Fisher: chess genius gone mad
Pound: literary genius gone mad

both hounded by the US for unpopular views and acts.

I think Fischer is Pound reincarnate.

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 08:52:11 -0700, "D Coffey"
wrote:

Fisher: chess genius gone mad
Pound: literary genius gone mad

both hounded by the US for unpopular views and acts.

I think Fischer is Pound reincarnate.

How do you know Pound was mad? Don't believe everything you read.

Fisher: chess genius gone mad
Pound: literary genius gone mad

both hounded by the US for unpopular views and acts.

I think Fischer is Pound reincarnate.

How do you know Pound was mad? Don't believe everything you read.

One could say that about Fischer too.

"D Coffey" wrote in message ...
Fisher: chess genius gone mad
Pound: literary genius gone mad

both hounded by the US for unpopular views and acts.

I think Fischer is Pound reincarnate.

He is more like John Nash the Nobel Prize winner who's life was
depicted in the movie "A Beautiful Mind." Highly, intelligent,
arrogant and suffering from schizophrenia.

A lot of people in America remember Bobby the hero and they also
understand that he pretty much lost his mind not long after the match
with Spassky.

How do you know Pound was mad? Don't believe everything you read.

One could say that about Fischer too.


If Fischer isn't mad, then he's an extremely evil person. Possibly one of the
worst people alive, in terms of intentions if not of actions. It might be
kinder to him to assume he's mad.

..
Fisher: chess genius gone mad
Pound: literary genius gone mad

both hounded by the US for unpopular views and acts.

I think Fischer is Pound reincarnate.

He is more like John Nash the Nobel Prize winner who's life was
depicted in the movie "A Beautiful Mind." Highly, intelligent,
arrogant and suffering from schizophrenia.


I saw that movie, but I don't believe Nash came off as arrogant.


Fischer seems to simply be paranoid; he takes unfortunate events which happen
to him and blows them up to gigantic proportions, saying that everyone is out
to get him. He sees himself as the bright center of the universe, about which
everything in the whole world revolves. Passport revoked? Simple case of the
U.S. government -- having nothing better to do -- going after the greatest
genius who ever lived, in order to silence him and steal all his money.
Someone next to him on the plane lets a fart? Simple case of attempted murder
by poison gas. But Bobby is much too smart to fall for that old trick! He
cleverly holds his breath, until it is safe. Move over, Norman Bates --
there's a new kid in town....

illspam (NoMoreChess) wrote in message ...
.
Fisher: chess genius gone mad
Pound: literary genius gone mad

both hounded by the US for unpopular views and acts.

I think Fischer is Pound reincarnate.

He is more like John Nash the Nobel Prize winner who's life was
depicted in the movie "A Beautiful Mind." Highly, intelligent,
arrogant and suffering from schizophrenia.


I saw that movie, but I don't believe Nash came off as arrogant.


Fischer seems to simply be paranoid

Perhaps an attitude that at one time served him well. I gather that
in his prime, you might have had 12 grandmasters playing in a tournament:
11 Soviets and Fischer. The Soviets WERE, in fact, in collusion and
out to get him. Paranoia was probably a rational response for
Fischer at the time--it allowed him to develop his own highly
individualistic techniques for psychological warfare that the dour
Soviets, operating on instructions from old bureaucrats in Moscow,
couldn't match.

Bobby apparently couldn't change with the times and continued to play
his paranoid games long after they became dysfunctional.

illspam (NoMoreChess) wrote in message ...
.
Fisher: chess genius gone mad
Pound: literary genius gone mad

both hounded by the US for unpopular views and acts.

I think Fischer is Pound reincarnate.

He is more like John Nash the Nobel Prize winner who's life was
depicted in the movie "A Beautiful Mind." Highly, intelligent,
arrogant and suffering from schizophrenia.


I saw that movie, but I don't believe Nash came off as arrogant.


Supposedly the movie polished up Nash and totally whietwashed his
anti-Semitism. He was supposeldy pretty arrogant like a lot of very
high IQ people.

Fischer seems to simply be paranoid; he takes unfortunate events which happen
to him and blows them up to gigantic proportions, saying that everyone is out
to get him. He sees himself as the bright center of the universe, about which
everything in the whole world revolves. Passport revoked? Simple case of the
U.S. government -- having nothing better to do -- going after the greatest
genius who ever lived, in order to silence him and steal all his money.
Someone next to him on the plane lets a fart? Simple case of attempted murder
by poison gas. But Bobby is much too smart to fall for that old trick! He
cleverly holds his breath, until it is safe. Move over, Norman Bates --
there's a new kid in town....

Oh come on. The guy has some real mental issues. His mother was
supposedly bonkers and both parents were communist sympathizers. The
mother was tailed by the FBI which made her even more paranoid. His
father was not really Fischer but a jewish physicist the mother hooked
up on a trip to Washington DC. Hoover's FBI had all the details
because they really thought his mom was a threat. He was poor as a
child. He dropped out of school and while he was very smart, he was
not very sophisticated.

He is a bit Mozartish in he was child prodigy and somewhat socially
retarded. I think he is a borderline schizophrenic or maybe over the
border. I think he cracked up not long after the Spassky match. He
may have been able to hold it all together as he was striving for the
peak and when he reached it he cracked up.

His comments are outrageous but the guy is not playing with a full
deck. He appears to only be sane when he is playing chess. A real
tragedy.

Fischer seems to simply be paranoid; he takes unfortunate events which happen
to him and blows them up to gigantic proportions, saying that everyone is out
to get him. He sees himself as the bright center of the universe, about which
everything in the whole world revolves. Passport revoked? Simple case of the
U.S. government -- having nothing better to do -- going after the greatest
genius who ever lived, in order to silence him and steal all his money.
Someone next to him on the plane lets a fart? Simple case of attempted murder
by poison gas. But Bobby is much too smart to fall for that old trick! He
cleverly holds his breath, until it is safe. Move over, Norman Bates --
there's a new kid in town....


Wow, that's good. you could be Fischer's staff writer. Have you checked to
see if he's hiring?

It's really embarrassing to see the double standards that people unashamedly
hold with Fischer.

With Fischer himself, the standard is that ANYTHING goes, as long as it's not
actionable. And even if it can be prosecuted, it's still okay, because it
shouldn't be. Anything he does can be either approved or at least ignored.

With Fischer's enemies however, it's a different story. If they so much as
look at him wrong, it's a horribly offensive crime. Doesn't matter whether
it's actionable or illegal or not. The way they've got it figured, the US
government is the villain here, though of course if they judged it the same way
they judged Fischer, they'd be ready to have George Bush canonized.

Perhaps an attitude that at one time served him well. I gather that in his
prime, you might have had 12 grandmasters playing in a tournament: 11 Soviets
and Fischer. The Soviets WERE, in fact, in collusion and out to get him.


Nope. Never happened. The closest thing to what you're talking about is
Curacao. Five Soviets, two Americans (one of them Fischer), and Dr. Filip, who
was, I think Yugoslavian.

There's never been any evidence that any games were thrown there, though
according to our old friend Viktor Lvovic (one of the Soviets), three of the
Soviets, Petrosian, Keres, and Geller, had agreed to draw all of their games
against each other. The other two Soviets, Tal and Viktor himself were NOT a
part of this agreement.

It's an infraction of the rules, to be sure, and I don't excuse it. Though
pre-arranged draws are a big problem in general, not just with Soviets, and a
minor infraction compared to throwing games. Grandmaster Draws are common
enough even without prior agreement. And Petrosian and Geller, as good
friends, usually drew all their games over the years bloodlessly anyway (I'd be
embarrassed to tell you what their lifetime score against each other was, and
believe me, I DO know.) And some might think that since Fischer himself had,
that *very same year* blatantly broke the 30 move draw rule, and publicly
excused himself by saying that the rules didn't apply to him (no joke, he
really did say that. At Varna 1962), some might think he didn't have much
cause to complain, and even see a little poetic justice in the situation.

Nevertheless, I don't want to whitewash. There was a deal, and it was a rules
violation, and it was wrong. But to think that this deal somehow screwed
Fischer out of a title shot is equally wrong. As Larry Evans himself said, in
1962 Fischer just wasn't ready yet. Fischer finished that tournament with a
mere +1 score, and collusion or not, nobody ever had and nobody ever would have
won a Candidates Tournament with a +1 score. Fischer couldn't deal with his
failure, and so sought to excuse it. The deal did exist, but in fact it didn't
cause his defeat. It might have, if things had gone differently, but it
didn't.

Fischer simply wasn't mature enough in 1962. He had won the Interzonal by a
large score, and the American Public had practically crowned him World Champion
on the spot. They were VERY premature. If you can find it, look up a copy of
the 1962 Chess Life Annual. There's an article in one issue in which they look
at all the contenders in the Candidates tournament, explain why each one of
them *except* Fischer has no chance of winning, (Keres is too old, Tal is too
sick, Petrosian is too drawish, Korchnoi is too wild, Filip is too big a fish,
et cetera), decide that Fischer is obviously going to take the thing, and close
the article by asking "Who do you think will win the Botvinnik-Fischer match?"
It was really that blatant. They'd handed him the title based on an
Interzonal, Fischer believed his own press, and got his head handed to him in
the Candidates. The very first round he got blown away by Benko, he lost again
in Round 2, never really recovered, and finished +1. There was no way he was
going to win the thing, but the way he told it, nothing more than Soviet
cheating kept him out.

Yeah, right. Then he demanded that they overhaul the entire Candidates system,
just for him, they did it, and the next time around, he STILL wouldn't play.
What a git.