Chetumal--interesting comment-could you expand a little please?

Thanks.

Thanks Dozy.

Your comments and analysis are very interesting and thought provoking.

You are right, let's remember him for the great player that he was, and for all the benefits he brought to the world of Chess.

A bad habit of mine (that I am trying to rectify) is just playing and not reading good chess books. To this end I have just ordered, "Bobby Fisher teaches Chess."  I have also ordered, "My 60 memorable games."  I am going to try doing a bit of reading to deepen my understanding of the game.   

I've often wondered the same thing but certainly have no qualifications to make an informed judgment.  That doesn't mean I don't have opinions about it -- no matter how ill-informed those opinions might be.

The biographical material gives him an unusual childhood, living with a mother whose behaviour could be pretty extreme.  He escaped into chess where his very genius must have created emotional conflicts. 

As a youngster he was able to defeat the very best players the U.S. had to offer and his self confidence must have outgrown his personal and academic development.  (Tal, not unkindly, described 15 year-old Fischer as "a tall child").

Long before he got to Reykjavik, when the non-chess playing world learned about some of his behavioural problems, he had a history of making demands that, at the time, appeared to be unreasonable. 

After that it was downhill all the way ending in the anti-US, anti-Jewish tirades of his later years.

Personally, I prefer to remember Fischer as a great player who had a genuine mental illness.  If he'd had cancer, we'd have sympathised with him; the hatred and paranoia that consumed him were no less a disease, but their inflammatory nature made them much harder to forgive.

It's important to remember that, apart from his inspirational contributions to chess practice, this man was also personally responsible for lifting the game to a professional level where sponsorship makes it possible for so many elite players to make a decent living from the game: and that professional approach is lifting standards even higher.

Hi Sarah, thanks for your comment.

Hope that you are ok after the flooding in your country.

Speak to you later.

I don't know if this is true but from what i've from some of my chess player friends once, GM Bobby Fischer seemed to have suffered depression. The cause of his probable depression, I don't know. ^_^