American Psycho

Robert J. (Bobby) Fischer became the first non-Soviet player to become World Chess Champion for many years when he defeated Boris Spassky in Rekyjavik in 1972. Bobby was a socially inadequate, paranoid-schizophrenic sociopath, with pronounced psychopathic tendencies. I liked him. Having defeated Spassky, he never played another competitive chess game, failing to defend his title in 1975 and disappearing into semi-obscurity - but despite the irony of the fact that he gave up the game at the moment of his greatest triumph he remains, in 2006, amongst the general public, the most well-known chess grand master who ever lived. I am working on a much longer piece about this remarkable man.