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In Reply to: RE: "Bobby Fisher Against the World:" the definitive bio-doc of the posted by tinear on September 30, 2011 at 08:45:46
nt
Follow Ups:
Nt
If he were Japanese, he would have cheered Hiroshima.
racism.
Anything could be written off as insanity.
If you have ever known anyone with paranoid schizophrenia, you would see that he obviously had it. He had major delusions about CIA Plots and they even said he placed aluminum foil on the walls to stop the CIA from transmitting "waves" to his brain. This is clearly paranoid schizophrenia. He obviously had the same delusions about Jews.It's not hard to figure out snd the film actually spelled out when his pyschotic behavior really started to develop...when he was in LA after the Spassky match.
Edits: 10/06/11
As has been mentioned, he was Jewish. The next thing is that he was a chess player who essentially lived at the Manhattan Chess Club where he had many relationships with Jewish people. I have supplied a link to an article that discusses this as per the article which reads in part:
Fischer has developed a straightforward narrative of a Jewish world conspiracy, but his antisemitism is more complex than first appears. In the strange pathology of Fischer’s hatred, his antisemitism has remained at a remove from his relationship with the many individual Jews who have populated his life and with whom he has maintained good relationships.
Denker continued an almost weekly telephone correspondence with Fischer during the 1970s. In the 1990s, when Fischer was on the run from American authorities, he lived for a time at the summer estate of the Polgars, a Jewish family in Budapest. The Polgar family had two beautiful daughters with whom Fischer would endlessly analyze chess matches. The older daughter, Susan, who in 1991 became the first female international grand master, remembers arguing with Fischer endlessly about his ideas on Judaism.
“It was very strange because a lot of his friends were Jewish” said Polgar, who now runs a chess center in Queens. “He would get around that by saying, ‘He is a nice person despite the fact that he is Jewish.’”
This disconnect has been on display in his recent pronouncements. Fischer rarely uses his antisemitic commentary to attack individual Jews. Instead, he uses “Jew” as a label against his enemies, whatever their ethnic background. Fischer called the American Chess Journal and Time magazine “Jew-controlled rags,” and has labeled Bill Clinton a “secret Jew.”
If you actually see the documentary, the later video of Fischer shows a man that is clearly insane to some extent. I have significant connections with autism and don't believe that autism has anything to do with Fischer's personality or problems. I see him more as paranoid and possibly schizophrenic.
Fischer is an enigma in that he was a hero to many of us who grew up during his years when he became champion and then he fell off the map and reappeared as a completely different person and not a person we would have wanted him to reappear. As I come from Jewish heritage, I would have every reason to be insulted and repelled by the man he became but I just feel sorry for the guy. He wasn't a leader of anyone. He didn't sway anyone with his rantings. He was just pathetic. Not what you expected from a guy who did so much decades earlier.
I read his books. I am a huge fan of his chess playing and his annotations to his games. Yes, I was a chess player in high school and a pretty good one (state champion as a senior and runner up as a junior).
You shouldn't view the guy as a little hitler because he had no credibility or following in his crazy state. He just was a broken man. The documentary shows this pretty clearly.
another man was.
And his mother was a notorious "free-spirit." She left Bobby for extended periods to go off protesting various causes. Her view of parenting was "unusual." I don't think it's too hard to understand that a sensitive, intelligent kid, with so little affection from his parents, would become enraged and hate-filled later in life. His was directed at their Jewish-ness, in general. Perhaps he found it hard to admit the personal feelings he felt directly towards them?
Enough, I'm not Jewish nor a psychoanalyst!
I played many of his games with my father and remembering being astonished at them. With Tal, he was my favorite player.
dd
Face it - he was just a one time title winner.
There have only been two Americans in the discussion: Fischer and Paul Morphy. The Soviets supported their players (unlike the US) and did collude by having them play short ties against each other saving their energy for the non-block players.
Edits: 10/03/11
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"Face it - he was just a one time title winner."
Now try reading what I wrote including another post where I asked you to explain what you mean by an impact outside of chess which you passed me along to Tin.
With Fischer you have a pretty classic case of a mental state that is hard to label or define. Was he insane in a legal sense? No. But he clearly was way out there. A paranoid pattern seeker, something the movie connects quite effectively to having a great chess mind. He was not your garden variety anti-semite. I am not making excuses for Fischer. Cleary he was not a very likable guy regardless of his rabid anti-semitism and anti-Americanism that came after fading away into seclusion. But one can be quite interesting and complex and not be likable.
Said Fischer told him it was to stop CIA signals or waves or something like that.
Amy doctor would tell you that is pyschotic behavior, most likely paranoid schizophrenia.
I do not believe he was anti-semitic. Psranoid schizophrenics have grand delusions about vast conspiracies against them. He exhibited this behavior during his entire life.
He rejected his Jewish heritage as he rejected his American citizenship.
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world. -Gandhi
What were the "inaccuracies" of the movie in question and what was the film maker's hidden agenda?
I don't think the agenda or inaccuracies were hidden at all if it made a detestable hate-filled person seem not so bad.
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world. -Gandhi
Edits: 10/02/11 10/02/11
Perhaps you can't get past your own agenda with the guy.
It is incredibly naive to present Fischer as almost the greatest chess player who ever lived - there is nothing to support that position. While he was undeniably capable, even brilliant, he also failed to reach any level of performance that would qualify him as such. Sure enough, he won the title, but only once, and against an admittedly not too strong an opponent. He never defended it against truly serious contenders, people like Karpov. It is often said that anyone can win Tour de France, but only few can do it several times. Whether Fischer's one time was a fluke, a pinnacle of his career, or just another milestone on his march to the chess Olympus - we shall never know, and certainly some of this achievements were brilliant, but for one reason or another, he failed to do what the truly great players do. His purported greatness was never truly tested.America needed a winner, and it's got it... nothing's wrong with that. Some also got a precious gift - a self-hating, anti-Semitic Jew - scuff legends are made off.
Edits: 10/02/11
you can't seem to get anything right about him. What has become painfully obvious is your ignorance on the subject.
were above and beyond anything I've ever witnessed in any type of competition and totally uncalled for.
"I'd like to own a squadron of tanks"
Like I said - he possibly had what it takes to become a champion... but he let it go. That was his decision.
only one of its own could win. Fisher changed that.
He was an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, and a general asshole. No denying that. He also continues to be considered the greatest of all chess players by his peers.
nt
How Fischer and Karpov handled Spassky. Just a couple of years apart, so the comparison is not totally ridiculous.
It is ridiculous to compare champions from different eras since each new generation builds their game on the lessons learned from the previous generation. One can only compare where a particular player stood amongst his peers in his or her time. In that regard Bobby Fischer was in a league of one. If you look at what he did and the context and conditions in which he did it he clearly is in a league of one. He was a freak among freaks. That he "freaked out" after hitting the top says nothing about what he was in terms of talent up until that point.
What Bobby Fischer did would be comparable for a highschool quarterback from Iceland jumping into the college ranks and then going on to the NFL and breaking all the single season records for passing. If that were to happen there would be a good argument that such a person was the best quarterback ever. Even if this imaginary person walked away from the game after a couple years and made no mark on any of the career records for quarterbacks in the NFL.
nt
nt
Some were actually far greater. No one is denying him his chess skills, but it makes little sense to blow them out of proportion. Certainly he was a super-hero in the US, don't forget that part. He earned the title once, against a weak opponent, but never defended it against stronger ones, so we will never know his true potential. Like I said - who remembers every one-time T-de-F winner? Achievement, yes... super-achievement - no.
For a reasonable stretch of time. What more could he do? He could have played longer but couldn't due to his mental illness (somethhing you are apparently rather naive about). Cheers.
"Widely considered a "chess legend",[1][2] at age 13 Fischer won a "brilliancy" that became known as The Game of the Century. Starting at age 14, he played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a point. At 15½, he became both the youngest grandmaster and the youngest candidate for the World Championship up until that time. He won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship 11–0, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. In the early 1970s he became the most dominant player in modern history—winning the 1970 Interzonal by a record 3½-point margin and winning 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps in the Candidates Matches. According to research by Jeff Sonas, in 1971 Fischer had separated himself from the rest of the world by a larger margin of playing skill than any player since the 1870s.[3] He became the first official World Chess Federation (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) (FIDE) number one rated chess player in July 1971, and his 54 total months at number one is the third longest of all time."
This does not even consider the context in which he achieved this status. A loner from NY competing against a Soviet super system with practically unlimited resources designed to build super chess players
.
You even went so far in one post as to ignore the fact that he *was* in fact the world champion. "One of many?" not even close. One of a very few who are true contenders for the mythical title of greatest or best ever. the fact that he is even in the conversation, and he is in the converstaion for those who know the subject and are not overtaken by their personal hatred for tha man, speaks volumes for his talent given that he walked awy from the game at age 29. In his short time in the game on an international level he achieved a degree of superiority that no other chess player has ever enjoyed in the history of the game. That certainly makes him one of if not the best ever and one of if not the greatest ever. You conveniently ignored that fact while making a bizarre "case" out of his time as the top rated player only being the third longest. Aside form the fact that his stay at the top was cut off by his choice to walk away from the game, that you would cite this as your case for Bobby Fisher being unexceptional is indeed bizarre.
Also you have been harping on about his impact beyond the game itself. His impact was pretty obvious. He was bigger than the game ever was or probably ever will be. Fischer was regarded by many as the most famous man on earth when he won the world championship. The championship itself was the lead story each night over Watergate. It was watched by millions of people. The popularity of chess in the United Stetes skyrocketed because of Fischer. How many people do you think know who Anand is these days? whether or not you can see past your hatred for the guy, he was bigger than the game itself. That is rare. While Anand seems to be a nicer guy than Fischer I somehow don't see anyone making a documentary of any interest on him or any other players. And nothing in the history of the game comes close to being the international event that the Spassky/ Fischer championship was. Kasparov/ Big Blue was a distant distant second. Fischer's win over Spassky was a big deal and had a substantial impact on the collective state of mind of the American people.
I feel a wounded pride in your writing, something akin to the Sputnik affair. While I understand these sentiments, they do not, by themselves, elevate the event to any new height. It would be silly to claim Fischer did not have talent... it is every bit as silly to blow it out of proportion, as you are doing. It really doesn't matter whether he left the sport at 29 or 79, what matters is his achievement, the biggest of which was one world title. Spectacular, to be sure... but far from unique. As far as being an international event, I would dare say Karpov/Korchnoi match was at least as attention-grabbing. Making an event by being an asshole is one thing. Defending the title against a couple of world's best would had been far more impressive. We all know what he choose.
Edits: 10/04/11
> > I feel a wounded pride in your writing, something akin to the Sputnik affair.> >
You are feeling something that simply isn't there.
> > While I understand these sentiments, they do not, by themselves, elevate the event to any new height.> >
There are no sentiments involved. What I said about the impact of that match is fact not personal sentiment.
> > It would be silly to claim Fischer did not have talent... it is every bit as silly to blow it out of proportion, as you are doing.> >
I merely cut and pasted actual facts. I am not blowing anything out of proportion. OTOH you have been way over the top in your dismissiveness of the guy.
> > It really doesn't matter whether he left the sport at 29 or 79, what matters is his achievement, the biggest of which was one world title.> >
Actually it matters a great deal. And while his championship is a big achievement his record for the highest margin of top ranking is arguably a greater achievment. His 20 game win streak was unique and very much off the map.
> > Spectacular, to be sure... but far from unique.> >
It was all those other things I cited that were *in fact* unique and supportive of the argument that he was the best ever.
> > As far as being an international event, I would dare say Karpov/Korchnoi match was at least as attention-grabbing.> >
You would be plainly wrong.
> > Making an event by being an asshole is one thing.> >
That isn't what made the Fischer Spassky championship match an event.
> > Defending the title against a couple of world's best would had been far more impressive. We all know what he choose.> >
Clearly the guy made a lot of bad choices in life to say the least. But just because the guy was an asshole, and he was, doesn't diminish the impact he and the match he played with Spassky had on The U.S. the world and the world of chess. Bobby Fischer was at one point one of the most famous persons on earth. Some say he was at one point THE most famous person on earth. Karpov? Korchnoi? Anand?
Fischer was bigger than chess. He was an enigma. And yes, he was an asshole. But he and the match with Spassky made for a very interesting documentary. That is the real point.
A US-centric point of view.
It was world wide news. Perhpas it was down played in the Soviet Union since it was not what the powers that be wanted and the results obviously were less than favorable. Perhaps yours is a some what USSR centric perspective. Where were you when this match was played?
Bobby Fischer was a most enigmatic individual.
Remove his chess talent and what's left behind is not enough for one half-page in a book. Such anti-Semites are a nickle a hundred.
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Remove his chess talent and you have a different person. Hey remove Einstein's inteligence and you have just another high school drop out.
You can't remove Bobby Fischer's chess talent. You can't change what was.
You can't make him into some simple easy target that is easy to dismiss no matter how much you disliked him. Despite your protests he was a complex man who was a significant figure in 20th century culture and.....
this was a very good movie.
But I see no point in you seeing it.
.
so yeah case closed.
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