Current Biography Excerpts: Chess

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FISCHER, BOBBY
KASPAROV, GARY

FISCHER, BOBBY
Mar. 9, 1943- Chess player.

In the autumn of 1992, the international grand master of chess BobbyFischer emerged from two decades of self-imposed obscurity to play a remarkable exhibition match against his old rival Boris Spassky. Fischer, who had defeated Spassky in the famous 1972 World Championship held in Reykjavik, Iceland, only to be stripped of the title three years later after refusing to defend it, won the 1992 encounter handily. His dramatic return to competition was just the latest episode in a career marked by a string of impressive victories. An eight-time United States champion, he is the only American to win a world championship in recent memory, and, until 1992, he held the record for being the youngest person to become an international grand master.

Some observers have suggested that Fischer, in bringing to chess an impressive mastery of technique and combinative brilliance, created a whole new climate of appreciation for the game in the United States."It was Bobby Fischer who had, singlehandedly, made the world recognize that chess on its highest level was as competitive as football, as thrilling as a duel to the death, as aesthetically satisfying as a fine work of art, as intellectually demanding as any form of human activity," Harold C. Schonberg wrote in Grandmasters of Chess (1973). "If for no other reason, Bobby Fischer was and would be the greatest chess champion who ever lived."

Copyright © 1996 by The H. W. Wilson Co.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1994 Current Biography Yearbook.

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KASPAROV, GARY
(kahs-PAH-rof)
Apr. 13, 1963- Soviet chess champion.

When twenty-two-year-old Gary Kasparov made his winning move in the final game of the World Chess Championship, on November 9, 1985, giving him a 13-11 point victory in the series of twenty-four games against the then-reigning champion Anatoly Karpov, the spectators packed into Moscow's Tchaikovsky Hall surged to their feet, chanting "Gary, Gary." Spontaneous celebrations erupted in the lobby for the triumph of the youngest world chess champion in history, with fans from the Soviet Union's southern republics(Kasparov is from Azerbaidzhan) jumping, hugging, and kissing each other. One fan explained Kasparov's enormous popularity for Celestine Bohlen of the Washington Post (November 10, 1985) as follows: "Because he is young, because he is more pleasant than the other one, and because he is not just a chess player, but an artist."

Copyright © 1996 by The H. W. Wilson Co.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1986 Current Biography Yearbook.

Search for another athlete