Bobby Fischer: from prodigy to pariah (2011)

[johan_larson]

"...Garry Kasparov, Fischer's only rival for the title of best-ever player..."

That's not quite right. Both Kasparov and Fischer are definitely among the best players ever, but the list of contenders for the top spot is definitely longer than that. One might easily include Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Tal, and a couple of others.

It's not really possible to say who the best player of all time is; some of the plausible candidates never played each other in their primes. One can estimate of course based on intervening games, but I'm not ready to put a lot of confidence in a model that has to judge how the Lasker of 1910 would fare against the Fischer of 1972, extrapolating over a span of more than sixty years.

[Lordarminius]

Well you are entitled to your opinion but it is very likely you are wrong. The consensus among very many strong chess players,and historians is that the mantle of 'greatest player ever' is a toss-up between GK and RJF. This is based on many factors: peak rating,percentage wins/losses, fighting spirit and aversion to draws, quality of the opposition, quality of play, raw talent, statistical analysis of elo ratings, their contribution to theory and other factors. The phrase is not a whim of the reporter.

[airza]

I mean, relatively speaking these players were strong for their time but the science of chess analysis makes it difficult to imagine a situation in which history's best players would stand a chance against their modern counterparts. We have so much more public information about what lines of play are promising and others which are... not so much.

[spodek]

Best human player.

Isn't Deep Blue the best player? Or some computer since?

[MaysonL]

I've been pissed off at Fisher for over 60 years!

In kindergarten or first grade my father taugh me how to play chess. A few months later, I beat him, and he never played me again, and I didn't play any more for quite a few years. My parents had been frightened that I would become a Bobby Fisher-like chess monster. It still rankles, even thought they may well have been right.

[tamana]

Have you seen the movie "Little Man Tate"? You might appreciate it.

[Overtonwindow]

A great, troubled man. It saddened me that I was the only person in the theater when the recent movie came out. As crazy as he was, I still think he deserves our respect.

[reefoctopus]

Marketing my have been an issue. My father and I would both have been interested, and this is the first either of us have heard of it. He spends a great deal of time on chess computing forums so I have no idea how this one slipped by us. Tobey Mcguire?!? 'Pawn Sacrifice' is probably the biggest budget chess movie in 2 decades!

[lern_too_spel]

The story of Morphy dying surrounded by women's shoes is apocryphal.

[fabriceleal]

That one is an urban myth of sorts i believe

[zoeysaurusrex]

I've listened to a few interviews with Josh Waitzkin and I have to say, not impressed with him as a human being. In his case, he is highly intelligent, but it doesn't escape the fact that he's kind of a lousy human being. Go listen to his interview with Tim Ferriss for example; he talks like he's robotically trying to figure out how to sling vocabulary words together to sound smart. At once point (paraphrasing here), he says something like: "we have create a sense of agency for the kids". Not long after, I stopped listening.

Just listening to him describe his life, he's a very self important type of person.

[tamana]

What's wrong with that quote? It seems like thr normal jargon of psychology.

[tim333]

He seems to have had that in common with Fischer then.

[shadgregory]

I wish this "chess makes you crazy" line would just die. If anything, chess kept Fischer sane. Chess gave Fischer focus and forced him to interact with people. He only truly went off the deep end after he stopped playing.

[artur_makly]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LSWau3pTyIg

[pmoriarty]

Have there been many great, mentally ill Go players?

[soyiuz]

The mystery of HN front page... a 2011 article from the Guardian about a known topic not related to technology.

[dannylandau]

I for one enjoyed reading this story. Interesting that the story diverges from the movie that was recently made in which it is Spassky that wanted to move to a different location as a result of noise generated by the ventilation system

[dang]

May it always be thus.

[hyperpallium]

I know HN seems like a technology news site - it even has "news" in its name! - but it's not.

  > anything that gratifies one's
  > intellectual curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nsns]

I've learned there's always a(n associative) trail of comments (sometimes from more than on thread) leading to such apparently random posts.

[jarcane]

A famous wunderkind shunned by all because of his "politics" (read: flaming bigotry)? It's pretty much HN catnip.