Word: fischer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Syria has consistently denied links to international terrorism. President Hafez Assad firmly reiterated that denial in an interview in Damascus with a group of TIME journalists, including Time Inc. Editor in Chief Henry Grunwald, Assistant Managing Editor Richard Duncan, International Editor Karsten Prager and Middle East Bureau Chief Dean Fischer. Assad not only rejected allegations of a Syrian terror connection but as usual accused Israel of terrorist activity and of being responsible for Middle East tensions in general. Though he offered no evidence, Assad broached his own elaborate theory of an Israeli plot in the London El Al incident. Assad...
Charles Krauthammer's essay "Did Chess Make Him Crazy?" [May 2] unfortunately looked at only the negative aspects of the Bobby Fischer saga. Krauthammer should know that there's a fine line between genius and madness. He wrote that Fischer "fell off a psychic cliff," but that's not generally how the game of chess affects people. I have been playing chess since I was in elementary school. It helped me tremendously with concentration, analytical skills, organizing and prioritizing. It made me what I am today: an engineer and International Chess Master. The experiences of the majority of chess players...
...Bobby Fischer is back in Iceland, and that is as it should be. Fischer put Iceland on the map for the first time since the Vikings happened by. And Iceland put Fischer on the map, providing the venue for his greatest triumph, the 1972 world chess championship. That was before he fell off a psychic cliff...
...Fischer is the poster boy for the mad chess genius, a species with a pedigree going back at least to Paul Morphy, who after his triumphal 1858-59 tour of Europe returned to the U.S., abruptly quit the game and is said to have wandered the streets of New Orleans talking to himself. Others have verged more on the edge of eccentricity. The great Wilhelm Steinitz claimed to have played against God, given him an extra pawn and won. Neither player left a record of the game...
...then there is Fischer, the fearsome counterexample, now pathetically sheltered in Iceland, the only place that appreciates his genius enough to take pity on his madness. So, Mama, should you let your baby grow up to be a chess champion? Tough question. In his novel The Defense, Nabokov, who loved the game as much as I do, has the hero, the chess master Luzhin, go mad when he is struck by the realization of the "full horror and abysmal depths of chess...