after the chess game from psycho hell, Bobby Fischer's surprisingly triumphant endgame: a free man, a national hero on a gorgeous island

To see this entire game -- considered one of the greatest chess games ever played -- one move at a time at your own pace, go HERE. (There's also a lot of kibbitzing -- criticism from onlookers pretending they know as much about the game as the players.)

Rather than pretend you're the 13-year-old Bobby Fischer, the game's brilliancy might be clearer if you play it from the adult master Byrne's point of view, from the white pieces. Then you can experience the sick, sinking feeling as you discover that, even after capturing Fischer's black queen, your own pieces are whittled away and you're dragged and trapped closer and closer to your doom.

Chess on the Web has become a lot more interesting and a lot more fun since they started posting these great games in this Java move-by-move slide show format.

I'm not a great player. I've just always adored the game, and been convinced it's one of the greatest kinds of competition two minds (even if one of them is silicon) can do. And as this game illustrates, it's possible, even fairly common, for very young kids to find themselves competing at the highest levels against the most skilled adults. And one of the most remarkable things about chess is its portability. Anywhere in the world you can be invited to play a game with a perfect stranger who speaks not a word of your own language, and you understand none of your opponent's language. But for the next half-hour or hour you and your opponent can exchange a bizarre degree of intellectual and emotional intimacy and ferocious competition. Sherlock Holmes regarded chess expertise as the mark of a devious mind. And yet it's also the realm of the fairest kind of struggle, a game where cheating (or performance-enhacing drug-taking) is essentially impossible.

Bobby Fischer died in Iceland yesterday. I was certainly saddened by the news. But in many ways, he won a magnificent end-game victory. Off the chessboard he was nutty as a fruitcake. But even at his loopiest and most theatrical, there was always something about him that captured the world's attention and made you wonder what he'd do next, and how the game would finally end. He was impossible to ignore.

From an e-mail:
============

Not so sad. If the US government had its way, he would have died in a US federal prison. The crime seems to have been Playing Chess Overseas Without a License.

All this is predicated on the apparent truth that everybody has to die sometime and somewhere.

I can testify from two wonderful visits that he managed to find sanctuary in one of the most visually beautiful places on Earth -- another place where you have to hire a guide to find Ugly. I hired a car and immediately got terribly lost. Being lost in Iceland is every bit as much fun and every bit as beautiful as knowing where you are. And if also you want a loud, kickin', heavy-drinkin', heavy-partying city with lots of music clubs, Reykjavik isn't shabby.

Then there is the Miracle of his last three years. This guy was loonier than [Glenn Gould]. It was universally believed that no human being would ever love him or could ever share intimacy with him.

But while he sat in a Japanese jail waiting to be extradited to the USA, a Japanese woman, the secretary of the Japan Chess Association (nobody in Japan plays chess, it is an almost unknown Spiel), became his passionate defender and advocate, to the Japanese government and to the world. She arranged for the invitation to grant him sanctuary in Iceland and even Icelandic citizenship (as hard to get for foreigners as Swiss citizenship).

As they left Japan for Iceland, they got married! He died a married man! Unglaublich!

How happy a marriage, I don't know. But the painter who had the affair with GG said there was lots of fun and happiness.

The Herr lieber Gott whom you are convinced does not exist -- He can be a surprisingly Generous Gott sometimes! He found a wife for Bobby Fischer and kept him out of prison!

As for those final years of public antisemitic rantings and ravings ...

At the very same time, almost unknown and never reported, he befriended the Polgar family of Budapest -- a Jewish family -- and tutored the two little girls, Judit and Susan, to become world-class chess champions. They became the biggest chess stars women have ever been. This reminds me to check out Susan Polgar's chess blog today, see what she has to say. She's married and lives in Texas now.

We used to use the word "touched" for this kind of lifelong mental illness -- it suggests that the gods have chosen to make a person this way. But they had Triumphs for Fischer, too.

It's easier to love Bach and Mozart and GG, all you need is ears and a heart. (Ludwig didn't even have the ears.)

But for those who understand chess -- a much more difficult world to access, requiring perhaps the most intensive study and memorization, thousands of old games, of any intellectual endeavor -- Fischer was the greatest player who ever lived, and made the most beautiful music on the chessboard, Fischer makes them weep with joy to this day, and weep with sadness that he stopped playing. Real chessplayers would have forgiven him everything.

Very similar life and "endgame" of the great 1940s world champion Alexander Alekhine. Hated, vilified, detested -- and for excellent reasons, he was a nasty creep -- but just because of how he moved those chess pieces around, also loved, protected, defended, mourned. I wish I played better. (The word for me is potzer -- hopeless amateur.) The better I played, the more I could understand Fischer's beautiful music. I can follow along with a couple of his most famous games, and little flashes of understanding come into my dim head. Little flashes of genius and beauty. Mozart in little dancing wooden pieces.

So this is of course a sad moment for me -- but maybe not so sad, really. Iceland embraced him as a national hero, a rock star as big as Bjork. And he's left dozens of recorded games that -- to a very specialized kind of audience -- will live as long as the Goldberg variations.

"Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist Er nicht."

(Subtle is the Lord God, but malicious He is not. -- Albert Einstein)

:-)