By IANS
Reykjavik (Iceland) : Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess maverick, passed away at age of 64 here Friday. Fischer became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the erstwhile Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, and became the first American to win the world championship.
Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman Gardar Sverrisson said, though there was no immediate word on the cause of death.
Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, Robert James Fischer was the US champion at 14 and a grand master at 15. However, his reputation as a chess genius soon declined by his idiosyncrasies. Fischer lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Russian Anatoly Karpov.
Fischer dropped out of competitive chess, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments; although his mother was Jewish and praised the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be “wiped out
Fischer announced that he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version in Argentina by the name “Fischerandom,” a computerised shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the board at the start of each game. Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats.
In July 2004, Fischer was arrested in Japan and was threatened with extradition to the US to face sanctions-busting charges. He spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland — a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph — granted him citizenship.
In his final years, Fischer railed against the chess establishment, alleging that the outcomes of many top-level chess matches were decided in advance. Instead, he championed his concept of random chess.
“I don’t play the old chess,” he had told reporters upon arrival in Iceland. “But obviously if I did, I would be the best.”