..
d) he did not 'disappear' in 1992, to 'resurface' only after 2001


The Phillipino radio "interviews" Bobby gave in 2001 are widely known, but
much less widely reported are his other activities after 1992.


The 1996 press conference in Buenos Aires at which he launched Fischer
Random Chess was attended by hundreds of people.


The world if filled with *billions* of people, and this seems to make
"hundreds" look kind of puny by comparison.
I bet if you ask a hundred different people where that press conference took
place, you will get a lot of blank stares, though most may have heard about his
new clock, somewhere.

The trouble is, others had already developed similar ideas, though they did
not have the marketing advantage of the Fischer name. The old "Master Quartz"
chess clock had a slight delay, where if you managed to press the button fast
enough, your minute hand would not move. Others followed with digital clocks,
some of which were programmable or at least had several modes, including
delays.


My beef with the earlier press articles is that they were clearly written by
non-chess people, who got even the simplest of facts wrong. For example, even
a checkers player knows the difference between a game, and a match -- yet these
so-called reporters could not fathom the difference, and their handiwork is
broadcast all over the world.
I don't expect the Associated Press or Reuters to hire Yasser Seirawan or Jan
Timman to write every chess-related news item, but they might at least involve
someone who knows how the pieces move.