[blind-chess] Annotated Game #006: The Game of the Century
- From: Roderick Macdonald <rmacd@xxxxxxxx>
- To: Blind Chess Mailing List <blind-chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:01:37 -1000 (HST)
Annotated Game #006:
The Game of the Century: Donald Byrne - Bobby Fischer
Adapted and Condensed from
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
Contents:
++1. Donald Byrne
++2. Robert James Fischer
++2. Robert James Fischer
++2.A Early years
++2.B Young champion
++2.C U.S. Championships
++2.D Olympiads
++2.E Grandmaster, Candidate
++2.F 1960-62, Candidates setback
++2.G Involvement with the Worldwide Church of God
++2.H Semi-retirement in the mid-1960s
++2.I World Champion
++2.I1 Road to the world championship
++2.I2 World Championship Match
++2.I3 Forfeiture of title
++2.J Sudden obscurity
++2.K 1992 Spassky rematch
++2.L Life as an imigre
++2.L1 Anti-Jewish statements
++2.L2 Anti-American and anti-Israel statements
++2.L3 Detention in Japan
++2.L4 Asylum in Iceland
++2.M Death, estate dispute, and exhumation
++2.N Contributions to chess
++2.N1 Opening theory
++2.N2 Endgame
++2.N3 Fischer clock
++2.N4 Fischer Random Chess
++2.N5 Legacy
++2.O In popular culture
++2.P Writings
++2.P1 Under Fischer's name
++2.Q Tournament and match summary
++2.Q1 Tournaments
++2.Q2 Matches
++2.Q3 Team events
++2.R Notable games
++3. The game of the Century
++3.A Background
++3.B The game
++1. Donald Byrne
Donald Byrne (June 12, 1930-April 8, 1976) was one of the USA's
strongest chess players during the 1950s and 1960s.
Born in New York City, he won the U.S. Open Chess Championship in
1953, was awarded the International Master title by FIDE (English:
World Chess Federation) in 1962, and played for or captained five
U.S. Chess Olympiad teams between 1962 and 1972. His older brother,
International Grandmaster Robert Byrne, was also a leading player
of that time.
Byrne lost to a 13-year-old Bobby Fischer in the Game of the
Century in 1956.
Byrne was a professor of English. He taught at Penn State
University from 1961 until his death, having been invited there to
teach and to coach the varsity chess team.
Byrne died in Philadelphia of complications arising from lupus. He
was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2002.
In the following game, Byrne beats perennial world championship
contender Efim Geller:
efim Geller - Donald Byrne, Moscow 1955
1. e4 c5
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 Nf6
5. Nc3 g6
6. Be3 Bg7
7. f3 Nc6
8. Qd2 O-O
9. O-O-O Be6
10. Kb1 Rc8
11. g4 Qa5
12. Nxe6 fxe6
13. Bc4 Nd8
14. Be2 Nd7
15. Bd4 Ne5
16. f4 Ndc6
17. Bxe5 dxe5
18. f5 Nd4
19. fxg6 hxg6
20. Rhf1 Rf4
21. g5 b5
22. Bd3 Rcf8
23. Qg2 b4
24. Ne2 Qc5
25. Qh3 Rf3
26. Rxf3 Rxf3
27. Qg4 Rxd3
28. Rc1 Rd1
29. c3 Rxc1+
30. Kxc1 Nxe2+
31. Qxe2 bxc3
32. Qg2 cxb2
33. Kxb2 Qb4+
34. Kc2 a5
35. Qg4 Qc5+
36. Kb3 Qb6+
37. Kc3 a4
38. h4 Qd4+
39. Kc2 Qf2+
40. Kd3 Qxa2
41. h5 Qb3+
42. Kd2 gxh5
0-1.
++2. Robert James Fischer
World Champion 1972-1975
++2.A Early years
Bobby Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago,
Illinois on March 9, 1943. His birth certificate listed his father
as Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist. His mother, Regina
Wender Fischer, was an American citizen of Polish Jewish descent,
born in Switzerland and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She later
became a teacher, a registered nurse, and a physician. The couple
married in 1933 in Moscow, USSR, where Regina was studying medicine
at the First Moscow Medical Institute. They divorced in 1945 when
Bobby was two years old, and he grew up with his mother and older
sister, Joan. In 1948, the family moved to Mobile, Arizona, where
Regina taught in an elementary school. The following year they
moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she worked as an elementary
school teacher and nurse.
A 2002 article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The
Philadelphia Inquirer argued that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish
physicist, was Fischer's biological
father. The article quoted an FBI report which stated that Regina
Fischer returned to the United States in 1939, while Hans-Gerhardt
Fischer never entered the United States, having been refused
admission by U.S. immigration officials because of alleged
Communist sympathies. Regina and Nemenyi were reported to have had
an affair in 1942, and he made monthly child support payments to
her, paying for Fischer's schooling until his death in 1952.
Fischer later told the chess player Zita Rajcsanyi that Nemenyi
would sometimes show up at his Brooklyn apartment and take him on
outings.
In May 1949, the six-year-old Fischer and his sister learned how to
play chess using the instructions from a chess set bought at a
candy store below their Brooklyn apartment. When the family
vacationed at Patchogue, Long Island that summer, Bobby found a
book of old chess games, and studied it
intensely. On November 14, 1950, his mother sent a postcard to the
Brooklyn Eagle, seeking to place an ad inquiring whether other
children of Bobby's age might be interested in playing him. The
paper rejected her ad because no one could figure out how to
classify it, but forwarded her inquiry to Hermann Helms, the "Dean
of American Chess", who told her that master Max Pavey would be
giving a simultaneous exhibition on January 17,
1951. Fischer played in the exhibition, losing in 15 minutes. One
of the spectators was Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn
Chess Club, who introduced him to the club and began teaching him.
In the summer of 1955, Fischer joined the Manhattan Chess Club, the
strongest in the country. Regina Fischer protesting on Bobby's
behalf in front of the White House during the Eisenhower
Administration.
In June 1956, Fischer began attending the "Hawthorne Chess Club",
which was actually master John W. Collins' home. Collins had
coached some of the country's leading players, including Robert and
Donald Byrne and William Lombardy. Fischer played thousands of
blitz and offhand games with Collins and other strong players,
began studying the books in Collins' large chess library, and ate
almost as many dinners at Collins' home as his
own. Future grandmaster Arnold Denker was also a mentor to young
Bobby, often taking him to watch the New York Rangers play hockey
at Madison Square Garden. Denker wrote that Bobby enjoyed those
treats and never forgot them; the two became lifelong friends.
Fischer was also involved with the Log Cabin Chess Club of Orange,
New Jersey, which in March 1956 took him on a tour to Cuba, where
he gave a 12-board simultaneous exhibition at Havana's Capablanca
Chess Club, winning 10 and drawing 2.
Fischer attended Erasmus Hall High School at the same time as
Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond. In 1959, its student council
awarded him a gold medal for his chess achievements. The same year,
Fischer dropped out of high school at age 16, later explaining to
Ralph Ginzburg, "You don't learn anything in school. It's just a
waste of time."
When Fischer was 16, his mother moved out of their apartment to
pursue medical training. Her friend Joan Rodker, who had met Regina
when the two were "idealistic communists" living in Moscow in the
1930s, believes that Fischer resented his mother for being mostly
absent as a mother, a communist activist and an admirer of the
Soviet Union, and that this led to his hatred for the Soviet Union.
In letters to Rodker, Fischer's mother states her desire to pursue
her own "obsession" of training in medicine and writes that her son
would have to live in their Brooklyn apartment without her: "It
sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he
is probably happier that way." The apartment was on the edge of the
Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which had one of the highest
homicide and general crime rates in New York. Despite the
alienation from her son, Regina in 1960 staged a 5-hour protest in
front of the White House (see photo) urging President Eisenhower to
send an American team to the chess olympics.
++2.B Young champion
On the tenth national rating list of the United States Chess
Federation (USCF), published on May 20, 1956, Fischer's rating was
a modest 1726, over 900 points below top-rated Samuel Reshevsky
(2663). Fischer's first real success was winning the United States
Junior Chess Championship in July 1956. He scored 8.5/10 at
Philadelphia to become the youngest-ever junior champion at age 13,
a record that still stands. In the 1956 U.S. Open Chess
Championship at Oklahoma City, Fischer scored 8.5/12 to tie for
4th-8th places, with Arthur Bisguier winning. In the first Canadian
Open Chess Championship at Montreal 1956, he scored 7/10 to tie for
8-12th places, with Larry Evans winning.
Fischer accepted an invitation to play in the Third Lessing J.
Rosenwald Trophy Tournament at New York 1956, a premier tournament
limited to the 12 players considered the best in the country. In
that elite company, the 13-year-old Fischer could only score
4.5/11, tying for 8th-9th place. However, he won the first
brilliancy prize for his game against Donald Byrne. Hans Kmoch
christened it "The Game of the Century", writing, "The following
game, a stunning masterpiece of combination play performed by a boy
of 13 against a formidable opponent, matches the finest on record
in the history of chess prodigies."
In 1957, Fischer played a two-game match against former World
Champion Max Euwe at New York, losing .5-1.5. On the United States
Chess Federation's eleventh national rating list, published on May
5, 1957, Fischer was rated 2231, a master - over 500 points higher
than his rating a year before. This made him at that time the
country's youngest master ever. In July, Fischer successfully
defended his U.S. Junior title, scoring 8.5/9 at San Francisco. In
August, he played in the U.S. Open Chess Championship at Cleveland,
scoring 10/12 and winning on tie-breaking points over Arthur
Bisguier, making Fischer the youngest U.S. Open Champion ever. He
next won the New Jersey Open Championship, scoring 6.5/7. Fischer
then defeated the young Filipino Master Rodolfo Tan Cardoso 6-2 in
a match in New York.
Based on Fischer's rating, the USCF invited him to play in the
1957-58 U.S. Championship. The tournament included such luminaries
as four-time champion Reshevsky, defending champion Bisguier, and
William Lombardy, who in August had won the World Junior
Championship with the only perfect score (11-0) in its history.
Fischer was expected to score around 50%. He scored eight wins and
five draws to win the tournament with 10.5/13, a point ahead of
Reshevsky. Still two months shy of his 15th birthday, he became the
youngest U.S. champion in history - a record that still stands.
Since the championship that year was also the U.S. Zonal
Championship, Fischer's victory earned him the International Master
title.
++2.C U.S. Championships
Fischer played in eight United States Chess Championships, each
held in New York City, winning every one. His margin of victory was
always at least one point.
His scores were:
* 1957-58: 10.5/13
* 1958-59: 8.5/11
* 1959-60: 9/11
* 1960-61: 9/11
* 1962-63: 8/11
* 1963-64: 11/11
* 1965-66: 8.5/11
* 1966-67: 9.5/11.
Fischer missed the 1961-62 championship, and there was no 1964-65
event. His total score was 74/90 (61 wins, 26 draws, 3 losses),
with only three losses (to Edmar Mednis, Samuel Reshevsky, and
Robert Byrne).
His 11-0 win in the 1963-64 championship is the only perfect score
in the history of the tournament, and one of about ten perfect
scores in high-level chess tournaments
ever. David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld called it "the most remarkable
achievement of this kind."
++2.D Olympiads
Fischer refused to play in the 1958 Munich Olympiad when his demand
that he, as the reigning U.S. Champion, play first board ahead of
Samuel Reshevsky was turned down. However, he represented the
United States on top board with great distinction at four
Olympiads:
Olympiad - Individual result - U.S. team result
Leipzig 1960
13/18 (Bronze)
Silver
Varna 1962
11/17 (Eighth)
Fourth
Havana 1966
15/17 (Silver)
Silver
Siegen 1970
10/13 (Silver)
Fourth
Fischer's overall total was +40, =18, -7, for 49/65 or 75.4%. In
1966, he narrowly missed the individual gold medal, scoring 88.23%
to World Champion Tigran Petrosian's 88.46%. Fischer played four
more games than Petrosian, faced stiffer opposition, and would have
won the gold if he had accepted Florin Gheorghiu's draw offer in
the penultimate round rather than declining it and suffering his
only loss.
Fischer had planned to play for the United States at the 1968
Lugano Olympiad, but backed out when he saw the poor playing
conditions.
++2.E Grandmaster, Candidate
Fischer's victory in the U.S. Championship qualified him to
participate in the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal, the next step toward
challenging the World Champion. The top six finishers in the
Interzonal would qualify for the Candidates Tournament. Prior to
the Interzonal, he played two short training matches in Yugoslavia.
He drew both games against Dragoljub Janosevic. Then he defeated
Milan Matulovic in Belgrade by 2.5-1.5.
Most observers doubted that a 15-year-old with no international
experience could finish among the six qualifiers at the Interzonal,
but Fischer told journalist Miro Radoicic, "I can draw with the
grandmasters, and there are half-a-dozen patzers in the tournament
I reckon to beat." Despite some bumps in the road, Fischer
succeeded in his plan: after a strong finish, he ended up with
12/20 (+6 =12 -2) to tie for 5th-6th. The Soviet grandmaster Yuri
Averbakh observed, "In the struggle at the board this youth, almost
still a child, showed himself to be a fully-fledged fighter,
demonstrating amazing composure, precise calculation and devilish
resourcefulness." Fischer became the youngest person ever to
qualify for the Candidates. He also became the youngest
Grandmaster in history at 15 years and 6 months. This record stood
until 1991 when it was broken by Judit Polgar.
Before the Candidates' tournament, Fischer competed in the 1958-59
U.S. Championship (winning with 8.5/11) and then in international
tournaments at Mar del Plata, Santiago, and Zurich. He played
unevenly in the two South American tournaments. At Mar del Plata he
finished tied for third with Borislav Ivkov, half a point behind
tournament winners Ludek Pachman and Miguel Najdorf. At Santiago,
he tied for fourth through sixth places, behind Ivkov, Pachman, and
Herman Pilnik. He did better at the strong Zurich event, finishing
a point behind world-champion-to-be Mikhail Tal and half a point
behind Svetozar Gligoric.
Until late 1959, Fischer "had dressed atrociously for a champion,
appearing at the most august and distinguished national and
international events in sweaters and corduroys". director of the
Manhattan Chess Club had once banned Fischer for not being
"properly accoutered", forcing Denker to intercede to get him
reinstated. Now, encouraged by Pal Benko to dress more sharply,
Fischer "began buying suits from all over the world, hand-tailored
and made to order". He boasted to journalist Ralph Ginzburg in 1961
that he had 17 suits, all hand-tailored, and that his shirts and
shoes were also handmade.
At the age of 16, Fischer finished a creditable equal fifth out of
eight, the top non-Soviet player, at the Candidates Tournament held
in Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1959. He scored 12.5/28 but
was outclassed by tournament winner Tal, who won all four of their
individual games.
++2.F 1960-62, Candidates setback
In 1960, Fischer tied for first place with the young Soviet star
Boris Spassky at the strong Mar del Plata tournament in Argentina,
with the two well ahead of the rest of the field, scoring 13.5/15.
Fischer lost only to Spassky, and this was the start of their
relationship, which began on a friendly basis and stayed that way,
in spite of Fischer's troubles on the board against him.
Fischer struggled in the later Buenos Aires tournament, finishing
with 8.5/19 (won by Viktor Korchnoi and Samuel Reshevsky on 13/19).
This was the only real failure of Fischer's competitive career.
According to Larry Evans, Fischer's first sexual experience was
with a girl to whom Evans introduced him during the tournament. Pal
Benko says that Fischer did horribly in the tournament "because he
got caught up in women and sex. ... Afterwards, Fischer said he'd
never mix women and chess together, and kept the promise." Fischer
concluded 1960 by winning a small tournament in Reykjavik with
4.5/5, and defeating Klaus Darga in an exhibition game in West
Berlin.
Reshevsky, Fischer, and Jose Ferrer
In 1961, Fischer started a 16-game match with Reshevsky, split
between New York and Los Angeles. Despite Fischer's meteoric rise,
the veteran Reshevsky, 32 years Fischer's senior, was considered
the favorite, since he had far more match experience and had never
lost a set match. After 11 games and a tie score (two wins apiece
with seven draws), the match ended prematurely due to a scheduling
dispute between Fischer and match organizer and sponsor Jacqueline
Piatigorsky. Reshevsky was declared the winner of the match, and
received the winner's share.
Fischer was second behind former World Champion Tal at Bled 1961,
which had a super-class field. He defeated Tal head-to-head for the
first time, scored 3.5/4 against the Soviet contingent, and
finished as the only unbeaten player, with 13.5/19.
Fischer (right) visiting Mikhail Tal in the hospital in 1962.
In the next World Championship cycle, Fischer won the 1962
Stockholm Interzonal by 2.5 points, scoring an undefeated 17.5/22.
He was the first non-Soviet player to win an Interzonal since FIDE
instituted the tournament in 1948. Fischer's decisive victory made
him one of the favorites for the Candidates Tournament in Curagao,
which began soon afterwards. He finished fourth out of eight with
14/27, the best result by a non-Soviet player but well behind
Tigran Petrosian (17.5/27), Efim Geller, and Paul Keres (both
17/27). Tal fell very ill during the tournament, and had to
withdraw before completion. Fischer, a friend of Tal, was the only
player who visited him in the hospital.
Following his failure in the 1962 Candidates (at which five of the
eight players were from the Soviet Union), Fischer asserted in an
August 1962 article in Sports Illustrated magazine, entitled The
Russians Have Fixed World Chess, that three of the Soviet players
(Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, and Efim Geller) had a pre-arranged
agreement to draw their games against each other in order to save
energy and to concentrate on playing against Fischer, and that a
fourth, Viktor Korchnoi, had been forced to deliberately lose games
to ensure that a Soviet player won the tournament. It is generally
thought that the former accusation is correct, but not the latter.
Fischer also stated that he would never again participate in a
Candidates' tournament, since the format, combined with the alleged
collusion, made it impossible for a non-Soviet player to win.
Following Fischer's article, FIDE in late 1962 voted a radical
reform of the playoff system, replacing the Candidates' tournament
with a format of one-on-one knockout matches; this was the format
that Fischer dominated in
1971.
Fischer defeated Bent Larsen in a summer 1962 exhibition game in
Copenhagen for Danish TV. He also defeated Bogdan Sliwa in a team
match against Poland at Warsaw later that year.
In the 1962-63 U.S. Championship, Fischer had a close call. In the
first round he lost to Edmar Mednis, his first loss ever in a U.S.
Championship. Bisguier was in excellent form, and Fischer caught up
to him only at the end. Tied at 7-3, the two met in the last round
for the championship. Bisguier stood well but blundered, handing
Fischer his fifth consecutive U.S. championship.
++2.G Involvement with the Worldwide Church of God
In an interview in the January 1962 issue of Harper's, Fischer was
quoted as saying, "I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says
religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I
agree." Nonetheless, Fischer said in 1962 that he had "personal
problems" and began to listen to various radio ministers in a
search for answers. This is how he first came to listen to The
World Tomorrow radio program with Herbert W. Armstrong and his son
Garner Ted
Armstrong. The Armstrongs' denomination, The Worldwide Church of
God (then under its original name, the Radio Church of God),
predicted an imminent
apocalypse. In late 1963, Fischer began tithing to the church.
According to Fischer, he lived a bifurcated life, with a rational
chess component and an enthusiastic religious component. Fischer
gave the Worldwide Church of God $61,200 of his 1972 world
championship prize money. However, 1972 was a disastrous year for
the church, as prophecies by Herbert W. Armstrong were unfulfilled,
and the church was rocked by revelations of a series of sex
scandals involving Garner Ted Armstrong. Fischer, who felt betrayed
and swindled by the Worldwide Church of God, left the church and
publicly denounced it.
++2.H Semi-retirement in the mid-1960s
Fischer declined an invitation to play in the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup
tournament in Los Angeles, which had a world-class field. His
decision was probably influenced by ill will over the aborted 1961
match against Reshevsky. Instead, he played in the Western Open in
Bay City, Michigan, which he won with 7.5/8. In August-September
1963, he won another minor event, the New York State Championship
at Poughkeepsie, with 7/7, his first perfect score.
The 1963-64 U.S. Championship was expected to be exciting,
particularly since Fischer had only narrowly won it the previous
year. It was, but not as expected. "One by one Fischer mowed down
the opposition as he cut an 11-0 swathe through the field, to
demonstrate convincingly to the opposition that he was now in a
class by himself." This stunning result brought Fischer more fame
than any chessplayer had ever known, including a profile in Life
magazine. Sports Illustrated diagrammed each of the 11 games in its
article, "The Amazing Victory Streak of Bobby Fischer".
Fischer decided not to participate in the Amsterdam Interzonal in
1964, thus taking himself out of the 1966 World Championship cycle.
He held to this decision even when FIDE changed the format of the
eight-player Candidates Tournament from a round-robin to a series
of knockout matches, which eliminated the possibility of collusion.
He instead embarked on a tour of the United States and Canada from
February through May, playing a simultaneous exhibition and giving
a lecture in each of more than 40 cities. His 94% winning
percentage over more than 2000 games is one of the best ever
achieved. Fischer also declined an invitation to play for the
United States in the 1964 Olympiad.
Fischer wanted to play in the Capablanca Memorial Tournament,
Havana 1965, but the State Department refused to endorse his
passport as valid for visiting Cuba. Fischer instead proposed, and
the tournament officials and players accepted, a unique
arrangement: Fischer played his moves from a room at the Marshall
Chess Club, which were then transmitted by teletype to Cuba. Ludek
Pachman observed that Fischer "was handicapped by the longer
playing session resulting from the time wasted in transmitting the
moves, and that is one reason why he lost to three of his chief
rivals". The tournament was an "ordeal" for Fischer, who had to
endure eight-hour and sometimes even twelve-hour playing sessions.
Despite this handicap, he tied for second through fourth places,
with 15/21, behind former World Champion Vasily Smyslov, whom he
defeated in their individual game. The tournament received
extensive media coverage.
Fischer began 1966 by winning the U.S. Championship for the seventh
time despite losing to Robert Byrne and Reshevsky in the eighth and
ninth rounds. He also reconciled with Mrs. Piatigorsky, accepting
an invitation to the very strong second Piatigorsky Cup tournament
in Santa Monica. Fischer began disastrously and after eight rounds
was tied for last with 3/8. He then staged "the most sensational
comeback in the history of grandmaster chess", scoring 7/8 in the
next eight rounds. At the end, World Championship finalist Boris
Spassky edged him out by a half point, scoring 11.5/18 to Fischer's
11. Now aged 23, Fischer would win every match or tournament he
completed for the rest of his life.
In 1967, Fischer won the U.S. Championship for the eighth and final
time, ceding only three draws. In March-April and August-September,
he won strong tournaments at Monte Carlo (7/9) and Skopje
(13.5/17). In the Philippines he played a series of nine exhibition
games against master opponents, winning eight and drawing one.
In the next World Championship cycle, at the 1967 Sousse
Interzonal, Fischer scored a phenomenal 8.5 points in the first 10
games. His observance of the Worldwide Church of God's sabbath was
honored by the organizers, but deprived Fischer of several rest
days, which led to a scheduling dispute. Fischer forfeited two
games in protest and later withdrew, eliminating himself from the
1969 World Championship cycle.
In 1968, Fischer won tournaments at Netanya (11.5/13) and Vinkovci
(11/13) by large margins. He stopped playing for the next 18
months, except for a win against Anthony Saidy in a New York
Metropolitan League team match.
++2.I World Champion
In 1970, Fischer began a new effort to become World Champion. His
dramatic march toward the title made him a household name and made
chess front-page news for a time. Chess statistician Jeff Sonas
observes that "for about a year, Bobby Fischer dominated his
contemporaries to an extent never seen before or since". He won the
title in 1972, but forfeited it three years later.
++2.I1 Road to the world championship
Throughout his career, Fischer used the older descriptive chess
notation system when recording his games, never switching to the
modern algebraic system.
The 1969 U.S. Championship was also a zonal qualifier, with the top
three finishers advancing to the Interzonal. Fischer, however, had
sat out the U.S. Championship because of disagreements about the
tournament's format and prize fund. Benko, one of the three
qualifiers, agreed to give up his spot in the Interzonal in order
to give Fischer another shot at the world championship.
Before the Interzonal, in March and April 1970, the world's best
players competed in the USSR vs. Rest of the World match in
Belgrade, Yugoslavia, often referred to as "the Match of the
Century." Fischer allowed Bent Larsen of Denmark to play first
board for the Rest of the World team in light of Larsen's recent
outstanding tournament results, even though Fischer had the higher
Elo rating. The USSR team eked out a 20.5-19.5 victory, but on
second board Fischer beat Tigran Petrosian, whom Boris Spassky had
dethroned as world champion the previous year, 3-1, winning the
first two games and drawing the last two.
After the USSR versus the Rest of the World Match, the unofficial
World Championship of Lightning Chess (5-minute games) was held at
Herceg Novi. Petrosian and Tal were considered the
favorites,but Fischer overwhelmed the super-class field with 19/22
(+17 =4 -1), far ahead of Tal (14.5), Korchnoi (14), Petrosian
(13.5), Bronstein (13), etc. Fischer lost only one game, to
Korchnoi, who was also the only player to achieve an even score
against him in the double round robin tournament. Fischer "crushed
such blitz kings as Tal, Petrosian and Smyslov by a clean score".
Tal marveled that, "During the entire tournament he didn't leave a
single pawn en prise!", while the other players "blundered knights
and bishops galore".
In April-May 1970, Fischer won easily at Rovinj/Zagreb with 13/17
(+10 =6 -1), finishing two points ahead of a field that included
such leading players as Gligoric, Hort, Korchnoi, Smyslov, and
Petrosian. In July-August, he crushed the mostly grandmaster field
at Buenos Aires, scoring 15/17 (+13 =4) and winning by 3.5 points.
In Siegen right after the Olympiad, he defeated Ulf Andersson in an
exhibition game for the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Fischer had
taken his game to a new level.
The Interzonal was held in Palma de Mallorca in November and
December 1970. Fischer won it with a remarkable 18.5-4.5 score (+15
=7 -1), far ahead of Larsen, Efim Geller, and Robert Huebner, who
tied for second at 15-8. Fischer's 3.5-point margin set a new
record for an Interzonal, beating Alexander Kotov's 3-point margin
at Saltsjuebaden 1952. Fischer finished the tournament with seven
consecutive wins (including a final-round walkover against Oscar
Panno). Setting aside the Sousse Interzonal (which Fischer withdrew
from while leading), Fischer's victory gave him a string of eight
consecutive first prizes in tournaments.
Fischer continued his domination in the 1971 Candidates matches.
First, he beat Mark Taimanov of the USSR at Vancouver by 6-0. "The
record books showed that the only comparable achievement to the 6-0
score against Taimanov was Wilhelm Steinitz's 7-0 win against
Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1876 in an era of more primitive
defensive technique."
Less than two months later, he astounded the chess world by beating
Larsen in their Denver match by the same
score. Just a year before, Larsen had played first board for the
Rest of the World team ahead of Fischer, and had handed Fischer his
only loss at the Interzonal. Garry Kasparov later wrote that no
world champion had ever shown a superiority over his rivals
comparable to Fischer's "incredible" 12-0 score in the two matches.
Chess statistician Sonas concludes that this victory gave Fischer
the "highest single-match performance rating ever".
In August 1971, Fischer won a strong lightning event at the
Manhattan Chess Club with a "preposterous" score of 21.5/22.
Only former World Champion Petrosian, Fischer's final opponent in
the Candidates matches, was able to offer resistance in their
match, played at Buenos Aires. Petrosian played a strong
theoretical novelty in the first game, gaining the advantage, but
Fischer played resourcefully and eventually won the game after
Petrosian faltered. This gave Fischer an extraordinary run of 20
consecutive wins against the world's top players (in the Interzonal
and Candidates matches), a winning streak topped only by Steinitz's
25 straight wins in 1873-82. Petrosian won decisively in the second
game, finally snapping Fischer's streak. After three consecutive
draws, Fischer swept the next four games to win the match 6.5-2.5
(+5 =3 -1). The final match victory allowed Fischer to challenge
World Champion Boris Spassky, whom he had never beaten (+0 =2 -3).
Fischer appeared on the cover of Life.
Fischer's amazing results gave him a far higher rating than any
player in history up until that time. On the July 1972 FIDE rating
list, his Elo rating of 2785 was 125 points ahead of Spassky, the
second-highest rated player (2660).
++2.I2 World Championship Match
Fischer's career-long stubbornness about match and tournament
conditions was again seen in the run-up to his match with Spassky.
Of the possible sites, Fischer's first choice was Belgrade,
Yugoslavia, while Spassky's was Reykjavik,
Iceland. For a time it appeared that the dispute would be resolved
by splitting the match between the two locations, but that
arrangement fell through. After that issue was resolved, Fischer
refused to appear in Iceland until the prize fund was increased.
London financier Jim Slater donated an additional US$125,000 to the
prize fund, bringing it to an unprecedented $250,000 ($1,267,825.63
in 2009, and Fischer finally agreed to play.
The match took place in Reykjavik from July through September 1972.
Fischer lost the first two games in strange fashion: the first when
he played a risky pawn-grab in a drawn endgame, the second by
forfeit when he refused to play the game in a dispute over playing
conditions. Fischer would likely have forfeited the entire match,
but Spassky, not wanting to win by default, yielded to Fischer's
demands to move the next game to a back room, away from the cameras
whose presence had upset Fischer. After that game, the match was
moved back to the stage and proceeded without further serious
incident. Fischer won seven of the next 19 games, losing only one
and drawing eleven, to win the match 12.5-8.5 and become the 11th
World Chess Champion.
The Cold War trappings made the match a media
sensation. It was called "The Match of the
Century", and received front-page media coverage in the United
States and around the
world. Fischer's win was an American victory in a field that Soviet
players had dominated for the past quarter-century -- players
closely identified with, and subsidized by, the Soviet state. Dutch
grandmaster Jan Timman calls Fischer's victory "the story of a
lonely hero who overcomes an entire empire".
Fischer became an instant celebrity. Upon his return to New York,
a Bobby Fischer Day was held, and he was cheered by thousands of
fans, a unique display in American chess. He was offered numerous
product endorsement offers worth "at least $5 million" (all of
which he declined) and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
With American Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz, he also
appeared on a Bob Hope TV special. Membership in the United States
Chess Federation doubled in 1972 and peaked in 1974; in American
chess, these years are commonly referred to as the "Fischer Boom."
Fischer also won the 'Chess Oscar' award for 1970, 1971, and 1972.
This award, started in 1967, is determined through votes from chess
media and leading players.
++2.I3 Forfeiture of title
Fischer was scheduled to defend his title in 1975. Anatoly Karpov
eventually emerged as his challenger, having defeated Spassky in an
earlier Candidates match. Fischer, who had played no competitive
games since his World Championship match with Spassky, laid out a
proposal for the match in September 1973, in consultation with a
FIDE official, Fred Cramer. He made three principal demands: 1. The
match should continue until one player wins 10 games, without
counting the draws.
2. There is no limit to the total number of games played. 3. In
case of a 9-9 score, champion (Fischer) retains his title and the
prize fund is split equally.
A FIDE Congress was held in 1974 during the Nice Olympiad. The
delegates voted in favor of Fischer's 10-win proposal, but rejected
his other two proposals, and limited the number of games in the
match to 36. In response to FIDE's ruling, Fischer sent a cable to
Euwe on June 27, 1974:
As I made clear in my telegram to the FIDE delegates, the match
conditions I proposed were non-negotiable. Mr. Cramer informs me
that the rules of the winner being the first player to win ten
games, draws not counting, unlimited number of games and if nine
wins to nine match is drawn with champion regaining title and prize
fund split equally were rejected by the FIDE delegates. By so doing
FIDE has decided against my participating in the 1975 world chess
championship. I therefore resign my FIDE world chess champion
title. Sincerely, Bobby Fischer.
The delegates responded by reaffirming their prior decisions, but
did not accept Fischer's resignation and requested that he
reconsider. Many observers considered Fischer's requested 9-9
clause unfair because it would require the challenger to win by at
least two games (10-8).
In a letter to Larry Evans, published in Chess Life in November
1974, Fischer claimed the usual system (24 games with the first
player to get 12.5 points winning, or the champion retaining his
title in the event of a 12-12 tie) encouraged the player in the
lead to draw games, which he regarded as bad for chess. Not
counting draws would be "an accurate test of who is the world's
best
player." Former U.S. Champion Arnold Denker, who was in contact
with Fischer during the negotiations with FIDE, claimed that
Fischer wanted a long match to be able to play himself into shape
after a three-year layoff.
Due to the continued efforts of U.S. Chess Association
officials, a special FIDE Congress was held in March 1975 in
Oosterbeek, the Netherlands in which it was accepted that the match
should be of unlimited duration, but the 9-9 clause was once again
rejected, by a narrow margin of 35 votes to 32. FIDE set a deadline
of April 1, 1975, for Fischer and Karpov to confirm their
participation in the match. No reply was received from Fischer by
April 3 and Karpov officially became World Champion by default. In
his 1991 autobiography, Karpov expressed profound regret that the
match did not take place, and claimed that the lost opportunity to
challenge Fischer held back his own chess development. Karpov met
with Fischer several times after 1975, in friendly but ultimately
unsuccessful attempts to arrange a match.
++2.J Sudden obscurity
After the World Championship in 1972, Fischer virtually retired
from chess: he did not play a competitive game in public for nearly
20 years. In 1977, he played three games in Cambridge against the
MIT Greenblatt computer program, winning all of them.
On May 26, 1981, a police patrolman arrested Fischer while he was
walking in Pasadena, saying that he matched the description of a
man who had just committed a bank robbery in that area. Fischer
stated that he was slightly injured during the arrest. He was then
held for two days and -- according to Fischer -- was subjected to
assault and various other types of serious mistreatment during that
time. He was then released on $1000 bail and the matter was later
dropped. After being released, Fischer published a 14-page pamphlet
detailing his alleged experiences and saying that his arrest had
been "a frame up and set up."
In the early 1980s, Fischer stayed for extended periods in the San
Francisco-area home of a friend, the Canadian Grandmaster Peter
Biyiasas. In 1981, the two played 17 five-minute games. Despite his
layoff from competitive play, Fischer won all of them, according to
Biyiasas, who lamented that he was never even able to reach an
endgame.
++2.K 1992 Spassky rematch
After twenty years, Fischer emerged from isolation to play Spassky
(then tied for 96th-102nd on the FIDE rating list) to a "Revenge
Match of the 20th century" in 1992. This match took place in Sveti
Stefan and Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, in spite of a United Nations
embargo that included sanctions on sporting events. Fischer
demanded that the organizers bill the match as "The World Chess
Championship", although Garry Kasparov was the recognized FIDE
World Champion. Fischer insisted he was still the true world chess
champion, and that for all the games in the FIDE-sanctioned World
Championship matches, involving Karpov, Korchnoi and Kasparov, the
outcomes had been pre-arranged. The purse for Fischer's re-match
with Spassky was US$5,000,000, with $3.35 million of that to go to
the winner.
Fischer won the match, 10 wins to 5 losses, with 15 draws. Many
grandmasters observing the match said that Fischer was past his
prime. Kasparov reportedly said, "Bobby is playing OK, nothing
more. Maybe his strength is 2600 or 2650. It wouldn't be close
between us." Fischer never played any competitive games afterwards.
Fischer and Spassky gave a total of ten press conferences during
the match. Yasser Seirawan wrote, "After September 23 (1992), I
threw most of what I'd ever read about Bobby out of my head. Sheer
garbage. Bobby is the most misunderstood, misquoted celebrity
walking the face of the earth." Seirawan wrote that Fischer is not
camera shy, "smiles and laughs easily", and "is a wholly enjoyable
conversationalist. A fine wit, he is a very funny man".
The U.S. Department of the Treasury had warned Fischer beforehand
that his participation was illegal as it violated President George
H. W. Bush's Executive Order 12810 that implemented United Nations
sanctions against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia. In
front of the international press, Fischer was filmed spitting on
the U.S. order forbidding him to play. Following the match, the
Department obtained an arrest warrant for him. Fischer remained
wanted by the United States government for the rest of his life and
never returned to the United States.
++2.L Life as an imigre
After the match with Spassky in 1992, Fischer again slid into
relative obscurity. Now a fugitive from the American legal system,
he intensified his vitriolic rhetoric against the U.S. For some of
these years Fischer lived in Budapest, Hungary, allegedly having a
relationship with young Hungarian chess master Zita
Rajcsanyi. He claimed to find standard chess stale and he played
chess variants such as Chess960 blitz games. He visited with the
Polgar family in Budapest and analyzed many games with Judit,
Zsuzsa (Susan), and Zssfia (Sofia) Polgar.
From 2000 to 2002, Fischer lived in Baguio City in the Philippines.
He resided in the same compound as the Filipino grandmaster Eugenio
Torre, a close friend who acted as his second during his matches
with Spassky. Torre introduced Fischer to a 22-year-old woman named
Marilyn Young. On May 21, 2001 Marilyn Young gave birth to a
daughter named Jinky Young. Her mother claimed that Jinky was
Fischer's daughter, citing as evidence Jinky's birth and baptismal
certificates, photographs, a transaction record dated December 4,
2007 of a bank remittance by Fischer to Jinky, and Jinky's DNA
through her blood samples. On the other hand, Magnzs Skzlason, a
friend of Fischer's, said that he was certain that Fischer was not
the girl's father.
On August 17, 2010 it was reported that a DNA test revealed that
Jinky Young is actually not the daughter of Bobby
Fischer.
++2.L1 Anti-Jewish statements
Fischer, whose mother was
Jewish, made occasional hostile comments toward Jews from at least
the early 1960s. In 1961, he "made his first public statements
despising Jews." Jan Hein Donner wrote that at the time of Bled
1961, "He idolized Hitler and read everything about him that he
could lay his hands on. He also championed a brand of antisemitism
that could only be thought up by a mind completely cut off from
reality." Donner writes that he took Fischer to a war museum, which
"left a great impression, since he is not an evil person, and
afterwards he was more restrained in his remarks--to me, at least".
From the 1980s and thereafter, however, Fischer's comments about
Jews were a major theme of his public and private remarks. He
denied the Holocaust and announced his desire to make "expos(ing)
the Jews for the criminals they are ... the murderers they are" his
lifework, and argued that the United States is "a farce controlled
by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards."
In 1984, Fischer denied being a Jew in a letter to the Encyclopedia
Judaica, insisting that they remove his name and accusing them of
"fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew ... to promote your
religion". Although it was reported that Fischer as a teenager
acknowledged that his mother was Jewish, Fischer was later reported
to have denied his Jewish ancestry.
In the last years of his life, Fischer's primary means of
communicating with the public was via sometimes-outrageous radio
interviews. He participated in at least 34 such broadcasts between
1999 and 2006, mostly with radio stations in the Philippines, but
also with stations in Hungary, Iceland, Colombia, and Russia. In
1999, he gave a call-in interview to a radio station in Budapest,
Hungary, during which he described himself as the "victim of an
international Jewish conspiracy." In another radio interview,
Fischer said that it became clear to him in 1977, after reading The
Secret World Government by Count Cherep-Spiridovich, that Jewish
agencies were targeting him. Fischer's sudden re-emergence was
apparently triggered when some of his belongings, which had been
stored in a Pasadena, California storage unit, were sold by the
landlord who claimed it was in response to nonpayment of rent. In
2005, some of Fischer's belongings were auctioned on eBay. In 2006,
Fischer claimed that his belongings in the storage unit were worth
millions.
Fischer's library contained anti-Semitic and white supremacist
literature such as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
and The White Man's Bible and Nature's Eternal Religion by Ben
Klassen, founder of the Church of the Creator. A notebook written
by Fischer is filled with sentiments such as "8/24/99 Death to the
Jews. Just kill the (expletive)!" and "12/13/99 It's time to start
randomly killing Jews."
++2.L2 Anti-American and anti-Israel statements
A little after Midnight on September 12, Philippines local time
(four hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.),
Fischer was interviewed live by Pablo Mercado on the Baguio City
station of the Bombo Radyo network. Fischer commented on U.S and
Israeli foreign policy, saying "I applaud the act. Look nobody gets
... no one ... that the U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the
Palestinians for years." He also said "All the crimes the U.S. is
committing all over the world ... This just shows, what goes
around, that comes around even to the United States." After calling
for U.S. President George W. Bush's death, Fischer then repeats
this phrase, saying "I say death to President Bush! I say death to
the United States! F---- the United States! F--- the Jews! ... They
are the worst liars and bastards. Now what goes around comes
around. They're getting it back, finally. Praise God ... This is a
wonderful day. F--- the United States. Cry, you crybabies! Whine,
you bastards! Now your time is coming." Fischer also recalls the
movie Seven Days in May and said he hopes for a military coup
d'itat in the U.S., "hoping ... the country will be taken over by
the military, they'll close down all the synagogues, arrest all the
Jews, execute hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders, and you
know, apologize to the Arabs, kill off all the Jews over there in
the bandit state, you know, of Israel. I'm hoping for a totally new
world."
On October 28, 2001, Fischer's right to membership in the United
States Chess Federation was canceled by a unanimous 7-0 vote of the
USCF's Policy Board.
Fischer drafted a letter to Osama bin Laden, which
began:
Dear Mr. Osama bin Laden allow me to introduce myself. I am Bobby
Fischer, the World Chess Champion. First of all you should know
that I share your hatred of the murderous bandit state of "Israel"
and its chief backer the Jew-controlled U.S.A. also know (sic) as
the "Jewnited States" or "Israel West." We also have something else
in common: We are both fugitives from the U.S. "justice" system.
After Fischer's death, chess columnist Shelby Lyman, who in 1972
had hosted the PBS broadcast of that year's Championship, said that
"the anti-American stuff is explained by the fact that ... he spent
the rest of his life (after the match in Yugoslavia) fleeing the
U.S., because he was afraid of being extradited". In Bobby Fischer:
The Wandering King, authors IM Hans Bvhm and Kees Jongkind write
that Fischer's radio broadcasts show that he was "out of his mind
... a victim of his own mental illness".
++2.L3 Detention in Japan
Fischer lived for a time in Japan. On July 13, 2004, acting in
response to a letter from U.S. officials, he was arrested by
Japanese immigration authorities at Narita International Airport
near Tokyo for allegedly using a revoked U.S. passport while trying
to board a Japan Airlines flight to Ninoy Aquino International
Airport in Manila, Philippines. He sustained bruises, cuts and a
broken tooth during the
arrest. At the time, Fischer had a passport, originally issued in
1997 and updated in 2003 to add more pages, that according to U.S.
officials had been revoked in November 2003 (due to his outstanding
arrest warrant for Yugoslavia sanctions
violation). Fischer said that he believed that it was legally still
valid. The authorities held Fischer at a custody center for 16 days
before transferring him to another facility. Fischer claimed that
his cell was windowless and he had not seen the light of day during
that period, and that the staff had ignored his complaints about
constant tobacco smoke in his cell.
Tokyo-based Canadian journalist and consultant John Bosnitch set up
the "Committee to Free Bobby Fischer" after meeting Fischer at
Narita Airport and offering to assist him. Bosnitch was
subsequently allowed to participate as a friend of the court by an
Immigration Bureau panel handling Fischer's case. He then worked to
block the Japanese Immigration Bureau's efforts to deport Fischer
to the United States and coordinated the legal and public relations
campaign to free Fischer until his eventual release. A month later,
it was reported that Fischer and Miyoko Watai, the President of the
Japanese Chess Association, with whom he had reportedly been living
since 2000, wanted to become legally married. (However, he was also
reported to have been living in the Philippines with Marilyn Young
during the same period. Fischer also applied for German citizenship
on the grounds that his father was German. Fischer stated that he
wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship, and appealed to United
States Secretary of State Colin Powell to help him do so. Japan's
Justice Minister rejected Fischer's appeal that he be allowed to
remain in the country and ordered him deported.
++2.L4 Asylum in Iceland
Seeking ways to evade deportation to the United States, Fischer
wrote a letter to the government of Iceland in early January 2005
and asked for Icelandic citizenship. Sympathetic to Fischer's
plight, but reluctant to grant him the full benefits of
citizenship, Icelandic authorities granted him an alien's passport.
When this proved insufficient for the Japanese authorities, the
Althing agreed unanimously to grant Fischer full citizenship in
late March for humanitarian reasons, as they felt he was being
unjustly treated by the U.S. and Japanese governments, and also in
recognition of his 1972 match, which had "put Iceland on the map".
The U.S. government filed charges of tax evasion against Fischer in
an effort to prevent him from traveling to Iceland.
Shortly before his departure to Iceland, on March 23, 2005, Fischer
and Bosnitch appeared briefly on the BBC World Service, via a
telephone link to the Tokyo airport. Bosnitch stated that Fischer
would never play traditional chess again. Fischer denounced
President Bush as a criminal and Japan as a puppet of the United
States. He also stated that he would appeal his case to the U.S.
Supreme Court and said that he would not return to the U.S. while
Bush was in power.
Upon his arrival in Reykjavik, Fischer was welcomed by a crowd and
gave a news conference. He lived a reclusive life in Iceland,
avoiding entrepreneurs and others who approached him with various
proposals.
On December 10, 2006, Fischer telephoned an Icelandic television
station and pointed out a winning combination, missed by the
players and commentators, in a chess game that had been televised
live in Iceland.
Fischer moved into an apartment in the same building as his closest
friend and spokesman, Garoar Sverrisson, whose wife Kristin
Porarinsdottir, a nurse, later looked after him as a terminally ill
patient. Garpar's two children, especially his son, were very close
to Fischer. Fischer also developed a friendship with Magnzs
Skzlason, a psychiatrist and chess player who later recalled long
discussions with Fischer about a wide variety of subjects.
++2.M Death, estate dispute, and exhumation
Church of Laugardflir, Fischer's resting place.
Fischer's grave.
On January 17, 2008, Fischer died from degenerative renal failure
in a Reykjavik hospital. Magnus Skulason reported his last words as
"Nothing is as healing as the human touch." On January 21, he was
buried in the small Christian cemetery of Laugardflir church,
outside the town of Selfoss, 60 km south-east of Reykjavik, after
a Catholic funeral presided over by Fr. Jakob Rolland of the
diocese of Reykjavik. In accordance with Fischer's wishes, no one
else was present except Miyoko Watai, Garpar Sverrisson, and
Garpar's
family.
Fischer's estate was estimated at 140 million ISK (about GBP 1
million or US$ 2 million) and it quickly became the object of a
legal battle involving claims from four parties: Fischer's apparent
Japanese wife Miyoko Watai, his alleged Philippine daughter Jinky
Young and her mother Marilyn Young, his two American nephews
Alexander and Nicholas Targ and their father Russell Targ, and the
American government (claiming unpaid
taxes).
According to a press release issued by Samuel Estimo, an attorney
representing Jinky Young, the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled in
December 2009 that Watai's claim of marriage to Fischer was
invalidated because of her failure to present the original of their
alleged marriage certificate.
On June 16, 2010, Iceland's Supreme Court ruled in favor of a
petition on behalf of Jinky Young to have Bobby Fischer's remains
exhumed. This was performed on July 5, 2010 in the presence of a
doctor, a priest and other officials. A DNA sample was taken and
Fischer's body was then reburied. On August 17, 2010, the Court
announced that the DNA sample had determined that Fischer was not
the father of Jinky Young.
++2.N Contributions to chess
++2.N1 Opening theory
Fischer was renowned for his deep opening preparation and made
numerous contributions to chess opening theory. He was one of the
foremost experts on the Ruy Lopez. A line of the Exchange Variation
(1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5. 0-0) is sometimes
called the "Fischer Variation" after he successfully resurrected it
at the 1966 Havana Olympiad. Fischer's lifetime score in tournament
and match games with 5. 0-0 was six wins, three draws, and no
losses (83.3%).
He was a recognized expert in the Black side of the Najdorf
Sicilian and the King's Indian Defense. He used the Gruenfeld
Defense and Neo-Gruenfeld Defense to win his celebrated games
against Donald and Robert Byrne, and played a theoretical novelty
in the Gruenfeld against reigning World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik,
refuting Botvinnik's prior published analysis. In the Nimzo-Indian
Defense, the line beginning with 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4.
e3 b6 5. Ne2 Ba6 was named for him.
Fischer established the viability of the so-called Poisoned Pawn
Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4.
Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Qb6). This bold queen sortie,
snatching a pawn at the expense of development, had been considered
dubious, but Fischer succeeded in proving its soundness. Out of ten
tournament and match games as Black in the Poisoned Pawn, Fischer
won five, drew four, and lost only one, the 11th game of his 1972
match against Spassky. Following Fischer's use, the Poisoned Pawn
became a respected line played by many of the world's leading
players.
On the White side of the Sicilian, Fischer made advances to the
theory of the line beginning 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4
Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 (or e6) 6. Bc4, which has sometimes been named for
him. In 1961, prompted by a loss the year before to Spassky,
Fischer wrote an article entitled "A Bust to the King's Gambit" for
the first issue of the American Chess Quarterly, in which he
stated, "In my opinion, the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by
force." Fischer recommended 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 d6, which
has since become known as the Fischer Defense to the King's
Gambit. Surprisingly, Fischer later played the King's Gambit as
White in three tournament games (preferring 3. Bc4 to 3. Nf3),
winning them all.
++2.N2 Endgame
Fischer had excellent endgame technique. International Master
Jeremy Silman listed him as one of the five best endgame players,
along with Emanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein, Jose Capablanca, and
Vasily Smyslov. Silman called him a "master of bishop endings".
The endgame of a rook, bishop, and pawns against a rook, knight,
and pawns has sometimes been called the "Fischer Endgame" because
of three instructive wins by Fischer (with the bishop) in 1970 and
1971 over Mark Taimanov. One of the games was in the 1970
Interzonal and the other two were in their 1971 quarter-final
candidates match.
++2.N3 Fischer clock
In 1988, Fischer filed for U.S. Patent 4,884,255 for a new type of
digital chess clock. Fischer's clock gave each player a fixed
period of time at the start of the game and then added a small
increment after each completed move. The Fischer clock soon became
standard in most major chess tournaments. The patent expired in
November 2001 because of overdue maintenance fees.
++2.N4 Fischer Random Chess
On June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fischer announced and
advocated a variant of chess called Fischer Random Chess, also
known as Chess960, that is intended to allow players to contest
games based on their understanding of chess rather than their
ability to memorize opening variations.
Fischer Random was designed to remove the importance of opening
book memorization. Fischer complained in a 2006 phoned-in call with
a television interviewer that because of the progress in
memorization of opening books, talented celebrity players from long
ago, if brought back from the dead to play today, would no longer
be competitive. "Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could
get an opening advantage against Capablanca", he said, merely
because of opening-book memorization, which Fischer disdained. "Now
chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and
prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative." Fischer
heavily disparaged chess as it was currently being played at the
highest levels.
2.N5 Legacy
Kasparov calls Fischer "perhaps the most mythologically shrouded
figure in chess". Some leading players and some of his biographers
have ranked him as the greatest player who ever lived. Other
writers have said that he was arguably the greatest player ever,
without reaching a definitive conclusion. Leonard Barden wrote,
"Most experts place him the second or third best ever, behind
Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov." Brian Carney opined in the
Wall Street Journal that Fischer's victory over Spassky in 1972
left him nothing to prove, except that perhaps someone could
someday beat him, and he was not interested in the risk of losing.
Fischer's refusal to recognize peers also allowed his paranoia to
flower: "The world championship he won...validated his view of
himself as a chess player, but it also insulated him from the
humanizing influences of the world around him. He descended into
what can only be considered a kind of madness."
Fischer was a charter inductee into the United States Chess Hall of
Fame in Washington, D.C. in 1985. After routing Taimanov, Larsen,
and Petrosian in 1971, Fischer achieved a then-record Elo rating of
2785. He was rated so far ahead of Spassky and everyone else that
he lost five rating points by beating Spassky 12.5-7.5 in played
games, dropping him to a 2780 rating.
Although international ratings were only introduced in 1970,
Chessmetrics.com has used modern algorithms to rank performances
retrospectively and uniformly throughout chess history. According
to the Chessmetrics calculation, Fischer's peak rating was 2895 in
October 1971. His one-year peak average was 2881, in 1971, the
highest of all time. His three-year peak average was 2867, from
January 1971 to December 1973--the second highest ever, just behind
Garry Kasparov. Chessmetrics ranked Fischer as the #1 player in the
world for a total of 109 different months, running (not
consecutively) from February 1964 until July 1974.
Fischer's great rival Mikhail Tal praised him as "the greatest
genius to have descended from the chess heavens." American
Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier, who won his first tournament game
against Fischer, drew his second, and lost the remaining 13, wrote
"Robert James Fischer is one of the few people in any sphere of
endeavour who has been accorded the accolade of being called a
legend in his own time."
Kasparov wrote that Fischer "became the detonator of an avalanche
of new chess ideas, a revolutionary whose revolution is still in
progress." In January 2009, reigning world champion Viswanathan
Anand described him as "the greatest chess player who ever lived.
He was a very special person, and I was fortunate to meet him two
years ago." Serbian Grandmaster Ljubomir Ljubojevic called Fischer,
"A man without frontiers. He didn't divide the East and the West,
he brought them together in their admiration of him."
German Grandmaster Karsten Mueller wrote:
Fischer, who had taken the highest crown almost singlehandedly from
the mighty, almost invincible Soviet chess empire, shook the whole
world, not only the chess world, to its core. He started a chess
boom not only in the United States and in the Western hemisphere,
but worldwide. Teaching chess or playing chess as a career had
truly become a respectable profession. After Bobby, the game was
simply not the same.
St. Louis philanthropist Rex A. Sinquefield offered a $64,000
Fischer Memorial Prize for any player who could win all nine games
at the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship. By the fifth day of the
championship, all 24 participants became ineligible for the prize,
having drawn or lost at least one game.
++2.O In popular culture
Bobby Fischer (seated), 1961
* The musical Chess, with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Bjorn
Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, tells the story of two chess
champions, referred to only as "The American" and "The Russian".
The musical is loosely based on the 1972 world championship match
between Fischer and Spassky. In later versions of the show, "The
American" is named "Freddie Trumper" and "The Russian" is "Anatoly
Sergieveski".
* During the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match, the Soviet bard Vladimir
Vysotsky wrote an ironic two-song cycle "Honor of the Chess Crown".
The first song is about a rank-and-file Soviet worker's preparation
for the match with Fischer; the second is about the game. Many
expressions from the songs have become catchphrases in Russian
culture.
* The 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer uses Fischer's name in
the title even though it is actually about the life of Joshua
Waitzkin. Outside of the United States, it was released as Innocent
Moves. The title refers to the search for Fischer's successor after
his disappearance from competitive chess (or about searching for
talent like Fischer's in the author's brilliant chess-playing son).
In the book on which the film is based, the narrator/author
actually looks for Fischer for a brief period and imagines what he
would say to him if found. In an unpublished 1997 manuscript,
Fischer complained that he had not "received one thin dime for the
totally exploitative Paramount Pictures 'rip-off' full-length
feature film".
* Bobby Fischer is mentioned in Milan Kundera's novel, The Book of
Laughter and Forgetting.
++2.P Writings
* Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess (Simon and Schuster, New York,
1959). ISBN 0-923891-46-3. An early collection of 34 lightly-
annotated games including the famous "Game of the Century" against
Donald Byrne.
* "A Bust to the King's Gambit" (American Chess Quarterly, Vol. 1,
No. 1 (Summer 1961), pp. 3-9).
* "The Russians Have Fixed World Chess" (Sports Illustrated
magazine, August 1962). This is the controversial article in which
Fischer asserted that the Soviet players in the 1962 Curagao
Candidates' tournament had colluded with one another. * "'The Ten
Greatest Masters in History" (Chessworld, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January-
February 1964), pp. 56-61). A famous article, in which Fischer
named Paul Morphy, Howard Staunton, Wilhelm Steinitz, Siegbert
Tarrasch, Mikhail Chigorin, Alexander Alekhine, Jose Razl
Capablanca, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, and Samuel Reshevsky as the
best players of all time. He modestly omitted himself, and
controversially did not include World Champions Emanuel Lasker and
Mikhail Botvinnik.
* "Checkmate" column from 1966 to 1969 in Boys' Life.
* My 60 Memorable Games (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969, and
Faber and Faber, London, 1969; Batsford 2008 (algebraic notation)).
"A classic of painstaking and objective analysis that modestly
includes three of his losses".
* I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse! (1982) pamphlet.
++2.P1 Under Fischer's name
There have been numerous books, in many languages, that list
Fischer as the author or as endorsing the book. One of these is the
1972 book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess with Donn Mosenfelder and
Stuart Margulies. The book uses programmed learning to help
beginners learn how to see elementary chess combinations. Although
Fischer allowed his name to be used, he had little involvement with
the writing of the book.
++2.Q Tournament and match summary
++2.Q1 Tournaments
Year Tournament Location
Wins Draws Losses Ranking
1955 U.S. Junior Championship Lincoln
2 6 2 10-20
1956 U.S. Amateur Championship New Jersey
3 2 1 21
1956 U.S. Junior Championship Philadelphia
8 1 1 1
1956 U.S. Open Oklahoma City
5 7 0 4-8
1956 Canadian Open Montreal
6 2 2 8-12
1956 Rosenwald Trophy NYC
2 5 4 8-10
1956 Eastern States Open Washington, D.C.
4 2 0 2-4
1956 Manhattan Club Championship, semifinals NYC
2 1 2 4
1957 Log Cabin Open West Orange
4 0 2 6
1957 Log Cabin 50-50 West Orange
3 2 2 unknown
1957 New Western Open Milwaukee
5 2 1 6-12
1957 U.S. Junior Open Championship San Francisco
8 1 0 1
1957 U.S. Open Cleveland
8 4 0 1
1957 New Jersey State Open East Orange
6 1 0 1
1957 North Central Open Milwaukee
4 2 1 5-11
1957 U.S. Championship New York
8 5 0 1
1958 Interzonal Portoroz
6 12 2 5-6
1958 U.S. Championship New York
6 5 0 1
1959 Mar del Plata
8 4 1 3-4
1959 Santiago
7 1 4 4-7
1959 Zurich
8 5 2 3-4
1959 Candidates Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade
8 9 11 5-6
1959 U.S. Championship New York
7 4 0 1
1960 Mar del Plata
13 1 1 1-2
1960 Buenos Ares
3 11 5 13-16
1960 Reykjavik
3 1 0 1
1960 U.S. Championship New York
7 4 0 1
1961 Bled
8 11 0 2
1962 Interzonal Stockholm
13 9 0 1
1962 Candidates Curagao
8 12 7 4
1962 U.S. Championship New York
6 4 1 1
1963 Western Open Bay City
7 1 0 1
1963 New York State Open Poughkeepsie
7 0 0 1
1963 U.S. Championship New York
11 0 0 1
1965 Capablanca Memorial Havana
12 6 3 2-4
1965 U.S. Championship New York
8 1 2 1
1966 Piatigorsky Cup Santa Monica
7 8 3 2
1966 U.S. Championship New York
8 3 0 1
1967 Monaco
6 2 1 1
1967 Skopje
11 3 2 1
1967 Interzonal Sousse
7 3 0 withdrew
1968 Netanya
10 3 0 1
1968 Vinkovci
9 4 0 1
1970 Rovinj/Zagreb
10 6 1 1
1970 Buenos Ares
13 4 0 1
1970 Interzonal Palma de Mallorca
15 7 1 1
++2.Q2 Matches
Year Opponent Location Tournament
Wins Draws Losses result
1957 Max Euwe New York match
0 1 1 lost
1957 Rodolfo Tan Cardoso New York match
5 1 1 won
1958 Dragoljub Janosevic Belgrade training match
0 2 0 tied
1958 Milan Matulovic Belgrade match
2 1 1 won
1961 Samuel Reshevsky New York & Los Angles match
2 7 2 unfinished
1971 Mark Taimanov Vancouver Candidates
6 0 0 won
1971 Bent Larsen Denver Candidates
6 0 0 won
1971 Tigran Petrosian Buenos Aires Candidates
5 3 1 won
1972 Boris Spassky Reykjavik World Championship
7 11 3 won
1992 Boris Spassky Sveti Stefan & Belgrade match
10 15 5 won
++2.Q3 Team events
Year Event Location
Wins Draws Losses
Opponent Board Individual ranking team ranking
1960 14th Olympiad Leipzig
10 6 2
various 1 3 2
1962 15th Olympiad Varna
8 6 3
various 1 8 4
1966 17th Olympiad Havana
14 2 1
various 1 2 2
1970 USSR vs World Belgrade
2 2 0
Tigran Petrosian 2 won individual match team lost
1970 19th Olympiad Siegen
8 4 1
various 1 2 4
++2.R Notable games
* "The Game of the Century" - Donald Byrne-Fischer, New York
1956, Gruenfeld, 5. Bf4 (D92), 0-1 Just 13 years old, Bobby
played in a bold combinational style.
* Robert Byrne-Fischer, 1963-64 U.S. Championship, Neo-
Gruenfeld 0-1 annotated From an almost symmetrical
position, Fischer as Black beats a strong grandmaster in
just 21 moves - "a game that was immediately recognized as
an all-time classic".
* Fischer-Tigran Petrosian, Buenos Aires Candidates Final
1971, 7th match game, Sicilian Defense: Kan. Modern
Variation (B42), 1-0 Even Petrosian, the master of defense,
was not able to bear the pressure of Fischer's rooks.
* Fischer-Boris Spassky, World Championship 1972, 6th match
game, Queen's Gambit Declined, Tartakower (D59), 1-0 One of
the most beautiful and most important games of the match.
++3. The game of the Century
++3.A Background
The Game of the Century usually refers to a chess game played
between Donald Byrne and the 13-year old Bobby Fischer in the
Rosenwald Memorial Tournament in New York City on October 17, 1956.
It was nicknamed "The Game of the Century" by Hans Kmoch in Chess
Review. Kmoch wrote, "The following game, a stunning masterpiece of
combination play performed by a boy of 13 against a formidable
opponent, matches the finest on record in the history of chess
prodigies." Other experts, such as Larry Evans, have suggested
different games as candidates for the "Game of the Century"
sobriquet - for example, the game between Garry Kasparov and
Veselin Topalov at the Wijk aan Zee Corus tournament in 1999.
Byrne's play (11. Bg5?; 18. Bxb6?) was weak; had a strong
grandmaster rather than a 13-year-old played Black, it would still
be an outstanding game, but probably not the Game of the Century.
Many players consider the game inferior to later games of
Fischer's, such as his stunning win over Donald's brother Robert at
the 1963 U.S. Chess Championship.
++3.B The game
Rosenwald Memorial Tournament, New York City, October 17, 1956
White: Donald Byrne
Black: Robert James Fischer
Result: 0-1
ECO: D92 - Gruenfeld Defense, Three Knights Variation with 5. Bf4
1. Nf3
(A noncommittal move by Byrne. From here, the game can develop into
a number of different openings.)
1. ... Nf6
2. c4 g6
3. Nc3 Bg7
(Fischer defends based on "hypermodern" principles, inviting Byrne
to establish a classical pawn stronghold in the center, which
Fischer intends to target and undermine with his fianchettoed
bishop and other pieces.)
4. d4 0-0
(Fischer castles, bringing his king to safety. The black move 4.
... d5 would have reached the Gruenfeld Defense immediately. After
Fischer's 4. ... 0-0, Byrne could have played 5. e4, whereupon 5.
... d6 6. Be2 e5 reaches the main line of the King's Indian
Defense.)
5. Bf4 d5
(Gruenfeld Defense, Three Knights Variation with 5. Bf4, D92. The
game has now transposed to the Gruenfeld Defense, usually initiated
by 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5.)
6. Qb3
(A form of the so-called Russian System (the usual move order is 1.
d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. Qb3), putting pressure on
Fischer's central d5 pawn.)
6. ... dxc4
(Fischer relinquishes his center, but draws Byrne's queen to a
square where it is a little exposed and can be attacked.)
7. Qxc4 c6
(Also possible is the more aggressive 7. ... Na6 (the Prins
Variation), preparing ... c5 to challenge White's center.)
8. e4 Nbd7
(In later games, Black played the more active 8. ... b5 followed by
9. ... Qa5. An example is Bisguier-Benko, U.S. Championship
1963-64. Fischer's choice is a little slow, although one would not
guess that from the subsequent play.)
9. Rd1 Nb6
10. Qc5
(An awkward square for the queen, which leaves it exposed to a
possible ... Na4 or ... Ne4, as Fischer brilliantly demonstrates.
Since both of those squares are protected by Byrne's knight on c3,
he understandably did not appreciate the danger. 10. Qb3 would have
left the queen better placed, although it would have invited
further harassment with 10. ... Be6.)
10. ... Bg4
(Byrne's pawns control the center squares. However, Fischer is
ahead in piece development and has castled, while Byrne's king is
still in the center. These factors would not have been very
significant had Byrne attended to his development on his next
move.)
11. Bg5?
(Byrne errs, moving the bishop a second time instead of completing
his development. Burgess, Nunn and Emms, as well as Wade and
O'Connell, suggest 11. Be2, protecting the King and preparing
kingside castling. Flear-Morris, Dublin 1991, continued 11. Be2
Nfd7 12. Qa3 Bxf3 13. Bxf3 e5 14. dxe5 Qe8 15. Be2 Nxe5 16. O-O and
White was slightly better. Byrne doubtless thought that Black's
slight lead in development would be transitory, not anticipating
the maelstrom that his young opponent now initiates.)
11. ... Na4!!
(Fischer offers an ingenious knight sacrifice. If Byrne plays 12.
Nxa4, Fischer will play Nxe4, leaving Byrne with some terrible
choices: (a) 13. Qxe7 Qa5+ 14. b4 Qxa4 15. Qxe4 Rfe8 16. Be7 Bxf3
17. gxf3 Bf8 produces a deadly pin. (b) 13. Bxe7 Nxc5 14. Bxd8 Nxa4
15. Bg5 Bxf3 16. gxf3 Nxb2 gives Fischer an extra pawn and ruins
Byrne's pawn structure. (c) 13. Qc1 Qa5+ 14. Nc3 Bxf3 15.gxf3 Nxg5
regains the sacrificed piece with a better position. (d) 13. Qb4
Nxg5 14. Nxg5 Bxd1 15. Kxd1 Bxd4 16. Qd2 Bxf2 with a winning
material advantage. (Fischer))
12. Qa3 Nxc3
13. bxc3 Nxe4!
(Fischer again offers material in order to open the e-file and get
at White's uncastled king.)
14. Bxe7 Qb6
15. Bc4
(Byrne wisely declines the offered material. If 15. Bxf8, Bxf8 16.
Qb3, Fischer analyzes 16. ... Nxc3! 17. Qxb6 (17. Qxc3?? Bb4 wins
the queen) axb6 18. Ra1 Re8+ 19. Kd2 Ne4+ 20. Kc2 Nxf2 21. Rg1
Bf5+, which he considers winning for Black. Also strong is 16. ...
Re8 17. Qxb6 (17. Be2 Nxc3!) 17. ... axb6 18. Be2 Nxc3 19. Rd2 Bb4
20. Kf1 Ne4 21. Rb2 Bc3 22. Rc2 Nd2+! 23. Kg1 (23. Nxd2 Bxe2+ 24.
Kg1 Bd3! 25. Rc1 Bxd2 leaves Black with a winning material
advantage) Rxe2 24. Rxc3 Nxf3+ 25. gxf3 Bh3 26. Rc1 Rxa2 leaving
White absolutely paralyzed.)
15. ... Nxc3!
(Now if 16. Qxc3, Rfe8 pins the bishop to White's king, thus
regaining the sacrificed piece with an extra pawn.)
16. Bc5 Rfe8+
17. Kf1
(Byrne threatens Fischer's queen; Fischer brings his rook into
play, misplacing Byrne's king. Now Fischer's pyrotechnics seem to
be at an end. Surely he must save his queen, whereupon White can
play 18. Qxc3, with a winning material advantage. But after 17.
Kf1. Instead of protecting his queen, Fischer will launch a
stunning counterattack with 17. ... Be6.)
17. ... Be6!!
(This stunning resource is the move that made this game famous.
Instead of saving his queen, Fischer offers to sacrifice it.
Fischer pointed out that 17. ... Nb5? loses to 18. Bxf7+ Kxf7 19.
Qb3+ Be6 20. Ng5+ Kg8 21. Nxe6 Nxd4 22. Nxd4+ Qxb3 23. Nxb3.)
18. Bxb6?
(Byrne takes the offered queen, hoping to outplay his 13-year-old
opponent in the ensuing complications. However, Fischer gets far
too much for his queen, leaving Byrne with a hopeless game. The
move 18. Bxe6 would have been even worse, leading to a smothered
mate with 18. ... Qb5+ 19. Kg1 Ne2+ 20. Kf1 Ng3+ 21. Kg1 Qf1+! 22.
Rxf1 Ne2#. White's 18. Qxc3 would have been met by 18. ... Qxc5!
and if 19. dxc5, Bxc3. White's best chance may have been 18. Bd3
Nb5!, which Kmoch wrote would also result in "a win for Black in
the long run".)
18. ... Bxc4+
(Fischer now begins a 'windmill' series of discovered checks,
picking up material.)
19. Kg1 Ne2+
20. Kf1 Nxd4+
21. Kg1
(21. Rd3? axb6 22. Qc3 Nxf3 23. Qxc4 Re1# - Fischer)
21. ... Ne2+
22. Kf1 Nc3+
23. Kg1 axb6
(Fischer captures a piece, simultaneously attacking Byrne's queen.)
24. Qb4 Ra4!
(Fischer's pieces cooperate nicely: the bishop on g7 protects the
knight on c3, which protects the rook on a4, which in turn protects
the bishop on c4 and forces Byrne's queen away. Perhaps Byrne
overlooked this move when analyzing 18. Bxb6, expecting instead 24.
... Nxd1? 25. Qxc4, which is much less clear. Otherwise, it is hard
to explain why Byrne played 18. Bxb6, since Black now has a clearly
winning position.)
25. Qxb6
(Unfortunately for Byrne, he has nothing better than this pawn-
grab, since he has no queen move available that would protect his
threatened rook on d1.)
25. ... Nxd1
(After 25. ... Nxd1, Fischer has gotten more than enough material
for his sacrificed queen. Fischer has gained a rook, two bishops,
and a pawn for his sacrificed queen, leaving him ahead the
equivalent, roughly, of one minor piece - an easily winning
advantage in master play. White's queen is far outmatched by
Black's pieces, which dominate the board and will soon overrun
White's position. Moreover, Byrne's remaining rook is stuck on h1
and it will take precious time (and the loss of the pawn on f2) to
free it. Byrne could resign here, but gamely plays on until
checkmate.)
26. h3 Rxa2
27. Kh2 Nxf2
28. Re1 Rxe1
29. Qd8+ Bf8
30. Nxe1 Bd5
31. Nf3 Ne4
32. Qb8 b5
(Note that every piece and pawn of Black is defended, leaving
White's "extra" queen with nothing to do.)
33. h4 h5
34. Ne5 Kg7
(Fischer breaks the pin, allowing the bishop to attack as well.)
35. Kg1 Bc5+
(Now Fischer "peels away" the white king from his last defender,
and uses his pieces in concert to force checkmate.)
36. Kf1 Ng3+
37. Ke1 Bb4+
(Kmoch notes that with 37. ... Re2+ Fischer could have mated a move
sooner.)
38. Kd1 Bb3+
39. Kc1 Ne2+
40. Kb1 Nc3+
41. Kc1 Rc2#
0-1
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