Bobby Fischer, alias Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess Grandmaster, one of the greatest figures in chess history. He was selected to be a member of the US Chess Hall of Fame in 1986, in 2001 to the World Chess Hall of Fame.

Fischer was born in Chicago but he spent his childhood in New York. In 1949, he began to learn the basics of chess with his sister. His talent appeared early, in 1956, he became the youngest Junior Champion in the USA. In 1957, the 14 year old Fischer received his first singles champion title among the adults. He is eightfold US Champion. He became the youngest Grandmaster of chess in 1958, in Portoroz. The reason for this is perhaps that Fisher had an IQ of over 180 at grammar school already.

In 1963, he made a historical victory in the championship of his country and became a champion undefeated. Although he obtained the title five times before that, such unprecedented number of victories is rare in the world of chess.

Fischer was famous about his extraordinary requests in connection with each competition. At age of 21, he decided to retire from chess, since FIDE hadn’t completed some of his demands. He didn’t play at tournaments for years but then he returned in 1970. At the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal, he won games against the best players one after another: 6:0 against the Russian Mark Taimanov, and with the same result against the Danish Bent Larsen. He won 21 hard matches altogether.

He represented the USA four times on first board and he earned two individual silver and one bronze medals.

At the age of 28, he went at first and last time for the world champion title. What made it possible was that the Hungarian-born American chess Grandmaster, Pal Benko gave up his spot in the Interzonal to him. After this, Fisher challenged the World Champion, Boris Spassky.

The Fischer-Spassky match has now become legendary and is called "The Match of the Century". Arthur Koestler, who reported the match, described the tense fight as „Funny to be a war correspondent again after all these years.” Koestler named Fischer „mimophant” after his mimosa and elephant features. As I mentioned it earlier, he had unusual demands such as to move the subsequent game to another room, and remove the cameras and spectators.

During the battle for the world champion title he was always late from the games, he did not even appear on one occasion. The Russians said that with his continuous requests and autonomous behaviour he confused Spassky, therefore he could win.

So, in 1972, Reykjavík Fischer won the match 12,5:8,5 against Spassky and became a world champion. With this victory he broke the hegemony of the Soviet chess players.

In 1975, he had a chance to defend his title against Anatoly Karpov but as the FIDE did not fulfilled his claims, Fisher resigned the title and retired from professional chess once again and for all.

According to Chessmetrics, his highest Rating was 2895.

Fisher possessed an excellent endgame technique, beside Lasker, Rubinstein, Capablanca and Smyslov he was one of the best five endgame specialists. The endgame of a rook, bishop, and pawns against a rook, knight, and pawns was often called the "Fischer Endgame".

In 1988, Fischer patented the digital chess clock named after him which gave each player a fixed period at the start of the game and then added a small increment after each move. The Fischer chess clock is used in most major tournaments.

Sources: https://hu.wikipedia.org; https://en.wikipedia.org;