Bobby Fischer is dead

Okay, he was a lunatic. He's also one of the two or three greatest chess players of all time.

Chessgames.com: 938 games of Bobby Fischer.

A master of his craft and an international celebrity, but he never came to terms with his identity and ended up making some extremely hateful anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks, to the point where the "lunatic" title was justly deserved. I guess he's case-in-point for the argument that "you can't have it all".

Reykjavik.

Please click here.

Looks like a homeless street person. He should have been in a mental hospital.

It's treated that way in most countries: If one wants the latest news about chess, one looks in the sport page. Sports Illustrated covers chess when the story is big enough and of interest to Americans. ABC's Wide World of Sports was all ready to cover the Fischer-Spassky match in 1972 when Fischer objected to the noise the cameras made.

It is human competition (unless computers are involved, then I give the story only passing mention, if any), there is a winner and a loser (unless a game is drawn, as often happens at the top levels), prize money and even cheating and accusations of cheating.

It is not true that the world chess championship is modeled after the world boxing championship. It's actually the other way around. Here are some thoughts on the subject of the world championship.