Iceland grants Fischer passport (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4370119.stm)
Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has been granted Icelandic citizenship after a vote in the country's parliament. You know, it's really amazing. Mr. Fischer would have to thee preeminent America Chess player and, to some a hero, and it takes Iceland to save him? How crazy is that? Why is the American government so obsessed with bringing him back to the US to be tried for playing a f*cking game of chess? It really makes no sense and I don’t get it? Clinton should have pardoned him before he left office and that’d been the end of it.

1: Spassky is the superiour player. If you take Spassky's matches and compare them to Fischer's, and also if you compare Spassky's contributions to the game in terms of books, developed openings etc, you'll see that Spassky has contributed more to the game.

2: Bobby Fischer is an egomaniacal loony who would have been trounced if he'd defended his title, especially by Karpov, who is a sexy Slavic genius. Hell it took Kasparov to defeat Karpov.

(Kasparov is also a hotty)

3: Bobby Fischer is an asshole. He's a right-wing wack job with mommy issues.

4: The only people give a damn about him is because of that stupid movie.

1: Spassky is the superiour player.
2: Bobby Fischer is an egomaniacal loony
3: Bobby Fischer is an asshole. He's a right-wing wack job with mommy issues.
4: The only people give a damn about him is because of that stupid movie.fair enough, but I still think the US is going way over the top trying to "bring him to justice" for playing a bloody game a chess, against the wishes of the then US gov. A game most Amercians probably have never even played. Its really too much (to me anyhow). . .. .

Ye the bobby fischer story made me laugh when I first heard of it.

1: Spassky is the superiour player. If you take Spassky's matches and compare them to Fischer's, and also if you compare Spassky's contributions to the game in terms of books, developed openings etc, you'll see that Spassky has contributed more to the game.

...No, he was not. Fischer was known for making gambits. Fischer changed the way the entire Sicilian game was played which has become the standard mainline of major tournament matches today. If you read the compilation of games that his coach Pandolfini saved and annotated, you would see that his positional gambits soon became adopted in to the main lines of text book openings. His bishop move subdued Spassky completely--both in 1972 and his pawn structure took Spassky out in '92 when he resurfaced to play him again. Those weren't fluke victories. Of course, that is not to say that Fischer would've been able to defend his title...

2: Bobby Fischer is an egomaniacal loony who would have been trounced if he'd defended his title, especially by Karpov, who is a sexy Slavic genius. Hell it took Kasparov to defeat Karpov.

(Kasparov is also a hotty)

However, at the time of the early 70's, he would've been able to dominate the prominent players for at least the next five years if he had stayed in top form. Karpov didn't start adopting his current style until the 80s. Korchnoi and Botvinnik were two players that Fischer made a point of studying even while he was preparing for Spassky in '72. Right after the Spassky match, Fischer went straight to his room to play out their openings, coming out only for dinner with royalty or to make a talk-show appearance. Suffice it to say, this guy ate, slept and breathed the game. At any rate, it's just speculation. Fischer very well could've been a proven one-hit wonder, or a consistent champion if he had continued playing.

Plus, it is a little odd that he didn't happen to take on the challenge of playing any of the top players when he resurfaced in '92. And if he was going to intentionally land himself in hot water by playing a Russian, why not take on Karpov and/or Kasparov directly?


3: Bobby Fischer is an asshole. He's a right-wing wack job with mommy issues.

...No arguement there. The only thing more atrocious is his unkempt website.

4: The only people give a damn about him is because of that stupid movie.

that may be true, but it's not fair to pin that all on Fischer. It wasn't even about him, it was about current International Master, Josh Waitzkin. Bobby Fischer did indeed contribute much to the game of chess from a social standpoint. The U.S. government created an entire department dedicated to the game just because of him. Fischer made the game internationally popular because of his cocky approach to it and his opponents. He has contributed a lot to the game, but he is by no means an ambassador to the game that Spassky was for an entire generation of Russians that came after him (Kasparov and Karpov among them) and for the chess world in general.

I don't understand why the fuck anybody cares where Bobby Fisher goes..except for maybe himself.

I don't understand why the fuck anybody cares where Bobby Fisher goes..except for maybe himself.

Well, no one really does. The U.S. gov't once did in the early 90's because he played a communist in a non-sanctioned game of chess, but the Soviet Union is no longer a union.

....He's come under fire more recently for his anti-semitism than anything else. His website is loaded with a bunch of newspapers articles from around the world that are politically spun against Israel and jews in general. So now it's a little more "dangerous" to Uncle Sam now that he's one more step closer to gaining complete freedom and potential diplomatic immunity from the Iceland parliament.

So he is a Nazi? heheh Yeah back in those anti Soviet days, I can see how the Amercican public could care. People were afraid of communism, but it's not like the soviets were really communists.