Bobby Fisher Dead at 64

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One of the strangest but also compelling sporting events of my lifetime was the Fisher-Spasky World Chess Chamionships of 1972 where Americans followed the matches in newspapers each day over a two week period at the height of the cold war.

The nightly news programs actually led broadcasts with chess updates as the country embraced Fisher as a sports and intellectual icon that rivaled any other of the time period albeit for a short but significant period. Chess as a "spectator sport" strangely became a source of national pride as americans who might not know how the pieces on a board actually moved suddenly were captivated and hungered for information about two men alone in a room in Iceland in 1972. A unique period in American history not likely to be seen again although his later dulisional paranoia makes one understand what "A Beautiful Mind" was all about.