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

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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.

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