I’ve been meaning to write about the passing of Bobby Fischer for awhile. I used to be quite the avid chess player, and while I was never any good, Bobby Fischer always fascinated me. While not someone to be emulated(his erratic behavior often included anti-semitic comments), his match with 1972 match with Boris Spassky was a Cold War battle.

There is a whole series of books about bizarre idiosyncratic events like Bobby Fischer’s battle with the soviets. The book about Bobby Fischer is called “Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How a Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine”.

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I find idiosyncratic history fascinating, so I think I will.

Also interesting is that Fischer eyed a final big match. Icelanic newspaer Morgunbladid quoted a friend of Fischer as saying that hoped to play current world champion Viswanathan Anard or Garry Kasparov in a final tournament in India.  The newspaper said that Anand was very interested in playing Fischer but it had not been able to schedule it. Kasparov, on the other hand, was reported as not being able to play Fischer due to political commitments in Russia.

Its unclear to me what these political commitments are, but I did find it interesting that even after all this time political commitments would keep two chess players from playing(although things like this do occur in sports and games all the time between other nations, Israel and Palestine in Soccer for instance).

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