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Raissa Robles

Bobby Fischer's Asian love interests may see him escape deportation to America

Ageing former world chess champion Bobby Fischer appears to be playing a double Asian love game to extricate himself from a Japanese jail and probable deportation back to his native United States.

In his latest gambit, he seems to be relying on two 'queens' - one in Japan, the other in the Philippines.

Fischer made his move in Japan yesterday, with lawyer Masako Suzuki, issuing a statement saying her client was seeking refugee status to marry a local woman.

The women  was identified as Miyoko Watai, the 59-year-old acting head of the Japan Chess Association, with whom the eccentric Fischer, 61, was said to have lived  during his frequent visits to Japan since 2000.

Fischer is being detained in Japan pending his extradition to the US where he is  wanted for breaking Washington's sanctions on Yugoslavia in 1992 by playing a chess match with his old rival Boris Spassky.

If the Japanese gambit does not work, it would seem he has established a fallback position to claim asylum in the Philippines. It emerged yesterday that Fischer has not only a common-law Filipino-Chinese wife, Justine Ong, 23, but also a daughter with her, Jinky, who, coincidentally, was born in 2000.

Fischer has been taking care of Ms Ong and Jinky with regular money remittances, say the maestro's supporters in the Philippines. Unlike Fischer's previous romantic entanglements, though, Ms Ong who hails from Davao City, in Mindanao, is no chess aficionado.

It is not the first time that Fischer has had an affair with a much younger woman. In 1992, he was linked with 18-year-old Hungarian chess prodigy Zita Rajcsanyi, who later left him and wrote a tell-all book.

Ms Ong may emerge from the shadows today when Fischer's supporters plan to lobby the Japanese and US embassies in Manila to allow him to seek asylum in the Philippines.

Filipino grandmaster Eugene Torre, who is leading the campaign for Fischer, refused to comment on the romantic double life his chess buddy and friend has been leading.

'All I can say is he's not married,' Torre told the Post. Torre is probably one of the few men who have Fischer's confidence. The latter handpicked Torre to be his official second in the match with Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992.

Torre has conveyed to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the asylum request.

He added that even if Fischer chose to marry a Japanese woman, that would not necessarily scupper his chances of asylum in the Philippines.

'Bobby Fischer has been a very close friend of the Philippines since 1967 and chess is very popular here.'



Chess legend plays two-queen gambit to get out of trouble