It's hard to remember nowadays how much attention the world paid to a chess tournament in 1972, when a kid from Brooklyn went up against the chess champion of the USSR and won. The cold war was still "hot" and the US was still in Viet Nam. Americans, who mostly don't play chess, got caught up in a 21-game tournament that ran for two months, with Fischer making demands for more money and the removal of a TV camera, and engaging in what Spassky complained was "psychological" warfare. That's Fischer on the right in this photo. Spassky, on the left, was the product of a Soviet system that groomed championship chess players and rewarded them well.
Sadly, Fischer went 'round the bend as he got older, dying of kidney failure on January 17. I'd rather not remember him as the anti-Semitic, anti-American recluse that he became. I'd rather remember him as the kid who took on the USSR and beat them at the chessboard.
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