Bobby Fischer 1943-2008

The man was a nut, but a nut who could flat out dominate the game. There's an active discussion about him over at Chessgames.com, as well as a library of some his most important games. Fittingly, he was 64.

I have to say, my favorite fact about Bobby Fischer was that as a young kid, he taught himself Russian so that he could read copies of the Russian chess manuscripts, which were publishing the best analysis at the time. At least that's the story. It may be apocryphal, though it's been repeated many times. Sort makes you want to crack open a copy of Šahovski Informator.