My own takeaways from Game 15 from Fischer's 60 games
Some takeaways for myself:
-I find going through annotated games without ever turning on the Chess engine, having just the players' comments behind some of the moves, patterns my mind to think of innocuous-looking moves with an analytical eye. When I use the engine, moves like ...h6 I just skip over and that kind of a move has no independent value. But when I read Fischer's analysis on that move, then what before would have been just another opening move with no navigational affordance becomes something significant and has an idea behind it that I can explain with words. This ability to give a reasoning behind every move was something that struck me when I took a couple of lessons with grandmasters before, they always were able to explain every single move with real words, like what is that move doing, what does that move change, what is that side trying to do, etc. To me, that is the real utility of going through annotated games, otherwise frankly I get more out of playing with the Chess engine doing my own analysis, but the authors' annotations pattern my mind to think in words, rationales, to think more analytically and penetratingly.
-The other thing is, it's interesting that despite being a kid before who loved Chess from the bottom of my heart, spent so much time on it, and really wanted to improve, I never let myself go through the process. As an adult now, I know that intractable problems are best faced the way you kill a cancer: you take shots at it from all different angles and there usually isn't just one solution, it's a lot of different actions you take and the solution itself is kind of a black box where you don't actually know what will work, but you're just aiming for a critical mass of effective actions until something clicks and unlocks. So I always knew the books were out there. I always knew the annotated games were out there. And man, I loved to read books more than any other kid alive. But I never let myself read them because I was always trying to 'figure out' the process rather than going through it. Whereas someone who just picked up resources here and there and went through them without overthinking what might actually work, would have built up that critical mass and unlocked real insight, because reading a bunch of books would have eventually patterned their mind to how real analysis is done, even if they weren't necessarily training in the most optimal way. That is what IM Erik Kislik did, he spent a season of his life combing through a ton of Chess books. I don't think that was objectively optimal at all, and I remember GM Debashis Das saying he only read the words for annotated games and not all the side analysis (which was usually there for the author themself, not the reader) but at least both the IM and GM did go through the books in their own way, to build that critical mass of actions taken until something clicked for them. Rather than sitting on this arm chair at age 33 on this side of the actions not taken and realizing I should have just let myself have fun with the process and do whatever the fuck I wanted to do, because that would have been better than overthinking and not doing anything at all. But I also don't blame myself, it wasn't for lack of ability or anything, there was just a lot of influence in my early life that immobilized me in that way, and sometimes you need role models to inspire a more courageous and action-oriented approach to life and I didn't have any.