Mad genius of chess Bobby Fischer dies

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - "Chess," Bobby Fischer once said, "is life."

It was the chess master's tragedy that the messy, tawdry details of his life often overshadowed the sublime genius of his game.

Fischer, who has died at the age of 64, was a child prodigy, a teenage grandmaster and - before age 30 - a world champion who triumphed in a Cold War showdown with Soviet champion Boris Spassky.

But the last three decades of his life were spent in seclusion, broken periodically by erratic and often anti-Semitic comments and by an absurd legal battle with his homeland, the United States.

Fischer died Thursday of kidney failure in Reykjavik after a long illness, friend and spokesman Gardar Sverrisson said yesterday.

Noted French chess expert Olivier Tridon: "Bobby Fischer has died at age 64. Like the 64 squares of a chess board."

In another bit of symmetry, his death occurred in the city where he had his greatest triumph - the historic encounter with Spassky.

Chicago-born and Brooklyn-bred, Fischer moved to Iceland in 2005 in a bid to avoid extradition to the U.S., where he was wanted for playing a 1992 match in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions.

At his peak, Fischer was a figure of mystery and glamour who drew millions of new fans to chess.

An American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, Fischer vanquished Spassky in 1972 in a series of games to become the first officially recognized world champion born in the United States.

The Fischer-Spassky match, at the height of the Cold War, took on mythic dimensions as a clash between the world's two superpowers.

But Fischer's reputation as a chess genius was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his volatility and often bizarre behavior. *