Bobby Fischer Found

paulydavis writes "Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted since 1992 for playing a tournament in Yugoslavia despite U.N. sanctions, was detained in Japan for an apparent passport violation and will be deported to the United States."

Comments

Changed the view of the US?

[garcia]

Radio Interview from 9/11/2001.

While I disagree with just about everything he has to say he did mention (paraphrase) "now that the Cold War is over and now they want to wipe me out because I am useless." He's probably right. The USSR was using their hand picked superstars (athletes mostly) to make their country seem superior. Bobby Fischer certainly made the US look much better than usual in that regard, but he has the view that he single-handedly changed the view of the United States from a baseball and football (US) country to one of intellectuals... This I just don't agree with. Maybe for that brief moment in time (1972). It's certainly not considered that now (or in 2001).

Re:Changed the view of the US?

[Otter]

Well I had never heard of him before this.

At the time, though, he was very widely known. Not quite "Miracle On Ice" level, maybe, although Fischer may in fact have higher name recognition than Mike Eruzione or Ken Morrow. Certainly they made a movie about Fischer first.

It's amazing how poor people's memory can be, but the image of the Soviet Union as a nuclear-armed Bulgaria was created purely in hindsight. Fischer was before my time, but I'm old enough to remember be lectured about how we lazy, stupid American kids were doomed in the face of Soviet schoolchildren studying hours of astrophysics every day before heading off to physical training that exceeded what NFL players did back then. I was a bit startled when Russian children started arriving in our school. (Mostly Jewish emigres whose parents had served time.) I was "This is what they keep scaring us over?"

Re:Changed the view of the US?

[clary]

Tax cuts are a "temporary high" because they must be met by either lower government spending in the future, undoing 1., or higher interests rates and higher interest payments to non-US residents, undoing 2.

Discussion of tax cuts always seem to ignore a crucial factor: the tax rate before the cut. From what information I have been able to gather in my feeble, non-economist research, the tax rate cuts of Reaganomics were followed by an increase in tax revenue. (Reagan spent that and more, but that is another story.)

Anyway, look at it this way. What will be the total revenue if the tax rate were 0 percent? Zero. What will be the total revenue if the tax rate were 100 percent? I can guarantee you that tax revenue from my lazy ass would also be zero in that case. If you are trying to maximize revenue, then there is a sweet spot someplace in between. (Whether maximizing revenue should be the goal is also another discussion.)

A serious discussion of taxes must consider what should be the absolute tax rate. Republicans want to lower tax rates? Make them tell you what is their ideal tax rate for each income level. Democrats say tax cuts are irresponsible? Make them tell you what rates for each income level would be appropriate.

Re:Changed the view of the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a bit startled when Russian children started arriving in our school. (Mostly Jewish emigres whose parents had served time.) I was "This is what they keep scaring us over?"

Depends on where they were coming from. A friend from Kiev area says everyone in his school district went through summer military training, learning to throw grenades, fire guns, etc, and that this was common throughout the area. When i mentioned this to a girl from Azerbaijan, she just rolled her eyes and said, "We never did anything like that - those Ukranians took everything way too seriously".

Re:Changed the view of the US?

[Art_XIV]

A few years ago I spent several months working with a developer who was from Russia. Being a bit of a xenophile, I regularly questioned him regarding Russian life, politics, culture, etc, and was even able to explain a few curiosities of American culture to him.

One day during lunch we found out that we had both been in the Army (not the same Army) at the same time, back when there was still a Cold War. I began to chuckle over the propoganda that the Army endeavored to instill in myself and my fellow soldiers. We had the impression that the Soviets were a bunch of automatons with no respect for human life that were just waiting to go war for any reason. How the Soviets were just dying to use chemical and/or nuclear weapons!

Sergei began to laugh, too, and said 'That's the same sort of thing that they used to tell us about you Americans.'

Re:Changed the view of the US?

[Slime-dogg]

Whoah. Bush is fun to make fun of. It doesn't actually reflect the effectiveness of his governance, nor does his propensity to attract jokes reflect the rebound that our economy has had... He's just easy to make fun of. Nearly every president is.

I'd say that more people have a problem with Ashcroft than Bush, even though John is the result of George's decision-making process. I'd say that Bush has really only made a couple of mistakes:

1. Telling us that there were WMD in Iraq, and that's why we should attack. He should have just told us outright that Suddam was dangerous to everyone, exposed his and France's cheating ways, and then gone after him. Of course, this would be after the whole Afghanistan thing is done. Military action, though politically dangerous, is usually beneficial to the economy, nationalism, and unification of citizens.
2. Putting the power-hungry Ashcroft into his position. The department of homeland defence is sort of redundant, since we're supposed to have a fully functional NSA and FBI. I think Bush was just goaded into creating the new department, but I didn't hear any bitching in opposition at the time.

Everything else... his big ears, his horrible handling of the English language, his slips of the tongue, his appearance of looking stupid, his daughters... they really don't have anything to do with his actual performance as a president.

Re:Changed the view of the US?

[Otter]

Having posted earlier, I had started thinking along the same lines. When I was a kid, the rightists insisted were facing mortal threat from a merciless, implacable, all-powerful enemy. The leftists insisted it was all a big understanding, they were a superior, peace-loving society acting only in response to our American evil, and that the whole thing was a scam by our moron president and theocratic attorney general to implement a police state.

And those Russian kids told us about a wretched, oppressive society whose primary victims were its own people but which had copied enough Western technology to still be quite dangerous. They, of course, turned out to be entirely correct.

This all sounds oddly familiar. But I still remember going to bed without being certain that the world would still be there the next day, which is why I can't work up the frenzy over today's issues that other people have.

Anyway, that's my Big Thought for Friday. Bring on today's SCO ragefest!

Open mouth, insert paranoid foot

[erick99]

I was somewhat surprised to find this in the article:

In radio interviews, he praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.

Behavior like that wont't help his cause regarding his 1992 match that was in violation of UN sanctions.

This is sort of interesting as well. It hints at a greatly inflated sense of self-importance and a little paranoia.

He announced that he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version, "Fischerandom," a computerized shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the chess board at the start of each game. Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats.

Cheers!

Erick

Re:Open mouth, insert paranoid foot

[gowen]

Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats

Thats not entirely it. Fische Random is designed to remove the advantage to be gained from memorising scores and scores of standard openings and to encourage play based on talent rather than preparation.

Re:Open mouth, insert paranoid foot

[October_30th]

Yes.

Here is a more thorough article on Fischer's rise and fall.

Re:Open mouth, insert paranoid foot

[TheCarp]

Well Fischer has always been politically incorrect. This is the same man that accused the russians of ruinin ghte game of chess by always playing for mates against eachother and always playing western masters for the win, and saying that women can't play chess because theres not a woman in the world he couldn't beat given knights odds. (not that there are more than a handful of men that could beat him with knights odds)

As a friend informs me, he had dissapeared back in the 70s because he believed the US government was out to get him. So in his mind he had been in hiding from the US for 26 years before he said that.

I guess the upshot is that we can now all expect a few more good crzy bobby fischer quotes in the near future.

Frankly i think its all pretty bogus. Ok Yugoslavia was under sanctions. Big deal. He went there to play chess. I think this entire mess shows an inflated sense of self importance for the US gov, or at least hypocracy. The UN matters when they agree with US and doesn't matter when they don't?

Hes an old coot who was one of the most well known chess grand masters ever. SO much so that he gave up his title and quit the game years before I was born, and I still know who he was. Just let him be, hes not hurting anyone.

Sure hes an asshole, but should bein gan asshole really be a crime?

-Steve

Re:Open mouth, insert paranoid foot

[mslinux]

He's very mathematical...probably has asperger's syndrome (high-level autism). These types of people don't have *any* social feelings, or if they do it's very little. It's simply not in their DNA. They don't purposefully intend to piss everyone off, but that's one of the things they do. Nothing personal, it's just how they are.

I have asperger's syndrome. I offend people constantly. I know this, but I can't help it and the fact that they're offended doesn't bother me... not in the least. I've tried to make myself feel bad about my lack of social tact, but I can't.

Re:Open mouth, insert paranoid foot

[hibiki_r]

You might be a mathematician, but I'm pretty sure you are not a chess player. Most legal opening moves are so bad that a chess player does not have to memorize anything: If somebody opens with something like a3 or g4, any reasonable move will give you an advantage. This is caused by how inmediately obvious most bad moves are. In chess, a really bad move can be "punished" 2 or thee moves later. A more subtle error might be noticeable in 8 moves or so. Compared to a game like Go, where mistakes could not be obvious to an amateur 30 moves later, chess's true complexity is relatively low.

In pro chess you'll never see a truly awful opening move: any move that could be considered a theoretical innovation is tested and retested by a grandmaster before he ever makes it on the board.

As far as known opening lines go, some of the biggest opening families like the Ruy Lopez have known variants well past move 10. More like move 23. Any Grandmaster out there knows all of that theory. Even I, a complete amateur, know more than a couple dozen opening lines past the 8th move.

But what about Paul Simon?

[lxt]

...not entirely sure about this one, but didn't Paul Simon violate US/UN sanctions by recording his album Graceland in South Africa? I don't recall anything happening to him over it (then again, I was only around four years old at the time :))...

Interesting that the Japanese authorities are

[foidulus]

going to extradite him to the US, but they will not extradite a soldier by the name of Jenkins, who "disappeared" into North Korea while in the US military guarding the 38th parallel some 20 or so years ago. Jenkins married a kidnapped Japanese woman while in North Korea, and will be returning to Japan for a medical checkup soon. I actually don't think they should extradite either of them, but if you are going to do it, at least be consistent...

Re:Busting him for violating sanctions

[yack0]

> Sad when a genius has his cheese slide off his cracker.

Fischer's cheese was never on his cracker. Ever.

Yes, he was/is a brilliant chess player, but other than that he's shown absolutely no positive social graces, a raging ego (into the bad side of ego - some ego good) a sense of vengeance overall and a pretty cracked sense of the world.

I'd even submit that there's a large portion of those who could be 'genius' and are wackos and/or socially inept as well.

(no, not a troll, but I realize I should don the nomex suit)

Re:Busting him for violating sanctions

[tabdelgawad]

The difference is that Capone's other 'activities' were criminal, but spouting off anti-semitic and anti-American propaganda is not. I really hope this was a routine bust, not a calculated way to silence dissent (even if it's the worst kind of dissent).

Re:Pointless Prosecution

[Doc Scratchnsniff]

No, there should not. While these particular sanctions no longer exist, other sanctions exist against other countries, and will presumably exist in the future. Sanctions are not an end unto themselves, they are a means of coercing the sanctioned party in some way. This means all sanctions are intended to end eventually. The "violating a law no longer in effect" clause would diminish the effectiveness of sanctions, since potential violators would need only evade discovery until the sanctions are lifted.

A quite extreme example of this is Iraq right now. Should we "let slide" anyone who broke sanctions there? After all, sanctions are lifted now. Of course, if the sanctions had been strictly held to, perhaps they would have actually diminished Saddam's power, instead of increasing it.

Re:Jesus!

[lseltzer]

And he was fucking nuts back in 72 as well. He's always been paranoid. He went apeshit before the 72 tournament refusing to play if there were any cameras or recording devices in the room. I believe he forfeited at least one game because he imagined there was a camera there.

I was 11 years old at the time but I remember it pretty clearly. I was aware back then that he was kooky anti-semite.

Give the Poor Guy a Rest (not Arrest)

[Teancum]

While Bobby Fischer might have technically violated some U.S. laws, (and this one technicality is just the first that he has dealt with) he really should simply be left alone.

I've been following Bobby Fischer since he started publishing Chess columns in Boys' Life. While not necessarily a hacker, certainly a classic geek.

He all but dropped out of society in almost a Ted Kaczynski fashion, and can IMHO be classified as the most persecuted American by the U.S. Government. He was also wanted a few years ago on tax evasion charges, but I thought that got cleared up. He really has been hounded by the U.S. government for many things, and gone through ups and downs in his life that I would not wish on anybody.

A really good writeup about Bobby Fischer's trip to Yugoslavia is on bobbyfischer.net

I had to use the internet wayback machine because for some reason the regular website is down. Probably due to some slashdotting, although in this case probably not directly due to slashdot it self (surprisingly). Some absolutely incredible articles. I've also seen segments on television news programs that have also discussed his life, and it seems rather pathetic. How much of this is brought onto himself, and how much is out right presecution remains to be debated, but he should really be given a nice quite spot in Montana and be left alone.

Maybe the U.S. government is afraid of letting intelligent people who think the U.S. government is screwed up be left alone.

Re:The man is clearly mentally unstable

[jjohnson]

What Fischer calls "cheating" is what others call "chess study". His criticism of the current form of chess is that being a grandmaster involves memorization of openings and endgames more than general strategy and tactics. His particular criticism of the "Russian Chess Machine", as he called it, was that it cheated by having hordes of grandmasters studying chess to back up their contender in a tournament; when there was a break in the game, the contender would meet with his committee of experts and receive the abridged version of their studies. The effect was to multiply the power of the contender because the rote memorization and study was done for him.

Of course, Fischer also accused Russian chess players of throwing games to advance other Russian chess players who'd been picked to be the champion so that their contendor could get to the final round without exerting himself, and be fresh for the championship match, while someone like Fischer had to fight his way to that match and be exhausted when he got there.

Fischer saw the former kind of cheating as an inherent problem in the fixed starting position of the game, and invented Fischerandom (TM) to overcome it. By randomizing the starting positions, book openings become meaningless and chess becomes much more an exercise in pure strategy/tactics and on-the-board analysis.

Re:Jesus!

[The Almighty Dave]

If I remember correctly, in addition to being intelligent and somewhat crazy, wasn't there some talk a while back about him being autistic, or at least showing some traits of autism?

Re:Jesus!

[Rei]

No, he didn't kill anyone - although, in response to September 11th, he told a Philippine radio station:

"I was happy? ?Yes, I applaud the act? ?Fuck the US. I wanna see the US wiped out. "

I'm just waiting to hear him blame his detention on Japanese Jewish operatives. ;) You know, Bobby, I'm not too fond of Israel's policies in the middle east, either. However, when you take things as far as, say, blaming the confiscation of your property in absentia by the government on "the Jews", you might as well be working to rebuild the Fourth Reich. Lets close with one of Bobby's quotes:

"I'm hoping for a [scenario] where the [US] will be taken over by the military, to close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews, execute hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders, and you know, apologize to the Arabs by killing off all the Jews over there in that bandit state, you know, Israel."

Sieg heil, Bobby. Sieg heil.

Re:Jesus!

[Deathdonut]

While he didn't willingly concede a game, he was warned that if he kept making silly demands (such as removing the first 7 rows of spectators, changing the lighting, de-glossing the chessboard, etc) the game would be forfeit. He continued, and the second game of the match was awarded to Spassky. The third game (and his first win of the match) was played in a secluded room to placate him. After the third match, he stopped being the one making insane demands and the Russians started taking apart light fixtures, filling bags with 'air samples' and accusing Fischer of using electronics to interfere with Spassky's brainwaves.

many more mistakes than that

[JimmytheGeek]

They cover a wide area:

math: Claiming X - Y (where both X and Y are > 0) = X in a televised debate. "Fuzzy math! Fuzzy math!" The topic was privatizing social security. Gore said, correctly, that diverting payments that go to current retirees to private accounts leaves a shortfall.

biology: doesn't believe in principle of evolution

statecraft: squandered goodwill after 9/11: went from state much sympathized to pariah state much feared.

statecraft 2: got in a land war in asia. They'll trade 2-10 for every one until we're done. We'll win every battle until we quit.

statecraft 3: didn't finish potentially winnable war in asia because of elective war in iraq.

governance: did not prevent torture from being used on those whose hearts and minds we're trying to win.

governance 2: did not anticipate any problems in Iraq. Every expert did. Went in cheap and sloppy.

character: lacks the humility and curiosity necessary to avoid the above mistakes. Leads to worse. For example, should have known that unsupervised, untrained 18 year olds will abuse authority. Or should have hired folks who knew that. Instead, encouraged abuse.

at a certain point, being an optimist equates to being a dumbass. We're long past that point with W.

Re:Jesus!

[maxpublic]

He wasn't told that he couldn't play chess in that country, merely that he could not play in a sanctioned tournament in that country. It's a bit of a distinction.

I see. And somehow that's supposed to make the whole thing less absurd?

The man is being charged with playing in a chess tournament when his fuckwit government ordered him not to. As insane as the son-of-a-bitch is, the government had no business pulling this totalitarian temper tantrum in the first place.

It doesn't matter what his views are. It doesn't matter if Hitler is his hero. All that matters is that the government over-extended it's authority and attempted to illegally shackle one of it's own citizens. For try as I might, I see no Constitutional authority granting the government the right to command it's citizens as to which countries they might go to, and what they might do while they're there.

Max