Bobby Fischer and the High Cost of Genius

Bobby Fischer became the best in the world—then disappeared. Not into retirement, but into paranoia, exile, and solitude.

What do you do when you believe no one is as smart as you? When you think no one thinks like you--or could ever possibly understand you? When you feel no one knows what it's like to be you?

I recently finished watching the series The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. I was pleasantly surprised it had nothing to do with British royalty, but instead revolved around the game of chess.

I haven’t played chess in over twenty years, but it brought back warm memories—sitting across from friends or family (who were usually older than me), trying to outthink them, move by move.

That is the beauty of chess. It is a game that doesn't judge by age, gender, race, or creed. It is a pure intellectual challenge.

As I am prone to do, reminiscing about the game of chess got me thinking.

Suddenly, I found myself going down a rabbit hole. I remembered watching the film Searching for Bobby Fischer—about a gifted young boy discovering an early talent for chess. That movie had always intrigued me.

But now, I wanted to know more about the man behind the myth.

Why was everyone searching for the next Bobby Fischer? Why did so many want to become him?

If they knew what it was like to actually be him, they might have reconsidered.

I had always known the basics: Fischer was an American chess prodigy, a U.S. champion who rose quickly through the ranks and threatened to challenge Soviet dominance of the game. I knew he beat the reigning world champion in the early '70s, then vanished at the peak of his success—only to resurface in 1992 for a bizarre rematch against the same opponent. After winning again, he disappeared once more.

What I didn’t know were the darker details: the political rants, the misogyny, the anti-Semitic views.

I wish I didn’t.

He would have been so much more of an inspirational figure to me.

But all of this—the prodigy, the paranoia, the exile—is just backstory.

What really got me thinking were the words Bobby Fischer reportedly said before he died.

He passed away in 2008 at the age of 64. The only person by his bedside was a psychiatrist—not even his own, just someone attending him at the end.

According to that psychiatrist, Fischer’s final words were:

“Nothing is as healing as the human touch.”

What? Where did that come from?

This was Bobby Fischer—the man famous for his reclusion, his bitterness, his obsessive solitude. His passion, his purpose, his entire identity had been wrapped in chess. He despised publicity. He loathed interviews. He avoided people.

And yet, at the very end, that’s what he said?

I wasn’t shocked by the statement itself. I’ve believed it for years.

I’ve been a firm believer in the healing power of massage ever since I received a gift certificate years ago. Any time life started to feel too heavy, I’d book a 60-minute Swedish massage—whenever I could afford it.

What stunned me about Fischer’s final words was simply who said them.

But should I have been surprised?

Maybe that’s how it always goes. Maybe the things we pretend we don't want are the things we yearn for the most.

Fischer was married once. He had a child. He wasn’t a monk living in the monastery. But the image that endured—the narrative the world believed—was that of a man alone in a dark room, surrounded by chessboards and unopened mail.

After reading about Fischer online, I went out and bought Endgame, the biography by Frank Brady.

I was particularly fascinated by Fischer’s childhood and early adulthood. And it really got me thinking.

As a young boy, Fischer became obsessed with the game of chess. That’s not hyperbole—he lived and breathed it. His mother grew so concerned that she brought him to a psychiatrist. The doctor reassured her: there are far worse things for a child to be addicted to than chess.

Maybe. But it reminded me of that old adage: too much of anything can be a bad thing. Even chess.

Fischer’s obsession stunted him socially. He grew up awkward, distant, emotionally underdeveloped. He didn’t know how to connect with people. Over time, he also became a kind of diva—insisting on absolute control over every condition in which he played: the lighting, the type of chair, the room temperature, the texture of the chess pieces. If something wasn’t perfect, he’d walk away.

After dominating American competition, Fischer didn't find winning so easy against the Russians—probably the first real adversity he had ever faced in chess.

During the famous 1972 match against world champion Boris Spassky, he lost the first game. Then, he didn’t show up for the second—claiming the TV cameras were too loud, among other complaints.

He only agreed to return for Game Three after the organizers allowed him to play in a side room, away from the stage, the cameras, and the crowd. It was a move straight out of the Fischer playbook: take flight, make excuses, reassess, make absurd demands, retake control of the situation.

And it worked.

Fischer rallied and defeated Spassky in a dramatic comeback to become world champion.

This was the height of the Cold War. Chess wasn’t just a game—it was viewed as a battleground of intellect. The Soviets had long dominated the “sport,” their champions were treated like royalty.

And now, here was an American defeating the Russian champion.

Fischer became a national hero– mentioned in the same breath as the likes of John Glenn, Muhammad Ali, and Neil Armstrong.

He was a Cold War champion not with fists or rockets, but with a chessboard.

Then—he disappeared.

Fischer is a fascinating psychological study in so many ways.

Did his obsession with chess make him not only socially inadequate, but did it also drive him insane?

Did his early and easy success make him afraid to play again, afraid to lose once worthy challengers like the Russians emerged?

Fischer did not appear to defend his title in 1975 (the world championship was played every three years) and lost the title by default.

And yet, all the while, Fischer continued to proclaim himself the greatest chess player in the world.

When he resurfaced in 1992 for a rematch with Spassky, both men were well past their prime. The match was billed as an exhibition, nothing more. But Fischer insisted it was a world championship.

How does any of this relate to me?

I don’t consider myself a genius like Fischer. (He reportedly had an IQ of 181—Einstein’s was 180, by comparison.) But I can relate to something else: his social anxiety, and even his performance anxiety.

I, too, grew up with high expectations—mostly from my father.

I could bring home a report card with four A’s and one A-minus, and he’d berate me for the minus. I was the smartest kid in my class—until seventh grade. I was also the best athlete.

I didn’t have time for friends, though.

If I wasn’t attending CCD on Sundays or sitting through Portuguese school three nights a week at the local social club, I was home. Studying. Preparing. Trying to make my dad proud.

Like Fischer, I was excelling at what I was told mattered most—but missing out on everything else.

Everything was pretty easy for me athletically and academically until middle school when a couple more school districts combined. Then, high school? Now we had all the students from the entire town in one place. My high school senior class had over 400 students.

I went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a very big one.

Suddenly, I wasn’t the smartest, the best, or the fastest. I wasn’t even close. I was still trying hard—but now I was invisible. Socially behind, overwhelmed, unsure of where I fit in. Whatever confidence I once had? Shattered.

So I withdrew. Quietly and as often as I could. And thus began my lifelong pattern of fleeing rather than fighting.

It is why I can relate to Bobby Fischer.

When he played only Americans, he was untouchable. A prodigy. A king.

But when he stepped onto the world stage—things got harder. He barely beat Spassky in 1972. Then he disappeared. He refused to defend his title in 1975. He vanished from the game he had once dominated, only to return when he needed money in 1992.

Was he afraid of losing?

Was the thought of defeat so terrifying to him – and much more of a possibility – that it became easier not to play?

And if he lost, what would that say about him? What did he have left?

Chess was his life. It defined him.

So if he started losing at chess… did that mean he was a loser? Did it mean he was now one of those he had always pitied and ignored?

But there’s another possibility.

Maybe Fischer wasn’t just afraid of losing.

Maybe he was afraid of winning, too.

Because winning meant attention. And attention was something he seemed to hate. All he wanted to do was play chess—quietly, in a back room or a basement. He didn’t want to sit across from Johnny Carson. He didn’t want the book deals or the press tours or the product endorsements.

Many people covet that sort of self-aggrandizement and rubbing shoulders with celebrities. Not Fischer.

He just wanted to play chess.

In some respects, I am—or I became—a bit like that.

I’ve never claimed to be the best at anything. But I was pretty damn good at a lot of things.

The phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” applies to me, both academically and athletically. I've used the phrase often to describe myself.

Looking back now, I realize something:

Maybe I never put in the work to become the best at any one thing because I was afraid of being the best.

I don’t like the spotlight.

The brighter the light, the more it reveals the flaws.

Fischer's story opened my eyes to something: to become the very best at something, you often have to sacrifice everything else—sometimes even your own sanity.

In recent times, look at Tom Brady. Arguably the greatest quarterback in NFL history. But what did he give up to get there?

Some would say—including his ex-wife Gisele—that his obsession with football cost him his marriage and his family life. He was married to a supermodel, for Christ's sake. Isn't that enough?

Tiger Woods was once on pace to be the greatest golfer of all time. His competitiveness didn’t stop on the golf course, however. He had to win at everything—even with women.

Larry Bird is a Boston Celtics legend--right up there on the Mount Rushmore of Boston sports along with Brady. But during Bird's playing days, he had an almost nonexistent relationship with his daughter.

Or look at the long list of child actors who turned to drugs, alcohol, or disappeared entirely. The spotlight that made them stars as kids burned them out as adults.

You see it everywhere: people who dedicated everything to their craft—only to watch their personal lives fall apart.

And maybe that’s why Fischer’s last words had such an effect on me.

“Nothing is as healing as the human touch.”

For a man who spent so much of his life pushing the world away, that wasn’t just a statement—it was a confession.

It sounded less like the final words of a defiant world champion and more like the voice of a little boy—finally speaking through him in his last breaths.

Bobby Fischer died in 2008 at the age of 64. The man–who once was one of the most famous people in the world–passed away quietly in Iceland, far from the country that had once celebrated him as a hero.

His funeral was barely attended—only three or four people, according to reports. No grand memorial. No ceremony. Just a small plot in a rural churchyard outside Selfoss, Iceland, where he was laid to rest under a humble headstone.

It’s hard not to see the symbolism in that.

Fischer once stood at the pinnacle of the chess world. But in the end, he was laid to rest in a remote corner of Iceland, with only a handful of people there to bear witness.

We chase so many things in life—trophies, titles, adoration. But what good is success if there’s no one to share it with?

Fortune and fame shouldn’t be the yardsticks by which we measure a life.

Fulfillment is the true prize.

We don’t need to be world champions.

We just need to be the champions of our own little ponds—our homes, our relationships, our communities.

That should be enough.

Everything else is just the cherry on top.

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