“Achilles without the Achilles’ heel,” is what Bobby Fischer was known as. He broke the ranks and rose to the top of the top of the leaderboard. He beat the chess masters in the world as just “the guy from America,” one American above all. This same guy would slip into paranoia and go insane. Chess grandmaster to insane, the tragic tale of Bobby Fischer. March 9, 1943, in Chicago Illinois, a baby was born. Bobby was born to a German-born physicist, Gerard Fischer, and a Swiss-born registered nurse and school teacher, Regina Wender. He grew up in Illinois with his older sister, Joan, until his family moved to California, Arizona, and finally in the Brooklyn Walkup in New York, in 1949, when he was six years old. Although he didn’t know that this would be the city he would make history. But history always has a start, his sister Joan introduced him to chess and taught him the basic moves, and he was hooked.
In school he was known as a strange kid and usually kept to himself, mostly studying chess. Two years later, he decided to join the Brooklyn Chess Club and started his trek up the ranks. Just four years later he was in the Manhattan Chess Club going against some of the toughest chess players in the city. One of his early accomplishments was that he joined the United States Junior Championships and won. At the same age, he crafted one of his best games against Donald Bryne which was labeled “The Game of the Century.” Bobby Fischer was now in the public view and he knew he had to continue to build his name. Two years later, at the age of 15, he took the title of grandmaster.
With this success in chess, he decided to drop out of high school at the age of 16 to focus solely on chess. Throughout the years he found insane accomplishments from win streaks to games. During the prime time he was playing the Cold War was going on and put major pressure on him to good on his games. If he didn’t he would be ashamed in America and people would have disliked him. However, with this pressure, he beat the Soviets at their own game and at one point he got a streak of 20 in the world championship in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1970-1971, which he also won. In the world championship of 1970-1971, Bobby beat the world chess grandmaster and champion Boris Spassky, who was his nemesis, winning $156,000. He was known for his early game aggressiveness and his brilliant counterattacks which roughed up some of the best chess grandmasters of all time. During his world chess championship rein, he crafted masterpieces of games against some of the best and every the Soviets. Bobby Fischer didn’t change in the fact of him being a bit odd. He didn’t play in front of cameras because he could hear them and he said he would withdraw from the world championships unless he played Boris Spassky in a small room with no distractions. Fischer was also known for his suits which he claimed he wore due to his thought of it being sophisticated. After 20 years of competitive chess, he withdrew from competing.
Bobby now started his slip into his insanity. With his withdrawal, he spoke down on select ethnicities which didn’t earn him the great respect of the people. Adding to that, he also was running out of money when he got the notification of $5 million to go up against Boris Spassky once more. This match was going to be done privately but he was told not to go, of course, he couldn’t pass this up, so he went and won the match. With this, he went into exile from Japan, The Philippines, and Switzerland, and finally landed back in Iceland. While he was in Manila, he did have a child with a woman named Jinky Ong in 2000. When he arrived back in Reykjavik, Iceland, people welcomed him for his wide influence on the island from his chess champion domination. Fischer was developing a mental illness and widely theorized that he did have a case of schizophrenia throughout his exile. There has been much speculation about why he fell into insanity. Some say it’s due to the nonstop studying of chess all his life he couldn’t handle it anymore. Others say that blindfolded chess training causes mental instability, which Fischer did quite a lot of. On January 17, 2008, Bobby Fisher died of kidney failure, reported by his close friend Gardar Severrisson, where Fischer was admitted to the hospital on a Wednesday. Bobby Fischer, the world domination chess champion spread the popularity of chess in many parts of the world to many of the new generations to come. The man who managed to beat the world-dominating Soviets during the time of the Cold War with America having laser-focused pressure on him. Fischer moved all around America looking for a home and he did so too in his exile, but, the home he was always looking for, lay in chess. “Achilles without the Achilles’ heel,” Bobby Fischer did have an “Achilles’ heel” which was none other than, himself.