I’m saddened to hear from this entry on Terry Gardener’s blog that Bobby Fischer passed away yesterday (Thursday the 17th of January, 2008).

Bobby was one of the cleverest, and yet yampiest, Chess players ever, “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, and it’d be a real surprise if you hadn’t heard of him. Even if you weren’t keen on Chess, Bobby was a ‘larger than life’ figure, often getting in the Press, and had even had the Musical Chess based upon him.

He achieved a FIDE estimated ELO rating of 2785 after winning the 1972 World Chess Championship against the outgoing Grand Master, Boris Spassky.

Unfortunately there’s a danger that it’s likely to be some of his behavior and some of the comments he made that he will be remembered for, rather than his Chess playing, or the innovations he brought to Chess (both theory, practice and the game itself).

In an effort to promote Talent and Creativity, rather than an encyclopedic Analysis of Chess openings, and generate more interesting and vibrant Chess games, he developed Fischer Random Chess (‘FRC’ or Chess960 as it’s now, more frequently, called).

Other Chess innovations he provided us with included the Fischer Chess Clock.

Personally I hope that it’s these and his Chess play that he will be remembered for as time passes, because essentially he was an outstanding player.

It was extremely unlikely that I was ever going to join this list and now I’ll definitely never get the chance.

Bobby’s Chess Hero was Paul Morphy (another hero of mine too), of whose unprecedented Chess playing talent he said:

“he was the greatest of them all”

Howard Staunton, the man credited with giving us the Staunton Chess set was so afraid of playing, and losing to, Paul Morphy, that he hid away saying he was too busy ‘annotating the works of Shakespeare’ to play the young Morphy.

This article points out the many similarities between Bobby and Paul Morphy: they were both prodigies, they both dominated the other players of their time, they were both were American (unusually in times led by European and Russian play), they both quit in their primes, and they both suffered in Psychological terms. It’s well worth a quick read.

Goodbye Bobby Fischer – you’ll be sorely missed.