Column:

Specialization comes at a price

By Phil Klopfenstein

Published Sept. 25, 2009

Every few years I'm convinced into embarrassing myself in some friendly board game competition. I don't care if it's checkers or Monopoly; I'm going to end up in a bad position. As far as board games go, I suck at Life.

But some folks are a little more endowed in natural competitiveness, visual-spatial abilities and strategic skills than I am. One name that comes to mind is Bobby Fischer, world-renowned chess grandmaster. Among his many honors, he contributed to America's Cold War effort in 1972 when he ended Russia's perfect chess record that dated back to 1945.

Not quite as memorable or visceral as the 1971 Peking U.S. vs. China ping-pong tournament, but at least we won at chess. Yes, Fischer won, and is still revered as one of the greatest chess players of all time. For a more compelling example of his merits, look back to 1970 when he won 20 consecutive games against the greatest chess masters then alive, setting the record for one of the greatest winning streaks in not only chess (a game in which three-fourths of all championship games end in draws), but in all sporting history.

After this great Cold War victory, stomping commies into oblivion and beating out actual Russians face-to-face while the U.S. government just engaged in proxy wars and secret operations, Fischer never played in another tournament.

No, he wasn't killed by a Cuban agent; he actually died just last year in Iceland, where he sought asylum from U.S. extradition. He spent the last 36 years of his life evading U.S. tax-evasion charges (successfully, adding Al Capone to list of greats he beat out) and growing increasingly paranoid and reclusive, with many claiming he was insane.

Sadly, Fischer is not the only example of chess masters driven to insanity. Consider Wilhelm Steinitz, Paul Morphy, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, Akiba Rubinstein, Carlos Torre or Alexander Alekhine: all members in a list of renowned chess greats who lived with mental illness. Steinitz might be familiar to some as the man who claimed to have played God at a disadvantage and won. He later died in a New York sanatorium, proof, perhaps, of God's sore spot about that match. Pillsbury found few opponents who could match him and became the ultimate victor in blindfolded chess.

Now, of course, the vast majority of chess players are as healthy as anybody else. But in this elite realm of chess grandmasters, there is a noticeable incidence of mental illness that cannot be ignored. It seems as if the higher up you go, the more knowledgeable one becomes of those 64 black and white squares on the chessboard, the further away the rest of life is.

Specialization comes with a price, and I'm not just talking about board games. It seems as knowledge increases to excellence in one subject, other subjects not only get smaller in proportion, but overall. Sure Fischer was a champ at chess (and pretty good at avoiding the U.S. government, even after tax-fraud, bank-robbery, violating U.S. sanctions in Yugoslavia and making pro-al-Qaeda statements following 9/11 — standard fare for chess greats, really), but the rest of his life was in shambles.

Specialization becomes a dangerous thing when it leads to obsession, and the life of chess great Bobby Fischer can serve as a warning to anyone in this regard: The man could outdo the American government, Russian communists and the greatest gangster of all time, but couldn't win the fight for his own sanity.