Bobby Fischer Comes Home: The Final Years in Iceland, a Saga of Friendship and Lost Illusions

On March 24, 2005, a small plane with Bobby Fischer on board landed at Reykjavik Airport. The arrival in Iceland of the former World Chess Champion was front-page news all over the world. In a ploy to free him from prison in Japan the Icelandic Parliament had granted the American Icelandic citizenship. Fischer had been arrested in Tokyo when the US warrant caught up with him that was issued after he had violated American sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by playing a controversial match against Boris Spassky. Icelandic chess grandmaster Helgi Olafsson was 15 year old in 1972, when in a sensational match in his home country Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky for the world title. Breathlessly, Helgi had followed the match and attended a number of games in the playing hall in Reykjavik. When thirty-three years later his childhood hero was arrested in Tokyo, Olafsson became one of the members of the Committee to Free Bobby Fischer. Now Fischer returned to Iceland, a country he was never to leave again till his death on January 17, 2008. Olafsson and Fischer developed a unique friendship. Countless hours they spent together, they talked about chess, about life, made trips, played games, had fun, and quarrelled. Bobby Fischer Comes Home tells the story of their complicated friendship and paints an intimate portrait of the last years of the man who many see as the greatest chess player that ever lived.

Bobby Fischer Comes Home: The Final Years in Iceland, a Saga of Friendship and Lost Illusions

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Bobby Fischer, el mas grande (Spanish Edition)

Robert James Fisher es quizás uno de los personajes más emblemáticos del ajedrez. Su vida como ajedrecista es digna de una película. A los 15 años se convirtió en el Gran Maestro más joven de la historia hasta ese momento (1958) Puso literalmente en jaque la supremacía soviética en el juego ciencia enfrentando a los ya consagrados Botvinnik, Geller, Smyslov, Korchnoi, Bronstein, Larsen, Petrosian, Averbach, Taimanov y Tal, entre otros. A los 29 años tomó por asalto la búsqueda por el máximo título del ajedrez mundial. Enfrentó en el denominado "match del siglo" a Boris Spassky, a quien vencería sin asomo de duda, para convertirse en el décimo primer Campeón del Mundo. Bobby Fisher fue el ejemplo del esfuerzo de un solo individuo contra la "maquinaria soviética" del ajedrez. Por sí mimo el estadounidense era un jugador que estaba por encima de todos, en su propia clase. Por sus logros, sus éxitos en el tablero, su ajedrez fantástico y su amor inagotable por el juego ciencia, Fischer es sin duda el más grande de todos los tiempo. Este libro nos narra la vida y obra ajedrecística de Bobby Fischer, analizando sus partidas más significativas, su gran ajedrez combinativo y sus aportaciones al mundo de las 64 casillas. Una obra fundamental para entender el ajedrez moderno.

Bobby Fischer, el mas grande (Spanish Edition)

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The World Chess Championship Updated to Include the 1972 Fischer-Spassky Match

The official Chess Championship of the World was inaugurated with the 1948 tournament. Between then and the 1972 victory of Bobby Fischer, there have been ten matches between champion and challenger, involving only seven players - Botvinnik, Bronstein, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky and Fischer. Of these, all but Bronstein have won the championship. Svetozar Gligoric, the world-famous Yugoslav international grandmaster, has known all these champions for many years, and it is from firsthand experience that he reveals the clash of their contrasting temperaments and techniques in each encounter. From his shrewd observation and analysis, Bovinnik emerges as the technical perfectionist whereas Bronstein is seen as a master of psychology, and Smyslov as the most assured player. Tal displayed youthful brilliance and imagination while Petrosian triumphed through his positional masterpieces until he was overcome by Boris Spassky, who in turn yielded to the newest champion, Bobby Fischer. For the first time, the full match scores of every series have been collected into this single volume. Clearly presented in descriptive notation with diagrams of the critical match positions and with succinct annotations, organized and edited by the international master R. G. Wade, complete with indexes of players and variations, this record of the postwar world championship matches is an invaluable work of reference as well as a brilliant and intimate portrait of the champions. The World Chess Championship contains the full match scores of every series, diagrams of the critical match positions, annotations, indexes of players and variations, as well as brilliant and intimate portraits of the champions.

The World Chess Championship Updated to Include the 1972 Fischer-Spassky Match

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Fischer's Chess Games (Oxford chess books)

Fischer's Chess Games (Oxford chess books)

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El ajedrez de Bobby Fischer / The Bobby Fischer's chess (Spanish Edition) (Jaque Mate / Checkmate)

Este libro muestra las claves de su concepcion de ajedrez. Acompanado por el autor, el aficionado captara la logica de jugadas FISCHERIANAS sorprendentes y vera que no siempre respondian a una valoracion objetiva de la situacion, pues, eran fruto de las preferencias personales de Bobby. Y aqui radica otro gran valor de este trabajo: nos aproxima a la compleja personalidad del genial norteamericano a traves de las decisiones que tomaba en sus partidas. Ademas de estudiar el ajedrez Bobby Fischer, Elie Agur ha escrito un verdadero tratado sobre el medio juego: elaboracion de planes, transformacion de ventajas, manejo de la pareja de alfiles, defensa activa, estructura de peones, liquidacion… Todos estos temas se tratan en profundidad analizando el juego de Fischer y comparando su estilo con el de otros ajedrecistas universales como Capablanca, Petrosian o Karpov. Esta obra, por otra parte, rebosa de aspecto puramente deportivo del ajedrez al poner de manifiesto los lazos que lo unen con la ciencia y el arte, sobre todo la musica. El resultado es un libro que esta destinado a convertirse en un clasico.

El ajedrez de Bobby Fischer / The Bobby Fischer's chess (Spanish Edition) (Jaque Mate / Checkmate)

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Bobby Fischer Goes to War

In the summer of 1972, with a presidential crisis stirring in the United States and the cold war at a pivotal point, two men -- the Soviet world chess champion Boris Spassky and his American challenger Bobby Fischer -- met in the most notorious chess match of all time. Their showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, held the world spellbound for two months with reports of psychological warfare, ultimatums, political intrigue, cliffhangers, and farce to rival a Marx Brothers film.

Thirty years later, David Edmonds and John Eidinow, authors of the national bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker, have set out to reexamine the story we recollect as the quintessential cold war clash between a lone American star and the Soviet chess machine -- a machine that had delivered the world title to the Kremlin for decades. Drawing upon unpublished Soviet and U.S. records, the authors reconstruct the full and incredible saga, one far more poignant and layered than hitherto believed.

Bobby Fischer Goes to War

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Bobby Fischer Vs the Rest of the World

In 1972, an epic chess match took place in Iceland between representatives of the two great super-powers of the world: Bobby vs. Boris. Boris was backed by the Mighty Soviet Union, with late night phone calls coming from his handlers in Moscow, telling him what his next move should be. Meanwhile, Bobby stood alone against the might of the opposing nation. But, Bobby was not exactly alone. The Americans did not need to tell him what moves to make on the chessboard. Bobby already knew how to do that. Rather, what the Americans needed to do was somehow to get him to sit down at the board and play the game. Here is the story of that titanic struggle: One half of the world trying to get Bobby to play, while the other half was trying to defeat him assuming that he did play. Hence the Title: Bobby Fischer vs. The Rest of the World. In the end, Bobby won. Émigrés from the Soviet Union often state that, more than any other single event, this defeat led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Bobby Fischer Vs the Rest of the World

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The Chess of Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer is regarded as the greatest chess player of all time. A movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer” was made about two of the times he disappeared. Although there are many books about Bobby Fischer, this is the only one that deals in depth with his second, in 1992, match against Boris Spassky and the one that explores in greatest depth his playing style and thought process. In The Chess of Bobby Fischer, the author employs his long experience as a chess analyst to transform the technique and insight of the greatest player of all time into a unique teaching tool. This, he shows, is how a great player wins games. Robert Burger first got to know Bobby as a precocious youngster when, in 1957, Fischer's mother called him to ask if he would "watch over" Bobby in San Francisco at the U.S. Junior Championship. As a director of The Mechanics' Institute, where the tournament was held, Burger was also familiar to the participants as the co-editor of The California Chess Reporter. A National Master, Burger also has the distinction of being a grandmaster of chess composition, of the U.S. Chess Problem Society. He is also a Fellow of the British Chess Problem Society and the author of numerous nonfiction books. Among his other chess books are "Grandmaster Chess" and "The Unknown Tal." He has reported on chess tourneys and matches throughout Europe. Among his collaborators on chess books have been Isaac Kashdan and Vladimir Nabokov (yes, that one!). The current edition of this classic is the most complete, referencing the second Fischer-Spassky match -- in Yugoslavia in 1992. Burger has always maintained that the real Bobby was among the most generous and statesmanlike of grandmasters, with this anecdote as an example: In 1964, when Bobby made his first, great tour of the United States following his sweep of the U.S. Championship, Burger was one of thirty players in a "simul" at Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco.

The Chess of Bobby Fischer

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