Bobby Fischer

I remember the Fischer-Spassky match well. The games were printed in the International Herald Tribune, and I'd cover the game with a card and try to figure out what each player's next move would be. Sometimes the card slipped and I missed a set of moves and wound up thoroughly confused. (Once or twice there was a misprint in the paper, too.) It was quickly pretty plain that I wasn't a grandmaster. We rooted for Bobby the underdog of course (the Russians dominated the chess field).

I didn't know then that chess masters were even more likely than mathematicians to snap, and Bobby certainly went weird on us. I don't know whether his famous diva-like behavior was calculated. Maybe it was at first, and grew on him, or maybe he found it a useful quirk until it went out of hand. But his alternate reclusion and ranting told us the poor man was in trouble away from the 64-square madhouse, and his embrace of new rules suggests that maybe he knew he wasn't as good as in his youth and couldn't stand it. Or maybe he was just tired of chess.

RIP