The Game of Kings

Watched this documentary the other night:

Bobby Fischer Against the World.

The story of Bobby Fischer is such an interesting, captivating, and somewhat cautionary tale. A kid from Brooklyn that starts playing chess at the age of 6, clearly a prodigy, studies it obsessively, destroys chess masters from Russia at a young age, wins the world championship at the age of 29, then stops playing chess at the height of his level, disappears for years and becomes a crazy recluse Anti-American and Anti-Semite (seriously crazy) and ends up and dies in Iceland.





The documentary told the story of Fischer really well (although there were some cheesy unnecessary visual effects acting as chapter breaks). It talked about how Fischer really revolutionized the game of chess not just in terms of play, but bringing it to the mainstream and popularizing it. There are such funny people in the chess world with the strangest mannerisms and it just made the documentary even more entertaining to watch. And there were just so many little things in this documentary that made it so great - the interviewees, the incidents, discussion of the chess plays and everyone was just so into it and it's like, man chess is so cool.

I'm so awful at chess. It is in the truest sense of the word, a game. And I get too nervous, too self conscious, too thoughtful in all the wrong ways that I can't think clearly. One time a friend said I could have used these mannerisms of mine to my advantage - as part of my game. But I can't do that either, I can only play in my nervous and transparent way - and man it is so bad.

I'd like to be better at it though, so uh, who wants to play me? I'm going to study youtube videos in the mean time, so watch out!