Who was Bobby Fischer?

On October 17, 1956, people called it “The Game of the Century”, others called it just the greatest game ever played.

On that day, 13-year-old Bobby Fischer’s legacy started after defeating Donald Byrne, one of the greatest chess players of the 1950’s. His statement after winning such an amazing game?

“I just made the moves I thought were best. I was just lucky.”

Bobby Fischer pondering moves

Bobby Fischer was ranked the number one chess player by the FIDE (World Chess Federation) for almost six years in a row, winning just about every championship he went into following up to that title. He was the youngest grandmaster at chess, at only the age of fifteen. Then at the age of twenty, he got the first perfect score ever seen at the U.S. championship.

He was considered the best chess player of his time, and can be argued the the best ever to play.

Well, most people considered this, but this was the time of the Cold War, and so tensions were very high with the Soviet Union, and they had to step up to the United States’ world champion. Spassky and Fischer met as delegates from their respective countries in Iceland to play for the title of world champion.

The games were intense, Spassky starting with a lead on the first two games, when Fischer forfeited the second because he did not agree to all the cameras that were on the table. People wanted to watch from all over the world. After the twenty one games that were played, Spassky won 3 games, Fischer had one 7, and there were 11 draws.

Fischer's Soviet opponent, Boris Spassky

The chess championship between the tense countries sparked a large interest in chess in other countries, but after the intense face-off of the two cold war countries, Bobby Fischer’s chess career slowed down. Fischer and Spassky remained friends, and after an unofficial match between the two, Fischer had a dispute with the U.S. government concerning taxes on the match winnings. After this, Fischer left the States, moved a lot of places, but eventually stayed in Iceland, basically becoming an anti-american, writing plenty and said of anti-american statements to the public over the radio.

The only notable thing he did after he had left the United States was that he patented a way of timing turns of chess, to keep a time restriction. This way of turn timing is used in tournaments today. He also made up a new way of playing chess, called Chess960, which isn’t widely played, but is still known today.