Overly aggressive can't be feeble?  Curiouser and curiouser...

Don't think so. I equate a feeble move with excessive and unwarranted caution.

Well, it can also simply mean "weak."  And I don't buy the argument that, if the move could be shown eventually to have drawn, it must've been alright.  Clearly he miscalculated to have gotten himself in that state (probably overlooking the Bd2 idea).

Fischer was the greatest, and a nice guy also.

Unless you wore a yarmulke.

The game was a draw before he played Bxh2; it's not like he was winning. The closest anyone got to an explanation for why he played that move was when someone asked Fischer if he played it to show Spassky that he (Fischer) could play anything against Spassky and still draw and Fischer reportedly replied, "Yeah, something like that." Fischer never said it was a blunder.

Worth noting that nearly every GM watching game 3 thought Fischer had gone crazy when he played ...Nh5 in the Modern Benoni. Turned out it was a much better move than anyone thought

@andyclifton lol

I have read the analysis on the Bxh2 move and the assessment of all the GM's present was that it lost the game. The fact that it was later (months) analyzed more positively can't work as a a defense, or " over the board" means nothing. It is clear that Fischer failed to calculate, and , much as I admire him as a chessplayer, had no plan going forward.

Maybe but he did raise the issue of the cameras that were filming the event. I dont want to use it as an excuse and they would eventually not film the rest of the matches until the last match.

Yeah, that's my take on it.  And presumably his oversight had to do with Spassky's Bd2.

What happened between the end of game 1 and first move of game 3 is very interesting. To the point of a player's state of mind affecting how he plays, Spassky was playing so listlessly in the first half of the match, his handlers thought he'd been drugged.

Yeah, he played like he was moving through molasses (some horrible stuff).  Maybe he was under the influence of whatever killed those flies.

The New York Times writer covering the match wrote that the flies had been killed by licking the poisoned pawn in the Sicilian Defense. Obviously a chess player with a sense of humor

Spassky made a horrific blunder in one of those early games, almost as bad as Taimanov (sp?) losing his rook to Fischer by a fork in the candidates match.

Yeah, that one game where he hung the exchange was just an evil-looking thing.

Excuses, excuses. A bad carpenter always complains about his tools.

Best game of the Fischer-Larsen candidates match was game 1, where Larsen played the French Defense. Really wild game that required incredibly precise calculating by Fischer to secure the win. If memory serves Larsen had both a queen and a rook on the seventh rank and a discovered check but Fischer got out of it with really ingenious play

Game one of the Fischer-Petrosian match was also really interesting. Petrosian employed a "novinka" that had Fischer in a losing position (as white!) but Petrosian lost his nerve and started playing for a draw and lost.

It's like what they say about American football - the only thing the "Prevent Defense" prevents is victory

he is a double edged blade on one side he is a pinical of human creativitiy a window of how God intended the world to be made then on the other hand he is a vivid example of human depravity and the inherant evil of mankind caused by the fall