Reports: Lost Genius of Chess Returns - on the Web

Sept. 10 -- It's a story of wizardry, secrecy and high-speed moves in a game that has room for both geniuses and fools.

For 30 years, U.S. chess genius and the world's most famous chess recluse, Bobby Fischer, has lived in exile following his 1972 face-off with then Soviet champion Boris Spassky in a game billed as the battle of the superpowers.

After a grueling match, Fischer trumped Spassky, a victory that wags unabashedly celebrated as America's symbolic triumph over the Soviets. But the media frenzy drove the reclusive Fischer into exile, a self-imposed deportation he maintained until he emerged in 1992 to beat Spassky in Yugoslavia.

Following U.S. accusations that he had violated sanctions against Yugoslavia, Fischer disappeared again, out of sight but not, according to one man, out of cyber circulation.

But on Sunday, in a public declaration that created ripples in the chess world, British grandmaster Nigel Short said he was convinced he had been playing the lost chess genius anonymously on the Internet.

"I am 99 percent sure that I have been playing against thechess legend," he wrote in a piece published by the London newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph. "It was an honor and the greatest pleasure to spend a few hours with Robert James Fischer — even if we never actually shook hands."

Battling a Genius

It all began in the most mysterious of circumstances last October, revealed Short in The Sunday Telegraph, when he was approached by an anonymous "intermediary" while he was logged onto the Internet Chess Club Web site.

He was given a "code word" to ensure he was playing the right man, asked to logoff and login again as a guest — to maintain secrecy, no doubt — and when the games began, was battered in eight three-minute spars that had the British chess champion reeling in shock.

"After eight games and eight losses, I apologized for my poor performance and left," wrote Short. "I suggested we play again the following evening when I would be lessexhausted."