The Young Fischer in New York
A brief remembrance, here.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Dick Cavett on Bobby Fischer
This blog post (dated February 8, 2008) includes a partial video of Fischer's 1972 appearance on Cavett's talk show. (HT: Maverick Philosopher)
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
This Week's ChessBase Show: Fischer-Spassky
And so we come to the end of our three-part series commemorating the chess of Bobby Fischer (though it's my intent to revisit more of his games in the future). We started with a look at his early career, looking at his brilliant 1956 win over Donald Byrne. Last week we continued with a game from his middle period, a nice victory of Lajos Portisch in 1966. And now we conclude with a game from the culminating event of his career, his 1972 World Championship match against the defending champion, Boris Spassky.
Fischer started off down 2-0, losing the first game on a blunder and the second game with an intentional forfeit. It seemed the match might not continue, but after much cajoling from others and tremendous sportsmanship from Spassky game three finally occurred, and it was a Fischer win. After a narrow escape in game 4, Fischer won again in game 5 to tie the scores. And now we come to game 6, the subject of our show this week.
The game was notable for several reasons. First, the opening. While Fischer had occasionally dabbled with non-1.e4 openings with White, those outings were rare and hadn't occurred even once in his three Candidates matches. When Fischer opened this game with 1.c4, it came as a palpable shock to most observers, and Spassky, as I'll explain during the show, didn't react as he should have during the game. The second noteworthy aspect is the game's quality: this is widely thought to be one of Fischer's two strongest creative achievements in the match. And third, this game him the lead for the first time in the match, a lead he never relinquished.
It is therefore a game not only of aesthetic and instructional value, but of historical significance to boot. All told, a fine reason to join me tonight - Wednesday night - at 9 p.m. ET on ChessBase's playchess.com server. The show is free, and you can find directions for tuning in here. Hope to see you there!
Fischer started off down 2-0, losing the first game on a blunder and the second game with an intentional forfeit. It seemed the match might not continue, but after much cajoling from others and tremendous sportsmanship from Spassky game three finally occurred, and it was a Fischer win. After a narrow escape in game 4, Fischer won again in game 5 to tie the scores. And now we come to game 6, the subject of our show this week.
The game was notable for several reasons. First, the opening. While Fischer had occasionally dabbled with non-1.e4 openings with White, those outings were rare and hadn't occurred even once in his three Candidates matches. When Fischer opened this game with 1.c4, it came as a palpable shock to most observers, and Spassky, as I'll explain during the show, didn't react as he should have during the game. The second noteworthy aspect is the game's quality: this is widely thought to be one of Fischer's two strongest creative achievements in the match. And third, this game him the lead for the first time in the match, a lead he never relinquished.
It is therefore a game not only of aesthetic and instructional value, but of historical significance to boot. All told, a fine reason to join me tonight - Wednesday night - at 9 p.m. ET on ChessBase's playchess.com server. The show is free, and you can find directions for tuning in here. Hope to see you there!
Friday, February 1, 2008
Kasparov on Fischer, a dispute over the latter's estate, and more
You can find the links, which are mostly depressing, here.