Bobby Fischer's mother tried to find him chess partners through a newspaper
In November 1950, worried that her seven-year-old son spent too many hours playing chess against himself, Regina Fischer wrote to the Brooklyn Eagle asking to place an advertisement for children who might play with him. The paper turned it down because nobody knew which category it belonged in, but it passed her note to a veteran chess columnist.
That columnist, Hermann Helms, pointed her to a simultaneous exhibition by the former Scottish champion Max Pavey in January 1951. Bobby lost, but he lasted fifteen minutes and drew a crowd. Watching was Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn Chess Club, who took the boy under his wing. Fischer later credited meeting Nigro as probably decisive in his carrying on with the game. After that came the Hawthorne Chess Club at the home of Jack Collins, where he played thousands of quick games and ate nearly as many dinners as at home.
His rise was astonishing. In May 1956 his rating stood at a modest 1726; by July he was the youngest US Junior Champion ever, at 13. That October, facing the country's best, he beat Donald Byrne by sacrificing his queen for a crushing attack, a win Hans Kmoch dubbed the Game of the Century. Before turning 15 he had won the US Championship, the first of a record eight, and in 1964 he took it with a perfect 11 out of 11.
In 1972 he became the eleventh world champion, beating the Soviet Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in a match billed as a Cold War duel that drew more global attention than any title match before or since. Three years later he refused to defend the crown after a dispute with FIDE, and Anatoly Karpov was declared champion by default. A 1992 rematch in Yugoslavia, then under sanctions, led to a US arrest warrant, and he spent his last years in Iceland, which granted him citizenship.
His legacy is tangled. Despite his own Jewish ancestry, he made repeated antisemitic statements. Yet chess still uses his ideas: his book My 60 Memorable Games, the time increment added after each move, and Chess960, where the back-rank pieces start in one of 960 shuffled arrangements.
Source: Bobby Fischer
