Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall—from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

Reading Frank Brady’s thorough and well-documented book was a bitter-sweet experience for me. I was a serious chess player in my teens, and Bobby Fischer was every American chess player’s hero, even, if for some inexplicable reason, he refused to play after winning the title—for twenty years it turned out. Later, when he broadcast on the radio anti-Semitic and anti-American rantings, I and most of the world figured that his brittleness and easily aroused paranoia, never far from the surface even when in his teens, had taken over his mind and he was lost to the chess world. His mental pathology also ended his life prematurely. He would not accept medical interventions and died of renal failure after a three-month illness.


What lessons can we learn from this deeply disturbed “genius” of the chessboard? Here are three:

1. Dedication and commitment are the surest road to success. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers writes about the 10,000 hours needed for mastery in most fields, rock music to surgery. Fischer put in these hours, probably before he was 16 years old. If anything, his commitment intensified as he got older. A telling anecdote from the book reveals his dedication. After a tournament had ended, Fischer stayed in the hotel and continued to analyze games, working 10 hours per day. He did this for two weeks, until the tournament sponsor told him he would no longer pay for the hotel room.
2. If you are successful at something, the world will forgive at least some of your faults. Few were as narcissistic and ungrateful as Fischer. Yet he had loyal friends who would do just about anything for him until the end of his life. Perhaps celebrity status is more important for admirers than actual talent, and Fischer had both. I was quite unsettled by so many people reaching out to this talented but horrifically flawed individual, and by the end of the book was rooting for him to get a well-deserved come-uppance. The flip side of this rule also seems true—an untalented but righteous person who avoids the limelight must work hard to find friends and is rarely forgiven after committing a few unavoidable life errors.
3. And yet…Sacrificing oneself to a career at the expense of gaining a spouse and perhaps children is rarely worth it. Erik Erickson wrote about the life stages of “Intimacy versus Isolation” and “Generativity versus Stagnation.” Fischer’s life remained unbalanced, because he was unable to commit to an intimate partner until a few years before his death. He did not marry until he was imprisoned near the end of his life and never generated children. Despite his long-term interest in finding a young woman to marry and start a family, he never did. The book does not speculate whether his lack of success in this area led to an Eriksonian existential despair. Yet Fischer in his early sixties was a bitter man who cared little about his appearance and looked twenty years older. Now middle-aged myself, I chose spouse and kids before career many years ago. Perhaps I made the best move.