Searching for Bobby Fischer?
 

Well, he's dead. What an idiot.

Still, it takes one back. In 1972, my dad and I watched the dreary Shelby Lyman-hosted PBS "coverage" of his match with Boris Spassky and plotted out the games on a board at home. My dad had actually played Fischer at the Marshall Chess Club some years earlier. (It was a simultaneous exhibition, and, of course, Fischer won.) At the time, the Fischer-Spassky match seemed up there with the moon landing as an American advance of international importance.

But, again, what an idiot.

Or, what a sad, sick man.

Probably both. I see him as an example of the mad genius - no one could doubt his brilliance, and no one could deny his excentricities that made him so reprehensible.

I just thought he had mad wicked chess skillz.

It makes me think of a friend of mine who coined the phrase, "Searching for Bobbitt's Pischer":p

I've heard it suggested in recent days that his antisemitism and other ravings may have simply been a result of paranoia brought on by severe mental illness, especially since he never was known to spout of such absurdities in his earlier years. I don't know whether it is true or not but it's an interesting theory.