Play online chess at letsplaychess.com

Fischer details

Index

Game philosophy
Literary contributions
Quotes
Games
Research references and credits
Relevant web sites
Revision history

Personal Background
  

• Born in Chicago, USA on 9th March 1943
• His father, Gerhard Fischer was a physicist from Berlin, Germany
• His mother, Regina Wender, was originally from Switzerland
• His parents were divorced in 1945
• In 1949 he, his mother and sister moved from Mobile, Arizona to Brooklyn, New York City, where Bobby's mother worked as an elementary teacher and nurse
• He acquired a chess set at the age of 6 from the candy store below his apartment
  

Back to top

Game philosophy

Fischer's games exhibit great strategy as well as great tactics. From the evidence of his games, his technique in all three phases of the game, the opening, the middlegame and the endgame is excellent.

His style was "universal"- he did not go out in every game for an attack. He simply played the position. If the position called for a brilliant combination, then he was able to deliver that, for example in his celebrated game against Donald Byrne.

Fischer had an incredible will to win. He tried to extract every last resource from the position, in order to keep the game alive.

Back to top

Literary contributions

My 60 memorable games published in 1969
Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess

Back to top

Quotes

"All I want to do, ever, is to play chess"

"Chess is life"

"Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponents mind."

"All that matters on the chessboard is good moves"

"If I win a tournament I win by myself. I do the playing, no-one helps me"

"Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all."

"I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically."

"As Olafsson showed me, White can win... It's hard to believe. I stayed up all night analysing, finally convicing myself, and, incidentally, learning a lot about Rook and Pawn endings in the process."

Back to top

Games

Fischer miniatures
Fischer games playable on a java browser

Back to top

Research references and credits

[1] "Clash of the Titans" television documentary 
[2] The World of chess, Saidy and Lessing
[3] The Games of Robert J.Fischer, Robert G.Wade and Kevin J.O'Connell
[4] The Guinness book of Chess Grandmasters, William Hartston
[5] The Oxford Companion to Chess, David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld

Back to top

Relevant web sites

The Bobby Fischer Home page

See the Deja News 'Chess History' Discussion Group

World chess championship matches

Chesslab.com has a historical archive which proved a very useful resource for finding Fischer's games

Back to top

Revision history

First draft, 27th December 1999

2nd draft, 28th December 1999

• Couple of typos corrected

• Games put (back) in

Back to top

Back to Fischer index page