Facts about Fischer

by Frederic Friedel
8/1/2023 – Weird History is a YouTube channel that provides chronicles of history in a form never covered in high school. It looks at the extreme, the unexpected, the untold and the flat-out weird parts of history. "Because as weird as people seem today, we don't hold a candle to history," they claim. They have 4.31 million subscribers and have registered over half a billion views. After posting over 700 videos they have descended on Bobby Fischer. Here is the video portrait, for what it is worth.
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Weird History writes: Bobby Fischer epitomized the notion that there is a very thin line between genius and insanity. Because Fischer refused interviews and famously cut off contact with acquaintances who talked about him publicly, many Bobby Fischer stories and Bobby Fischer facts did not emerge until after his death. Some may never have surfaced at all. But even from a very early age, Bobby Fischer's life was fraught with chaos, anger, and instability. Fischer is perceived as possibly the greatest chess player who ever lived yet his bizarre personality later in life destroyed any semblance of a positive legacy.

Here's the video summary of his weird life:

Different takes

If some of the above sounds farfetched you may want to consult the following book, written by Fischer's last friend in Iceland, Gardar Sverrisson: Bobby Fischer's final years. It is described in this article on our news page.

You can also listen to a description of interaction with Fischer in this video:

Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.

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