Bangalore, Jan 19: There are 64 squares on a chessboard and apparently 64 years in the life of chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer. Fischer died Thursday of kidney failure after an extended illness. The child prodigy was residing in Iceland.
At his best he was the greatest the world has ever seen. He was certainly the greatest chess player up to that point in history. Mr Fischer wouldn't give his opponents any mercy. He would seize on any small opportunity and push and push it until there was nothing left. He wouldn't just beat his opponents, Infact he would crush them. The sixth game agains Spassky, during the 1972 match is widely considerd his greatest ever. It was like a Mozart symphony.
Fischer achieved his success because of a burning, incandescent desire to win. Most other champions had other intellectual pretensions or pursuits and interests such as art or photography but for Fischer there was nothing but chess, chess, chess. Nothing distracted him - he had no relationships with women or other people , it was just chess.
It was this strange contrast between a man who could achieve such greatness but never dared to follow it. It"s like someone who creates a work of art so perfect that he couldn"t ever paint again.
He was to end his life among friends, worshippers even, but he remained a recluse and wouldn't touch a chessboard. He had invented his own form of chess, Fischerandom, in which, at the beginning of the game, the pieces are randomly distributed. Conventional chess, he said, was played out - killed by computers and over-analysis. Psychologically, he had to believe that chess died with him, the last, undefeated champion. In a way, perhaps it did.
OneIndia salutes " Bobby Fischer" the greatest chess player in the history of the game.