Bobby Fischer is dead

My all-time favorite chess player (but not favorite person) has died.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) - Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death. ...

He renounced his American citizenship and moved in 2005 to Iceland, accepting an offer of citizenship from the country still grateful for its role as the site of his most famous match.

Fischer had been detained for nine months detention in Japan for trying to leave the country using an invalid U.S. passport. Japan agreed to release him after he accepted Iceland's offer of citizenship.

Fischer told reporters that year that he was finished with a chess world he regarded as corrupt, and sparred with U.S. journalists who asked about his anti-American tirades.

"The United States is evil. There's this axis of evil. What about the allies of evil - the United States, England, Japan, Australia? These are the evildoers," Fischer said.

As a teenager, I tried emulating Fischer's attacking style of play, but it just wasn't me. I later learned to use more subtle strategies. His book "My 60 Favorite Games" remains one of my all-time favorite chess books, and I still have my copy in my basement somewhere.

I played chess in college, but I gave it up my senior year to concentrate on graduating. Sometimes I play games against my computer, but I have to put the computer on the lowest setting to have any chance of winning. I have a hard time dealing with the Berendregt (?)variation of the Ruy Lopez, the Giuoco Piano or the Queen's Gambit Declined in the opening, and I have a rough time with bishop-and-knight endgames. What came so naturally in my youth is so hard now.

Playing chess competitively requires too big an investment of the ego. My vanity has better things to do nowadays.

Fischer was great for the game, but his personal demons got the better of him after he reached his ultimate goal.