January 19, 2008	Saturday	Muharram 09, 1429

— Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has died in Iceland at the age of 64.

— Fischer, born in Chicago, was the United States’ first and only world chess champion, and is still seen by many as the greatest natural talent the game has ever known.

—His world title match with the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972 became an emblem of the Cold War confrontation between the superpowers. Fischer won convincingly, by 12-1/2 points to 8-1/2.

—When the moody and eccentric Fischer failed to defend his crown in Manila in 1975, world chess authorities awarded it to his challenger, the Russian Anatoly Karpov.

— Fischer fell foul of US authorities by playing a rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, at a time when it was subject to economic sanctions over Belgrade’s war with breakaway republics.

— Fischer vanished after the match, only resurfacing after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In an interview with a Philippine radio station, he praised the strikes and said he wanted to see America “wiped out”.

— He was granted Icelandic citizenship in 2005 after spending eight months in detention in Japan fighting a US extradition request.—Reuters