Collect Endgame: Bobby Fischers Remarkable Rise And FallFrom Americas Brightest Prodigy To The Edge Of Madness Engineered By Frank Brady Depicted In E-Text

is a book about Bobby Fischer the man and as a man he was a horrible mess,

Did his singular focus make him a chess genius but also lead to his failure as a person

Its a chicken and egg argument.


Whats clear is that Fischers fame, a result of his brilliance and an odd confluence of Cold War politics, caused his eccentric personality to become untethered.


Like a Micheal Jackson, a Howard Hughes, or even Sheldon from Big Bang, the dangers of early success loom large.


Fame means no ones ever kept around for you to say sorry to,

Whats all consuming is a solipsism that is deep and unending, A creature that must be fed, Fischer alienated everyone who was ever kind to him, actively estranged himself from humankind, engaging in a paranoid blame game that new no limitsand then there was the rabid antisemitism.




Like go, chess is a game I know how to play but not well, I own books and have halfheartedly studied the game off and on, but I will never be a great or even particularly good player.
Still, the beauty and logic of the game attracts me, along with all its storied lore,

Most people know that Bobby Fischer was once the greatest American player in the world, possibly the greatest player in the world period.
Certainly he was one of the best players ever, This biography tells his life story by a sympathetic but not uncritical friend of his,

But of course, less interesting than his life and early beginnings in chess is the raving crackpot he became later in life.
The biography of a famous chess player is unlikely to be all that interesting in itself, and Bobby Fischer's childhood was a fairly unremarkable one, the child of an impoverished single mother in Brooklyn.
His mother was somewhat flaky but obviously attentive, and the author, Frank Brady, repeatedly contradicts reports that Fischer and his mother were estranged when he was older.
He did suffer a teenager's usual embarrassment when his mother was trying to be too active in his life, but according to Brady, they remained close even when they were living in separate countries and did not see each other face to face for years at a time.


Words to describe Bobby Fischer after reading this book: Temperamental, Prickly. Unforgiving. Controlfreak. Selfsabotaging. The author veers away from calling him "crazy" or "deranged," even as he became more and more of a screaming bigot later in life.


It's almost painful to read how the man who once had the world at his feet and turned down a tickertape parade in New York City spent much of his later years in poverty, yet turned down opportunity after opportunity to make big bucks because there was always something just not quite right about the offer.
He would not play chess matches unless he got everything he asked for, and whatever he was offered, he asked for more.
He was abusive and ungrateful to everyone who ever helped him, And as he got older, he became increasingly antiSemitic, He hated the Russians, believing they were cheaters who had all conspired against him during his matches against Soviet players, Ironically, the Soviets were conspiring against him, as Russian grandmasters later admitted, and the Soviets had an entire "lab" devoted to studying Fischer for years, so great a threat was he to their national prestige.


TheFischerSpassky match is a comedy of Cold War politics and temperamental chess egos, Bobby Fischer complained about everything, forfeited several games by refusing to show up until his demands were met, and generally foreshadowed what a monumental pain in the ass he would become later in life.
Of course, the Soviets responded with increasingly absurd accusations that Fischer was "chemically or electronically interfering" with Spassky, resulting in the ridiculous spectacle of security guards Xraying chairs and dismantling light fixtures.
And yet, thatmatch in Reykjavik, Iceland created a worldwide chess boom,

Then Fischer went into semiretirement and nearpoverty, living off of his mother's Social Security checks for decades, while turning down publication deals, big money tournaments, endorsements, because the money offered wasn't enough, or because someone else would profit off of it too and he didn't think anyone but Bobby Fischer should make money off of Bobby Fischer.
Or because they were Jews,

In, Fischer played a rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia, This finally made him enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life, It was also his fatal undoing, as Yugoslavia was under a UN embargo at the time because of the Bosnian war, and the U.
S. State Department sent him a letter enjoining him against playing the match, Rather than appealing or just ignoring the letter, he literally spat on it, thus earning him the enmity of the U, S. government and sending him into political exile for the rest of his life,

But he was still pretty much ignored until the/attacks, when he released a series of vitriolic radio interviews from the Philippines, denouncing America, praising the attacks, and calling for a new Holocaust against the Jews.
At this point, the U, S. government remembered he existed again, and went after him in earnest, Which led to his being arrested in Japan inon an expired passport and spending almost a year in a detention facility.
Incredibly, Iceland, grateful for the attention he had brought to their country in, went to heroic measures to offer him not just asylum but citizenship, and thus Fischer was deported to his new home in Iceland.
Even more incredibly, he soon became disenchanted and began badmouthing his hosts, who had literally saved his life,

I knew before reading this book that Bobby Fischer was a great chess player and a crank, After reading it, I find him a much more interesting, and tragic, and despicable, figure, It's tempting to feel sorry for him, as he obviously spent many years lonely and bitter, but notwithstanding speculations about his mental health, he also brought all of that on himself.
He was ungrateful, eventually turning on every one of his friends no matter how much they'd done for him, He was selfish and foolish he could have easily spent his life wealthy and famous and in seclusion if he so desired, but he had to always have things his way and no one else could get their way.
And worst of all, he was a hateful bigot, turning his rage against Jews and America for reasons that probably made sense only in his own head.


Fischer was a complicated, arrogant, brilliant person, but even with this fairly kind biography, he was not a very sympathetic one.
Truly his life was a tragedy, a man who could have been great remembered mostly for turning into a bearded crank and spewer of nonsense.


A wellwritten book about the brilliant, inherently ungrateful, and paranoid conspiracy theorist, Chess grandmaster Bobby Fisher, This is a very entertaining book about what some have called the Worlds greatest Chess player Bobby Fischer, He was raised, along with his sister, by a very well educated mother named Regina who continued to have bad luck, Regina was studying in a Soviet Union medical school when the Soviets were imposing AntiSemitic pogroms, She chose, with Bobby and his sister, to immigrate to the United States, Bobbys father, Gerhardt Fischer, choose to immigrate to France, After a short

stay in Chicago Regina, absent Gerhardt who remained in France, moved her family to New York City,

Often searching for work and then attending Nursing school she had to, often, leave Bobby and his sister alone, Bobby, as a boy, had a penchant for playing board games like Parcheesi which quickly led him to the game of Chess.
He became self absorbed in the many facets of the game, Since he was in New York his mother was able to enroll him in Chess clubs throughout the City,

His great ability to play chess was noticed by one of New York Citys best chess teachers Carmine Nigro, When Nigro saw Bobby, at age, playing at an outdoor chess tournament he immediately bonded with him, The Nigro family house became a second home to Bobby, There he could be play Chess as well as read books about Chess from Nigos immense library,

Bobby spent hours reading books about Chess.
He was also a normal boy in that he loved Baseball and swimming, He also was an avid reader of other books besides Chess,

He eventually came under the tutelage of Chess Maser Jack Collins, Collins was not only a Chess Master but another owner of many books about Chess, Bobby spent many nights in Collins home playing, discussing and reading Chess books, Bobby memorized classic Chess games from the past and analyzed every move, He became an expert on Chess History as well,

Bobby at agedefeated American Chess Champion Donald Byrne inin what is known as “The Game of the Century.
” This lead him in to anAmerican Chess Championship in, It is the only perfect score in an American Chess Championship, After numerous Chess victoriesyear old Bobby was matched to play Soviet Grand Master and Chess genius David Bornstein, When all Bornstein could do was muster a draw against hisyear old prodigy opponent it created a sensation in America and the Chess World.
He competed in numerous Chess tournaments throughout the world defeating many of the Great Russian grand masters, This earned Bobby the rank of number one rated chess player in the world, So he was set to play World Chess Champion Boris Spassky inin Iceland in what became the most popular chess match the world has ever seen.


If you did not live in the years of the Cold War, you have missed something special, The two great Super Power countries competed against each other in every conceivable way besides an all out war, By continuing to produce world Chess Champions the Soviet Union would boast about their intellectual supremacy, So, when New Yorker Bobby Fischer beat Soviet Boris Spassky for the World Chess Championship he became an American Cold War hero.


However, his experience with the Soviet players in the Championships left him very distrustful of Soviet Players, He accused them of collusion and cleverly cheating in the championships, He was never happy with his treatment by them even though he was still a child when he played against them, He was the World Chess champion and America went wild because of him, Chess game sales soared and tickertape parades were arranged, However, Bobby was a recluse who refused to participate in any parades, He never defended his championship and ultimately had it stripped from him,

Then his celebrity led him into the World Wide Church of God ministry, When he was in New York he listened on the radio to the charismatic sermons of Herbert W, Armstrong the leader of the World Wide Church of God, Armstrong preached on the evils of medicine and said that all illness was caused by rotten food and lack of exercise, Bobby lived his entire life believing this, He moved to California and lived with other members of the church funneling his championship earnings to the church, He complained of lack of companionship, So the church would provide him with voluptuous women who were bound to celibacy, This frustrated him. Then Church leader Armstrong made a prediction that the world would end inand when it didnt, Bobby quit the church in disappointment.


With all his championship earnings gone, he moved into a single room apartment in the outskirts of Los Angeles in a hermitlike existence apparently living off his mothers social security checks.
He virtually disappeared from the world of chess foryears when an unlikely letter made it to his mail box,

Very few letters made it to Bobby mailbox because hardly anyone knew where he lived and most of what he received he threw out without reading.
However, a letter from ayear old girl and upcoming chess player convinced him to reemerge, A rematch was set up between Bobby and Boris Spassky in, Somehow, this girl and the millions of dollars he was promised was sufficient reason for Bobby to return, A Yugoslavian financier put up the prize money to have the match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, The U. S. had a trade embargo placed on Serbia at the time and Bobby was warned by the U, S. treasury not to play or be subject to a violation Of Executive Order, Bobby arrogantly and mistakenly ignored the U, S. order.

He did however easily defeat Boris Spassky in the rematch which took place in Sveti Stefan and Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Bobby collected his earnings but became a U, S. fugitive. This however did not hamper him as he traveled the world and lived in different places, He blamed the U. S. government for his fugitive status even though they never actively pursued after him, That changed after the brutal attacks ofwhich brought him back into the U, S. governments auspices.

Bobby, while living in the Philippines, spurred antiAmerican vitriol on a small radio talk show, It would have gone unnoticed but his hostility to the U, S. made its way to the internet, It is reported to the U, S. government and the government decided to pursue him, He was caught in Japan and imprisoned for eight months, His very clever friends figured away to get him out, The plan they came up with was to have Bobby become a citizen of another country and then Japan would transfer him to that country.
The only country they could find that would take him was Iceland, Iceland never forgot how the Fischer/ Bassky match put their country on the “socalled” map, He moved to Iceland and lived a mostly secluded life, He died there at the age ofin,
.