Fischer, Bobby (Robert James Fischer) (fĭsh`ər), 1943–, American chess player, b. Chicago. In 1958, he became a grandmaster, the youngest to that time. In the Interzonal and Candidates' matches in 1970 and 1971 he won an unprecedented 20 straight games to qualify to challenge Boris Spassky Spassky, Boris, 1937–, Soviet chess champion. A child prodigy, he became an international master at the age of 16 and in 1955, at age 18, he became an international grand master.
..... Click the link for more information. for the world championship. When he overwhelmed Spassky in 1972, he became the only American world titlist and, according to a consensus of contemporary grandmasters, the strongest chess player in history. From then until 1992, Fischer did not play a single game of chess in public. He forfeited his world title in 1975 and turned down lucrative offers to play again. In 1992 he was indicted for participating in a match with Spassky in Yugoslavia, against which the United States had an economic boycott. He subsequently lived abroad as a fugitive and was arrested (2004) in Japan for traveling on a revoked passport. Threatened with deportation to the United States, he was allowed to leave (2005) for Iceland after that nation granted him citizenship.

Bibliography

See D. Edmonds and J. Eldinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War (2004).

Fischer, Bobby

orig. Robert James Fischer

Bobby Fischer, 1971.

(credit: AP)

(born March 9, 1943, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 17, 2008, Reykjavík, Ice.) U.S.-born chess master. He became a grandmaster at age 15, then a record. In 1972 Fischer defeated Boris Spassky to become the only American to win the world chess championship. An intense and eccentric personality, he was a devout Christian fundamentalist who frequently condemned the Soviet Union for godlessness; he was deprived of his title in 1975 after refusing to meet his Soviet challenger, Anatoly Karpov. He remained out of the game thereafter except for a victorious private rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992; the game violated U.S. sanctions against Yugoslavia. Fischer stayed abroad, becoming an Icelandic citizen in 2005.

Fischer, (Robert James) Bobby (1943– ) chess player; born in Chicago. Raised in Brooklyn after his parents divorced in 1945, he learned to play chess when he was six and won the U.S. junior and senior titles at age 14. In 1972 he captured the world championship from Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, while competing for what was then the largest purse ($250,000) offered in any sport outside boxing. Amid praise for his "classicist" style, the win set off a short-lived U.S. chess boom. A longtime nemesis of tournament officials for his tantrums and phobias, he failed in 1975 to agree to terms for a title defense against Anatoly Karpov and was stripped of his crown by FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Echecs). Afterwards he refused to compete in public, lived in virtual seclusion in the Los Angeles area, and was briefly active in the fundamentalist Worldwide Church of God.