Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by George Kane on July 6, 2010 at 7:23pm

He learned by hard experience. When he won the world championship he was double-tithed to Rev. Ted Armstrong's Church of the Air, a radio ministry.

Permalink Reply by George Kane on July 6, 2010 at 10:39pm

There is another context in which Bobby Fischer might come up in an atheist discussion. Bobby was taught how to play by his older sister, Joan. Joan married Russell Targ. I got to know them in the late 1970s, when he was the executive director of the Parapsychological Research Institute, I believe it was called. A few years ago I read an article that their daughter Elizabeth Targ received a large grant from the National Institute of Science to study some paranormal nonsense, so it must have become a family industry. Russell is a party to the litigation in Iceland, claiming that Fischer promised his estate to Russell and Joan’s sons, Alexander and Nicholas.

I met Bobby Fischer two times. I watched his win over Reshevsky at Santa Monica, 1963. Then in 1964 Fischer went on a nationwide tour of simultaneous exhibitions. The last event on the tour was at Mechanics Institute in San Francisco. I managed to draw, which I was quite proud of. I just spent some time to reconstruct the game from memory. I may have made a minor transposition or two, but I think that this score is correct.

Robert James Fischer vs. George Francis Kane
Simultaneous Exhibition
San Francisco, 1964
Scandinavian Defence
1 e4 d5
2 ed5: Qd5:
3 Nc3 Qa5
4 d4 c6
5 Bd3 Nf6
6 Nf3 Bg4
7 h3 Bf3:
8 Qf3: e6
9 0-0 Bd6
10 Bd2 Qc7
11 Ne4 Ne4:
12 Qe4: Nd7
13 c4 Nf6
14 Qf3: 0-0-0
15 Be3 c5
16 dc5: Bc5:
17 Rad1 Be3:
18 Qe3: Kb8
19 Be2 Ka8
20 b4 Rd1:
21 Rd1: Rd8
22 Rd8:+ Qd8:
23 Qe5 g6
24 c5 Nd5
25 b5 Qf6
26 Qd6 Qe7
27 Qe5 Qf6
28 Qd6 Qe7
29 Qg3 Qf6
30 a4 Qf4
31 Qf4: Nf4:
32 Bf3 Kb8
33 a5 Kc7
34 b6+ ab6:
35 ab6:+ Kc8
36 Kf1 Nd3
37 c6 bc6:
38 Bc6: Ne5
39 Ba4 Kb7
40 Be8 Kb6:
Draw agreed on Black’s proposal.