I'm finished with the old chess, it's rotten to the core!

Bobby Fischer talks to Reykjavik radio station

On January 27, 2002, Bobby Fischer spoke to a radio station in Reykjavik, Iceland. This was the first time we have heard from the reclusive ex-champion since his notorious anti-American and anti-Jewish tirades on September 12, 2001. In this interview he talks mainly about chess related interviews, although the hatred for America is still clear. In one of the very first remarks of the interview he says to his interview partner "Sammy" Pálsson,"You visited the stinking USA and got mugged right away, right? You were lucky to get away alive."

Fischer is interviewed by Helgi Helgasson, together with Sæmundur Pálsson, Fischer's bodyguard and close friend during the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match. Here are some excerpts from the interview. We leave out the most offensive bits, which (if you must) you can listen to in the MP3 audio files given at the bottom of the page.

• Is there a chance that you will play chess again?
  Only Fischer Random – I don't play the old chess any more. The old chess is dead, it's been played out.

• Have you been playing on the Internet?
  Not true, that's bullshit, a lot of Jewish lies. They want to distract people from all the crimes they have committed against me.

• Nigel Short said he met someone on the Internet who could have been you.
  He can say whatever he wants.

• Do you follow chess at all?
  I follow the old chess, I follow all the pre-arranged matches, like the last Kramnik-Kasparov match. At the highest level it is all pre-arranged, move by move. You have very interesting, beautiful pre-arranged games being created by very intelligent players, working with computers, working in teams. I have no objections to people creating such games, but they must say these are pre-arranged games, but they must not claim that they are finding the moves over the board. I have learned so much from these pre-arranged matches and all these cooked-up notes, they're wonderful. But they are fake, they are flawed. Somebody should ask Kasparov about my charges, that his first match against Karpov was pre-arranged move by move. Somebody should ask him, record his answer when he answers it live, and then put this through a lie detector. You will see he is lying through his rotten teeth.

• Where have you been staying during the last few years?
  In Hungary a lot, Germany, for the last couple of years I've been in Japan a lot of the time, the Philippines, Hong Kong. I'm working on a project trying to complete my chess clock.

• What if you were offered ten million dollars to play a match against some chess champion?
  I only play Fischer Random, period. I'm finished with the old chess, it's rotten to the core.

• Searching for Bobby Fischer was a popular movie...
  Yes, now it's on DVD. I have it here in front of me, on Amazon.com, for $24.95. So they've probably made maybe hundreds of millions of dollars on this movie, and they intend to make hundreds of millions more. It is totally illegal, they've stolen my name, the US government has given them this as their trademark.

Fischer denies that there is a warrant for his arrest because of income tax evasion in the US. However there is no question in his mind that they want to put him in jail for the rest of his life, and that they would in fact like to kill him.

Fischer urges chess players to visit his site given below. There you can send him your comments to his own personal email address, and where you can find a lot more of this what is occupying him these days.

• The Bobby Fischer web site: http://home.att.ne.jp/moon/fischer
• Audio of part one of the interview: http://home.att.ne.jp/moon/bobby_c/F_20_1.MP3 (2.4 MB)
• Audio of part two of the interview: http://home.att.ne.jp/moon/bobby_c/F_20_2.MP3 (1.0 MB)
• The Islandic Radio station Strikis web site (with video – you need an installed Real Player to see and hear the interview).