Athletes Don't Play Chess

Intelligence vs Masculinity

In my post ‘The Hunter-Gatherer Fitness Model’, I made the argument that smarter people are physically weaker and have more slender features. I only used one study to back it up, although here is another study that says “facial intelligence negatively affects perceived masculinity” in their research on the faces of leaders. As for the study I referenced in the HGFM article, this is what it said:

Faces that are perceived as highly intelligent are rather prolonged with a broader distance between the eyes, a larger nose, a slight upturn to the corners of the mouth, and a sharper, pointing, less rounded chin. By contrast, the perception of lower intelligence is associated with broader, more rounded faces with eyes closer to each other, a shorter nose, declining corners of the mouth, and a rounded and massive chin. By contrast, we found no correlation between morphological traits and real intelligence measured with IQ test, either in men or women.

These results suggest that a perceiver can accurately gauge the real intelligence of men, but not women, by viewing their faces in photographs; however, this estimation is possibly not based on facial shape. Our study revealed no relation between intelligence and either attractiveness or face shape.

So actually they found no correlation. Which means I used a study that didn’t support my argument to support my argument.

Lets make sense of what the study is actually saying. They are saying that:

• People can judge the intelligence of males quite accurately

• People believe that broader faces belong to less intelligent men

• Broader faces do not actually belong to less intelligent men, and everyone is just getting lucky when they correctly guess their IQ. Or their brain is using a different cue (not facial width) and they are not consciously aware.

Lets look at the pictures from the study.

The study says that the faces on the right are perceived as more intelligent, and that the faces on the right are more intelligent.

Look at them. It is pretty clear that they are more slender and more feminine. It is even apparent in the women, although the effect should be smaller. Personally, I like the faces on the right more than the faces on the left. That’s because I am intelligent, like all my readers. The faces on the left are built for fighting. The faces on the right are built for thinking.

My reasoning was that broader faces and muscular bodies are more metabolically costly than thinner faces and weaker bodies. Similarly, larger and more complex brains are more metabolically costly than smaller, simpler brains. In our food-scarce ancestral environment, it just wasn’t possible to have a large brain and a large body.

This is why the ‘nerd’ and ‘jock’ stereotypes exist.

Jocks are more masculine, but less intelligent. Nerds/geeks/dorks are weaker, skinnier and less socially dominant. The word dork is not used to make fun of someone because they are smarter, that doesn’t work. It is used to highlight a lack of masculinity or social awkwardness. Since these stereotypes exist, and the work of Lee Jussim has shown that stereotypes are generally very accurate, I believe there must be a correlation between intelligence and facial width and muscularity. Perhaps the researchers were not measuring facial width correctly, or something.

Stereotypical nerd

Stereotypical jock

I want to highlight an important aspect of this relationship. The difference between jocks and nerds is not only musculature, size and strength. While nerds are usually less muscular than average, they also tend to have poorer coordination, speed, stamina and eyesight. Lets group these things under general athleticism. There may be some nerds who are quite big, but still avoid sports due to poor coordination. This makes me think that these abilities (vision, speed etc) are also metabolically costly in some way, just as large bones and muscles are.

This may be why high earners wear glasses more than low earners. It could also explain why Asians are thought to wear glasses more than White people, and Whites wear glasses more than Black people. Because Asians are smarter than Whites, and Whites are smarter than Blacks. This picture below actually says that Whites wear glasses more than Asians, but that is just America, and Asians will probably overtake as the younger generation becomes older. I’m pretty sure the Chinese are known for wearing glasses a lot. Also, women wear glasses more than men, but that is because men needed to be good hunters and women didn’t.

So, assuming that there is a (negative) correlation between intelligence and athleticism, we might say that most people are either:

• athletic and dumb

• unathletic and smart

• average in both

The vast majority of people (I am not sure the percentage, because I don’t know how strong the correlation is) fall into one of these categories. It is possible, however, to find people who are particularly dumb as well as being physically weak and unathletic. Not very common, but they do exist and you might even have met some people like this.

However, it is almost impossible to find people on the opposite side of the spectrum, those who are extremely smart and very physically capable. By very smart I mean at least 140 IQ. By physically capable I mean highly athletic, good at every sport and might think about going pro in their sport of choice. It is virtually impossible to find people like this.

Why? Because most genetic mutations are deleterious. Most of our genes have high levels of synergy, built up over millions of years, and finding another random mutation that happens to synergize even better with the rest of them is going to be exceptionally rare.

When somebody does exhibit both, they tend to have an uncompromising, fearless attitude as a result of their innate advantages. One such person, in my opinion, was Bobby Fischer.

Bobby Fischer

Fischer was the undisputed world chess champion for several years, and he also enjoyed exercise and maintained a strong level of fitness by swimming, playing tennis and even boxing.

An article from The Columbia Dispatch notes:

Fischer might have possessed more than a little athletic ability. A New York teacher remembered him as "the best underwater swimmer" at a summer camp.

At the chessboard, "the kid from Brooklyn" was mercilessly competitive, exhausting his opponents by relentless and prolonged efforts to win.

But his competitiveness could also have a boyish quality, as when he taunted Boris Spassky while they swam in a hotel pool during a 1966 tournament that took place in Santa Monica, Calif.

"I swim faster than you," Fischer told his Soviet foe.

Fischer was genetically Jewish, but for a Jew he was a genetic outlier. He was tall, at 1.85m I assume he was the tallest ever chess world champion. He has stated in interviews that his cognitive strength is spatial perception, while Jews typically have a heavy verbal tilt. It is likely Fischer had good eyesight to match his physical abilities. Consider that:

• 75% of people in the general population use corrective eyewear

• Jewish people are more likely to wear glasses than non-Jews

• Intelligent people wear glasses more, and most chess champions did

The mere fact that Fischer never needed corrective eyewear, even in his later years, is unusual. On the Dick Cavett show, Fischer mentions he might have liked to be involved in sports as a profession.

Cavett: "What would you have been if you hadn’t been a chess player? Do you have any idea?"

Fischer: "Uhh, some kind of sports.. something, you know."

Cavett: "A sport?"

Fischer: "I mean I haven’t really gone into it much but I think I might have gone for something like that"

Cavett: "When they meet you, people expect a frail little fellow with thick glasses and they’re always surprised by the width of your shoulders and the fact that you look like an athlete"

There are not many chess players, and especially chess champions that would think they could make a profession out of their sporting ability. Like a typical athlete, Fischer got bad grades as a student. He didn’t think much of the education system, saying "you don't learn anything in school."

He was nevertheless highly intelligent, and shockingly brilliant at chess. There are arguments for Magnus Carlsen or Garry Kasparov being the greatest chess player ever, and most people seem to prefer one of them instead of Fischer. However, Magnus and Kasparov, while dominant, never stunned the chess world with their achievements, repeatedly, like Fischer did.

At 13 years old, Fischer played in a tournament against Robert Byrne, one of the leading American chess masters at the time. Fischer obtained a winning position by move 18, and checkmated Byrne on move 41. It is not just the fact that he won at 13 years old, but also the brilliance of the game, which was described as a masterpiece and is now known as the “Game of the Century”.

Here is an excerpt from his Wikipedia page, detailing his victories just before his World Championship match against Boris Spassky.

Fischer beat Taimanov by the score of 6–0. There was little precedent for such a lopsided score in a match leading to the World Championship. Fischer was next scheduled to play against Danish GM Bent Larsen.

Spassky predicted a tight struggle. “Larsen is a little stronger in spirit."

Before the match, Botvinnik had told a Soviet television audience:

“It is hard to say how their match will end, but it is clear that such an easy victory as in Vancouver [against Taimanov] will not be given to Fischer. I think Larsen has unpleasant surprises in store for [Fischer], all the more since having dealt with Taimanov thus, Fischer will want to do just the same to Larsen and this is impossible.”

Fischer beat Larsen by the identical score of 6–0. Robert Byrne writes: "To a certain extent I could grasp the Taimanov match as a kind of curiosity—almost a freak, a strange chess occurrence that would never occur again. But now I am at a loss for anything whatever to say… So, it is out of the question for me to explain how Bobby, how anyone, could win six games in a row from such a genius of the game as Bent Larsen."

When compared to the other world chess champions throughout history, Fischer stands out as being uncommonly handsome. Furthermore, he possessed masculine qualities that endeared him to the Americans and antagonized his Soviet opponents. Fischer was extremely ambitious and confident about his ability. He was unapologetically objective regarding his status as the best, and had a habit of predicting his victories.

From Wikipedia:

At the 1962 Varna Olympiad, Fischer predicted that he would defeat Argentinian GM Miguel Najdorf in 25 moves. Fischer actually did it in 24, becoming the only player to beat Najdorf in the tournament.

Najdorf, by the way, is a legend of the game and has a major opening named after him.

An interview with talk show host Johnny Carson shows Fischer confidence:

Carson: “What really drove you? Was it because you felt the Russians were really playing games for a while and wouldn’t let the championship out of their country?”

Fischer: “Well at first its just the love of the game as a boy, loving to win and all that.. but I had all these troubles with the Russians and they tried to block me from playing them for a title match.. and they kept writing that I wasn’t that good, that I wasn’t even in the top 10, they said I just got publicity because of my antics you know, and this is really what kept me on. If they had just shut up and ignored me and said he’s a very fine player, I might not have gone for the title. Because it didn’t matter to me that much, I knew I was the best, but they kept saying this all the time, putting me down, they got me mad.”

An interview with 60 minutes:

Interviewer: "You like to crush another man's ego?"

Fischer: "Uh-uh. So when they go home that night, they know.. they can't kid themselves that they're so hot."

Interviewer: "Do you worry about Spassky?"

Fischer: "Not overly, I mean he's a little better than the other Russians I've taken on."

Interviewer: "You've played Spassky. He's beaten you but you've never beaten him!"

Fischer: "Yeah well, we've only played a few games... Looking through his games from the [recent] Moscow event... they were atrocious games. He was lost in half the games in that tournament. Really bad games on his part."

Interviewer: "Sometimes you’re described as arrogant [paraphrasing], I sense that its something quite different."

Fischer: "People have calling me arrogant for many years, but lately they're not calling me arrogant. Why? Because now I've been winning all these matches and I'm doing what I've always said I would. I used to say I was the best player in the world. Everybody said arrogant, terrible, conceited. But this was just an obvious fact."

His brutal words stands in stark contrast to the words we hear in almost every sport. Players are usually very careful about their words. They do not want to insult their opponent for fear of them playing better against them. This is especially true in team sports. I am sure Fischer didn’t care about that at all. He would probably welcome it, wanting his opponent to be at their strongest so he could beat them anyway and prove he really was the best.

He was the most dominant player at his peak, and planned to stay world champion for 30 years. Fischer's sister observed:

"Bobby did all this in a country almost totally without a chess culture. It was as if an Eskimo had cleared a tennis court in the snow and gone on to win the world championship".

What’s more is that Fischer was completely self-taught, even learning several Eastern European languages so that he could read chess magazines. All other high level chess players are coached from a very young age, whereas Bobby never used any at any stage of his career. He didn’t trust anyone else’s advice. Furthermore, during his career the Russians often colluded against him, prearranging draws with each other to save their energy for playing Fischer.

Autism

Bobby had autism. He would complain about the lighting being too bright, the temperature being too high and the sound of the audience being too loud. All clear signs of autism. He was socially awkward, in his early interviews he is very laconic and sometimes crosses small social boundaries. He had a strong fixation on chess and a great ability to focus. His real father was likely Paul Neményi, a brilliant Hungarian physicist and mathematician.

As I noted in my article on autism, people with autism have an ‘extreme male brain’, according to Simon Baron-Cohen. My article supported this theory and included some more behavioural aspects as well as physical characteristics. While some of these findings have pretty weak evidence because of lack of research or poorly designed studies, in general autism can and should be viewed as an ‘extreme male profile’ condition.

People with autism typically have:

• larger brains

• larger bodies

• more neurotransmitters and more addictions

• more focus (poorer multitasking)

• better spatial ability

• low interest in socialising

• poorer verbal ability

• poorer empathy

• more masculine reactions to certain smell triggers

• higher sex drives

• more masculine facial features

• higher fetal testosterone (and possibly in adults)

• greater preference for routines (unspontaneous)

• light, heat and sound hypersensitivity

• smell hyposensitivity

• greater vengefulness or lower frustration tolerance

• more ambition

• poorer eye contact

• worse hygiene maintenance

• greater rationality

All of these characteristics are found more in males than females. What’s more is that people with autism possess these traits to a stronger degree than normal males. Unsurprisingly, 80% of autism diagnoses are males.

Females with autism also possess these traits, but to a lesser degree than autistic males. They are somewhere between normal females and autistic males. This means that symptoms of autism are slightly mitigated in females, due to some complicated genetic/chromosomal function. However, they still stand out because they are compared to other females, not to males.

All in all, it is quite clear that autism is an ‘extreme male profile’ condition. Why is this important? In 2011, there was a paper by Jared Reser that actually has a close connection to the HGFM. He explained that autism can be conceptualised in terms of natural selection and behavioural ecology, with a hypothesis termed the ‘solitary forager hypothesis’. Even though I have posted the abstract several times before, it is so good I will post it again.

This article reviews etiological and comparative evidence supporting the hypothesis that some genes associated with the autism spectrum were naturally selected and represent the adaptive benefits of being cognitively suited for solitary foraging. People on the autism spectrum are conceptualized here as ecologically competent individuals that could have been adept at learning and implementing hunting and gathering skills in the ancestral environment. Upon independence from their mothers, individuals on the autism spectrum may have been psychologically predisposed toward a different life-history strategy, common among mammals and even some primates, to hunt and gather primarily on their own. Many of the behavioral and cognitive tendencies that autistic individuals exhibit are viewed here as adaptations that would have complemented a solitary lifestyle. For example, the obsessive, repetitive and systemizing tendencies in autism, which can be mistakenly applied toward activities such as block stacking today, may have been focused by hunger and thirst toward successful food procurement in the ancestral past. Both solitary mammals and autistic individuals are low on measures of gregariousness, socialization, direct gazing, eye contact, facial expression, facial recognition, emotional engagement, affiliative need and other social behaviors. The evolution of the neurological tendencies in solitary species that predispose them toward being introverted and reclusive may hold important clues for the evolution of the autism spectrum and the natural selection of autism genes. Solitary animals are thought to eschew unnecessary social contact as part of a foraging strategy often due to scarcity and wide dispersal of food in their native environments. It is thought that the human ancestral environment was often nutritionally sparse as well, and this may have driven human parties to periodically disband. Inconsistencies in group size must have led to inconsistencies in the manner in which natural selection fashioned the social minds of humans, which in turn may well be responsible for the large variation in social abilities seen in human populations. This article emphasizes that individuals on the autism spectrum may have only been partially solitary, that natural selection may have only favored subclinical autistic traits and that the most severe cases of autism may be due to assortative mating.

To summarise, people with autism are so good at hunting and surviving that they can do it on their own, and do not need to be concerned with forming groups. Thus, they do not need to be concerned with socialising. This hypothesis makes sense when seen in the context of an ‘extreme male brain’ because males are better at hunting and ‘eschew unnecessary social contact’ more than females do.

This is why the ‘sigma male’ meme exists but the ‘sigma female’ meme does not. Only extremely competent males are capable of surviving on their own.

Do not mistake autism for a developmental disorder or learning disability. Those people get diagnosed more often, but there are many more people who have a high number of autistic traits and could be considered autistic, but can function well enough to fly under the radar. They are not aware themselves because no one really knows what autism is. They just know they are “weird”.

Bobby Fischer strikes me as an “ecologically competent” individual who would do well in a HG environment. Ecologically competent people don’t need to care about their social reputation, they can survive on their own, and Bobby certainly didn’t care about his.

People with autism are hypersensitive to sensory stimuli. This means that they have greater capacity for sensory information. It is not just that they become overwhelmed because they lack a filter. They have superior senses.

Sounds are often too loud, light is often too bright, clothes are too uncomfortable etc. This is because information is amplified. This means that the difference between, for example, two different sounds is also amplified. This makes it easier to tell sounds apart, as well as the direction of the sound, the tone or pitch etc. People with autism are sensitive to light because they have better eyesight. They are sensitive to heat and sound because they have better tactile perception and better hearing.

Being hypersensitive means there is more information coming in, and the brain has more to process. People with autism probably get tired more quickly doing the same thing that others do. Bobby didn’t get tired, in fact he was known for his stamina, but that is because:

• he loved chess and it didn’t feel like work to him

• playing chess is not exactly an overly stimulating environment

• he lived an extremely ascetic, “almost monastic life”, where the only thing he spent energy on was chess and some physical exercise

It is a common complaint from people with autism that it is difficult to work full time. Personally, I don’t think I have ever worked full time for more than a few months before burnout occurs (I have autism). Since people with autism have better eyesight, that is why I think that greater vision has a metabolic cost, which is why smarter people on average have worse vision.

One time I was going for a walk with my wife when we were on holiday in a small town in the mountains. Our child was getting hungry so we ordered sandwiches from a cafe. My wife wanted to sit down there and eat, but I ordered take away for several reasons. There was music inside, and it was way too loud for me. I also refused to sit outside because there was no shade anywhere and it was too hot and too bright. So we had to sit at a bus stop to eat. Growing up I never understood how people tolerate such loud music. Nightclubs are just unbearable. Normal people even talk loudly. Now I know they have dulled hearing and it makes sense.

Isaac Newton is another one who was both highly intelligent and highly masculine. He never used spectacles and was a strong boxer in his youth. His personality was famously uncompromising, with the occasional violent-tempered outburst. He had people hanged for crimes of counterfeiting when he was Master of the Mint. He was short, however. William Stuckley states “Sir Isaac was gray headed when under 40; owing, perhaps, to the infinite expence of spirits from severe studies; yet he had great strength and a good constitution. Though not tall in stature, yet strong, sinewy, & well made. His voice was of a deep tone, but pleasant enough, having a large chest, for one of his stature.”

Note the large, deep set eyes on Fischer and Newton. A study on autistic faces shows a composite of 6 faces that scored high on the autistic quotient (right), and a composite that scored low (left). You can see the right face has a more aggressive, focused look, while the left has a more pro-social look. Which one, would it seem, has better vision, and is a better hunter?

Newton knew that his theories were correct. He is famous for fudging some numbers in his Principia, whereas most academics are extremely careful when suggesting a hypothesis. His attitude is similar to Fischer’s knowledge that he was the best in the world before even taking on the Russians.

Genius

In my opinion, this is the attitude required for obtaining genius status. A genius inevitably breaks some orthodoxy, and succeeds after breaking it. That’s why Schopenhauer said “talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.” This attitude likely stems from a superior physical ability, relevant to our ancestral past and still maintained in our psychology. A high hunter-gatherer fitness level allows a person to disregard social rules and their reputation because they will always be able to survive either on their own, or by proving themselves too useful to the group to be cast out. The genius lacks conformity because conformity is a compensatory tool for the weak and the unathletic.

Genius also requires high intelligence, which allows for creativity and problem solving. People like to think of intelligence and creativity as separate abilities, they are not. Anyone can be creative. Look at how creative liberals are when trying to find excuses for different racial outcomes. When the CIA refers to torture as enhanced interrogation, that’s creative. When the Soviets referred to sentencing people as ‘imposing administrative penalties’, that’s creative. Creativity just relies on the life strategy employed. If you are physically weak, you use creativity in social relations to survive or scale the hierarchy. When you are strong, you use creativity for inventing tools to help you exploit the natural environment. So the genetic factors for genius are just IQ + HGF, while you then need some environmental factors to work in favour.

Magnus Carlsen

A word on Magnus Carlsen. While it seems he also has autism, he is not “ecologically competent” to the same degree as Fischer. Some people might think he is athletic because he follows and plays a lot of sport. He may be good for a chess player, he is a far cry from being described as an athlete.

Magnus enjoys being the pin-up boy of chess. He would never say anything controversial, at least not at the peak of his career. Fischer, however, said whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to. In 1970 (before championship) he reportedly accosted a Jewish opponent saying that he was reading a very interesting book. When asked what it was he declared “Mein Kampf!”

Magnus talking about women in chess:

“I don’t believe there are any underlying genetic circumstances that should make men better players… From my experience traveling around the world I’ve seen that at a young age there is really not that much of a difference. Girls are as fascinated and as interested in chess as boys are.”

I can forgive him for the genetics comment since the equality brainwashing is so pervasive these days, but I don’t see how anyone can seriously believe that women like chess as much as boys do. Do girls also like cars and videogames as much as boys now? Boys like things, women like people.

Fischer’s insanity

At the height of his chess career, Fischer suddenly dropped off into obscurity and didn’t play a competitive game in public for nearly 20 years. He would pop up on Filipino radio now and then, ranting against the US and the Jews. Most people believe he went a little crazy, that he was mentally ill, and that chess had simply kept him sane. For me, he just became disillusioned with the state of the world, said some things you are not supposed to say, and was persecuted for it.

He had always liked to keep up with world news from a young age. I think he grew out of chess. He read a lot, and realised that the world was full of problems that were more important than chess.

Maybe he read about the USS Liberty and the Lavon affair. Maybe he read about Vietnam veterans being left to die in POW camps.

Maybe he read about the assassination of JFK after denying Israel nuclear weapons. Maybe he read about the horrific, ongoing abuse towards Palestinians.

Maybe he read about the assassination of General Patton, who became a strong critic of the US government and Jews.

Maybe he read about the violent history between Jews and Europeans for over 2000 years. The expulsions, and the accusations of financial exploitation, well-poisoning and child ritual murder.

Maybe he read about Jewish attitudes towards non-Jews, written in their scriptures, where it says that gentiles only live to serve Jews.

Maybe he read about the theft of US military secrets by Israel. Maybe he read about the Mossad-Epstein sexual blackmail operation used to control politicians and CEOs. Maybe he read about Israeli involvement in 9/11.

Oh wait- that stuff came later.

Fischer with his half-sister Joan and her daughter Elisabeth, 1962

Summary

• Intelligence has a metabolic cost.

• Vision, size and speed all have a metabolic cost.

• Therefore, intelligence should have a small negative correlation with these traits.

• When combining these traits into general athleticism, the negative correlation with intelligence should be medium-to-large.

• Because of this trade-off, it is extremely rare to find people who are highly intelligent and highly athletic.

• Fischer was very smart and very masculine, and was thus uncompromising, driven and highly objective

• Genius may require high intelligence combined with high hunter-gatherer fitness levels

Quotes

Vlastimil Hort knew the American chess genius personally and shares memories of Bobby:

• When he was sitting at the board his behaviour was immaculate. A kind of gentleman like Keres. He wrote down the moves legibly and in a nice way. As far as I know, he had never tried to speed up his writing, not even when his opponent was in time-trouble. He would never have duped someone.

• On one such rest day all participants and all organisers met on a different playing ground, the soccer field. Fischer only knew American Football. Soccer was totally unknown to him. He saw the round, leathery ball for the first time. But his physical stamina was remarkable. It did not take long to explain the rules to him. But after the start of the game he was running after the ball with the elegance and speed of a panther. We all had a lot of fun and Bobby seemed to enjoy dribbling with the ball.

• We were invited to a party on a sailing ship. The fantastic blue of the Adria, delicious barbecue specialities, cocktails galore, and music helped us to forget the games of the tournament. Hostesses lionised the big star. His body evoked memories of Johnny Weissmüller, the famous swimmer and Tarzan-impersonator. Only the lianas of the jungle were missing on the ship. But Bobby remained faithful to his lifestyle, no alcohol, only litres of cold milk.

Here are some more quotes about or by Fischer. You can generally tell which ones were said during his career and which were said afterwards.

• “I don’t consider myself to be a genius at chess. I consider myself more to be a genius who just happens to play chess. I could have done and I can do any number of other things. Maybe I should have… I really don’t like chess players in general. They’re not my kind of people. They are very petty. They’re mean-minded, petty, small-minded, stupid.”

• Fischer on Kasparov: “A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he’s like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing.”

• Musk on Kasparov:

  

• “There are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don’t seem to dress so nicely, you know. That’s what I don’t like.”

• Until late 1959, Fischer "had dressed atrociously for a champion, appearing at the most august and distinguished national and international events in sweaters and corduroys." Now, encouraged by Pal Benko to dress more smartly, Fischer "began buying suits from all over the world, hand-tailored and made to order." He told journalist Ralph Ginzburg that he had 17 hand-tailored suits and that all of his shirts and shoes were handmade.

• “I don’t listen to weakies.” (I don’t know when he apparently said this or if it is even real, but I can see Fischer saying it).

• Fischer experienced a rare failure in his competitive career at the Buenos Aires Tournament (1960)… Pal Benko said that Fischer did horribly in the tournament "because he got caught up in women and sex. Afterwards, Fischer said he'd never mix women and chess together, and kept the promise."

• “I was never invited to the White House. They invited that Olympic Russian gymnast - that little Communist, Olga Korbut.”

• “I don't believe in hero worship.”

• “I felt that chess... is a science in the form of a game... I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist.”

• “Ultimately the white man should leave the United States and the black people should go back to Africa.”

• “The white people should go back to Europe, and the country should be returned to the American Indians. This is the future I would like to see for the so-called United States.”

• “The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians, just slaughtering them, for years. Robbing them and slaughtering them.”

• “First of all, we have to understand what communism is. I mean, to me, real communism, the Soviet communism, is basically a mask for Bolshevism, which is basically a mask for Judaism.”

• “My basic thesis is that the Jews are a criminal people, and the Jews completely control the United States, and the Jews are using the United States as a vehicle to take over the world.”

• “I like to say what I think. And if you’re gonna work for the Jews, you can no longer say what you think. You can’t say the holocaust never happened, for example. That is an absolute no-no. You can’t say that circumcision is a crime. There are so many things you cannot say once you get on the Jewish bandwagon. … There used to be a lot of people like me, but little by little the Jewish spirit seems to be conquering all.”

• Interview on Philippines radio:

  Pablo Mercado: All right. with all of these things Mr. Fischer. what do you intend to do now?

  Bobby Fischer: I intend to do what I'm doing right now.

  Pablo Mercado: What?

  Bobby Fischer: Which is to expose the Jews for the criminals they are, the parasites they are, the liars they are, the thieves they are, the niggers they are.

  Pablo Mercado: You speak like an Arab.

  Bobby Fischer: .. You ask the Palestinians. I was just listening to the BBC. the horror story that come out of there when you get into an Israeli prison. the way they torture you . it's unheard of. I was listening to a Palestinian woman, a Christian woman from Palestine, not even Muslims, Christian women who were anti-Israel. They got picked up by the Israeli police, taken down to the jail, and then the Israeli police tried to get information -- Who do you know among your friends that's anti-Israel? Give us all the names of your Arab, Christian friends who are anti-Israel. When they refused, they put the women in a cell, these are mothers, these women, mostly. They put em in a cell, and then they start playing, in Arabic, on the loudspeaker, 24 hours a day, "Mommy, come home, Mommy, we miss you" in Arabic. They played it over and over again until the women just collapsed.

  Pablo Mercado: All right, do you have any-

  Bobby Fischer: This is the Jewish mentality. These are a criminal people. They torture their prisoners in the worst way. It's even illegal! They don't even deny it hardly. Jews were always bastards throughout history. They are liars, they are the worst pieces of shit in the world. They mutilate their own children.

• “Jews hate nature and the natural order, because it’s pure and beautiful, and also because it’s bigger and stronger than they are, and they feel that they can not fully control it. Nature’s beauty and harmony stands in stark contrast to their squalidness and ugliness, and that makes them hate it all the more. Jews are destroyers. They are anti-humans.”

• Magnús Skulason was not "Bobby's psychiatrist", as has been implied in the general press, nor did he offer Bobby any analysis or psychotherapy. He was at Bobby's bedside as a friend, to try to do anything he could for him. Because of his training, however, he couldn't fail to take note of Bobby's mental condition. "He definitely was not schizophrenic", Skulason said. "He had problems, possibly certain childhood traumas that had affected him. He was misunderstood. Underneath I think he was a caring sensitive person."

• “My main interest right now is to expose the Jews. This is a lot bigger than me. They’re not just persecuting me. This is not just my struggle, I’m not just doing this for myself… This is life and death for the world. These God-damn Jews have to be stopped. They’re a menace to the whole world."

• “I would rather be free in my mind, and be locked up in a prison cell, than to be a coward and not be able to say what I want.”