Reaching Millions with a Smile

” REYKJAVIK, Iceland - “Chess,” Bobby Fischer once said, “is life.” It was the chess master’s tragedy that the messy, tawdry details of his life often overshadowed the sublime genius of his game. Fischer, who has died at the age of 64, was a child prodigy, a teenage grandmaster and — before age 30 — a world champion who triumphed in a Cold War showdown with Soviet champion Boris Spassky.

But the last three decades of his life were spent in seclusion, broken periodically by erratic and often anti-Semitic comments and by an absurd legal battle with his homeland, the United States.

“He was the pride and sorrow of chess,” said Raymond Keene, a British grandmaster and chess correspondent for The Times of London. “It’s tragic that such a great man descended into madness and anti-Semitism.”

Fischer died Thursday of kidney failure in Reykjavik after a long illness, friend and spokesman Gardar Sverrisson said Friday.

“A giant of the chess world is gone,” said Fridrik Olafsson, an Icelandic grandmaster and former president of the World Chess Federation.

Noted French chess expert Olivier Tridon: “Bobby Fischer has died at age 64. Like the 64 squares of a chess board.” ”

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~Mirada~