RIP Bobby Fischer

A sad day for the chess world:

Former chess champion Bobby Fischer has died of kidney failure following a long illness, his spokesperson said Friday. He was 64.

Fischer, a brilliant chess player who rocketed to grandmaster status at 15, was hailed as a Cold War hero when he defeated Russian Boris Spassky in 1972 to become the first American world chess champion in more than 100 years.

From the Ceeb. Nowadays most people know him for his, er, eccentricities- his forfeiting of the World Championship in 1975 following his refusal to defend his title, his sexism (he once said that he could give knight odds to any woman in the world), his rabid anti-Semitism (despite the fact that Fischer himself was of Jewish ancestry) and his comments about 9/11 (which, while a bit over the top, weren't really too far off the mark). But really, what we should remember him for is the fact that he was one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Just go through this game (played when he was only 13!) and try not to be amazed at his brilliance. Or just watch this moment of silence held in his honour at a major international tournament:

Via babble. As N. Beltov says, you could hear a pin drop in that room.