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03/14/10 11:52 PM

#34424 RE: asus #34423

8. Bobby Fisher: the greatest - and craziest - chess player that ever lived


17-year-old Bobby Fisher playing against world champion Mikhail Tal in 1960.

Bobby Fisher is considered by many to be one of the greatest players (if not the greatest) in the history
of chess
. And while there's no denying that the man's brilliant (he became the youngest-ever junior champion
at the age of 13 and a grandmaster at 15), what made Bobby Fisher fascinating was his craziness and paranoia.

Rene Chun of The Atlantic wrote an interesting article titled Bobby Fisher's Pathetic Endgame
.. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200212/chun ..
that offers a glimpse into the strange (and sad) world of the chess genius:

In 1977, after a bitter falling-out that led Fischer to claim that the [Worldwide Church of God] was taking its orders from a "satanical secret world government," he cut all ties with the Church. Then he crawled even further into his own netherworld. He began dressing like a hobo. He took up residence in seedy hotels. He began worrying about the purity of his bodily fluids. He bought great quantities of exotic herbal potions, which he carried in a suitcase, to stave off the toxins he feared might be secretly put in his food and water by Soviet agents. According to a 1985 article in Sports Illustrated, Fischer medicated himself with such esoteric remedies as Mexican rattlesnake pills ("good for general health") and Chinese healthy-brain pills ("good for headaches"). His suitcase also contained a large orange-juice squeezer and lots and lots of vitamins. He always kept the suitcase locked, even when he was staying with friends. "If the Commies come to poison me, I don't want to make it easy for them," he explained to a friend. Perhaps the most telling sign of his rapid mental deterioration was that he insisted on having all his dental fillings removed. "If somebody took a filling out and put in an electronic device, he could influence your thinking," Fischer confided to a friend. "I don't want anything artificial in my head."


http://www.neatorama.com/2009/03/11/neatolicious-fun-facts-chess/

How do you feel about an all-white basketball league?

Are you a Beck Fan? Limbaugh? Do you relate to them more than
you relate to Tim Wise? I wouldn't ask you to speak for your friends.

'Ummm', not 100% sure why you mentioned them, but Bobby Fischer came to mind.