Bobby Fischer, a former world chess champion, a true genius and officially a weirdo, has died three days ago in Iceland at the age of 64.
The only American who win the official World Chess Championship and became famous for beating Cold War Soviet rival Boris Spassky in 1972, died of an unspecified illness.
Here's a random post I stumbled upon while surfing through the LJ's.
It's made by some Icelander, who've met Bobby Fischer at the informal meeting last year and talked to him:
SourceMy evening with Bobby Fischer.
Last night I got invited to a birthday party at one of my old debate guys house. About 60% of the people there were old students of mine, which makes for a funny evening anyway. But the part that made the party interesting was chess legend Bobby Fischer.
Yup, he was there, chatting with anyone who cared to listen to his craaazy theories on the CIA and the jewish conspiracy against him. The man is totally off his melon of course, a crazy genius of giant proportions. But he is actually real fun to talk to if you ignore the fact that he's the most paranoid man on earth.
I talked with him about the crisis in Sudan, how best to achieve peace in the middle east, the CIA's involvement in Iceland (apparently they have agents EVERYWHERE!), the political situation in Iceland (which apparently is the most corrupted in the WHOLE WORLD), his ideas on why current chess is obsolete and corrupt and why Fischer Random is a better form of the game (that was actually very interesting) and lastly of course how the "Dirty Jews" controlled everything and everyone. Actually every conversation topic somehow progressed towards the "Dirty Jews" in the end, a good signal to change the subject. The man is totally obsessed with a jewish world conspiracy. Hitler would have liked him.
It was one of the most surreal things that have happened to me. There I was drinking my beer, and in the next chair one of the most famous men in the world, probably one of the smartest men in the world and also one of the craziest men in the world, all in the persona of Bobby Fischer. It was like having one of the coolest artefacts from the Cold war to chat with at leisure. This is a man who is actually famous for never talking to anyone, for disappearing from the face of the earth for some twenty years. He never gives interviews to the press, he sues people who write books about him, he is generally considered to be propably the best chess player that ever lived, yet he never plays chess or even talks about it.
And still, I got to talk with him at length, about where he was from, about chess, about whatever my heart desired. Surreality never looked so good. I always knew he was a bit nuts...but I never suspected just how nuts he actually is...
When I left at three a.m. he was lying in the upstairs sofa, shirt buttoned down, rubbing his belly, explaining to someone who would still listen how he hated Iceland and wanted to leave as soon as possible. Well... I had my moment with him...he can go now.