My Favorite Chess Stories

Hello friends how are you? Good morning from deep deep inside Africa. The day is bright and cold. I prefer dark and cold but I'll take what I have. I prefer cold rainy days to the dry ones because rain makes me nostalgic... The smell of rain is awesome.

Today, I'm going to tell you stories (random stories) about goings on in the chess world both ancient and modern as I remember them.

Chess has always been a crazy game, hence players have to be a little crazy too. I think the better you get at chess, the more crazy you get too lol...

My Favorite chess player is the craziest of them all (maybe because I'm crazy too lol...).

His name is

1 Robert James Fischer (AKA Bobby Fischer)

This guy was an absolute beast on the board. In my opinion, he helped carry on the idea of romanticizing chess because of his play style. He sacrificed more important pieces to his opponents and when his opponents accepted them, he went on to demolish them. He was a god and master of several openings, but for some weird reason chose one (1e4) and said it was the best ever. Because he was such a boss, he demolished anyone who used silly openings save a few. He was more than 100 elo ahead of anybody in his playing days including the world champion he challenged and won later. Bobby Fischer was never to be spotted without a suit. According to him, it made him the most elegant man in the chess world!!! He was very vocal about a lot of his ideas. But one thing I lived him for was his undeniable talent. There was one time he called a friend and his friends daughter picked up the phone and spoke in another language. He didn't understand so he hung up. The next day, when he saw his friend he repeated the exact sound he heard in such a way that anyone would no doubt understand the little girl's meaning. That's the equivalent of photographic memory with hearing. He was in an era where chess was dominated by the soviet union and he was an American that was determined to show that he was better than them all!!! He did it every chance he got. There was one tournament he won 21 consecutive games which was all the games in the tournament. No one has accomplished that feat till today.

Now to the crazy parts. He was obviously the greatest player of his era, and the highest level of chess is the world chess championship. So Bobby win the candidates tournament and qualified for the world chess championship. But he had crazy demands that made them all but cancel the match. In the end, after a bunch of interventions, he agreed to play Borris Spasky (the then world champion). Going into the game, he had never beaten Spasky before. He in fact list the first game again. He refused to play the second game, and that put Spasky two games ahead of him in that match. He didn't play the second match because he wanted the room empty... He didn't want the camera people to keep disturbing or something like that. On the day of the third game, my man was already at the airport, but his team pleaded with him and he agreed to come back and play, but this time, he said they would okay the match backstage...

It didn't even matter that he was two games behind he went on to demolish Spasky in the remaining of the games. Absolutely crazy genius!!!!

Tomorrow, I'll probably continue and tell you guys about Anatoly Karpov and Kochnoi, or Gary Kasparov, and Karpov. Their stories are crazy enough to involve murderers, hypnotists and refusal to shake hands... Lol... I only picked fisher because he himself was actually crazy.

Fischer was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He refused to defend his title later. He never met Gary, but claimed that he didn't believe the games were real. He claimed they were engine games that were staged. But this was probably because of the paranoia that comes with schizophrenia. I always hope it doesn't get this bad for me. :(

Thanks for reading guys. You're awesome.