Secret of Studying Style of B.Fischer

Bobby Fischer was talented. No doubt about it. But talent is common and does not always lead to greatness in the rules of chess. Bobby Fischer was a rare combination of talent and hard work. Bobby Fischer was dedicated to the game of chess and spent every minute he could studying the game by reading chess books. In fact, Bobby undoubtedly spent 10 times as much time reading chess books then he did playing chess.

A former US champion GM Nick deFirmian once told me, that he believes that Fischer would have beat Kasparov in a match, because no one has ever approached the dedication Fischer has for Chess. Fischer would have studied until he could beat any challenger.

Bobby Fischer did not have private chess coaches. While the Russians he was challenging would have entire teams of coaches instructing them from the time they were young, Fischer achieved his greatness alone reading books.

From the time he was 10 he read of every chess book he could get his hands on.

It is said by the time he was 14 (and us Champion) Bobby had read every significant chess book ever written in English. He was the United States champion, but knew he had a long way to go to beat the Russians who were the best at chess. So to continue his studying, Bobby Fischer taught himself Russian and began reading all the Russian chess books and magazines. At age 27 he won the world championship.

Bobby was obsessed with chess and was dedicated to studying it. He once said all he needs is a small room in an apartment with a window and his small hand held chess set with his books. Bobby would stay inside studying all day and would only leave to go to his favorite chess clubs to play and show off his new stuff.

One time, a friend of Bobby's asked him if he would give him a chess lesson. Bobby said sure and told him to go home and read MCO (Modern Chess Opening's Encyclopedia) from cover to cover. Usually this is just a reference manual where chess players can research specific opening line. Fischer specified he read the entire book including variations and the lines he did not play. The guy came back to Bobby exhausted a month later and said he was ready for his second lesson. Bobby told him "go home and read it a second time."

Bobby Fischer Wrote two of the top 100 chess books ever written:

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess

My 60 memorable games.

This article copy paste from http://www.academicchess.org/Focus/Fischer/studyingbobbyfsicher.shtml

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Actually, Fischer was 29 when he won the world championship in 1972 . He was born 1943 . Its always amazing to me that such basic facts are so often wrong in things I read. It makes me wonder what can be believed anymore ? 

I also read the story about Fischer's first lesson to someone consisting of reading MCO X (NOT Modern Chess Openings Encyclopedia)from cover to cover, which the player didn't at least in my version. 

Well I rarely believe anything I read anymore without references, everything else is just rumors, hearsay or flat out lies - and so are many references.

NM Reb don't start reading a lot of the wiki articles here without your blood pressure meds handy!

"Bobby Fischer was a rare combination of talent and hard work"

SInce his ability can be explained by hard work alone then why do we need the lumineferous aether of talent?

he is very strange when he playing chess and i remember what he saying to people 

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

Because hard work alone wont make one the best in the world at anything. Some people just have more innate ability/aptitude/TALENT than others in certain areas.... 

what do you mean???i don't understand??

 Because you say so?

You obviously have little life experience.  Ever taught chess ( or anything ) to kids ?  Even adults will do.... Talk to teacher sometimes. People dont all learn things at the same rate even when taught the same thing, by the same teachers, and at the same age. Its why they used to have ability grouping in school but as they have gotten away from that ( don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings these days ) the quality of education has steadily declined. 

Tell me David , whats your problem ?  Are you in Atlanta or Milan ?  I mean really.... 

Don't give me that baloney about life experience. There's a lot of people with plenty more life experience than you or me and it didn't do them a shred of good. Quality matters, not quantity my friend.

"People dont all learn things at the same rate even when taught the same thing, by the same teachers, and at the same age"

Excellent point. I agree completely, I don't know how you can conclude that's a result of the creator adding an extra shake of "talent" to some people though.

People obviously develop differently due to environmental factors (if this wan't the case then twins, who are genetically identical, would be identical in every facet and not just appearance). I wasn't born a lazy sonofabitch, but years of sleeping all day, watching mindless tv all night and experimenting with psychoactive drugs will do that to a person.

Teaching isn't a matter of just standing at the top of a classroom and coating students with a uniform film of knowledge. It's like planting a seed. If students don't want to do the work required of them then tough shit.

Reb didn't you work hard for your title? I sincerely believe that hard work is the key to be good in something however that talent does help.

The talent point is simple to prove as someone which is very mentally challenged might not even be able to learn the rules of chess. Thus intelligence/talent influence your ability to play chess.

"Talent is Overrated" is an interesting book.  

It shows that those with innate talent to begin with, worked hard to reach excellence, with 10,000 hours of study/practice the magic number. 

They took studies of the talented elite of various fields (musis, sports, etc) and found what separated the rare few from the elite was this incredible work ethic, single-mindedness. 

It is an inspiring book that teaches that if any of us put our minds to it, we can dramaticly improve that which we dedicate ourselves to.  

I strummed guitar from teenager until 40 years of age, with little improvement. Then, I got an instructional DVD, and gave myself to "determined practice" *(which is described as hard work, rather unpleasant) and I did not miss a single day of practice for 1,000 straight days, keeping a journal.  I went from a heavy handed strummer to a fingerstyle player---I'm not a professional (I don't have natural ability) but I am good enough to play publicly, for example, at an restaraunt.  

Now I have turned my determination towards chess with a goal at improvement.  "Talent is Overrated" is a great book to inspire oneself to "determined practice" which is why I have been seeking practice ideas from experts here.  I am mapping out my study plan for the next 6 months.  Dan Helsman's "A Guide to Chess Improvement" is a help in my planning.  He has talked me out of "How To Reassess Your Chess" until I complete "The Amateur's Mind" for example. 

Fischer was obviously a talent, but his work ethic on chess was single minded and is an inspiration today.  Thanks for posting an interesting article.  I don't care much for the minor errors; they don't distract from the main point. 

Yes, I worked hard on chess and it took me 11 years to make NM , which is only a modest accomplishment imo. I have never believed I have any " talent " in chess because I believe if I had it wouldnt have taken me so long to accomplish such a modest goal . I believe this because I know other players who worked harder and longer than me and achieved less. On the other hand I also know players that made NM within 2 or 3 years of starting tournament play .  Its clear that something more than just hard work is involved to reach certain levels/goals , whatever you wanna call it. I call that intangible talent. Others may call it something different. As for the Polgar sisters its clear that Judit had the most talent as she is the only one to reach 2700 + and be able to compete with the best male players in the world. Susan didnt reach her level and Zsu Zsa ( sp ? ) didnt reach the same level as Susan. Shouldnt they all have reached the same level if the intangible doesnt exist ?  I think so....... some people are just so worried that maybe they dont possess any talent that they prefer to refuse to believe that it exists. I can understand this but it doesnt bother me that I dont have a talent for chess... I am okay with that . Others arent so secure ... 

Most people would be happy with your rating, so you should give yourself a little bit more credit.

I'm a beginner who started at a chess club in september and am already happy that I was able to win 2 games (a 1150 and 1600 guy) out of 4 so far.  For the moment I would be happy to become 1600+ , as my club barely has players below 1600. For now I can only dream to become 2200++ and can't even say if I have the dedication and/or talent for it.

As for the sisters there may be other reasons why they aren't all as good. Admittedly I do not know enough about it to have a opinion, however I can imagine that  a lot of other factors then talent influence things. Perhaps one of the sisters likes chess more or did spend slightly more time at it etc. I think that things are more complicated then people often want to believe.

You believe that a hundred people all working as hard as they can will all become exactly as good?

I suggest you try teaching chess to kids and get back to us .  Try explaining opposition , weak squares , holes  etc in chess to say a group of kids and see how quickly they will grasp these concepts at the same depth of understanding in the same amount of instruction. If it makes you feel better you can choose only kids from the same geographical area if you like, same age, same sex ..... whatever... just do it.  I hate to inform you but your God  ( science ) can't answer all questions. What then ? 

I'm a pretty piss-poor chess player, but I'm OK at a few other things, among them music and martial arts -- and I have taught both to young kids.

I have had 5 year old kids who can immitate a horse stance perfectly with about 3 seconds of instruction. I have had 5 year old kids who can't deal with being out on the matts 10 feet from mommy yet and will only focus on her.

I have had twins taking guitar lessons from me and one learns the lesson material in a single lesson. The other took 3 or 4.

Differences in individuals effect the rate at which they learn material and the level and amount of instruction they need to achieve (and maintain) certain level of abilities.

The sum of those individual differences are noticable through the effect they have on learning ability and learning rate, and we refer to that as "talent."

But what people mostly forget is that some kids need other instructions than others.

The slow kid may be with another teaching approach the faster kid.

While it's certainly true that some kids respond better to other instructors than others, I have never observed a kid who took longer to learn something learning things significantly faster with other instructors in either martial arts or music.

I have seen different pedagogical approaches make huge differences in some kids for some concepts (for example, some kids can learn the idea of intervals very quickly using one method while struggle with another method), but the difference tend to be averaged out over a broad range of topics. Good instructors tend to have all their kids learn at a rate higher than poor instructors.

So if you find a pedagogical method that works better than another, bringing it to the classroom will have everyone accellerate at about the same rate.

What you will never see is an instructor show up in a classroom and the kids who were taking a long time suddenly become the stars, while the one's who were the stars suddenly become the bottom of the totem pole. Relative innate ability that drives how easy or hard a subect is for each student doesn't change much.