Japanese Scores Fischer Money

A rare chess victory for Japan: Reuters reports, "An Icelandic court said on Thursday the widow of former world chess champion Bobby Fischer should inherit his estimated $2 million estate, which has been in dispute since his death in 2008."

Read more here.

New Doco on Fischer

Obviously as a follow-up to yesterday's post, one of our avid readers just sent in a tip about the latest doco on Bobby Fischer. This one called "Bobby Fischer Against the World", directed by Liz Garbus, recently premiered at Sundance.

I couldn't find the trailer, but here's Liz briefly talking about the film plus a brief clip.

How Crazy was Fischer?

Frank Brady, founding editor of the US Chess Life magazine, has written a new book on Bobby Fischer entitled, "Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness". Here's Laura Miller's review of that book in Salon:

Just how crazy was Bobby Fischer? Those best qualified to judge, such as the psychiatrist friend who kept him company in his final days, insisted he was not schizophrenic or psychotic; he didn't hallucinate or lose touch with reality. However, he clearly wasn't mentally healthy. The intensity of his attention to chess was certainly compulsive, and it unbalanced his life in addition to making him one of the game's greatest players.

But Fischer's celebrity seems to have done him more damage than anything else. It fueled the grandiosity that lies at the heart of all paranoia and it turned him into an imperious diva who inflicted ridiculous demands -- that a hotel raise the level of his toilet seat by exactly 1 inch, for example, or that he be paid outlandish fees just to discuss the possibility of a high-profile match -- apparently for the sake of exercising arbitrary power.

Chess, Curaçao and Commies

The problem with communism is that it's an ideology that is always desperate to get ahead. Commies, therefore, always do desperate things. Like cheat. In chess tournaments. Now please, don't ask me if players, pros and juniors alike, caught cheating in dunnies are commies. That's for another day.

Curaçao 1962 was and is one of the most talked-about chess tournaments ever mainly for the wrong reasons. Weeks after the event, Bobby Fischer wrote an article for Sports Illustrated magazine (published on August 60, 1962) in which he bluntly accused his Russian opponents of colluding against him. In other words, they just flat out cheated.

But between 1959 and 1962 the Russian dominance of the Candidates' Tournament became much more open than it had been before. At Curacao it was flagrant. There was open collusion between the Russian players. They agreed ahead of time to draw the games they played against each other. Each time they drew they gave each other half a point. The tournament winner, Petrosian, got 5 points of his 17 total this way. They consulted during the games. If I was playing a Russian opponent, the other Russians watched my games, and commented on my moves in my hearing. Then they ridiculed my protests to officials. They worked as a team.

It is perhaps thanks largely to Fischer's renown that we often think of him as the biggest victim of this collusion. However, reading the paper, "Did the Soviets collude? A statistical analysis of championship chess 1940–1978", by Moul and Nye, tells us something different.

The bigger victim to this commie cheating was another American in yet another famous tournament. Sammy Reshevsky in Zurich 1953.

I am talking about all this because Bobby Ang has just revisited the whole issue in his latest column for RP's Business World magazine. You can still read that article here.

Fischer Lover Fights On

Just when I thought that it was all done and dusted, Pinoy lawyer Sammy Estimo, representing Fischer's Filipina lover, is doing everything he can to continue the fight. I suppose that's what every lawyer should do, but, now this is fast becoming a typical midday Fipino soap opera.

From the Daily Mail: "Mr Estimo claims that Mr Bogason closed the case prematurely without consulting the mother and daughter after the DNA tests in Germany allegedly showed that Jinky was not Fischer's daughter."

Read more: Icelandic court to reopen inheritance case of former lover of chess legend Bobby Fischer.

Bobby on Bobby's Legacy

There's been plenty of news over the last couple of weeks on the whole Bobby Fischer saga and, in particular, whether or not he fathered a child with one Marilyn Young, apparently his then "live-in partner". We now know that he didn't. The DNA tests said so. As far as I'm concerned, the science is conclusive and that's that.

But in his column today for the Philippines' Business World, Fischer's long-time friend Bobby Ang still has something to say about the whole thing.

Through mutual friends Marilyn Young was introduced to him, they fell in love and lived together in a house in Baguio Country Club. Then Ms. Marilyn got pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl, Jinky.

...

When the baby came out Bobby was initially skeptical: "how come the baby does not have blue eyes?" was the question he kept asking. However, after some time he seemed to relent and recognize the baby as his own. I do not know whether he ever brought them abroad to vacation, but even after Fischer left the Philippines he used to send them money, postcards and gifts through a mutual friend.

Maybe Marilyn had another boyfriend before Bobby Fischer, maybe the paternity test was flawed -- I don’t know. What I do know is that Bobby Fischer treated Jinky like his own daughter. And for someone like him who is not used to being close to anybody that is saying a lot.

And that is all I have to say about that.

READ: Whatever the DNA tests say, Jinky deserves something.

Fischer Lover Needs Job

The woman who's at the centre of the latest Fischer news frenzy appears to be more concerned about the most regular thing: just getting a job. And she prefers one in government.

Thirty one year old Marily Young is in a legal fight to prove that her 9 year old daughter, Jinky, is, in fact, the daughter of the late chess champion. A win will mean that she'll likely end up with P140M in the bank or roughly just a little over 3 million US dollars. It's pretty damn hard to believe that Fischer died with apparently so much dough!

More in Manila Bulletin.

Iceland to Exhume Fischer

In a follow up story to my earlier post, the Icelandic Supreme Court has now given the go-ahead for the exhumation of Fischer.

The SMH reports.

Fischer to be Exhumed?

Pinoy journo Marlon Bernardino has just filed a news report for the RP press in which he writes:

IN a bizarre twist to the battle for the estate left by the late chess legend Bobby Fischer, lawyer Sammy Estimo revealed that the remains of the chess icon will be exhumed soon.

Estimo, lawyer of Fischer’s Filipino child, Jinky Young, said that Judge Sigrun Gudmundsdottir of the Icelandic probate court found no DNA samples of Fischer at the National Hospital in Iceland where the ex-world champion died on January 17, 2008 of renal failure.

Because of this development, Estimo and his collaborating Icelandic lawyer, Thordur Bogason, were left with no other recourse but to request the court to issue an order for the exhumation of Bobby’s remains for DNA samples to be tested with the blood samples extracted from Jinky when she went to Iceland in December last year.

UPDATE (1 April): The Manila Bulletin has the article here.

Searching for Fischer's Father

A fascinating article by Peter Nicholas for the LA Times.

How was Bobby affected by the secrecy and the contradictions surrounding his father's identity? What was it like for him to learn that the man whose name he bore was not his father -- and to find out only after Nemenyi's death that this mysterious figure with the thick accent was his flesh and blood?

There is no way to know. But these experiences may help explain Fischer's venomous anti-Semitism and his denial of his own Jewish ancestry.

As a teenager, he told a magazine writer he was Jewish only on his mother's side. Years later, he wrote to the Encyclopedia Judaica asking that he not be listed as a Jew.

Read more in Chasing the king of chess.

Icelandic Doco About Fischer

The Iceland Review reports of a doco about ex-World Champion Bobby Fischer that will premier on 17 April.

"It begins in the Cold War […]. Then we travel to Japan where Saemi is trying to free his friend. Then the story continues until Bobby's death".

Fischer's Last Note

Today's issue of the Good Weekend, a magazine insert that comes with the weekend edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, has a short article on Bobby Fischer. Author John Carlin mainly writes about the ex-World Champion's last days in Iceland and especially about the very few people with whom Fischer had regular contact. One of those people is psychiatrist Magnus Skulason.

Just before Fischer died, Skulason spent an entire night by his bedside. "Once, towards dawn, he woke up and said his feet ached and asked if I could massage them. I tried my best, and it was then he said his last words to me and, as far as I know, to anybody. Responding to my hands on his feet he said, 'Nothing is as healing as the human touch.'"

Skulason, who said he believe the human touch was something Fischer had craved all his life, told me he was surprised at how much he missed Fischer now he was gone. The psychiatrist was at pains to note that, for all his tyrannical tendencies, the hermitic genius could sometimes exude great warmth. All those I spoke to in Iceland who had known him said the same thing.

Of interest to Fischer aficionados is that their man had apparently written a final note which is to be found at Fischer's favourite bookshop, Bokin. It was a request for a comic book and read simply, "They'll Do it Every Time! by Jimmy Hatlo (cartoons) 40s or 50s" and signed, "Bobby F".

Unfortunately, the GW article doesn't seem to be available online. But for more on Skulason, Fischer and the Bokin - read this article again, in The Smart Set, which I'd posted last January.

See also Fischer - Andersson, Siegen Exhibition, 1970.

The Times on Fischer

London's Times paper has a long article today on Bobby Fischer: Bobby Fischer's final manoeuvre.

Fridrik Olafsson, who first met 15-year-old Fischer at an international chess championship in Slovenia, tells an unsettling story about how, at breakfast one morning, Fischer took his knife and started slicing up wasps crawling across the table, saying: “That’s how I’m going to squeeze my opponents.” In the years that followed, Fischer did not just defeat opponents; he crushed them. By the time of the 1972 world championship, he was described as “the most individualistic, intransigent, uncommunicative, uncooperative, solitary… champion in the world”. But also “the strongest player who ever lived”.

Fischer Was Stupid

The late great Bobby Fischer was stupid. So says John-Paul Pagano:

Fischer is compelling because he showed so clearly why these conceptions are wrong. Great genius and profound stupidity coexisted in him. His genius was cognitive, his stupidity was emotional and the profundity of his emotional retardation lent him a false air of psychosis.

More in Knave's Gambit: The Totalitarian Stupidity of Bobby Fischer.

Remembering a Different Bobby Fischer

It's been more than a couple of weeks after his death and yet plenty are still written about Bobby Fischer in the mainstream papers. In today's NY Times, Dick Cavett reminisces on the chess champion's appearance on his TV show back in 1971.

Getting Fischer on my show that first time, before the big match, was considered a major catch at the time. If anyone in the audience shared my image of what a chess genius probably looked like, Bobby’s entrance erased it.

Here was no Nabakovian homunculus. There appeared, somewhat disconcerted, a tall and handsome lad with football-player shoulders, impeccably suited, a little awkward of carriage and unsure how to negotiate the unfamiliarity of the set, the bright lights, the wearing of make-up, the band music, the hand-shaking and the thundering ovation — all at the same time. I had hoped to avoid the cliché “gangling,” but Bobby gangled. He sort of lurched into his chair.

The accompanying video, too, is not to be missed. From Was It Only a Game?

Bobby Fischer - A Heartless Son

From The Times, a brief and insightful look at Fischer's relationship with his mother, Regina Fischer. Very interesting reading in Bobby Fischer, chess genius, heartless son:

Regina Fischer, rejected by her son and filled with anguish at their separation, continued to follow his meteoric career, turning up in Iceland disguised in a blonde wig to witness his finest hour, in defiance of his orders to stay away.

For three years between 1957 and 1960 Regina wrote regularly to Joan Rodker, now a retired journalist, photographer and film-maker, disclosing some of the hurt felt by a mother disowned by an extraordinary son. The two women had met as idealistic communists living in Moscow in the 1930s and remained friends.

One Last Fischer Controversy

A final controversy looks set to be written into the life and death of Bobby Fischer. Britain's Telegraph is reporting that Fischer's burial may not have been completely legal!

The grave was dug in secret as darkness descended over the white frozen landscape around the village of Hraungerdi, ready for Bobby Fischer's last getaway. Not even the minister whose churchyard it was knew of the funeral planned for the following morning.

From Bobby Fischer's final bizarre act. I suppose the bastard just couldn't help himself.

Bobby Fischer's Favourite Bookstore

Drexel University's The Smart Set - which, by the way, is a must-read - has a nice little piece on Bobby Fischer. Sara Blask, a writer based in Reykjavik, recounts Fischer's time in a little joint called Bókin, a bookstore. Worth a read. From: "Bobby Fischer Read Here".

The last time Fischer visited Bókin was in early October, before he became sick. In many ways, Bókin was the deeply rooted giving tree Fischer so desperately needed, a place where he could either fuel — or seek shelter from — the storms brewing in his head. He remained obstinate until his dying day, refusing Western treatment for what would ultimately lead to kidney failure, a move he could not outsmart with any amount of intellect or logic. Bobby Fischer may have been able to defy his opponents but in the end, he couldn’t triumph over his own tired body.

Fischer Buried in Iceland

Robert James Fischer was buried yesterday in Iceland apparently near Reykjavik. It was a Catholic ceremony and attended only by a small number of people including his companion, Miyoko Watai.

From Reuters: Chess champion Bobby Fischer buried in Iceland.

Fischer's Philippine Connections

Yet another Fischer post, but this one, dear readers, has a particularly unique angle. It's about Fischer and his Filipino connection, but most especially a romantic one!

In one of the "reactions" (to Fischer's death) videos on Chessvibes, GM Ljubomir Ljubojevic suddenly said that Fischer has an offspring in the Philippines. That just too me aback! I only quarter-remembered this bit of detail and was no longer certain if it was true. But a quick email from our friend Manny Benitez confirmed that Ljubojevic's statement is, indeed, correct. And now, this morning, I saw this:

Fischer played tennis at the Baguio Country Club and had a romance with a 30-year-old woman from Davao named Marilyn Young in Baguio City before he went on exile to Iceland.

Fischer’s certified Filipino heir, 7-year-old Jinky, was born in 2002 at the Saint Louis University Sacred Heart Hospital here.

The girl’s birth certificate bears the name "Robert James Fischer" as her father, but she kept her mother’s maiden name, "Young."

It's quite remarkable. Read more in Why Bobby Fischer loved RP, Filipinos. (Thanks again to Manny for pointing me to this article).

And we're a little late with these but here are obits from The Times and in The Guardian (by L. Barden).