Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has died

Controversial former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has died at the age of 64, Icelandic TV and radio said today.  Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death.

He gained international fame in 1972 when he beat the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in what was dubbed as the “match of the century” to become the first US chess champion for a century. But his reputation as a genius of chess soon was eclipsed, in the eyes of many, by his idiosyncrasies.  The Chicago-born, Brooklyn, N.Y.-reared Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Cold War rival Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions.  Fischer, became a fierce critic of his homeland,  renounced his U.S. citizenship, and moved to Iceland in 2005.