Bobby Fisher Dead At 64

"I don't play the old chess," he told reporters when he arrived in Iceland in 2005. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best."

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) - "Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.

Fisher died of kidney failure Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital after a long illness, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said Friday.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer faced criminal charges in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.

As a champion, he used his eccentricities to unsettle opponents, but Fischer's reputation as a genius of chess was soon eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.

"Chess is war on a board," he once said. "The object is to crush the other man's mind."

How silly it all seems now, what with the Michael Moore's and Sean Penn's of the world traveling willy nilly to aid and abet America's enemies.

Channel 13 in NYC would give play by plays of Fisher's matches, and that made the host Grand Master Shelby Lyman locally famous. Shelby would stand in front of a large chessboard, his curly hair all a-muss, and time after time stare goggle-eyed at a move Fisher would make. No one could follow Bobby's train of thought, although valiant Shelby always gave it a try, and many moves later would still be scratching his head wondering what was going on.

"Um, Bobby has moved, wait maybe we've got a bad line to Iceland and he really didn't make that move...oh boy, they tell me he DID make that move but nobody here can figure it out..."

Yes, crazier than a shit house rat but perhaps the greatest chess genius of all time.

Fisher, not poor Shelby. Shelby finally did go a trifle mad trying to understand what Fisher was doing but it never stopped him from trying.

"Ah, Bobby has moved again...and this one...um, this one is even worse. I...I, I'm sorry everybody I just don't know what's going on..."