Farewell Bobby Fischer

The American chess genius Bobby Fischer (9th March 1943 - Jan 17th 2008) has died.

As a keen chess player I learnt much from Bobby's "My 60 Memorable Games" and although it's sad that he had mental problems throughout his life I respected his decision to play his rematch with Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia during the war that saw the break-up of Yugoslavia. It was particularly breath-taking to watch America, a country that has invaded Cuba three times in the last century, and fomented so much dissent in South America - put Bobby, a brilliant but mentally ill chess player, on their wanted list and causing his exile in Iceland. This attitude says so much about how the US ended up in the Iraq invasion, or"Vietnam II" as I think of it.

A certain monomanical attititude is required to excel at programming, as in chess, and I wish to salute this genius of pattern-matching and algorithmic selection.

-Peter