He was a hero of mine from the time I was 18 years old.

His older sister Joan taught him how to play when he was just six. At 13, he played one of the strongest players in the Manhattan Chess Club, sacrificed a queen and a knight, and went on to win that game beautifully. It’s was dubbed by one of the onlookers, a chess master, as the “Game of the Century.” By age 14, he was the youngest ever to win the U.S. Open Chess Championship. And by 15, he was the youngest ever to earn a “Grandmaster” rating.

The rest is history.

(Photo: Playing against former World Champion Mikhail Tal.)

Bobby Fischer brought a new standard of excellence and professionalism to American chess … and chess in general. A very high standard! He never played for a draw, and only rarely accepted them. And he hated losing with every fiber in his body. By age 18, he had read over 1000 books on chess – many of them in Russian and Eastern European languages – and absorbed the best from every one of them.

He also wrote a couple himself, one of them becoming a classic – My 60 Memorable Games – a masterpiece in chess literature.  If you want to know the real Bobby Fisher – if you want to know his heart, his soul and mind, – this book is a must. It’s a chess lover’s treasure of distilled wisdom. What musical notation is to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, – what Einsteinian equations are to General Relativity – that’s what this book is to chess. Every game is annotated by Bobby – many of them with exhaustive analysis … and the original publication was written in descriptive notation (algebraic notation had not yet arrived). Grandmaster Larry Evans writes a forward to every game that captures the mood and setting and does so with a writer’s flair.

For the non-player, if you think of a chess master as some frail little fellow with thick glasses, think again. Bobby Fischer was six-foot-one, broad-shouldered and built like an athlete. That’s because he worked out vigorously with swimming and tennis to keep in shape for chess. No … there’s no punch line. In top level chess, you have to be in excellent physical condition to endure the grueling four-to-six-hour mental combat that can drain a person physically. That’s just for one game. In a tournament, you may play a dozen games over days or even weeks. Maybe he took it to the extreme, but Bobby was extremely serious about chess.

As his popularity grew, he became increasingly demanding, especially with tournament organizers and sponsors. He was outspoken about the mediocre playing conditions and poor lighting in most tournament halls. He also demanded more money to appear and play … and he got it. More than anything, he brought attention to the game and he alone sparked a renewed interest in chess here in the U.S.

I for one, became more passionate about the game. I started reading chess books. Played in tournaments. I started the Valley Junior College Chess Club and was its first President. Though I never had the opportunity to meet Bobby Fischer, I did play against Grandmaster Larry Evans in a simultaneous exhibition. I was one of about 25 players who played against him, and though I lost the game, I outlasted most of the other players.

Bobby Fischer was equally outspoken on the international stage. He accused the Russians (as he so often referred to them) of cheating, collusion and of rigging the system in their favor. He said they pre-arranged easy ‘draws’ among themselves, saving their strength and energy for him or other top-rated Americans and then played their hearts out. A future Soviet world champion and still top-10-rated player today, Anatoly Karpov, would later confirm this accusation to be true.

The former U.S.S.R. dominated the game of chess for over a quarter century prior to the 1972 World Chess Championship match. It’s one of the ways in which they tried to assert their intellectual superiority over the West during the Cold War. Only one problem: Fischer claimed to be the best player in the world and he viewed the Soviets with naked contempt for keeping what he believed to be rightfully his since age 18; the crown. On a personal level though, he did establish warm friendships with some Soviet players including Leonid Stein, Mikhail Tal … and later, Boris Spassky, whom he beat in their 1972 match making Bobby the first, – and as yet the only – American to win the World Chess Championship.

Fisher’s exploits on the chessboard are the stuff of mythology.

He would win the U.S. Open Championship seven more times for a total of eight – once with a perfect 11-0 score: no losses, no draws. Had never been done before; never been done since.  Even more incredible, on his quixotic quest to break the USSR’s iron-fist-hold they had on world chess, he pretty much demolished everyone who came before him. In three matches leading up to the world championship, he would play the #9, #3 and #6 strongest players in the world. The first two he crushed in 6-0 shutouts which frankly, is like beating Mohammed Ali with one hand tied behind your back. It’s just not done. Bobby went on to win the third match … and the world championship decisively.

He never defended his title and never played another game until 20 years later. I guess Fischer had scaled his Mt. Everest. He is considered by many to be the best player who ever lived.

Bobby went to the same high school that Barbara Streisand went to at the same time she attended; Erasmus Hall High School in New York City. While there, the school administered an I.Q. test and reportedly scored a 178 … or in other words, a very high level genius.

He and his sister Joan were personal guests of Ferdinand & Imelda Marcos of the Philippines on several occasions. In his professional chess career he traveled around the world several times and just like his mother who spoke five or six languages including Russian, Bobby had a facility for languages. He is adored in the Philippines, Argentina, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Iceland, and even admired in the former U.S.S.R.

Later he would marry Miyoko Watai, who presided over the Japan Chess Assoc. Bobby lived with her for at least four years in Japan, and remained married until his death in 2008 in Iceland.

Throughout his chess career, Bobby’s favorite opening move as white – almost exclusively – was P-K4 (Pawn to King 4). In his book, My 60 Memorable Games, his annotation after his opening move of P-K4 in one of the games is simply … Best by Test.

I love that. He’s referring to the move … but for me, his comment pretty much sums up the entirety of his chess playing career!