Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Bobby Fischer in a used bookstore, New York, 1962. Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Bobby Fischer plays chess with an ...

Bobby Fischer, left, playing Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian at the 1971 chess championship. Photob by Keystone/Getty Images I went to the tiny town of Laugarvatn in southern Iceland to spend a month ...

Bobby Fischer, the troubled American chess hero, embarrassed a chess-playing computer in 1977. He wouldn’t play another recorded game for over a decade. GETTY IMAGES ...