With all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming release of the movie Pawn Sacrifice (starring Tobey Maguire, who looks nothing at all like Fischer), I feel I may as well share my opinion that Bobby Fischer was the worst champion in the history of Chess.
Instead of going into great detail about it, I will restrict myself to two salient points.
First, as champion, he played ZERO games of chess. Fischer even surpassed Botvinnik who barely played at all in the years following his own title win, and at least Botvinnik showed up to play his duly appointed Challenger. Instead, with Fischer, we got years of drama, and no chess at all for 20 years. He then came out of retirement claiming to still be the champion, in order to cash in against Boris Spassky - again.
Second, Fischer's antics away from the board were appalling and couldn't help but taint the rest of us by association. Not completely, of course, but he certainly reinforced the stereotype that chess players are crazy. Thanks, Bobby!
I doubt this is a controversial opinion these days, and that's just sad.
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