Chess champion Bobby Fischer has died. In 1972 Bobby Fischer defeated Soviet Boris Spassky in a much-hyped Cold War-esque chess tournament. With the win came fame outside of the chess world- fame that Fischer didn’t really want. As with many extremely intelligent folks, Fischer was somewhat of an eccentric and preferred privacy. He tried to disappear the best he could.

In 1992 he came out of hiding for a rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia. The rematch violated U.N. sanctions and Fischer faced arrest for participating in the match. He didn’t care and went ahead anyway. He then disappeared again and eventually moved to Iceland.

I wasn’t around in ‘72, but I did grow up hearing about Bobby Fischer quite a bit. All I knew was that he was a young chess player who was pretty good. As the years went on, I learned exactly how good he was. “One Night in Bangkok” started getting heavy radio play in ‘84 or ‘85. This song was from the musical Chess that had a character loosely based on Fischer. It was around this time that I really learned who Fischer was and why he was such a big deal.

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