Controversial former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has died in Iceland, aged 64, after a long illness, according to dpa. Fischer, the US national who won the chess title in 1972 against then-reigning champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, had lived in Iceland since 2005. Fischer spokesman Gardar Sverisson said he died Thursday in hospital. Born in Chicago as Robert James Fischer, the chess prodigy who became the youngest US national champion at the age of 14 went on to become the first Western player to make a living playing chess. In 2004, Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov wrote of him in The Wall Street Journal, "the gap between Mr Fischer and his contemporaries was the largest ever." As a player, Fischer was unpredictable on the board, rarely repeating opening strategies during matches and was considered a genius at attacking. World champion between 1972 and 1975, Fischer's reign came at the high point of the Cold War. With players from the Soviet Union dominating world chess, Fischer was treated as a hero in the United States. Fischer however was known as much for his personality quirks as for his playing, with bright lights and shiny chess pieces being among his phobias. In 1975, he lost his title to Anatoli Karpov by default after refusing to accept the conditions for the match. Ever reclusive, his later life would be marked by controversy. In 1992, he came out of seclusion to defeat Spassky in an exhibition game in Yugoslavia that secured him 3.5 million dollars in prize money. It also resulted in the United States seeking his arrest for breaking US economic sanctions against the Balkan country. Unable to return to the United States, he remained in Eastern Europe, later moving to Japan. He continued to court trouble by issuing virulently anti-Semitic statements despite himself being Jewish (through his mother). Considering the United States a world menace at least partly because of what he imaged was its control by Jews, he stated that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US were justified. In mid-July 2005, Fischer was arrested at an airport in Tokyo for travelling with an invalid US passport. He accused former US president George W Bush and then Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi of personally arranging his "kidnapping." With the aid of his attorney and supporters, Fischer was able to avoid extradition to the US by applying for asylum and renouncing his US citizenship. He was finally able to escape extradition from Japan when the government of Iceland allowed Fischer permanent residence. Iceland's Foreign Minister David Oddsson explained the decision by saying there being so many eccentrics in Iceland that one more would not make a difference. In the summer of 2005, Spassky attempted to lure his archrival into playing chess again but to no avail. Speaking to The New York Times from France, Spassky said he was "very sorry" at the news of Fischer's death.
