Chess champion Bobby Fischer, alcoholic.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Chess genius Bobby Fischer, who became a Cold War hero when he defeated Soviet champ Boris Spassky in 1972 in Reykjavik, but who later became known for his hate-filled rants after becoming a fugitive, dead at 64. Fischer's encounter with Spassky transformed the game, causing sales of chess sets and memberships in chess clubs to skyrocket while making front-page news. Harold C. Schonberg, in his 1973 book Grandmasters of Chess, wrote that Fischer single-handedly helped the world recognize that chess is as "competitive as football, as thrilling as a duel to the death, as aesthetically satisfying as a fine work of art, as intellectually demanding as any form of human activity." However, his "dark side" had ...
