Robert James ("Bobby") Fischer was born in 1943 in Chicago, in the United States. While born in Chicago, Fischer lived in Brooklyn, New York. He learned to play chess at the age of 6 when his older sister purchased a chess set at a neighborhood store and they read the rules included with the set.Fischer began reading chess books and attending the Brooklyn Chess Club soon afterwards, participating in chess tournaments, but without great success. Fischer kept working at his game, however, and really made big progress in 1956 at the age of 13, thanks in large part to coaching by John W. Collins who also worked with other future U.S. masters and grandmasters. That July, he became the U.S. Junior Champion.
In October, Fischer was invited to the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament. He finished in the bottom half of the table, but one of his games, his victory against Donald Byrne, launched his fame in the chess world. The game is called the "Game of the Century," which is too gaudy a title for the game, though it does feature a middlegame queen sacrifice and wass very well played by the 13-year old.
Fischer then won the U.S. Open in 1957. This was an incredible achivement, considering the calibre of players he faced in such a strong event. By virtue of becoming U.S. Open Champion, Fischer was invited to the U.S. (Closed) Championship the following year, in 1958. The difference between the "Open" and the "Closed" is that anyone can play in the "Open," and players are paired each round, the winner being the player with the most points. In the Closed, only a select number of players (in those days, 9 to 14) were invited. The players would play a round-robin (each player faced everyone else), and the player with the most points would be crowned the U.S. Champion.
With the help of William Lombardy's defeat of Samuel Reshevsky in the final round, Fischer finished in first place at the 1958 U.S. Championship, and became the youngest U.S. Champion ever, at 14 years old. This record has yet to be broken. By virtue of this victory, Fischer qualified to play in the 1958 Interzonal tournament in Potoroz (Slovenia), the beginning of the World Championship cycle.
Players who qualified for the Interzonal automatically became International Masters. Thus, Fischer became the youngest International Master ever at that time, achieving the title at 15 years old. The top 6 finishers (out of 24) in the Interzonal would qualify for the Candidates Tournament. Fischer, dismissing all the pundits, managed to finish in a tie for 5th-6th place, making the Candidates.
For this there was another prize: players who qualified for the Candidates were automatically awarded the title of International Grandmaster (and deservedly so). And so Bobby Fischer, at the age of 15, became an International Grandmaster, the youngest person ever to do so in the history of chess. No one broke Fischer's record until Judit Polgar did so in 1992, earning the title a few months earlier than did Fischer!
Fischer put in a respectable, though not brilliant, performance at the Candidates Tournament held in Yugoslavia in 1959. Mikhail Tal won the tournament and the next year defeated Mikhail Botvinnik to become World Champion. Tal scored 4-0 against Fischer in this event, though he never defeated him again. Fischer had been scaling every peak thus far, but the Candidates Tournament contained truly great players, and Fischer was not yet up to their level. Fischer was going to be a professional chessplayer, though, because by this time he dropped out of high school.
Fischer went on to win more U.S. Championships (he won all 8 that he competed in), including a perfect 11-0 score in 1963-64. This has never been duplicated: the disparity in strength between Fischer and the next strongest American players was enormous.
Fischer won the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal and Competed in the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curacao, but finished in the middle of the table. It was around this time that Fischer began his famous (infamous?) accusations that the Soviet players were colluding against him (especially) and the other outsiders by drawing the games against each other and trying hard to beat him.
The worldwide stir Fischer's comments created convinced FIDE (the International Chess Federation) to move to a structure of Candidates matches instead of a tournament for 1965, and also to limit the amount of players qualifying to five from any one country. These decisions have been widely debated, but it is interesting to note the amount of impact Fischer had on the chess world, even when he was not a World Champion.
Fischer was a chessplayer who demanded everything be done his way, or he would simply not play. He did not participate in the 1964-66 World Championship cycle. While competing in the Sousse (Tunizia) Interzonal in 1967 for the 1967-69 cycle, he dominated the tournament with 8.5 out of 10, but then left the event less than halfway through due to a dispute with the organizers.
Fischer was only able to compete in the 1970-72 cycle that made him Champion because U.S. Grandmaster Pal Benko, through an agreement with the USCF, gave Fischer his place. Fischer had not competed in the 1969 U.S. Championship that served as a Zonal to qualify players for the Interzonal.
He was after all able to participate in the 1970 Palma de Mallorca Interzonal and, predictably, won it easily, by a full 3.5-point margin, with 18.5 out of 23. Fischer won his last 7 games of the tournament, and his game in Round 23, against Oscar Panno was won by forfeit after Panno had a dispute with the organizers and refused to play the game. This was the last tournament game of Fischer's career. In the next year, 1971, the Candidates Matches would be played.
In his Candidates Quaterfinal match, Fischer was paired against Soviet GM Mark Taimanov. Taimanov was a strong, veteran competitor and, incidentally, an excellent concert pianist. Fischer was expected to win, but the final score of 6-0, with no draws, shook the chess world. Such a result, at the highest level of chess is, in a word, impossible. These things just do not happen. One player can dominate another, but there would at least be a few draws mixed in. Taimanov returned to the USSR and had all of his honors stripped from him and was humiliated as punishment for being embarrassed by the brash American.
In the Semifinal match, Fischer was to play Danish GM Bent Larsen. Larsen was a strong GM for decades and decades, is deservedly considered a legendary player—certainly stronger even than Taimanov. Larsen does not admit this, but it is sometimes said that after his 1971 match with Fischer, Larsen's confidence was never quite the same. Fischer won this match, too, with a perfect 6-0. As Paul Keres said: "This must be sorcery! A Larsen cannot lose by such a score!" And yet it is true. Fischer managed a double-shutout of two of the best players the world had to offer!
Fischer strode into the Candidates Final to face ex-World Champion Tigran Petrosian. Fischer won the first game, but lost the second badly, finally ending his streak: with his 7 wins to finish the interzonal, 6-0 against Taimanov, 6-0 against Larsen, and the Game 1 win against Petrosian, Fischer had won 20 straight games against top international competition! THIS IS A FEAT THAT WE WILL NEVER SEE AGAIN (at least from a human), even if we live 200 years!
The next three games of the Petrosian match were drawn, and the match was tied 2.5-2.5. But then, surprisingly, Fischer won the next four in a row! He claimed the match 6.5-2.5 and went on to the World Championship match.
Fischer was to face Boris Spassky, the 10th World Champion, in Reykjavik, Iceland. I do not want to rehash all of the difficulties that ensued in getting the match to take place, you can check out the Wikipedia link below for that, but the "Match of the Century" finally did get played and after losing Game 1 due to a horrible blunder, and forfeiting Game 2 due to protests about cameras, Fischer was down 2-0.
It can be said that this is where Spassky made the decisive mistake. Spassky agreed to have the cameras moved to where Fischer wanted, and Game 3 was played in a back room. Spassky was the World Champion, not Fischer, and he could have simply insisted that Fischer accept the terms or go home. The USSR told Spassky to return home, but he did not heed this (good) advice and stayed.
Fischer won Game 3 and eventually took the match by a final score of 12.5-8.5. So after being down 2-0, Fischer went +6 in the last 19 games of the match. Absolutely incredible against a player of Spassky's calibre. On September 1, 1972 Robert James Fischer became the 11th World Champion.
He did not play any tournaments or matches or Olympiads, however. He forfeited his title on April 3, 1975 after not agreeing on match conditions with FIDE. Fischer submitted 179 conditions for the match, and FIDE accepted 178 of them. The last advantage that FIDE would not (and by precedent, could not) give was that the Challenger would have to win by a score of 10-8 (two points, instead of the usual one) to win the title. Anatoly Karpov was crowned the 12th World Champion.
Fischer turned down numerous offers to play exhibition matches and to return to tournament play, becoming a recluse. He finally did play a match in 1992 with Spassky for $5 million, rescuing himself from poverty. He won this match 17.5-12.5. After passport problems leading to detainment in Japan in 2004, he was granted Icelandic citizenship in 2005.
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