chess media and leading players.

Forfeiture of title

Fischer was scheduled to defend his title in 1975. Anatoly Karpov eventually emerged as his challenger, having defeated Spassky in an earlier Candidates match. Fischer, who had played no competitive games since his World Championship match with Spassky, laid out a proposal for the match in September 1973, in consultation with a FIDE official, Fred Cramer. He made three principal demands:

#The match should continue until one player wins 10 games, without counting the draws. #There is no limit to the total number of games played. #In case of a 9–9 score, champion (Fischer) retains his title and the prize fund is split equally.

A FIDE Congress was held in 1974 during the Nice Olympiad. The delegates voted in favor of Fischer's 10-win proposal, but rejected his other two proposals, and limited the number of games in the match to 36. In response to FIDE's ruling, Fischer sent a cable to Euwe on June 27, 1974: :As I made clear in my telegram to the FIDE delegates, the match conditions I proposed were non-negotiable. Mr. Cramer informs me that the rules of the winner being the first player to win ten games, draws not counting, unlimited number of games and if nine wins to nine match is drawn with champion regaining title and prize fund split equally were rejected by the FIDE delegates. By so doing FIDE has decided against my participating in the 1975 world chess championship. I therefore resign my FIDE world chess champion title. Sincerely, Bobby Fischer.

The delegates responded by reaffirming their prior decisions, but did not accept Fischer's resignation and requested that he reconsider. Many observers considered Fischer's requested 9–9 clause unfair because it would require the challenger to win by at least two games (10–8).

In a letter to Larry Evans, published in Chess Life in November 1974, Fischer claimed the usual system (24 games with the first player to get 12½ points winning, or the champion retaining his title in the event of a 12–12 tie) encouraged the player in the lead to draw games, which he regarded as bad for chess. Not counting draws would be "an accurate test of who is the world's best player." Former U.S. Champion Arnold Denker, who was in contact with Fischer during the negotiations with FIDE, claimed that Fischer wanted a long match to be able to play himself into shape after a three-year layoff.

Due to the continued efforts of U.S. Chess Association officials, a special FIDE Congress was held in March 1975 in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands in which it was accepted that the match should be of unlimited duration, but the 9–9 clause was once again rejected, by a narrow margin of 35 votes to 32. FIDE set a deadline of April 1, 1975, for Fischer and Karpov to confirm their participation in the match. No reply was received from Fischer by April 3 and Karpov officially became World Champion by default. In his 1991 autobiography, Karpov expressed profound regret that the match did not take place, and claimed that the lost opportunity to challenge Fischer held back his own chess development. Karpov met with Fischer several times after 1975, in friendly but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to arrange a match.

Sudden obscurity

After the World Championship in 1972, Fischer virtually retired from chess: he did not play a competitive game in public for nearly 20 years. In 1977, he played three games in Cambridge against the MIT Greenblatt computer program, winning all of them.

On May 26, 1981, a police patrolman arrested Fischer while he was walking in Pasadena, saying that he matched the description of a man who had just committed a bank robbery in that area. Fischer stated that he was slightly injured during the arrest. He was then held for two days and — according to Fischer — was subjected to assault and various other types of serious mistreatment during that time. He was then released on $1000 bail. After being released, Fischer published a 14-page pamphlet detailing his alleged experiences and saying that his arrest had been "a frame up and set up."

In the early 1980s, Fischer stayed for extended periods in the San Francisco-area home of a friend, the Canadian grandmaster Peter Biyiasas. In 1981, the two played 17 five-minute games. Despite his layoff from competitive play, Fischer won all of them, according to Biyiasas, who lamented that he was never even able to reach an endgame. The purse for Fischer's re-match with Spassky was US$5,000,000, with $3.35 million of that to go to the winner.

Fischer won the match, 10 wins to 5 losses, with 15 draws. Kasparov reportedly said, "Bobby is playing OK, nothing more. Maybe his strength is 2600 or 2650. It wouldn't be close between us." Fischer never played any competitive games afterwards.

Fischer and Spassky gave a total of ten press conferences during the match. Yasser Seirawan wrote, "After September 23 [1992], I threw most of what I'd ever read about Bobby out of my head. Sheer garbage. Bobby is the most misunderstood, misquoted celebrity walking the face of the earth." Seirawan wrote that Fischer is not camera shy, "smiles and laughs easily", and "is a wholly enjoyable conversationalist. A fine wit, he is a very funny man".

The U.S. Department of the Treasury had warned Fischer beforehand that his participation was illegal as it violated President George H. W. Bush's Executive Order 12810 that implemented United Nations sanctions against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia. In response, Fischer called a conference and, in front of the international press, literally spat on the U.S. order forbidding him to play, announcing "This is my reply". Following the match, the Department obtained an arrest warrant for him. Fischer remained wanted by the United States government for the rest of his life and never returned to the United States.

Life as an émigré

After the match with Spassky in 1992, Fischer again slid into relative obscurity. Now a fugitive from the American legal system, he intensified his vitriolic rhetoric against the U.S. For some of these years Fischer lived in Budapest, Hungary, allegedly having a relationship with young Hungarian chess master Zita Rajcsányi. He claimed to find standard chess stale and he played chess variants such as Chess960 blitz games. He visited with the Polgár family in Budapest and analyzed many games with Judit, Zsuzsa, and Zsófia Polgár.

From 2000 to 2002, Fischer lived in Baguio City in the Philippines. Torre introduced Fischer to a 22-year-old woman named Marilyn Young. On May 21, 2001 Marilyn Young gave birth to a daughter named Jinky Young. Her mother claimed that Jinky was Fischer's daughter, citing as evidence Jinky's birth and baptismal certificates, photographs, a transaction record dated December 4, 2007 of a bank remittance by Fischer to Jinky, and Jinky's DNA through her blood samples. On the other hand, Magnús Skúlason, a friend of Fischer's, said that he was certain that Fischer was not the girl's father.

On August 17, 2010 it was reported that a DNA test revealed that Jinky Young is not the daughter of Bobby Fischer.

Anti-semitic statements

Fischer, whose mother was Jewish, In 1961, he "made his first public statements despising Jews." Jan Hein Donner wrote that at the time of Bled 1961, "He idolized Hitler and read everything about him that he could lay his hands on. He also championed a brand of antisemitism that could only be thought up by a mind completely cut off from reality." He openly denied the Holocaust and announced his desire to make "expos[ing] the Jews for the criminals they are [...] the murderers they are" his lifework, and argued that the United States is "a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards."

In 1984, Fischer denied being a Jew in a letter to the Encyclopedia Judaica, insisting that they remove his name and accusing them of "fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew [...] to promote your religion". Although it was reported that Fischer as a teenager acknowledged that his mother was Jewish, Fischer's sudden re-emergence was apparently triggered when some of his belongings, which had been stored in a Pasadena, California storage unit, were sold by the landlord who claimed it was in response to nonpayment of rent. In 2005, some of Fischer's belongings were auctioned on eBay. In 2006, Fischer claimed that his belongings in the storage unit were worth millions.

Fischer's library contained anti-Semitic and white supremacist literature such as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and The White Man's Bible and Nature's Eternal Religion by Ben Klassen, founder of the Church of the Creator. A notebook written by Fischer is filled with sentiments such as "8/24/99 Death to the Jews. Just kill the Motherfuckers!" and "12/13/99 It's time to start randomly killing Jews."

Anti-American and anti-Israel statements

A little after Midnight on September 12, Philippines local time (four hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.), Fischer was interviewed live by Pablo Mercado on the Baguio City station of the Bombo Radyo network. Fischer commented on U.S and Israeli foreign policy, saying "I applaud the act. Look nobody gets.. no one.. that the U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years." He also said "All the crimes the U.S. is committing all over the world ... This just shows, what goes around, that comes around even to the United States."

Fischer drafted a letter to Osama bin Laden, which began:

Dear Mr. Osama bin Laden allow me to introduce myself. I am Bobby Fischer, the World Chess Champion. First of all you should know that I share your hatred of the murderous bandit state of "Israel" and its chief backer the Jew-controlled U.S.A. also know [sic] as the "Jewnited States" or "Israel West." We also have something else in common: We are both fugitives from the U.S. "justice" system.

After Fischer's death, chess columnist Shelby Lyman, who in 1972 had hosted the PBS broadcast of that year's Championship, said that "the anti-American stuff is explained by the fact that ... he spent the rest of his life [after the match in Yugoslavia] fleeing the U.S., because he was afraid of being extradited". In , authors IM Hans Böhm and Kees Jongkind write that Fischer's radio broadcasts show that he was "out of his mind ... a victim of his own mental illness".

Detention in Japan

Fischer lived for a time in Japan. On July 13, 2004, acting in response to a letter from U.S. officials, he was arrested by Japanese immigration authorities at Narita International Airport near Tokyo for allegedly using a revoked U.S. passport while trying to board a Japan Airlines flight to Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Philippines. Fischer resisted arrest, claiming to have sustained bruises, cuts and a broken tooth in the process. At the time, Fischer had a passport, originally issued in 1997 and updated in 2003 to add more pages, that according to U.S. officials had been revoked in November 2003 (due to his outstanding arrest warrant for Yugoslavia sanctions violation). The authorities held Fischer at a custody center for 16 days before transferring him to another facility. Fischer claimed that his cell was windowless and he had not seen the light of day during that period, and that the staff had ignored his complaints about constant tobacco smoke in his cell. It was reported that Fischer and Miyoko Watai, the President of the Japanese Chess Association, with whom he had reportedly been living since 2000, wanted to become legally married. Fischer stated that he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship, and appealed to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell to help him do so. Japan's Justice Minister rejected Fischer's request for asylum and ordered him deported.

Asylum in Iceland

Seeking ways to evade deportation to the United States, Fischer wrote a letter to the government of Iceland in early January 2005 and asked for Icelandic citizenship. Sympathetic to Fischer's plight, but reluctant to grant him the full benefits of citizenship, Icelandic authorities granted him an alien's passport. When this proved insufficient for the Japanese authorities, the Althing agreed unanimously to grant Fischer full citizenship in late March for humanitarian reasons, as they felt he was being unjustly treated by the U.S. and Japanese governments, and also in recognition of his 1972 match, which had "put Iceland on the map".

Shortly before his departure to Iceland, on March 23, 2005, Fischer and Bosnitch appeared briefly on the BBC World Service, via a telephone link to the Tokyo airport. Bosnitch stated that Fischer would never play traditional chess again. Fischer denounced President Bush as a criminal and Japan as a puppet of the United States.

Upon his arrival in Reykjavík, Fischer was welcomed by a crowd and gave a news conference. He lived a reclusive life in Iceland, avoiding entrepreneurs and others who approached him with various proposals.

On December 10, 2006, Fischer telephoned an Icelandic television station and pointed out a winning combination, missed by the players and commentators, in a chess game that had been televised live in Iceland.

Fischer moved into an apartment in the same building as his closest friend and spokesman, Garðar Sverrisson, whose wife Kristín Þórarinsdóttir, a nurse, later looked after him as a terminally ill patient. Garðar's two children, especially his son, were very close to Fischer. Fischer also developed a friendship with Magnús Skúlason, a psychiatrist and chess player who later recalled long discussions with Fischer about a wide variety of subjects. He originally had a urinary tract blockage but refused surgery or medications. Magnús Skúlason reported his last words as "Nothing is as healing as the human touch." On January 21, he was buried in the small Christian cemetery of Laugardælir church, outside the town of Selfoss, 60 km south-east of Reykjavík, after a Catholic funeral presided over by Fr. Jakob Rolland of the diocese of Reykjavik. In accordance with Fischer's wishes, no one else was present except Miyoko Watai, Garðar Sverrisson, and Garðar's family.

Fischer's estate was estimated at 140 million ISK (about GBP 1 million or US$ 2 million) and it quickly became the object of a legal battle involving claims from four parties with Miyoko Watai ultimately inheriting what remains of his estate after government claims. The four parties were Fischer's apparent Japanese wife Miyoko Watai, his alleged Philippine daughter Jinky Young and her mother Marilyn Young, his two American nephews Alexander and Nicholas Targ and their father Russell Targ, and the American government (claiming unpaid taxes). According to a press release issued by Samuel Estimo, an attorney representing Jinky Young, the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled in December 2009 that Watai's claim of marriage to Fischer was invalidated because of her failure to present the original copy of their alleged marriage certificate. On June 16, 2010, Iceland's Supreme Court ruled in favor of a petition on behalf of Jinky Young to have Bobby Fischer's remains exhumed. This was performed on July 5, 2010 in the presence of a doctor, a priest and other officials. A DNA sample was taken and Fischer's body was then reburied. On August 17, 2010, the Court announced that the DNA sample had determined that Fischer was not the father of Jinky Young.

Contributions to chess

:This section uses algebraic chess notation to describe chess moves.

Opening theory

Fischer was renowned for his deep opening preparation and made numerous contributions to chess opening theory. He was one of the foremost experts on the Ruy Lopez. A line of the Exchange Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.0-0) is sometimes called the "Fischer Variation" after he successfully resurrected it at the 1966 Havana Olympiad. Fischer's lifetime score with 5.0-0 in tournament and match games was six wins, three draws, and no losses (83.3%).

He was a recognized expert in the Black side of the Najdorf Sicilian and the King's Indian Defense. He used the Grünfeld Defence and Neo-Grünfeld Defence to win his celebrated games against Donald and Robert Byrne, and played a theoretical novelty in the Grünfeld against reigning World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, refuting Botvinnik's prior published analysis. In the Nimzo-Indian Defense, the line beginning with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 Ba6 was named for him.

Fischer established the viability of the so-called Poisoned Pawn Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6). This bold queen sortie, to snatch a pawn at the expense of development, had been considered dubious, but Fischer succeeded in proving its soundness. Out of ten tournament and match games as Black in the Poisoned Pawn, Fischer won five, drew four, and lost only one, the 11th game of his 1972 match against Spassky. Following Fischer's use, the Poisoned Pawn became a respected line played by many of the world's leading players.

On the White side of the Sicilian, Fischer made advances to the theory of the line beginning 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 (or e6) 6.Bc4, which has sometimes been named for him. In 1961, prompted by a loss the year before to Spassky, Fischer wrote an article entitled "A Bust to the King's Gambit" for the first issue of the American Chess Quarterly, in which he stated, "In my opinion, the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by force." Fischer recommended 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6, which has since become known as the Fischer Defense to the King's Gambit. Surprisingly, Fischer later played the King's Gambit as White in three tournament games (preferring 3.Bc4 to 3.Nf3), winning them all.

Endgame

Fischer had an excellent endgame technique. International Master Jeremy Silman listed him as one of the five best endgame players, along with Emanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein, José Capablanca, and Vasily Smyslov. Silman called him a "master of bishop endings".

The endgame of a rook, bishop, and pawns against a rook, knight, and pawns has sometimes been called the "Fischer Endgame" because of three instructive wins by Fischer (with the bishop) in 1970 and 1971 over Mark Taimanov. One of the games was in the 1970 Interzonal and the other two were in their 1971 quarter-final candidates match.

Fischer clock

In 1988, Fischer filed for for a new type of digital chess clock. Fischer's clock gave each player a fixed period of time at the start of the game and then added a small increment after each completed move. The Fischer clock soon became standard in most major chess tournaments. The patent expired in November 2001 because of overdue maintenance fees.

Fischer Random Chess

On June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fischer announced and advocated a variant of chess called Fischerandom Chess (later known as Fischer Random Chess or Chess960) intended to ensure that a game between players is a contest between their understandings of chess, rather than their abilities to memorize prepared opening lines.

Fischer Random was designed to remove any advantage from the memorization of opening variations by rendering it inpracticable. Fischer complained in a 2006 phoned-in call with a television interviewer that because of the progress in openings and the memorization of opening books, talented celebrity players from long ago, if brought back from the dead to play today, would no longer be competitive. "Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca", he said, merely because of opening-book memorization, which Fischer disdained. "Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative." Fischer heavily disparaged chess as it was currently being played at the highest levels.

Legacy

Kasparov calls Fischer "perhaps the most mythologically shrouded figure in chess". Some leading players and some of his biographers have ranked him as the greatest player who ever lived. Other writers have said that he was arguably the greatest player ever, without reaching a definitive conclusion. Leonard Barden wrote, "Most experts place him the second or third best ever, behind Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov." Brian Carney opined in the Wall Street Journal that Fischer's victory over Spassky in 1972 left him nothing to prove, except that perhaps someone could someday beat him, and he was not interested in the risk of losing. Fischer's refusal to recognize peers also allowed his paranoia to flower: "The world championship he won ... validated his view of himself as a chess player, but it also insulated him from the humanizing influences of the world around him. He descended into what can only be considered a kind of madness."

Fischer was a charter inductee into the United States Chess Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C. in 1985. After routing Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian in 1971, Fischer achieved a then-record Elo rating of 2785.

Fischer's great rival Mikhail Tal praised him as "the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens." American grandmaster Arthur Bisguier, who won his first tournament game against Fischer, drew his second, and lost the remaining 13, wrote "Robert James Fischer is one of the few people in any sphere of endeavour who has been accorded the accolade of being called a legend in his own time."

Kasparov wrote that Fischer "became the detonator of an avalanche of new chess ideas, a revolutionary whose revolution is still in progress." In January 2009, reigning world champion Viswanathan Anand described him as "the greatest chess player who ever lived. He was a very special person, and I was fortunate to meet him two years ago." Serbian grandmaster Ljubomir Ljubojević called Fischer, "A man without frontiers. He didn't divide the East and the West, he brought them together in their admiration of him."

German grandmaster Karsten Müller wrote:

Fischer, who had taken the highest crown almost singlehandedly from the mighty, almost invincible Soviet chess empire, shook the whole world, not only the chess world, to its core. He started a chess boom not only in the United States and in the Western hemisphere, but worldwide. Teaching chess or playing chess as a career had truly become a respectable profession. After Bobby, the game was simply not the same.

St. Louis philanthropist Rex A. Sinquefield offered a $64,000 Fischer Memorial Prize for any player who could win all nine games at the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship. By the fifth day of the championship, all 24 participants became ineligible for the prize, having drawn or lost at least one game.

In popular culture

The musical Chess, with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, tells the story of two chess champions, referred to only as "The American" and "The Russian". The musical is loosely based on the 1972 World Championship match between Fischer and Spassky. In later versions of the show, "The American" is named "Freddie Trumper" and "The Russian" is "Anatoly Sergieveski". During the 1972 Fischer–Spassky match, the Soviet bard Vladimir Vysotsky wrote an ironic two-song cycle "Honor of the Chess Crown". The first song is about a rank-and-file Soviet worker's preparation for the match with Fischer; the second is about the game. Many expressions from the songs have become catchphrases in Russian culture. The 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer uses Fischer's name in the title even though it is actually about the life of Joshua Waitzkin. Outside of the United States, it was released as Innocent Moves. The title refers to the search for Fischer's successor after his disappearance from competitive chess (or about searching for talent like Fischer's in the author's brilliant chess-playing son). In the book on which the film is based, the narrator/author actually looks for Fischer for a brief period and imagines what he would say to him if found. In an unpublished 1997 manuscript, Fischer complained that he had not "received one thin dime for the totally exploitative Paramount Pictures 'rip-off' full-length feature film".

Bobby Fischer is mentioned in Milan Kundera's novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

An episode of Law and Order Criminal Intent is based on Bobby Fischer.

An episode of the Nickelodeon program "Hey Arnold!" featured a character called Robby Fischer, a skilled Chinese checkers player and obvious parody of Bobby Fischer.

Bobby Fischer is mentioned in a Saturday Night Live skit on January 20, 1996. Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri, acting as Spartan cheerleaders, repeat the line "Bobby Fischer, where is he? I don't know!? I don't know!?" in one of their cheers.

In an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show called "The Good-Time News" aired on September 16, 1972, Mary tries to develop a new format for the news, saying that most modern newscasts have two anchormen and all they have to do is "find someone who is warm and endearing enough to balance Ted." Lou replies, "I don't think Bobby Fischer wants to do television."

In the Prefab Sprout song Cue Fanfare on the album Swoon, the lyrics say, "When Bobby Fischer's plane touches the ground/he'll take those Russian boys and play them out of town/playing for blood as grandmasters should"

Progressive metal band OSI recorded the song "OSIdea 9" featuring audio clips of Fischer's rambling interview with a radio station after his arrest in Japan. In the interview Fischer asserts that the U.S. government will torture and murder him as soon as he is extradited back to the country.

Post-rock band iLiKETRAiNS' song "A Rook House For Bobby" is about Fischer's abscondence from the American legal system

Writings

Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1959). ISBN 0-923891-46-3. An early collection of 34 lightly-annotated games including the famous "Game of the Century" against Donald Byrne.

"A Bust to the King's Gambit" (American Chess Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer 1961), pp. 3–9).

"The Russians Have Fixed World Chess" (Sports Illustrated magazine, August 1962). This is the controversial article in which Fischer asserted that several of the Soviet players in the 1962 Curaçao Candidates' tournament had colluded with one another.

"'The Ten Greatest Masters in History" (Chessworld, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January–February 1964), pp. 56–61). A famous article, in which Fischer named Paul Morphy, Howard Staunton, Wilhelm Steinitz, Siegbert Tarrasch, Mikhail Chigorin, Alexander Alekhine, José Raúl Capablanca, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, and Samuel Reshevsky as the best players of all time. He modestly omitted himself, and controversially did not include World Champions Emanuel Lasker and Mikhail Botvinnik.

"Checkmate" column from 1966 to 1969 in Boys' Life.

My 60 Memorable Games (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969, and Faber and Faber, London, 1969; Batsford 2008 (algebraic notation)). "A classic of painstaking and objective analysis that modestly includes three of his losses".

I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse! (1982) pamphlet.

Under Fischer's name

There have been numerous books, in many languages, that list Fischer as the author or as endorsing the book. One of these is the 1972 book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess with Donn Mosenfelder and Stuart Margulies. The book uses programmed learning to help beginners learn how to see elementary chess combinations. Although Fischer allowed his name to be used, he had little involvement with the writing of the book.

Tournament and match summary

Tournaments

Matches

Team events

{| class="wikitable" |+Team events

Fischer-Tigran Petrosian, Buenos Aires Candidates Final 1971, 7th match game, Sicilian Defense: Kan. Modern Variation (B42), 1-0 Even Petrosian, the master of defense, was not able to bear the pressure of Fischer's rooks.

Fischer-Boris Spassky, World Championship 1972, 6th match game, Queen's Gambit Declined, Tartakower (D59), 1-0 One of the most beautiful and important games of the match.

See also

List of chess games

List of people who have beaten Bobby Fischer in chess

Notes

References

Further reading

Bobby Fischer: A Study of His Approach to Chess by Elie Agur, Cadogan 1992, ISBN 1-85744-001-3.

Bobby Fischer vs. the Rest of the World by Brad Darrach, Stein & Day, 1974, ISBN 0-8128-1618-8 (prizewinning behind-the-scenes account of the Spassky-Fischer match)

Bobby Fischer – wie er wirklich ist: Ein Jahr mit dem Schachgenie by Petra Dautov, ISBN 3-9804281-3-3.

World Champion Fischer (ChessBase, CD-ROM) – includes all Fischer's games (about half annotated), biographical notes, and an examination by Robert Hübner of Fischer's annotations in My Sixty Memorable Games.

World Chess Champions by Edward G. Winter, editor, 1981, ISBN 0-08-024094-1

Bobby Fischer for Beginners, by Renzo Verwer, 2010, New in Chess, ISBN 978-90-5691-315-1

Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness, by Frank Brady, 2011, Crown, ISBN 978-0-307-46390-6

External links

Bobby Fischer Memorial Page at Find-a-Grave

"The Chessman", Gary Kasparov, TIME magazine, 26 January 2008

"Was It Only a Game?", Dick Cavett, NY Times, February 8, 2008

"Death of a madman driven sane by chess", Stephen Moss The Guardian, 19 January 2008

"Bobby Fischer's Pathetic Endgame", Rene Chun The Atlantic, December 2002

Extensive collection of Fischer photographs, Echecs-photos online

Edward Winter, List of Books About Fischer and Kasparov

The Bobby Fischer Unofficial Home Page

Archive of Fischer's personal homepage

Bobby Fischer Live Radio Interviews (1999–2006)

A compilation of pictures of Fischer in the Philippines 1967 made into a video

"Breaking news: Fischer comeback? (27.05.2005)", chessbase.com Alex Titomirov initiated discussion about Fischer comeback to the arena of competitive chess

The Bobby Fischer Defense Essay by Gary Kasparov in the ''New York Review of Books, February 2011.

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