Chess

I was never much of a chess player; I prefered trying to solve chess problems in newspapers and magazines. I was reasonably good at that. I was never good enough at playing chess to enter competitions with teams of players. But I have known a few people who have played competitively, my father for one when he was a young man. He had studied the game and told me he used some of the methods great chess players use. The name Kappa Blanca (not sure of the spelling) comes to mind. "I did a Kappa Blanca opening on him," he'd say. He used to play with my brother, a couple of years older than me. I can't remember who won those games. My father told me of a game he played against a man who ate nuts throughout, crunching them between his front teeth; probably done to annnoy his opponents.
A man I knew for a while some years ago was a schizophrenic - he had been hospitalised some years before I knew him. He was sort of recovered but I was wary of him; I knew him to be awkward if riled. I was told that when he was learning to drive one day, the driving instructor shouted at him and received in return a punch to the jaw. End of driving lesson.
He played chess in tournaments. He told me of a game in which he played when, he averred, his opponent cheated. He complained to the official and the incident was investigated. I'm afraid I never heard the result.
Went to see the film "Bobby Fischer against the World", a documentary which told the life of Bobby Fischer in some film and most still photos; there were filling scenes of people who knew him, played against him, helped him etc. It's been a highly rated film but I didn't like it much. It didn't tell me anything new about him - correction:I didn't know that he had won the American title of best player at the age of 14. It didn't have any chess in it - not surprising I suppose because the makers wouldn't have wanted to put people off who don't play the game. But it suffered from being not so much about a genius and more about an eccentric. It was hard to watch towards the end when Fischer went into decline. Strangely he was an anti-semite and an anti-American yet he was Jewish and American.
Here's my pschological analysis of Bobby Fischer: he got to hate himself because he could never satisfy his longings (maybe sexual) so he hated what he was - a Jew and an American.
I rest my case.