Who had the best opening, middle game and endgame ever?

And--eventually--overcame his opponents. 

when did Fischer left the board ??

Re: Disparaging comments....

Look up what Botvinnik said about Fischer after Fischer went through his matches with Taimanov and Larsen with 6-0 scores each. Even Kasparov thought Botvinnik went too far. Also worth noting that Fischer found "over the board" a resource that Botvinnik missed in his home analysis and won a pawn in the only game they played. Fischer was a difficult personality and it moved into more than that after he won the '72 championship, but his fellow GMs weren't saints either in how they behaved. And when Tal was hospitalized in the middle of a tournament, the only tournament player who visited him in the hospital was Fischer

Fischer was also only 19 when he played Botvinnik in their game so the fact he became white as a ghost and had tears welling up in his eyes could partly be attributed to his youth

I'm in the danger of becoming a notorious 'Fischer-basher' on this site, unfortunately, since I actually like his games. But I'm quite tired of people making excuses for his atrocious behaviour - in any other sport he would probably have been disqualified. Youth only becomes a valid excuse if you eventually grow up, something Fischer never did. Frank Brady's new book Endgame is a worse indictment of Fischer's lack of basic moral decency than anything I could ever say.  

Between the pages of one of my chess books I have a photocopy of an old photograph: Fischer playing chess with Tal, in a hospital bed, after he'd withdrawn from Curacao with a very serious illness. He had his decent moments, I guess.

I was quite willing to excuse everything Fischer did. right up til Sept. 11th, 2001.

Good post, Chigosian50

When he was playing chess, Fischer's ire was directed at tournament organizers and officials regarding playing conditions - not at his opponents. In my opinion that started to change in the '72 WCC when he, again my opinion, realized he couldn't beat Spassky without gaining a psychological edge or "upsetting his equilibrium" in Fischer biographer Frank Brady's words. After he won the '72 championship his behavior did become increasingly bad.

No one is all black or all white; neither are they permanently one shade of black or white. That's all I'm saying. And Fischer's demand for better playing conditions and higher purses benefited ALL future chess players, as did the increased popularity of chess in America and other places due to the Cold War environment in which the '72 WCC was played

You are right about no one being entirely good or evil. The enigma of Fischer is that someone who played such beautiful chess could act the way he did. Maybe he was a very sick person? For a Jew to be anti-semitic takes some disassociation from reality. Still, I struggle to see his great joy over the radio on September the 11th as anything but evil!?!

One (early) example of Fischer's "bad behavior" was his refusal to continue his match with Reshevsky after the playing time had been bumped up to 11 a.m. to accommodate the organizer's desire to watch her husband perform in a concert. Fischer didn't want to play that early and the game was defaulted to Reshevsky.

The "bad behavior" in this example lies with the tournament organizer - not Fischer - for changing the conditions of the match on a whim. Unfortunately, the media completely disregarded the organizer's role in *creating* the problem and instead focused their criticism solely because he didn't want to play that early. Fischer was a notorious night owl and would study chess in the wee hours of the morning and not wake up til early afternoon

That's why I said his behavior became increasingly bad after the '72 WCC. I don't know anyone who excuses his behavior on 9/11.

But to judge the entirety of his behavior on his post-chess playing days seems highly unfair.

Anyone who's achieved a level of success and celebrity is going have their warts exposed to the public.

Nothing wrong with condemning bad behavior, but condemning the entirety of a person based off behavior that was not exhibited over the course of his/her life doesn't seem fair. Plus, you haven't walked a mile in his shoes

Spassky noted in his "rematch" with Fischer in the early '90s that Fischer's complaints about playing conditions in that match seemed to decline when Fischer was winning, which would lend support to the hypothesis that the complaints, at least later in his career, were designed, subconsciously or consciously, to get him in a fighting mood for the game and/or to upset his opponent's equilibrium. I think the same thing happened in the '72 match. Once Fischer was winning, his complaints decreased and his mood became better.

Only reason I think his behavior was designed to upset Spassky is because it was bad *before* the match started

The mood you're in (psychological state of mind) affects how you play. It's not all openings, theory and the nuts-and-bolts of the game

Fischer ranted, because he was Bobby Fischer.

A search for some "psychological edge" wouldn't explain his rantings in '75, at a match he didn't even show up for.  

But good posts though Psalms. Nicely stated.

His rantings in '75 could be explained by his not wanting to play and risk defeat. One of the Russian GMs (forget who it was but it might have been Kasparov) said Spassky was susceptible to Fischer's mind games while they never would have worked on Karpov. If Fischer knew his attempt to gain a psychological edge on Karpov was destined to fail, he may have been looking for an out, or excuse not to play. I'll have to re-read part of Kasparov's book on Fischer, Najdorf and Larsen because I think he quotes one GM as saying that he didn't believe anything would get Fischer to defend his title. But Max Euwe didn't think Fischer would play Spassky, so who knows?

I'm really not a good person, but thanks for the compliment:) Spassky was such a mensch that he maintained a friendship with Fischer for years after their WCC match in which Fischer behaved quite obnoxiously. Don't know how long that friendship lasted or if it survived Fischer's 9/11 comments on the radio station in the Philippines

I get the impression from recent comments by Spassky as well as his visit to Fischer's graveside that he really really misses him.....amazing.

The problem for Fischer (and for any great chess player) is that when people get to study your games during their formative years, they will not be as easy to play against as your own generation....standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. Kasparov is one of the few who considers Karpov to have been the favourite in the clash that never happened. Very hard to call in my opinion.

It should be stated once and for all that Karpov really went out of his way to get to play Fischer, with secret negotiations unknown to the Soviet authorities. He also seems convinced that he never completely fulfilled his potential due to the match never happening, and that he would have beaten Kasparov the first time round, if the match with Fischer had occurred. The greatest tournament player of all time never fulfilling his potential......that makes me smile!

One of the funniest photos I ever saw of Fischer was at the awards ceremony after the '72 match, where he's seated next to Spassky and Spassky's wife. Fischer has his pocket chess set out and is apparently trying to show Spassky a position from one of their games. You have to figure going over a game from the match was one of the last things Spassky wanted to do, but Fischer didn't care; he took out his pocket set anyway. And Spassky is seen in the photo casting a sideways glance at the pocket set - either out of courtesy or because he was once again pulled into Fischer's 64-square world. I think that's one of the things that led to Spassky maintaining a friendship with Fischer despite his behavior in the '72 match - his fanatical devotion to chess