Fischersetur

Bobby Fischer hadn't played a competitive game in twenty years.

Then in 1992 he resurfaced in Yugoslavia to play the one man tied to his whole legacy, Boris Spassky, in a rematch nobody thought would ever happen.

There was one massive problem.

The United States had sanctions against Yugoslavia at the time because of the war going on there. Playing that match on that soil was illegal under US law. The government sent Fischer a written warning telling him not to go.

He went anyway.

At a press conference before the match, he spat on the letter from the US Treasury Department in front of cameras. Not a metaphor. He actually spat on it.

He won the match. Beat Spassky decisively and collected a prize purse worth several million dollars.

But he never went home again.

The US government issued a warrant for his arrest. Fischer spent the rest of his life bouncing between countries, avoiding extradition, growing more paranoid and erratic with every year that passed. Interviews from that era show a man who sounded almost nothing like the quiet genius who'd shocked the world in 1972.

He died in Iceland in 2008, the only country that would grant him citizenship after Japan detained him trying to leave the country on a revoked passport.

The greatest American chess player who ever lived, and he couldn't set foot in his own country for the last sixteen years of his life.

Was that match worth everything he lost to play it, or did he throw his entire life away just to prove a point nobody asked him to prove?