https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6M4ngKRp0
The Worst Losers in Chess History
Sort:
Dr who:
SmyslovFan wrote:
Some other nominees:
Blackburne once defenestrated a player who beat him!
lol I thought you said deficated on him lol
cjt33 wrote:
lol I thought you said deficated on him lol
I wonder if there's an example of that somewhere in the murky depths of chess history...!
SmyslovFan wrote:
Some other nominees:
Blackburne once defenestrated a player who beat him!
IM Michael Schliefer got up and urinated on a chess board while drunk. He was so drunk, he didn't notice whether he was winning or losing though.
Here's Bill Wall's blog on sore losers:
haha, thanks. I really enjoyed reading the sore losers in chess article.
How dare you nominate Nimzovich for such a category? I bet you employ many of his ideas in your own games.
Anyway, my list is as follows in no particular order:
1.Howard Staunton: too afraid to face Morphy, and this is a guy who played Nh1! in one of his best games and today's engines say this is the best move if you leave it on Nh1 long enough (I think Staunton used the English opening in that game)
2.Boris Spassky. Most of his wins against Fischer were by forfeit yet Fischer still defeated him convincingly. His playing strength plummeted to that of strong IM/weak GM after losing the title and never recovered. Still has some great games from this post-champion period worth looking at though.
Oh, you meant sore losers.
linuxblue1 wrote:
What about Viktor Korchnoi?
Especially when he loses to women
I looked at one of their games in a database and actually found it far more notable that Korchnoi has a victory! There's nothing special about losing to the up and coming female Bobby Fischer (playing style and ability are about the same) especially well past one's prime whereas defeating such a person is notable indeed, even if it's a decent GM against a superstar female.
edit: I was thinking of Smyslov, sorry!
madhacker wrote:
How about throwing up all over the board? There was a case of that in my local league once. To be fair to the guy (a serious alcoholic, sadly now deceased), you can hardly say it was an intentional resignation!
This seems a nightmare when considering the touch move rule.
Wasn't Korchnoi just walking away without shaking hands with Judit Polgar when he lost a game with her ?
And the Queen story reminds me of the theft, in a night, of all queens from the hundreds of boards in the tournament hall in Wijk aan Zee, Holland, during a Hoogovens Tournament ( later Corus and Tata ), by a group people, asking the municipality to do something for the local gymnastics and swimming pool.
Next morning they brought a big bag with the queens to the mayor...
ScorpionPackAttack wrote:
How dare you nominate Nimzovich for such a category? I bet you employ many of his ideas in your own games.
Anyway, my list is as follows in no particular order:
1.Howard Staunton: too afraid to face Morphy, and this is a guy who played Nh1! in one of his best games and today's engines say this is the best move if you leave it on Nh1 long enough (I think Staunton used the English opening in that game)
2.Boris Spassky. Most of his wins against Fischer were by forfeit yet Fischer still defeated him convincingly. His playing strength plummeted to that of strong IM/weak GM after losing the title and never recovered. Still has some great games from this post-champion period worth looking at though.
Spassky only won one game by forfeit against Fischer and that was game 2 of their 1972 match . In 1973 he won the USSR championship which included all the top soviet players of the time and Karpov was in the field . Seems like a nice recovery to me ! As for his being a weak GM to strong IM after the 72 match here are some of his best results after 1972 : Spassky did, however, score some notable triumphs in his later years. In his return to tournament play after the loss to Korchnoi, he tied for first at Bugojno 1978 on 10/15 with Karpov,[76] both players scoring +6 -1 =8 to finish a point ahead of Timman. He was clear first at Montilla–Moriles 1978 with 6½/9.[77] At Munich 1979, he tied for first place with 8½/13,[78] with Yuri Balashov, Andersson and Robert Hübner.[79] He shared first at Baden in 1980, on 10½/15 with Alexander Beliavsky.[80] He won his preliminary group at Hamburg 1982 with 5½/6, but lost the final playoff match to Anatoly Karpov in extra games.[81] His best result during this period was clear first at Linares 1983 with 6½/10, ahead of Karpov and Ulf Andersson, who shared second.
Spassky was a contender in any event he played for at least a decade after his loss to Fischer in 1972 .
Reb wrote:
ScorpionPackAttack wrote:
How dare you nominate Nimzovich for such a category? I bet you employ many of his ideas in your own games.
Anyway, my list is as follows in no particular order:
1.Howard Staunton: too afraid to face Morphy, and this is a guy who played Nh1! in one of his best games and today's engines say this is the best move if you leave it on Nh1 long enough (I think Staunton used the English opening in that game)
2.Boris Spassky. Most of his wins against Fischer were by forfeit yet Fischer still defeated him convincingly. His playing strength plummeted to that of strong IM/weak GM after losing the title and never recovered. Still has some great games from this post-champion period worth looking at though.
Spassky only won one game by forfeit against Fischer and that was game 2 of their 1972 match . In 1973 he won the USSR championship which included all the top soviet players of the time and Karpov was in the field . Seems like a nice recovery to me ! As for his being a weak GM to strong IM after the 72 match here are some of his best results after 1972 : Spassky did, however, score some notable triumphs in his later years. In his return to tournament play after the loss to Korchnoi, he tied for first at Bugojno 1978 on 10/15 with Karpov,[76] both players scoring +6 -1 =8 to finish a point ahead of Timman. He was clear first at Montilla–Moriles 1978 with 6½/9.[77] At Munich 1979, he tied for first place with 8½/13,[78] with Yuri Balashov, Andersson and Robert Hübner.[79] He shared first at Baden in 1980, on 10½/15 with Alexander Beliavsky.[80] He won his preliminary group at Hamburg 1982 with 5½/6, but lost the final playoff match to Anatoly Karpov in extra games.[81] His best result during this period was clear first at Linares 1983 with 6½/10, ahead of Karpov and Ulf Andersson, who shared second.
Spassky was a contender in any event he played for at least a decade after his loss to Fischer in 1972 .
I was thinking of 80s Spassky. In the database it says his rating dropped down into the high 2500/low 2600s.
RomyGer wrote:
Wasn't Korchnoi just walking away without shaking hands with Judit Polgar when he lost a game with her ?
Wasn't that Sophia Polgar?
If you were to list the world champions who were the best sports, Spassky would probably be ranked second behind Max Euwe.
It's a travesty to mention Spassky in a thread about the worst losers. He was one of the great gentlemen of the game. I wonder what it says about our sport that the two world champions who were the best sports were also probably the two weakest match-play world champions of the lot.
(And as always, stating that these two were the weakest world champions is not a slight. They are both among the greatest of all time.)
The story of Blackburne throwing Steintitz out a window is a wive's-tale stemming from Steinitz' description (in his "ICM," Nov. 1889) of an altertercation he had with Blackburne: "And on one occasion at Purssell’s about 1867, in a dispute between us, he struck with his full fist into my eye, which he blackened and might have knocked out. And though he is a powerful man of very nearly twice my size, who might have killed me with a few such strokes, I am proud to say that I had the courage of attempting to spit into his face, and only wish I had succeeded... And on the second occasion, in Paris, we occupied adjoining rooms at the same hotel, and I was already in bed undressed when he came home drunk and began to quarrel, and after a few words he pounced upon me and hammered at my face and eyes with fullest force about a dozen blows, until the bedcloth and my nightshirt were covered with blood. But at last I had the good fortune to release myself from his drunken grip, and I broke the window pane with his head, which sobered him down a little."
manfredmann wrote:
Thanks Lady Jane! Blackburne was notorious for getting in fights but I never heard the one about throwing a guy out the window!
What are those other notorious incidences?
SmyslovFan wrote:
If you were to list the world champions who were the best sports, Spassky would probably be ranked second behind Max Euwe.
It's a travesty to mention Spassky in a thread about the worst losers. He was one of the great gentlemen of the game. I wonder what it says about our sport that the two world champions who were the best sports were also probably the two weakest match-play world champions of the lot.
(And as always, stating that these two were the weakest world champions is not a slight. They are both among the greatest of all time.)
Yeah maybe Spassky wasn't really that bad, it's just that Fischer was so great it only made him look that way. I also read (Botvinnik's comment I think?) on how Spassky used to be really great, then became lazy like a bear or something to that effect. I don't really read up on the chess culture much and don't mind admitting that, I only look at games and sometimes comments when reading chess books.
Fischer didn't make Spassky look bad, he just made him look less good...
We love the games of their World Championship tussle because of both players. If it was just a Fischer blow-out it would be considerably less entertaining.
This game was played Between strong players:
1.d4-Nf6 2.Nd2-e5 3.dxe5-Ng4 4.h3-Ne3 and white resigned
What about Viktor Korchnoi?
Especially when he loses to women