The Courier-Journal Louisville, Kentucky Thursday, August 05, 2004 - Page E4
Chess: Bobby Fischer's Iron Will Creates Worldwide Tension by Shelby Lyman
At this writing, Bobby Fischer sits in a Japanese jail cell awaiting possible deportation to the United States, where it is expected he would face federal charges for defying U.N. sanctions and a U.S. executive order to play a 1992 match with Boris Spassky in war-torn Yugoslavia.
Fischer is involved in the most important chess game of his life. Those who remember his off-the-board maneuvers before the historic 1972 match with Spassky in Iceland know him as a stubborn, iron-willed protagonist who brilliantly created and defined issue after issue in his own terms.
Already, he has claimed his arrest was a kidnapping; declined legal representation; alleged rough treatment by the police; refused to sign legal documents; and elicited significant public sympathy and support from friends and admirers.
Don Schultz, an American chess organizers, has presciently described the U.S. government's dilemma: “He's uncompromising. If they bring him back, I predict it will go on for some time, and there will be lots of problems.”
Below is a game between Etienne Bacrot and Luke McShane from an international tournament in Biel, Switzerland.