Petrosian annotates 2 of his games against Fischer from the candidates final match

Tigran Petrosian needs no introduction, neither does Bobby Fischer, nor does their candidates final match. Though of course I will share informations surrounding their match, pre-match interviews, post-match interviews and impressions etc.

Today, I will share annotations by Tigran Petrosian of their 2 games: 5th and 7th games. The annotations is taken from the book "Petrosian's legacy" which is consisted of transcripts of Petrosian's speeches and writings, collected by Petrosian himself and after his [umtimely] death by his wife Rhona Petrosian.

Some notes about the blog: The annotation is in the book, here I am transposing it into interactive board of chess.com but to maintain the annotations' structure in the way they are in the books, I often had to avoid visualising the alternative lines by Petrosian. So, most of the time they are just plain text, otherwise chess.com's board presentation interface mixes the sentences as alternative lines open in another line.

If in the moves seen marks like !, it means they are there in Petrosian's book.

Also, in the annotations Petrosian is referred to in the 3rd person but the chapter these annotations are taken from talk from the perspective of the great champion, Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian.

When Petrosian gave a position in a diagram, I drew attention there by making the move in italic.

Without further ado, here we go. Game 5:

And here is the second game of the match Petrosian annotated:

This blog is to share Petrosian's comments only.

In the two books I have, Petrosian talks about the match conditions, pre-, during and post- match events. I will share them in another blog.