As Alex Dunne (senior master) once said about "kill or be killed" in tournament chess.

It’s tough to get across to a non-chessplayer what it’s like to sit down across from a Bobby Fischer type.  You know he’s better than you, and he knows you know. 

People have panic attacks, heart attacks, all sorts of stuff.  You get nervous before a soccer game … well, during the game you run it off.  In chess you sit there for four hours, three feet from your superior opponent, with nerves getting worse and worse.  It’s a high-adrenaline experience.

Yasser Seirawan (Garfield High chess genius who became U.S. champ) described his first tournament experience overseas against the Russians (Viktor Korchnoi): 

"I had a winning position, and that guy was just in a burning seething rage, staring at his pieces, ‘you idiots, you $*#@$, he’s attacking, how could you let it happen?’  He had this grim iron determination … It was like he wanted to KILL me, from this lousy position, really wanted me dead as a human being, drive his bishop through my chest or something.  I was looking at the grimace on his face and going "Whoa!"  I had to walk it off, I’m saying, I’m not going to sit across from this guy."

With Fischer himself, the problem was that he was (1) so incredibly strong as a player, far stronger than the #2 player in the world, and (2) the most sadistic player in world chess.  And he’s there to lick and savor your blood for the next four hours.  It sounds stupid, but that’s what it’s like. 

No other master has such a terrific will to win. At the board he radiates danger, and even the strongest opponents tend to freeze, like rabbits when they smell a panther. Even his weaknesses are dangerous. As white, his opening game is predictable - you can make plans against it - but so strong that your plans almost never work. In the middle game his precision and invention are fabulous, and in the end game you simply cannot beat him. — Anonymous German Expert

If one may judge a player’s strength by comparing him with his contemporaries, it seems to me that Fischer’s achievement is unsurpassed. The gap between him and his closest rivals was the widest there ever was between a World Champion and the other top-ranking players of his time. Fischer’s distance was vast!  By this measure, I consider him the greatest world champion.– Garry Kasparov

It is difficult to play against Einstein’s theory. — Mikhail Tal (on his first loss to Fischer)

Bobby just drops the pieces and they fall on the right squares. — Miguel Najdorf

Do you realize Fischer almost never has any bad pieces? He exchanges them, and the bad pieces remain with his opponents. — Yuri Balashov

You know you’re going to lose. Even when I was ahead I knew I was going to lose. — Andrew Soltis (on playing against Fischer)

It began to feel as though you were playing against chess itself. — Walter Shipman (on playing against Fischer)

When you play Bobby, it is not a question if you win or lose. It is a question of if you survive. — Boris Spassky

Fischer does not merely outplay opponents; he leaves them bodily and mentally gutted. Fisher himself speaks of the exultant instant in which he feels the ‘ego of the other player crumbling.’ — George Steiner

I’m not saying the Mariners need to get sadistic, but I do think that Mike Hargrove and Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln need to grasp the nature of sports battle.

I don’t know, maybe the Mariners should have a chessmaster into the clubhouse to play a 40-game simultaeous exhibition against them and show them what killer instinct looks like.  ;-) 

A few real-life Bobby Fischer quotes:

Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.

(annotating a big game) … GM Bisguier slumped and his chest collapsed, as he saw that he could not avoid the loss of a piece.

I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.

I like to see ‘em squirm.

I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.

There are tough players and nice guys, and I’m a tough player.

I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it.  

 

Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact.

 

(sneering) People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.

If I win a tournament, I win it by myself. I do the playing. Nobody helps me.

It’s just you and your opponent at the board and you’re trying to prove something.

Don’t even mention losing to me. I can’t stand to think of it.  I play honestly and I play to win. If I lose, I take my medicine.

You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances.

I despise the media. Is it against the law to kill a reporter? They like to write only bad things about me.

I’m not as soft or as generous a person as I would be if the world hadn’t changed me.

For the first lesson, I want you to play over every column of Modern Chess Openings, including the footnotes. And for the next lesson, I want you to do it again. (advice to his biographer, Frank Brady, who had asked for chess lessons)

I don’t keep any close friends. I don’t keep any secrets. I don’t need friends.

I don’t like American girls. They’re very conceited, you know. In Europe they’re more pleasant.

You don’t learn anything in school. It’s just a waste of time. The teachers are stupid. I don’t remember one thing I learned in school. I don’t listen to weakies. My two and a half years in Erasmus High I wasted. I didn’t like the whole thing. You have to mix with all those stupid kids. The teachers are even stupider than the kids. They talk down to the kids. Half of them are crazy.

They have nothing on me, those guys. They can’t even touch me. Some people rate them better than me. That really bugs me. They think that no Americans play chess. When I meet those Russian Patzer I’ll put them in their place.

I object to being called a chess genius, because I consider myself to be an all around genius, who just happens to play chess, which is rather different. A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he is like an idiot savant, outside of chess he knows nothing.

I can remember times coming home from a chess club at four in the morning when I was half asleep and half dead and forcing myself to pray an hour and study (the Bible) an hour. You know, I was half out of my head-stoned almost.