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jelo-amie Find out your CHESS PERSONALITY and post it here after going to this site www.chesspersonality.com Heres mine (accdg to the survey) http://www.chesspersonality.com/type/mad-scientist 4 weeks ago · Quote · Edit · Delete · #2 jelo-amie Mad Scientists believe in justice and principles in chess, and use passion and calculating ability to prove their beliefs. The Mad Scientist is capable of carrying out brilliant attacks, but will only do so when he believes it is the right way - he won't normally play speculatively. More often that not the Mad Scientist is the one facing an attack, and he is willing to do that if he believes the attack is not objectively correct. Mad Scientists are also experimenters, trying different ways to expand the horizons in chess. Wilhelm Steinitz is a Mad Scientist Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900), the first World Champion, was a Mad Scientist. Beginning as an attacking player specializing in gambits (as was the style at the time), Steinitz eventually realized that chess obeys certain rules and principles, and that a player - regardless of how brilliant - could not circumvent those rules and force through a winning combination if his game was not well-founded. Steinitz's style changed into a positional and defensive one, in which he often accepted extremely passive positions to defend his theories, but also showed that brilliant results could be produced. His contemporaries initially didn't understand his play, seeing it as bizarre or even cowardly, but later his principles were accepted, and he is regarded as the father of modern chess theory.

Great job som. congrats, AKA, MUHAMMED ABDIRAHIM NUSUF INTER VARSITY GAMES 2013- OPEN CATEGORY U.C.U MUKONO 2nd place on board 1 Last update 19.12.2013 15:12:20, Creator/Last Upload: stephen kisuze Links Official Homepage of the Organizer, Link with tournament calendar Parameterselection show tournament-details Lists Ranking crosstable, Rank table, Starting rank list of players, Alphabetical list of players, Time-table Team-Composition with round-results, Team-Composition without round-results, Team-Pairings of all rounds Board Pairings Rd.1, Rd.2, Rd.3, Rd.4, Rd.5, Rd.6, Rd.7, Rd.8, Rd.9 The best players according Points, according percent The best player per board according Points, according percent Excel and Print Print list, Export to Excel, Export to PDF-File The best player per board: according Points The minimum required number of games: 60% Board 1 Rk. Name Rtg Team Pts. % Games 1 MATHIAS SSONKO 1900 KYAMBOGO UNIVERSITY 5.5 91.7 6 2 MUHAMMED ABDIRAHIM 1900 MAKERERE UNIVERSITY 5.0 71.4 7 3 HARUNA NSUBUGA 1900 K.I.U 4.5 64.3 7 4 EMMANUEL BEWAYO 1900 NKUMBA UNIVERSITY 3.5 43.8 8 5 TIMOTHY KIRABO TUMUHAIRWE 1900 BUSITEMA UNIVERSITY 2.5 35.7 7 6 ROBERT ODONGO 1900 M.U.S.T 2.0 25.0 8 7 PETER ASIZU 1900 U.C.U. MUKONO 1.0 16.7 6

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I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse! (1982) pamphlet. Under Fischer's name There have been numerous books, in many languages, that list Fischer as the author or as endorsing the book. One of these is the 1972 book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess with Donn Mosenfelder and Stuart Margulies. The book uses programmed learning to help beginners learn how to see elementary chess combinations. Although Fischer allowed his name to be used, he had little involvement with the writing of the book. Tournament and match summaries Donald Byrne–Fischer, New York 1956, Grünfeld, 5.Bf4 (D92), 0–1 "The Game of the Century". At just 13 years old, Fischer played in a bold tactical style. Robert Byrne–Fischer, 1963–64 U.S. Championship, Neo-Grünfeld 0–1 annotated From an almost symmetrical position, Fischer as Black beats a strong grandmaster in just 21 moves—"a game that was immediately recognized as an all-time classic". Fischer–Tigran Petrosian, Buenos Aires Candidates Final 1971, 7th match game, Sicilian Defense: Kan. Modern Variation (B42), 1–0 Even Petrosian, the master of defense, was not able to bear the pressure of Fischer's rooks. Fischer–Boris Spassky, World Championship 1972, 6th match game, Queen's Gambit Declined, Tartakower (D59), 1–0 One of the most admired and important games of the match. Boris Spassky-Fischer, World Championship 1972, 13th match game, Alekhine Defense: Modern, Alburt Variation (B04), 0-1 Botvinnik called this game "the highest creative achievement of Fischer". He resolved a drawish opposite-colored bishops endgame by sacrificing his bishop and trapping his own rook. "Then five passed pawns struggled with the white rook. Nothing similar had been seen before in chess".

Olympiads Fischer at the age of 17 playing against 23-year-old World Champion Mikhail Tal in Leipzig Fischer refused to play in the 1958 Munich Olympiad when his demand was turned down that he, as the reigning U.S. Champion, play first board ahead of Samuel Reshevsky. According to some sources, Fischer, then 15, was unable to arrange leave from attending high school in order to play in Munich. Yet, he represented the United States on top board with great distinction at four Olympiads: OlympiadIndividual resultU.S. team result Leipzig 1960 3/18 (Bronze)Silver Varna 1962 1/17 (Eighth)Fourth Havana 196615/17 (Silver)Silver Siegen 1970 10/13 (Silver)Fourth Fischer's overall total was +40−7=18, for 49/65 or 75.4%. In 1966, he narrowly missed the individual gold medal, scoring 88.23% to World Champion Tigran Petrosian's 88.46%. Fischer played four more games than Petrosian, faced stiffer opposition, and would have won the gold if he had accepted Florin Gheorghiu's draw offer in the penultimate round rather than declining it and suffering his only loss. Fischer had planned to play for the U.S. at the 1968 Lugano Olympiad, but backed out when he saw the poor playing conditions. In the 1962 Varna Olympiad, on the eve of the match between the U.S. and Argentine teams, Fischer boasted to his teammates that he would finish his game in 25 moves. His opponent the next day, Miguel Najdorf, opened with the Sicilian Najdorf, and resigned on move 24. 1960–61 In 1960, Fischer tied for first place with the young Soviet star Boris Spassky at the strong Mar del Plata tournament in Argentina, with the two well ahead of the rest of the field, scoring 13½/15. Fischer lost only to Spassky, and this was the start of their relationship, which began on a friendly basis and stayed that way, in spite of Fischer's troubles against him over-the-board. Fischer struggled in the later Buenos Aires tournament, finishing with 8½/19 (won by Viktor Korchnoi and Samuel Reshevsky on 13/19). This was the only real failure of Fischer's competitive career. According to Larry Evans, Fischer's first sexual experience was with a girl to whom Evans introduced him during the tournament. Pal Benko says that Fischer did horribly in the tournament "because he got caught up in women and sex. Afterwards, Fischer said he'd never mix women and chess together, and kept the promise." Fischer concluded 1960 by winning a small tournament in Reykjavík with 4½/5, and defeating Klaus Darga in an exhibition game in West Berlin. In 1961, Fischer started a 16-game match with Reshevsky, split between New York and Los Angeles. Despite Fischer's meteoric rise, the veteran Reshevsky, 32 years Fischer's senior, was considered the favorite, since he had far more match experience and had never lost a set match. After 11 games and a tie score (two wins apiece with seven draws), the match ended prematurely due to a scheduling dispute between Fischer and match organizer and sponsor Jacqueline Piatigorsky. Reshevsky was declared the winner of the match, and received the winner's share of the prize fund. Fischer was second behind former World Champion Tal at Bled 1961, which had a super-class field. He defeated Tal head-to-head for the first time, scored 3½/4 against the Soviet contingent, and finished as the only unbeaten player, with 13½/19. 1962: success, setback, accusations of collusion In the next World Championship cycle, Fischer won the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal by 2½ points, scoring an undefeated 17½/22. He was the first non-Soviet player to win an Interzonal since FIDE instituted the tournament in 1948. Russian grandmaster Alexander Kotov said of his play: I have discussed Fischer's play with Max Euwe and Gideon Stahlberg. All of us, experienced 'tournament old-timers', were surprised by Fischer's endgame expertise. When a young player is good at attacking or at combinations, this is understandable, but a faultless endgame technique at the age of 19 is something rare. I can recall only one other player who at that age was equally skillful at endgames — Vasily Smyslov. Fischer's decisive Interzonal victory made him one of the favorites for the Candidates Tournament in Curaçao, which began soon afterwards. He finished fourth out of eight with 14/27, the best result by a non-Soviet player, but well behind Tigran Petrosian (17½/27), Efim Geller, and Paul Keres (both 17/27). Tal fell very ill during the tournament, and had to withdraw before completion. Fischer, a friend of Tal, was the only contestant who visited him in the hospital. Accuses Soviets of collusion See also: World Chess Championship 1963 Following his failure in the 1962 Candidates (at which five of the eight players were from the Soviet Union), Fischer asserted in an August 1962 article in Sports Illustrated magazine, entitled The Russians Have Fixed World Chess, that three of the Soviet players (Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, and Efim Geller) had a pre-arranged agreement to quickly draw their games against each other in order to save energy and to concentrate on playing against Fischer, and that a fourth, Viktor Korchnoi, had been forced to deliberately lose games to ensure that a Soviet player won the tournament. It is generally thought that the former accusation is correct, but not the latter. Anatoly Karpov, later World Champion, wrote in his 1991 autobiography that Korchnoi had complained in the Soviet Union, shortly after the 1962 Candidates' event, about not being included in the colluding group of Soviets. Fischer also stated that he would never again participate in a Candidates' tournament, since the format, combined with the alleged collusion, made it impossible for a non-Soviet player to win. Following Fischer's article, FIDE in late 1962 voted a radical reform of the playoff system, replacing the Candidates' tournament with a format of one-on-one knockout matches; this was the format that Fischer would dominate in 1971. Fischer defeated Bent Larsen in a summer 1962 exhibition game in Copenhagen for Danish TV. He also defeated Bogdan Śliwa in a team match against Poland at Warsaw later that year. In the 1962–63 U.S. Championship, Fischer had a close call. In the first round he lost to Edmar Mednis, his first loss ever in a U.S. Championship. Bisguier was in excellent form, and Fischer caught up to him only at the end. Tied at 7–3, the two met in the last round for the championship. Bisguier stood well in the middlegame, but blundered, handing Fischer his fifth consecutive U.S. championship. Religious affiliation. In an interview in the January 1962 issue of Harper's, Fischer was quoted as saying, "I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree." Fischer's mother was Jewish. Fischer, however, disavowed having Jewish roots and joined the Worldwide Church of God in the mid-1960s. This church prescribed Saturday Sabbath, and forbade work (and competitive chess) on Sabbath. Fischer's religious obligations were respected by chess organizers, concerning scheduling of his games. Fischer contributed significant money over several years to the Worldwide Church of God. In 1972 one journalist stated that "Fischer is almost as serious about religion as he is about chess", and the champion credited his faith with greatly improving his chess. That year was a disastrous one for the Worldwide Church of God, however, as prophecies by Herbert W. Armstrong were unfulfilled, and the church was rocked by revelations of a series of sex scandals involving Garner Ted Armstrong. Fischer, who felt betrayed and swindled by the Worldwide Church of God, left it and publicly denounced it. Semi-retirement in the mid-1960s Fischer declined an invitation to play in the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Los Angeles, which had a world-class field. His decision was probably influenced by ill will over the aborted 1961 match against Reshevsky, which had been arranged by the same organizer. Instead, he played in the Western Open in Bay City, Michigan, which he won with 7½/8. In August–September 1963, he won another minor event, the New York State Championship at Poughkeepsie, with 7/7, his first perfect score. In the 1963–64 U.S. Championship, "One by one Fischer mowed down the opposition as he cut an 11–0 swathe through the field, to demonstrate convincingly to the opposition that he was now in a class by himself." This result brought Fischer heightened fame, including a profile in Life magazine. Sports Illustrated diagrammed each of the 11 games in its article, "The Amazing Victory Streak of Bobby Fischer". Such extensive chess coverage was groundbreaking for the top American sports magazine. His 11–0 win in the 1963–64 Championship is the only perfect score in the history of the tournament, and one of about ten perfect scores in high-level chess tournaments ever. David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld called it "the most remarkable achievement of this kind". Fischer recalls of the event: Motivated by my lopsided result (11–0!), Dr. Hans Kmoch congratulated Larry Evans (the runner up) on "winning" the tournament... and then he congratulated me on "winning the exhibition." Future International Master Anthony Saidy recalls his last round encounter with the undefeated (10–0 at that point) Fischer: Going into the final game I certainly did not expect to upset Fischer. I hardly knew the opening but played simply, and he went along with the scenario, opting for a N-v-B i.e., Knight vs. Bishop endgame with a minimal edge. In the corridor, Evans said to me, 'Good. Show him we're not all children.' At adjournment, Saidy saw a way to force a draw, yet "sealed a different, wrong move", and lost. "The rest is history." "Chess publications around the world wrote of the unparalleled achievement. Only Bent Larsen, always a Fischer detractor, was unimpressed: 'Fischer was playing against children,' he said. Reshevsky a child? Robert Byrne? Larry Evans? Pal Benko?" Fischer, eligible as U.S. Champion, decided not to participate in the Amsterdam Interzonal in 1964, thus taking himself out of the 1966 World Championship cycle. He held to this decision even when FIDE changed the format of the eight-player Candidates Tournament from a round-robin to a series of knockout matches, which eliminated the possibility of collusion. He instead embarked on a tour of the United States and Canada from February through May, playing a simultaneous exhibition and giving a lecture in each of more than 40 cities. His 94% winning percentage over more than 2,000 games is one of the best ever achieved. Fischer also declined an invitation to play for the U.S. in the 1964 Olympiad in Tel Aviv. Successful return Fischer wanted to play in the Capablanca Memorial Tournament, Havana in August and September 1965. The State Department, however, refused to endorse Fischer's passport as valid for visiting Cuba. Fischer instead proposed, and the tournament officials and players accepted, a unique arrangement: Fischer played his moves from a room at the Marshall Chess Club, which were then transmitted by teleprinter to Cuba. Luděk Pachman observed that Fischer "was handicapped by the longer playing session resulting from the time wasted in transmitting the moves, and that is one reason why he lost to three of his chief rivals". The tournament was an "ordeal" for Fischer, who had to endure eight-hour and sometimes even twelve-hour playing sessions. Despite this handicap, he tied for second through fourth places, with 15/21, behind former World Champion Vasily Smyslov, whom he defeated in their individual game.[232] The tournament received extensive media coverage. In December, Fischer won his seventh U.S. Championship (1965), with the score of 8½/11. Fischer began 1966 by winning the U.S. Championship for the seventh time despite losing to Robert Byrne and Reshevsky in the eighth and ninth rounds. He also reconciled with Mrs. Piatigorsky, accepting an invitation to the very strong second Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Santa Monica. Fischer began disastrously and after eight rounds was tied for last with 3/8. He then staged "the most sensational comeback in the history of grandmaster chess", scoring 7/8 in the next eight rounds. At the end, World Championship finalist Boris Spassky edged him out by a half point, scoring 11½/18 to Fischer's 11. Now aged 23, Fischer would win every match or tournament he completed for the rest of his life. In 1967, Fischer won the U.S. Championship for the eighth and final time, ceding only three draws. In March–April and August–September, he won strong tournaments at Monte Carlo (7/9) and Skopje (13½/17). In the Philippines he played a series of nine exhibition games against master opponents, winning eight and drawing one. Withdraws while leading Interzonal Fischer's win in the 1965 U.S. Championship qualified him for the next World Championship cycle. At the 1967 Sousse Interzonal, Fischer scored 8½ points in the first 10 games, to lead the field. His observance of the Worldwide Church of God's seventh-day Sabbath was honored by the organizers, but deprived Fischer of several rest days, which led to a scheduling dispute. Fischer forfeited two games in protest and later withdrew, eliminating himself from the 1969 World Championship cycle. Since Fischer had completed less than half of his scheduled games, all of his results were annulled, meaning players who had played Fischer had those games cancelled, and the scores nullified from the official tournament record. Second semi-retirement In 1968, Fischer won tournaments at Netanya (11½/13) and Vinkovci (11/13) by large margins. Fischer then stopped playing for the next 18 months, with the exception of a win against Anthony Saidy in a 1969 New York Metropolitan League team match. In 1969, Fischer released his second games collection, entitled My 60 Memorable Games, which was published by Simon & Schuster. Fischer was assisted by his friend, grandmaster Larry Evans. The book of deeply annotated games became an instant best-seller. World Champion In 1970, Fischer began a new effort to become World Champion. His dramatic march toward the title made him a household name and made chess front-page news for a time. Chess statistician Jeff Sonas observes that "for about a year, Bobby Fischer dominated his contemporaries to an extent never seen before or since."[253] He won the title in 1972, but forfeited it three years later. Road to the World Championship Bobby Fischer's scoresheet from his round 3 game against Miguel Najdorf in the 1970 Chess Olympiad in Siegen, Germany The 1969 U.S. Championship was also a zonal qualifier, with the top three finishers advancing to the Interzonal. Fischer, however, had sat out the U.S. Championship because of disagreements about the tournament's format and prize fund. Benko, one of the three qualifiers, agreed to give up his spot in the Interzonal in order to give Fischer another shot at the World Championship. "When it was suggested to Fischer that Benko was considering the gesture based on a large sum of money to be paid to him, Bobby replied that Benko would not give up his berth for money alone. It was a matter of honor." "The only condition I asked for stepping down was for Fischer to agree not to withdraw from the Interzonal or the ensuing matches should he qualify for them - and he fulfilled this condition." According to Brady, "Lombardy, who was next in line with the right to participate, was queried as to whether he would also step aside. 'I would like to play,' he answered, 'but Fischer should have the chance.'" Before the Interzonal, in March and April 1970, the world's best players competed in the USSR vs. Rest of the World match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, often referred to as "the Match of the Century". Fischer allowed Bent Larsen of Denmark to play first board for the Rest of the World team in light of Larsen's recent outstanding tournament results, even though Fischer had the higher Elo rating. The USSR team eked out a 20½–19½ victory, but on second board Fischer beat Tigran Petrosian, whom Boris Spassky had dethroned as World Champion the previous year, 3–1, winning the first two games and drawing the last two. After the USSR versus the Rest of the World Match, the unofficial World Championship of Lightning Chess (5-minute games) was held at Herceg Novi. Petrosian and Tal were considered the favorites, but Fischer overwhelmed the super-class field with 19/22 (+17−1=4), far ahead of Tal (14½), Korchnoi (14), Petrosian (13½), Bronstein (13), etc. Fischer lost only one game, to Korchnoi, who was also the only player to achieve an even score against him in the double round robin tournament. Fischer "crushed such blitz kings as Tal, Petrosian and Smyslov by a clean score". Tal marveled that, "During the entire tournament he didn't leave a single pawn en prise!", while the other players "blundered knights and bishops galore". In April–May 1970, Fischer won easily at Rovinj/Zagreb with 13/17 (+10−1=6), finishing two points ahead of a field that included such leading players as Gligorić, Hort, Korchnoi, Smyslov, and Petrosian. In July–August, he crushed the mostly grandmaster field at Buenos Aires, scoring 15/17 (+13−0=4) and winning by 3½ points. Fischer then played first board for the U.S. Team in the Siegen Olympiad in the 19th Chess Olympiad in Siegen, where he won an individual Silver medal, winning 76.9% of his games, and scoring 10/13 (+8−1=4), with his only loss being to World Champion Boris Spassky. Right after the Olympiad, he defeated Ulf Andersson in an exhibition game for the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Fischer had taken his game to a new level. The Interzonal was held in Palma de Mallorca in November and December 1970. Fischer won it with an 18½–4½ score (+15−1=7), far ahead of Larsen, Efim Geller, and Robert Hübner, who tied for second at 15–8. Fischer's 3½-point margin set a new record for an Interzonal, beating Alexander Kotov's 3-point margin at Saltsjöbaden 1952. Fischer finished the tournament with seven consecutive wins (including a final-round walkover against Oscar Panno). Setting aside the Sousse Interzonal (which Fischer withdrew from while leading), Fischer's victory gave him a string of eight consecutive first prizes in tournaments. Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik was not, however, impressed by Fischer's results, stating: "Fischer has been declared a genius. I do not agree with this... In order to rightly be declared a genius in chess, you have to defeat equal opponents by a big margin. As yet he has not done this." Despite Botvinnik's remarks, "Fischer began a miraculous year in the history of chess." In the 1971 Candidates matches, Fischer was set to play against Soviet grandmaster and concert pianist Mark Taimanov in the quarter-finals. "Their match was to begin in May 1971 in Vancouver, Canada, on the beautiful campus of the University of British Columbia." "Fischer saw himself as the firm favorite in the Taimanov match. He was not alone; the noncommunist press was of the same mind. Only Taimanov insisted that he could win, dismissing Fischer as a mere computer." Taimanov had reason to be confident. He was backed by the firm guidance of Botvinnik, who "had thoroughly analysed Fischer's record and put together a 'dossier' on him", from when he was in talks to play Fischer in a match "a couple of years earlier". But Taimanov's preparation proved insufficient for Fischer. After Fischer defeated Taimanov in the second game of the match, Taimanov asked Fischer how he managed to come up with the move 12. N1c3, to which Fischer replied "that the idea was not his—he had come across it in the monograph by the Soviet master Alexander Nikitin in a footnote." Taimanov said of this: "It is staggering that I, an expert on the Sicilian, should have missed this theoretically significant idea by my compatriot, while Fischer had uncovered it in a book in a foreign language!" Fischer beat Taimanov by the score of 6–0. "The record books showed that the only comparable achievement to the 6–0 score against Taimanov was Wilhelm Steinitz's 7–0 win against Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1876 in an era of more primitive defensive technique." Upon losing the final game of the match, Taimanov shrugged his shoulders, saying sadly to Fischer: "Well, I still have my music." As a result of his performance, Taimanov "was thrown out of the USSR team and forbidden to travel for two years. He was banned from writing articles, was deprived of his monthly stipend... [and] the authorities prohibited him from performing on the concert platform." "The crushing loss virtually ended Taimanov's chess career." Fischer was next scheduled to play against Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen. "Spassky predicted a tight struggle: 'Larsen is a little stronger in spirit.'" Before the match, Botvinnik had told a Soviet television audience: It is hard to say how their match will end, but it is clear that such an easy victory as in Vancouver [against Taimanov] will not be given to Fischer. I think Larsen has unpleasant surprises in store for him, all the more since having dealt with Taimanov thus, Fischer will want to do just the same to Larsen and this is impossible. Fischer beat Larsen by the score of 6–0. Robert Byrne writes: "It is out of the question for me to explain how Bobby, how anyone, could win six games in a row from such a genius of the game as Bent Larsen". Just a year before, Larsen had played first board for the Rest of the World team ahead of Fischer, and had handed Fischer his only loss at the Interzonal. Garry Kasparov later wrote that no player had ever shown a superiority over his rivals comparable to Fischer's "incredible" 12–0 score in the two matches. Chess statistician Sonas concludes that the victory over Larsen gave Fischer the "highest single-match performance rating ever". In August 1971, while preparing for his last Candidates match with former World Champion Tigran Petrosian, Fischer played a strong lightning event at the Manhattan Chess Club, winning with a score of 21½/22. "Reporters asked Petrosian whether the match would last the full twelve games... 'It might be possible that I win it earlier,' Petrosian replied," and then stated: "Fischer's [nineteen consecutive] wins do not impress me. He is a great chess player but no genius." Petrosian played a strong theoretical novelty in the first game, gaining the advantage, but Fischer eventually won the game after Petrosian faltered. This gave Fischer a run of 20 consecutive wins against the world's top players (in the Interzonal and Candidates matches), a winning streak topped only by Steinitz's 25 straight wins in 1873–82. Petrosian won the second game, finally snapping Fischer's streak. After three consecutive draws, Fischer swept the next four games to win the match 6½–2½ (+5−1=3). Sports Illustrated ran an article on the match, highlighting Fischer's domination of Petrosian as being due to Petrosian's outdated system of preparation: Fischer's recent record raises the distinct possibility that he has made a breakthrough in modern chess theory. His response to Petrosian's elaborately plotted 11th move in the first game is an example: Russian experts had worked on the variation for weeks, yet when it was thrown at Fischer suddenly, he faced its consequences alone and won by applying simple, classic principles. Upon completion of the match, Petrosian remarked: "After the sixth game Fischer really did become a genius. I on the other hand, either had a breakdown or was tired, or something else happened, but the last three games were no longer chess." Fischer's match results (against Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian) led Botvinnik to state: "It is hard to talk about Fischer's matches. Since the time that he has been playing them, miracles have begun." "When Petrosian played like Petrosian, Fischer played like a very strong grandmaster, but when Petrosian began making mistakes, Fischer was transformed into a genius." 1971 CandidatesFinal scoreLocationMonth Fischer–Taimanov6–0 (+6−0=0)VancouverMay Fischer–Larsen6–0 (+6−0=0)DenverJuly Fischer–Petrosian6½–2½ (+5−1=3)Buenos AiresSep.–Oct. Fischer's results gave him a far higher rating than any player in history up to that time. On the July 1972 FIDE rating list, his Elo rating of 2785 was 125 points ahead of Spassky, the second-highest rated player at 2660. Shortly after the Petrosian match, Fischer appeared on the cover of Life magazine. The final match victory allowed Fischer to challenge World Champion Boris Spassky, whom he had never beaten (+0−3=2). Despite this deficit, Petrosian warned Spassky of the 'new' Fischer: I must warn Spassky that Fischer is armed with all the new ideas in chess. As soon as Fischer gains even the slightest advantage, he begins playing like a machine. You cannot hope for some mistake. Fischer is a quite extraordinary player. World Championship match World Chess Championship 1972 Fischer in 1972 Fischer's career-long stubbornness about match and tournament conditions was again seen in the run-up to his match with Spassky. Of the possible sites, Fischer's first choice was Belgrade, Yugoslavia, while Spassky's was Reykjavík, Iceland. For a time it appeared that the dispute would be resolved by splitting the match between the two locations, but that arrangement fell through. After that issue was resolved, Fischer refused to appear in Iceland until the prize fund was increased. London financier Jim Slater donated an additional US$125,000 to the prize fund, bringing it to an unprecedented $250,000 ($1,267,825 in 2009), and Fischer finally agreed to play. Before and during the match, Fischer paid special attention to his physical training and fitness, which was a relatively novel approach for top chess players at that time. He had developed his tennis skills to a good level, and played frequently during off-days in Reykjavík. He also had arranged for exclusive use of his hotel's swimming pool during specified hours, and swam for extended periods, usually late at night. According to Soviet grandmaster Nikolai Krogius, Fischer "was paying great attention to sport, and that he was swimming and even boxing..." The match took place in Reykjavík from July through September 1972. Fischer lost the first two games in strange fashion: the first when he played a risky pawn-grab in a drawn endgame, the second by forfeit when he refused to play the game in a dispute over playing conditions. Fischer would likely have forfeited the entire match, but Spassky, not wanting to win by default, yielded to Fischer's demands to move the next game to a back room, away from the cameras whose presence had upset Fischer. After that game, the match was moved back to the stage and proceeded without further serious incident. Fischer won seven of the next 19 games, losing only one and drawing eleven, to win the match 12½–8½ and become the 11th World Chess Champion. The Cold War trappings made the match a media sensation. It was called "The Match of the Century", and received front-page media coverage in the United States and around the world. Fischer's win was an American victory in a field that Soviet players had dominated for the past quarter-century—players closely identified with, and subsidized by, the Soviet state. Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman calls Fischer's victory "the story of a lonely hero who overcomes an entire empire". Fischer became an instant celebrity. Upon his return to New York, a Bobby Fischer Day was held, and he was cheered by thousands of fans, a unique display in American chess. He was offered numerous product endorsement offers worth "at least $5 million" (all of which he declined) and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. With American Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz, he also appeared on a Bob Hope TV special. Membership in the U.S. Chess Federation doubled in 1972 and peaked in 1974; in American chess, these years are commonly referred to as the "Fischer Boom". Fischer also won the 'Chess Oscar' award for 1970, 1971, and 1972. This award, started in 1967, is determined through votes from chess media and leading players. Forfeiture of title Fischer was scheduled to defend his title in 1975. Anatoly Karpov eventually emerged as his challenger, having defeated Spassky in an earlier Candidates match. Fischer, who had played no competitive games since his World Championship match with Spassky, laid out a proposal for the match in September 1973, in consultation with a FIDE official, Fred Cramer. He made three principal demands: The match continues until one player wins 10 games, draws not counting. No limit to the total number of games played. In case of a 9–9 score, the champion (Fischer) retains the title, and the prize fund is split equally. A FIDE Congress was held in 1974 during the Nice Olympiad. The delegates voted in favor of Fischer's 10-win proposal, but rejected his other two proposals, and limited the number of games in the match to 36. In response to FIDE's ruling, Fischer sent a cable to Euwe on June 27, 1974: As I made clear in my telegram to the FIDE delegates, the match conditions I proposed were non-negotiable. Mr. Cramer informs me that the rules of the winner being the first player to win ten games, draws not counting, unlimited number of games and if nine wins to nine match is drawn with champion regaining title and prize fund split equally were rejected by the FIDE delegates. By so doing FIDE has decided against my participation in the 1975 World Chess Championship. Therefore, I resign my FIDE World Chess Championship title. Sincerely, Bobby Fischer. The delegates responded by reaffirming their prior decisions, but did not accept Fischer's resignation and requested that he reconsider. Many observers considered Fischer's requested 9–9 clause unfair because it would require the challenger to win by at least two games (10–8). Botvinnik (who had benefited from both draw odds and the right to an automatic rematch while champion) called the 9–9 clause "unsporting". Korchnoi, David Bronstein, and Lev Alburt considered the 9–9 clause reasonable, and Korchnoi and Alburt observed that Karpov, in later securing the right to a rematch if he lost the World Championship, was given a greater advantage by FIDE than Fischer had asked for. Over two matches, Korchnoi was required to beat Karpov by at least 6–5 and 6–5: an aggregate score of +2 and a minimum win requirement +2 greater than Karpov would have needed in 1975. This scenario nearly materialised since the 1978 match was tied 5–5 after 31 games before Karpov won the 32nd game. Korchnoi could in theory have won 6–0 in the first match and lost 5–6 in the second, with an aggregate win total of 11 games to Karpov's 6. Recognising this, FIDE president Euwe proposed that the champion should only have a rematch in the event he lost 5–6 but Karpov rejected this proposal. In a letter to Larry Evans, published in Chess Life in November 1974, Fischer claimed the usual system (24 games with the first player to get 12½ points winning, or the champion retaining his title in the event of a 12–12 tie) encouraged the player in the lead to draw games, which he regarded as bad for chess. Not counting draws would be "an accurate test of who is the world's best player". Former U.S. Champion Arnold Denker, who was in contact with Fischer during the negotiations with FIDE, claimed that Fischer wanted a long match to be able to play himself into shape after a three-year layoff. Due to the continued efforts of U.S. Chess Association officials, a special FIDE Congress was held in March 1975 in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands in which it was accepted that the match should be of unlimited duration, but the 9–9 clause was once again rejected, by a narrow margin of 35 votes to 32. FIDE set a deadline of April 1, 1975, for Fischer and Karpov to confirm their participation in the match. No reply was received from Fischer by April 3 and Karpov officially became World Champion by default. In his 1991 autobiography, Karpov expressed profound regret that the match did not take place, and claimed that the lost opportunity to challenge Fischer held back his own chess development. Karpov met with Fischer several times after 1975, in friendly but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to arrange a match. Brian Carney opined in The Wall Street Journal that Fischer's victory over Spassky in 1972 left him nothing to prove, except that perhaps someone could someday beat him, and he was not interested in the risk of losing. And that Fischer's refusal to recognize peers also allowed his paranoia to flower: "The world championship he won ... validated his view of himself as a chess player, but it also insulated him from the humanizing influences of the world around him. He descended into what can only be considered a kind of madness." Sudden obscurity. After the World Championship in 1972, Fischer virtually retired from chess: he did not play a competitive game in public for nearly 20 years. In 1977, he played three games in Cambridge, Massachusetts against the MIT Greenblatt computer program, winning all of them. On May 26, 1981, a police patrolman arrested Fischer while he was walking in Pasadena, saying that he matched the description of a man who had just committed a bank robbery in that area. Fischer stated that he was slightly injured during the arrest. He was then held for two days and—according to Fischer—was subjected to assault and various other types of serious mistreatment during that time. He was then released on $1000 bail. After being released, Fischer published a 14-page pamphlet detailing his alleged experiences and saying that his arrest had been "a frame up and set up". In 1981, Bobby Fischer stayed at the home of grandmaster Peter Biyiasas, where he beat Biyiasas 17 straight speed games before Biyiasas finally surrendered. "He was too good," Biyiasas says." In an interview with Sports Illustrated reporter William Nack, Biyiasas elaborated on his seventeen games with Fischer: He was too good. There was no use in playing him. It wasn't interesting. I was getting beaten, and it wasn't clear to me why. It wasn't like I made this mistake or that mistake. It was like I was being gradually outplayed, from the start. He wasn't taking any time to think. The most depressing thing about it is that I wasn't even getting out of the middle game to an endgame. I don't ever remember an endgame. He honestly believes there is no one for him to play, no one worthy of him. I played him, and I can attest to that. It's not interesting. 1992 Spassky rematch. Main article: Fischer–Spassky (1992 match) After twenty years, Fischer emerged from isolation to play Spassky (then tied for 96th–102nd on the FIDE rating list) to a "Revenge Match of the 20th century" in 1992. This match took place in Sveti Stefan and Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in spite of a United Nations embargo that included sanctions on sporting events. Fischer demanded that the organizers bill the match as "The World Chess Championship", although Garry Kasparov was the recognized FIDE World Champion. Fischer insisted he was still the true World Champion, and that for all the games in the FIDE-sanctioned World Championship matches, involving Karpov, Korchnoi, and Kasparov, the outcomes had been pre-arranged. The purse for Fischer's rematch with Spassky was US$5 million, with $3.35 million of that to go to the winner. According to GM Andrew Soltis: The match games were of a fairly high quality, particularly when compared with Kasparov's championship matches of 1993, 1995 and 2000, for example. Yet the games also reminded many fans of how out of place Fischer was in 1992. He was still playing the openings of a previous generation. He was, moreover, the only strong player in the world who didn't trust computers and wasn't surrounded by seconds and supplicants. Fischer won the match, 10 wins to 5 losses, with 15 draws. Kasparov reportedly said, "Bobby is playing OK, nothing more. Maybe his strength is 2600 or 2650. It wouldn't be close between us." Fischer never played any competitive games afterwards. Fischer and Spassky gave a total of ten press conferences during the match. Yasser Seirawan wrote, "After September 23 , I threw most of what I'd ever read about Bobby out of my head. Sheer garbage. Bobby is the most misunderstood, misquoted celebrity walking the face of the earth."Seirawan wrote that Fischer was not camera shy, smiled and laughed easily, was "a fine wit" and "a wholly enjoyable conversationalist". The U.S. Department of the Treasury had warned Fischer beforehand that his participation was illegal, as it violated President George H. W. Bush's Executive Order 12810 that implemented United Nations Security Council Resolution 757 sanctions against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia. In response, Fischer called a conference and, in front of the international press, spat on the U.S. order forbidding him to play, announcing "This is my reply." Following the match, the Department obtained an arrest warrant against him. Fischer remained wanted by the United States government for the rest of his life and never returned to the U.S. Life as an émigré After the match with Spassky in 1992, Fischer again slid into relative obscurity. Now a fugitive from the American legal system, he intensified his vitriolic rhetoric against the U.S. For some of these years Fischer lived in Budapest, Hungary, allegedly having a relationship with young Hungarian chess master Zita Rajcsányi. He claimed to find standard chess stale and he played chess variants such as Chess960 blitz games. He visited with the Polgár family in Budapest and analyzed many games with Judit, Zsuzsa, and Zsófia Polgár. From 2000 to 2002, Fischer lived in Baguio City in the Philippines. He resided in the same compound as the Filipino grandmaster Eugenio Torre, a close friend who acted as his second during his 1992 match with Spassky. Torre introduced Fischer to a 22-year-old woman named Marilyn Young. On May 21, 2001 Marilyn Young gave birth to a daughter named Jinky Young. Her mother claimed that Jinky was Fischer's daughter, citing as evidence Jinky's birth and baptismal certificates, photographs, a transaction record dated December 4, 2007 of a bank remittance by Fischer to Jinky, and Jinky's DNA through her blood samples. On the other hand, Magnús Skúlason, a friend of Fischer's, said that he was certain that Fischer was not the girl's father. On August 17, 2010 it was reported that a DNA test revealed that Jinky Young is not the daughter of Bobby Fischer. In 2001, Nigel Short wrote in The Sunday Telegraph chess column that he believed he had been secretly playing Fischer on the online chess platform Internet Chess Club in speed chess matches. Short later retracted the claim after Fischer himself denied ownership of the account. Anti-semitic statements. Fischer, whose mother was Jewish, and whose possible biological father was also Jewish, made numerous anti-Jewish statements and professed a general hatred for Jews since at least the early 1960s. Jan Hein Donner wrote that at the time of Bled 1961, "He idolized Hitler and read everything about him that he could lay his hands on. He also championed a brand of anti-semitism that could only be thought up by a mind completely cut off from reality." Donner writes that he took Fischer to a war museum, which "left a great impression, since he is not an evil person, and afterwards he was more restrained in his remarks—to me, at least." From the 1980s and thereafter, however, Fischer's comments about Jews were a major theme in his public and private remarks. He openly denied the Holocaust, and called the United States "a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards". Although Fischer described his mother as Jewish in an article he wrote as a teenager, he later denied his Jewish ancestry.[17] In 1984, Fischer denied being a Jew in a letter to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, insisting that they remove his name and accusing them of "fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew ... to promote your religion". Between 1999 and 2006, Fischer's primary means of communicating with the public was radio interviews. He participated in at least 34 such broadcasts, mostly with radio stations in the Philippines, but also in Hungary, Iceland, Colombia, and Russia. In 1999, he gave a radio call-in interview to a station in Budapest, Hungary, during which he described himself as the "victim of an international Jewish conspiracy". In another radio interview, Fischer said that it became clear to him in 1977, after reading The Secret World Government by Count Cherep-Spiridovich, that Jewish agencies were targeting him. Fischer's sudden reemergence was apparently triggered when some of his belongings, which had been stored in a Pasadena, California storage unit, were sold by the landlord who claimed it was in response to nonpayment of rent. In 2005, some of Fischer's belongings were auctioned on eBay. In 2006, Fischer claimed that his belongings in the storage unit were worth millions of U.S. dollars. Fischer's library contained anti-semitic and white supremacist literature such as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and The White Man's Bible and Nature's Eternal Religion by Ben Klassen, founder of the Church of the Creator. A notebook written by Fischer is filled with sentiments such as "8/24/99 Death to the Jews. Just kill the Motherfuckers!" and "12/13/99 It's time to start randomly killing Jews." Anti-American and anti-Israel statements Shortly after midnight on September 12, 2001, Philippines local time (approximately four hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.), Fischer was interviewed live by Pablo Mercado on the Baguio City station of the Bombo Radyo network. Fischer stated that he was happy that the airliner attacks had happened, while expressing his view on U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, saying "I applaud the act. Look, nobody gets...no one...that the U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years". He also said "All the crimes the U.S. is committing all over the world ... This just shows, what goes around, that comes around even to the United States." Fischer also referenced the movie Seven Days in May and said he hoped for a military coup d'état in the U.S., "I hope the country will be taken over by the military, they'll close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews, execute hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders." In response, on October 28, 2001, Fischer's right to membership in the U.S. Chess Federation was permanently revoked by a unanimous 7–0 vote of the USCF's Policy Board. Fischer drafted a letter to Osama bin Laden, which began: Dear Mr. Osama bin Laden allow me to introduce myself. I am Bobby Fischer, the World Chess Champion. First of all you should know that I share your hatred of the murderous bandit state of "Israel" and its chief backer the Jew-controlled U.S.A. also know sic as the "Jewnited States" or "Israel West." We also have something else in common: We are both fugitives from the U.S. "justice" system. After Fischer's death, chess columnist Shelby Lyman said that "the anti-American stuff is explained by the fact that ... he spent the rest of his life after the match in Yugoslavia fleeing the U.S., because he was afraid of being extradited." In Bobby Fischer: The Wandering King, authors IM Hans Böhm and Kees Jongkind write that Fischer's radio broadcasts show that he was "out of his mind ... a victim of his own mental illness". Detention in Japan. Fischer lived for a time in Japan. On July 13, 2004, acting in response to a letter from U.S. officials, he was arrested by Japanese immigration authorities at Narita International Airport near Tokyo for allegedly using a revoked U.S. passport while trying to board a Japan Airlines flight to Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Philippines. Fischer resisted arrest, claiming to have sustained bruises, cuts and a broken tooth in the process. At the time, Fischer had a passport, originally issued in 1997 and updated in 2003 to add more pages, that according to U.S. officials had been revoked in November 2003 (due to his outstanding arrest warrant for Yugoslavia sanctions violation). Despite the outstanding arrest warrant in the U.S., Fischer said that he believed the passport was still valid. The authorities held Fischer at a custody center for 16 days before transferring him to another facility. Fischer claimed that his cell was windowless and he had not seen the light of day during that period, and that the staff had ignored his complaints about constant tobacco smoke in his cell. Tokyo-based Canadian journalist and consultant John Bosnitch set up the "Committee to Free Bobby Fischer" after meeting Fischer at Narita Airport and offering to assist him.[419] It was reported that Fischer and Miyoko Watai, the President of the Japanese Chess Association, with whom he had reportedly been living since 2000, wanted to become legally married. (It was also reported that Fischer had been living in the Philippines with Marilyn Young during the same period.) Fischer also applied for German citizenship on the grounds that his father was German. Fischer stated that he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship, and appealed to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to help him do so, though to no effect. Japan's Justice Minister rejected Fischer's request for asylum and ordered him deported. Asylum in Iceland Seeking ways to evade deportation to the United States, Fischer wrote a letter to the government of Iceland in early January 2005 and asked for Icelandic citizenship. Sympathetic to Fischer's plight, but reluctant to grant him the full benefits of citizenship, Icelandic authorities granted him an alien's passport. When this proved insufficient for the Japanese authorities, the Althing agreed unanimously to grant Fischer full citizenship in late March for humanitarian reasons, as they felt he was being unjustly treated by the U.S. and Japanese governments, and also in recognition of his 1972 match, which had "put Iceland on the map". Shortly before his departure to Iceland, on March 23, 2005, Fischer and Bosnitch appeared briefly on the BBC World Service, via a telephone link to the Tokyo airport. Bosnitch stated that Fischer would never play traditional chess again. Fischer denounced President Bush as a criminal and Japan as a puppet of the United States. Upon his arrival in Reykjavík, Fischer was welcomed by a crowd and gave a news conference. He lived a reclusive life in Iceland, avoiding entrepreneurs and others who approached him with various proposals. On December 10, 2006, Fischer telephoned an Icelandic television station and pointed out a winning combination, missed by the players and commentators, in a chess game televised live in Iceland. Fischer moved into an apartment in the same building as his closest friend and spokesman, Garðar Sverrisson. Sverrisson's wife, Kristín Þórarinsdóttir, was a nurse and later looked after Fischer as a terminally ill patient. Garðar's two children, especially his son, were very close to Fischer. Fischer also developed a friendship with Magnús Skúlason, a psychiatrist and chess player who later recalled long discussions with Fischer about a wide variety of subjects. Death, estate dispute, and exhumation On January 17, 2008, Fischer died from degenerative renal failure at the Reykjavík hospital. He originally had a urinary tract blockage but refused surgery or medications. Magnús Skúlason reported Fischer's last words as "Nothing is as healing as the human touch." On January 21, he was buried in the small Christian cemetery of Laugardælir church, outside the town of Selfoss, 60 km southeast of Reykjavík, after a Catholic funeral presided over by Fr. Jakob Rolland of the diocese of Reykjavík. In accordance with Fischer's wishes, no one else was present except Miyoko Watai, Garðar Sverrisson, and Garðar's family.Church of Laugardælir, Fischer's resting place Fischer's estate was estimated at 140 million ISK (about 1 million GBP or US$2 million) and it quickly became the object of a legal battle involving claims from four parties with Miyoko Watai ultimately inheriting what remained of his estate after government claims. The four parties were Fischer's apparent Japanese wife Miyoko Watai, his alleged Philippine daughter Jinky Young and her mother Marilyn Young, his two American nephews Alexander and Nicholas Targ and their father Russell Targ, and the U.S. government (claiming unpaid taxes). According to a press release issued by Samuel Estimo, an attorney representing Jinky Young, the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled in December 2009 that Watai's claim of marriage to Fischer was invalidated because of her failure to present the original copy of their alleged marriage certificate. On June 16, 2010, the Court ruled in favor of a petition on behalf of Jinky Young to have Bobby Fischer's remains exhumed. This was performed on July 5, 2010 in the presence of a doctor, a priest, and other officials. A DNA sample was taken and Fischer's body was then reburied. On August 17, 2010, the Court announced that from the DNA sample it was determined that Fischer was not the father of Jinky Young. On March 3, 2011, a district court in Iceland ruled that Miyoko Watai and Fischer had married on September 6, 2004, and that as Fischer's widow and heir, Watai was therefore entitled to inherit his estate. Fischer's nephews were ordered to pay ISK 6.6 million (approximately $57,000) in Watai's legal costs for the dispute. Contributions to chess This section uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves. Opening theory Fischer was predictable in his use of openings and variations of those openings, but it was still difficult for opponents to exploit this limitation because his knowledge of them was so deep. As Black, he would usually play the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian defense against 1. e4 and the King's Indian Defense against 1. d4, only rarely venturing into the Nimzo-Indian Defense (1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4). As White, Fischer opened with 1. e4 almost exclusively throughout his career. On occasion he would open with 1. Nf3 or 1. d4, but these were rarities. He was a master of the Sicilian from both sides of the board and won many games as White with 1. e4 c5. The next most common defense against his 1. e4 was the Caro-Kann Defense (1. e4 c6), to which Fischer had a good record. His worst record was against the French Defense (1. e4 e6), and especially the Winawer Variation (1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4). For most of his career he maintained that the Winawer was unsound because it exposed Black's kingside, and that, in his view, "Black was trading off his good bishop with 3...Bb4 and ...Bxc3." Later on Fischer said: "I may yet be forced to admit that the Winawer is sound. But I doubt it! The defense is anti-positional and weakens the K-side." Fischer was renowned for his deep opening preparation and made numerous contributions to chess opening theory. He was one of the foremost experts on the Ruy Lopez. A line of the Exchange Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.0-0) is sometimes called the "Fischer Variation" after he successfully resurrected it at the 1966 Havana Olympiad. Fischer's lifetime score with the move 5.0-0 in tournament and match games was six wins, three draws, and no losses (83.3%). He was a recognized expert in the black side of the Najdorf Sicilian and the King's Indian Defense. He used the Grünfeld Defence and Neo-Grünfeld Defence to win his celebrated games against Donald and Robert Byrne, and played a theoretical novelty in the Grünfeld against reigning World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, refuting Botvinnik's prepared analysis over-the-board. In the Nimzo-Indian Defense, the line beginning with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 Ba6 was named for him. Fischer established the viability of the so-called Poisoned Pawn Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6). This bold queen sortie, to snatch a pawn at the expense of development, had been considered dubious, but Fischer succeeded in proving its soundness. Out of ten tournament and match games as Black in the Poisoned Pawn, Fischer won five, drew four, and lost only one, the 11th game of his 1972 match against Spassky. Following Fischer's use, the Poisoned Pawn became a respected line played by many of the world's leading players. On the white side of the Sicilian, Fischer made advances to the theory of the line beginning 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 (or e6) 6.Bc4, which has sometimes been named for him. In 1961, prompted by a loss the year before to Spassky, Fischer wrote an article entitled "A Bust to the King's Gambit" for the first issue of the American Chess Quarterly, in which he stated, "In my opinion, the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by force." Fischer recommended 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6, which has since become known as the Fischer Defense to the King's Gambit.Fischer later played the King's Gambit as White in three tournament games, preferring 3.Bc4 to 3.Nf3, winning them all. Endgame Fischer had an excellent endgame technique. International Master Jeremy Silman listed him as one of the five best endgame players, along with Emanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein, José Capablanca, and Vasily Smyslov. Silman called him a "master of bishop endings". The endgame of a rook, bishop, and pawns against a rook, knight, and pawns has sometimes been called the "Fischer Endgame" because of several instructive wins by Fischer (with the bishop), including three against Mark Taimanov in 1970 and 1971. One of the games was in the 1970 Interzonal and the other two were in their 1971 quarter-final candidates match. Fischer clock Further information: Game clock#Recent developments of digital clocks and current usage In 1988, Fischer filed for U.S. Patent 4,884,255 for a new type of digital chess clock. Fischer's clock gave each player a fixed period of time at the start of the game and then added a small increment after each completed move. The "Fischer clock" soon became standard in most major chess tournaments. The patent expired in November 2001 because of overdue maintenance fees. Fischerandom Chess Main article: Chess960 On June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fischer announced and advocated a variant of chess named Fischerandom Chess (later known as Chess960) intended to ensure that a game between players is a contest between their understandings of chess, rather than their abilities to memorize opening lines or prepare opening strategies. Fischerandom was designed to remove any advantage from the memorization of opening variations by rendering it impracticable. Fischer complained in a 2006 phoned-in call with a radio interviewer that because of the progress in openings and the memorization of opening books, the best players from history, if brought back from the dead to play today, would no longer be competitive. "Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca", he said, merely because of opening-book memorization, which Fischer disdained. "Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative." Fischer heavily disparaged chess as it was currently being played at the highest levels. Legacy Kasparov calls Fischer "perhaps the most mythologically shrouded figure in chess". Some leading players and some of Fischer's biographers have ranked him as the greatest player who ever lived. Other writers have said that he was arguably the greatest player ever, without reaching a definitive conclusion. Leonard Barden wrote, "Most experts place him the second or third best ever, behind Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov." "Referring to the future chess computer, Jim Sherwin aka: James Sherwin, an American chess player who knew Fischer well, described him as 'a prototype Deep Blue.' The Soviet analysis showed that even when faced with an unexpected position, Fischer took not longer than fifteen or twenty minutes to make his move; other grandmasters might take twice as long. Nor did Fischer appear to be governed by any psychologically predetermined system or technique." Although international ratings were just introduced in 1970, Chessmetrics has used algorithms to rank performances retrospectively and uniformly throughout chess history. According to Chessmetrics, Fischer's peak rating was 2895 in October 1971—the highest in history. His one-year peak average was 2881, in 1971, the highest of all time. His three-year peak average was 2867, from January 1971 to December 1973—the second highest ever, just behind Garry Kasparov. Chessmetrics ranked Fischer as the number one player in the world for a total of 109 different months, running (not consecutively) from February 1964 until July 1974. Fischer's great rival Mikhail Tal praised him as "the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens". American grandmaster Arthur Bisguier wrote "Robert James Fischer is one of the few people in any sphere of endeavour who has been accorded the accolade of being called a legend in his own time." Fischer biographers David Edmonds and John Eidinow wrote Faced with Fischer's extraordinary coolness, his opponents sic assurance would begin to disintegrate. A Fischer move, which at first glances looked weak, would be reassessed. It must have a deep master plan behind it, undetectable by mere mortals (more often than not they were right, it did). The U.S. grandmaster Robert Byrne labeled the phenomenon "Fischer-fear." Grandmasters would wilt, their suits would crumple, sweat would glisten on their brows, panic would overwhelm their nervous systems. Errors would creep in. Calculations would go awry. There was talk among grandmasters that Fischer hypnotized his opponents, that he undermined their intellectual powers with a dark, mystic, insidious force. Kasparov wrote that Fischer "became the detonator of an avalanche of new chess ideas, a revolutionary whose revolution is still in progress." In January 2009, reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand described him as "the greatest chess player who ever lived. He was a very special person, and I was fortunate to meet him two years ago." Serbian grandmaster Ljubomir Ljubojević called Fischer, "A man without frontiers. He didn't divide the East and the West, he brought them together in their admiration of him." German grandmaster Karsten Müller wrote: Fischer, who had taken the highest crown almost singlehandedly from the mighty, almost invincible Soviet chess empire, shook the whole world, not only the chess world, to its core. He started a chess boom not only in the United States and in the Western hemisphere, but worldwide. Teaching chess or playing chess as a career had truly become a respectable profession. After Bobby, the game was simply not the same. Fischer was a charter inductee into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C. in 1985. After routing Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian in 1971, Fischer achieved a then-record Elo rating of 2785. After beating Spassky by the score 12½–8½ in their 1972 match, his rating dropped to 2780. St. Louis philanthropist Rex Sinquefield offered a $64,000 Fischer Memorial Prize for any player who could win all nine of their games at the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship. By the fifth day of the championship, all 24 participants became ineligible for the prize, having drawn or lost at least one game. In popular culture The musical Chess, with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, tells the story of two chess champions, referred to only as "The American" and "The Russian". The musical is loosely based on the 1972 World Championship match between Fischer and Spassky. During the 1972 Fischer–Spassky match, the Soviet bard Vladimir Vysotsky wrote an ironic two-song cycle "Honor of the Chess Crown". The first song is about a rank-and-file Soviet worker's preparation for the match with Fischer; the second is about the game. Many expressions from the songs have become catchphrases in Russian culture. The 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer uses Fischer's name in the title even though the film is actually about the life of Joshua Waitzkin. Outside of the United States, it was released as Innocent Moves. The title refers to the search for Fischer's successor after his disappearance from competitive chess, and for a talent like Fischer's in the author's chess-playing son. Fischer never saw the film and complained bitterly that it was an invasion of his privacy by using his name without his permission. Fischer never received any compensation from the film, calling it "a monumental swindle". Bobby Fischer is mentioned in Milan Kundera's novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. A 2005 episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, "Gone" is based on Bobby Fischer. Writings Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1959). ISBN 0-923891-46-3. An early collection of 34 lightly annotated games including the "Game of the Century" against Donald Byrne. "A Bust to the King's Gambit" (American Chess Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer 1961), pp. 3–9). "The Russians Have Fixed World Chess" (Sports Illustrated magazine, August 1962). This is the controversial article in which Fischer asserted that several of the Soviet players in the 1962 Curaçao Candidates' tournament had colluded with one another. "The Ten Greatest Masters in History" (Chessworld, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January–February 1964), pp. 56–61). An article in which Fischer named Paul Morphy, Howard Staunton, Wilhelm Steinitz, Siegbert Tarrasch, Mikhail Chigorin, Alexander Alekhine, José Raúl Capablanca, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, and Samuel Reshevsky as the best players of all time. "Checkmate" column from December 1966 to December 1969 in Boys' Life, assumed later by Larry Evans. My 60 Memorable Games (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969, and Faber and Faber, London, 1969; Batsford 2008 (algebraic notation)). "A classic of painstaking and objective analysis that modestly includes three of his losses

Robert James "Bobby" Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess prodigy, grandmaster, and the eleventh World Chess Champion. He is considered by many to be the greatest chess player who ever lived. At age 13, Fischer won a "brilliancy" that became known as The Game of the Century. Starting at age 14, he played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a point. At the age of 15 years, 6 months and 1 day, he became both the youngest grandmaster and the youngest candidate for the World Championship up to that time. He won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship with 11/11, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. He was then 20 years old. His book My 60 Memorable Games, published in 1969, remains a revered work in all chess literature. In the early 1970s he became one of the most dominant players in history—winning the 1970 Interzonal by a record 3½-point margin and winning 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps in the Candidates Matches. He became the first official World Chess Federation (FIDE) number one ranked player in July 1971, and spent 54 total months at number one. In 1972, he captured the World Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation. The match, held in Reykjavík, Iceland, attracted more worldwide interest and publicity than any chess match before or since. In 1975, Fischer declined to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE over one of the conditions for the match. Afterward, Fischer became a recluse, disappearing from the public eye until 1992, when he won an unofficial rematch against Spassky. The competition was held in Yugoslavia, which was under a United Nations embargo at the time. This led to a conflict with the U.S. government, which also sought income tax on his match winnings. Fischer never returned to his homeland, thus becoming a fugitive. In the 1990s, Fischer proposed a new variant of chess as well as a modified chess timing system. His idea of adding a time increment after each move is now standard practice in top tournament and match play, and his variant Chess960 is gaining in popularity. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Fischer lived in Hungary, Germany, the Philippines, Japan, and Iceland. During this time he made increasingly anti-American and anti-semitic statements on various radio stations. His U.S. passport was revoked, and he was subsequently detained by Japanese authorities for nine months in 2004 and 2005 under threat of deportation. In March 2005, Iceland granted Fischer full citizenship, and Japanese authorities released him to Iceland, where he lived until his death in 2008. Contents 1 Early years 1.1 Paul Nemenyi as Fischer's father 1.2 Chess beginnings 1.3 The Hawthorne Chess Club 2 Young champion 2.1 Wins first U.S. title 3 Grandmaster, candidate, author 3.1 Drops out of school 4 U.S. Championships 5 Olympiads 6 1960–61 7 1962: success, setback, accusations of collusion 7.1 Accuses Soviets of collusion 8 Religious affiliation 9 Semi-retirement in the mid-1960s 10 Successful return 10.1 Withdraws while leading Interzonal 10.2 Second semi-retirement 11 World Champion 11.1 Road to the World Championship 11.2 World Championship match 11.3 Forfeiture of title 12 Sudden obscurity 13 1992 Spassky rematch 14 Life as an émigré 14.1 Anti-semitic statements 14.2 Anti-American and anti-Israel statements 14.3 Detention in Japan 14.4 Asylum in Iceland 15 Death, estate dispute, and exhumation 16 Contributions to chess 16.1 Opening theory 16.2 Endgame 16.3 Fischer clock 16.4 Fischerandom Chess 16.5 Legacy 17 In popular culture 18 Writings 18.1 Under Fischer's name 19 Tournament and match summaries 19.1 Tournaments 19.2 Matches 19.3 Team events 20 Notable games 21 References 22 Further reading 23 External links Early years Bobby Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on March 9, 1943. His birth certificate listed his father as Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, also known as Gerardo Liebscher, a German biophysicist. His mother, Regina Wender Fischer, was an American citizen of Polish-Russian Jewish descent, born in Switzerland and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She later became a teacher, a registered nurse, and then a physician. After graduating college in her teens, Regina traveled to Germany to visit her brother. It was there that she was hired by Hermann Joseph Muller, a geneticist and future Nobel Prize winner, who persuaded Regina to move to Moscow and enroll at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University to study medicine. It was there that Regina met and married Hans-Gerhardt in November 1933. They had a daughter, Joan Fischer, and lived in Moscow until 1938, when the anti-semitism that was spreading under Joseph Stalin forced Regina to leave school and move to Paris, France, with Joan in tow. While in Paris, Regina became an English teacher for a short time, until the threat of a German invasion of France led her to flee with Joan to the United States in 1939. Hans-Gerhardt tried to follow Regina and Joan, but was prevented from entering the United States because he was a German citizen. As it turned out, Hans-Gerhardt never did come to the United States. In fact, Regina and Hans-Gerhardt had separated in Moscow (although they did not officially divorce until 1945). As a result, Regina was a single parent, raising Bobby along with his elder sister, Joan. Regina lived an itinerant life, shuttling between different jobs and schools all over the country, and engaging in political activism. In 1948, the family moved to Mobile, Arizona, where Regina taught in an elementary school. The following year they moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse. Paul Nemenyi as Fischer's father Sources implying that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish physicist (an expert in fluid and applied mechanics) may have been Fischer's biological father, were first made public in a 2002 investigation by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer. During the 1950s, the FBI investigated Regina and her circle for her alleged communist sympathies and her previous life in Moscow. The files from that FBI investigation into the family identify Nemenyi as Bobby's biological father. Government documents show that Hans-Gerhardt Fischer never entered the United States, having been refused admission by U.S. immigration officials because of alleged Communist sympathies. Regina and Nemenyi were reported to have had an affair in 1942. Additionally, Paul Nemenyi made monthly child support payments to her, and paid for Fischer's schooling until his own death in 1952. Nemenyi also lodged complaints with social workers saying he was concerned about the way that Regina was raising the child, on one occasion breaking down in tears when making the complaints. Separately, Bobby later told the Hungarian chess player Zita Rajcsanyi that Paul Nemenyi would sometimes show up at the family's Brooklyn apartment and take him on outings. After Paul Nemenyi died, in 1952, Regina Fischer wrote a letter to Paul Nemenyi's first son (Peter), asking if Paul had left money for Bobby in his will: "Bobby was sick 2 days with fever and sore throat and of course a doctor or medicine was out of the question. I don't think Paul would have wanted to leave Bobby this way and would ask you most urgently to let me know if Paul left anything for Bobby." Regina also told a social worker that the last time she had ever seen Hans-Gerhardt Fischer was in 1939, four years before Bobby was born. On another occasion, she told the same social worker she had traveled to Mexico to see Hans-Gerhardt in June 1942, and that Bobby was conceived during that meeting. According to Bobby Fischer's brother-in-law, Russell Targ, who was married to Bobby's half-sister, Joan, for 40 years, Regina concealed the fact that Nemenyi was Bobby's father because she wanted to avoid the stigma of an out-of-wedlock birth. Chess beginnings In May 1949, the six-year-old Bobby, and his sister Joan, learned how to play chess using the instructions from a chess set bought at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment. When Joan lost interest in chess and Regina didn't have time to play, it left Fischer to play many of his first games against himself. When the family vacationed at Patchogue, Long Island that summer, Bobby found a book of old chess games, and studied it intensely. On November 14, 1950, his mother sent a postcard to the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, seeking to place an ad, inquiring whether other children of Bobby's age might be interested in playing chess with him. The paper rejected her ad because no one could figure out how to classify it, but forwarded her inquiry to Hermann Helms, the "Dean of American Chess", who told her that Master Max Pavey would be giving a simultaneous exhibition on January 17, 1951. Fischer played in the exhibition, losing in 15 minutes. One of the spectators was Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn Chess Club, who introduced Fischer to the club and began teaching him. Fischer attended the club regularly, intensified his interest, and gained playing strength rapidly. In the summer of 1955, the then 12-year-old Fischer joined the Manhattan Chess Club, the strongest in the country. Fischer's relationship with Nigro lasted five years, from 1951 to 1956, when Nigro moved away to Florida. Carmine Nigro introduced Fischer to future grandmaster William Lombardy, and, starting in September 1954, Lombardy began coaching Fischer in private, training him to be totally immersed in the game: "We spent hours in our sessions, simply playing over quality games", and that he "tried to instill in Bobby the secret of his own speedy rise. Eidetic Imagery and Total Immersion." Based on a 1956 game Lombardy played against Pavilias Vaitonis (in which he agreed to a draw offer after only 13 moves), he advised Fischer to play for wins, rather than draws: "Do not accept draw offers. For an ambitious and talented player, accepting a draw is death to a top result. Opponents fear an uncompromising opponent and thus make more mistakes. Act as I advise and do not copy my timidity". Lombardy would play a key part in Fischer becoming World Champion. He was Fischer's aide at Portorož where they analyzed Fischer's games. He was Bobby's second in Reykjavik, where he analyzed with Fischer, and helped keep Fischer in the match. The Hawthorne Chess Club In June 1956, Fischer began attending the "Hawthorne Chess Club", which was actually master John "Jack" W. Collins' home. For many years it was believed that Collins was Fischer's teacher and coach, even though Collins stated that he did not teach Fischer. It is now believed that Collins was Fischer's mentor, not his teacher or coach. "A mentor and a friend, Fischer played thousands of blitz and offhand games with Collins and other strong players, began studying the books in Collins' large chess library, and ate almost as many dinners at Collins' home as his own." Future grandmaster Arnold Denker was also a mentor to young Bobby, often taking him to watch the New York Rangers play hockey at Madison Square Garden. Denker wrote that Bobby enjoyed those treats and never forgot them; the two became lifelong friends. Young champion Fischer experienced a "meteoric rise" in his playing strength during 1956. On the tenth national rating list of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), published on May 20, 1956, his rating was a modest 1726, over 900 points below top-rated Samuel Reshevsky (2663). Fischer was involved with the Log Cabin Chess Club of Orange, New Jersey, which in March 1956 took him on a tour to Cuba, where he gave a 12-board simultaneous exhibition at Havana's Capablanca Chess Club, winning ten and drawing two. On this tour the club played a series of matches against other clubs. Fischer played on second board, behind strong master Norman Whitaker. Whitaker and Fischer were the leading scorers for the club, each scoring 5½ points out of 7 games. In July 1956, Fischer won the U.S. Junior Chess Championship, scoring 8½/10 at Philadelphia to become the youngest-ever Junior Champion at age 13, a record that still stands. In the 1956 U.S. Open Chess Championship at Oklahoma City, Fischer scored 8½/12 to tie for 4th–8th places, with Arthur Bisguier winning. In the first Canadian Open Chess Championship at Montreal 1956, he scored 7/10 to tie for 8–12th places, with Larry Evans winning. In November, Fischer played in the 1956 Eastern States Open Championship in Washington DC. He tied for second with William Lombardy, Nicholas Rossolimo, and Arthur Feuerstein, with Hans Berliner taking first by a half point. Fischer accepted an invitation to play in the Third Lessing J. Rosenwald Trophy Tournament at New York City 1956, a premier tournament limited to the 12 players considered the best in the country. Fischer received entry by special consideration, since his rating was certainly not among the top 12 in the country at that stage. In that elite company, the 13-year-old Fischer could only score 4½/11, tying for 8th–9th place. This was his first truly strong round-robin event, and he achieved a creditable result, certainly above what his rating predicted. He won the first brilliancy prize for his game against Donald Byrne. Hans Kmoch christened it "The Game of the Century", writing, "The following game, a stunning masterpiece of combination play performed by a boy of 13 against a formidable opponent, matches the finest on record in the history of chess prodigies." "'The Game of the Century' has been talked about, analyzed, and admired for more than fifty years, and it will probably be a part of the canon of chess for many years to come." "In reflecting on his game a while after it occurred, Bobby was refreshingly modest: 'I just made the moves I thought were best. I was just lucky.'" In 1957, Fischer played a two-game match against former World Champion Max Euwe at New York, losing ½–1½. On the USCF's eleventh national rating list, published on May 5, 1957, Fischer was rated 2231, a master—over 500 points higher than his rating a year before. This made him at that time the country's youngest master ever. In July, Fischer successfully defended his U.S. Junior title, scoring 8½/9 at San Francisco. In August, he played in the U.S. Open Chess Championship at Cleveland, scoring 10/12 and winning on tie-breaking points over Arthur Bisguier, making Fischer the youngest U.S. Open Champion ever. He next won the New Jersey Open Championship, scoring 6½/7. Fischer then defeated the young Filipino master Rodolfo Tan Cardoso 6–2 in a New York match sponsored by Pepsi-Cola. Wins first U.S. title Based on Fischer's rating and strong results, the USCF invited him to play in the 1957–58 U.S. Championship. The tournament included such luminaries as six-time champion Samuel Reshevsky, defending champion Bisguier, and William Lombardy, who in August had won the World Junior Championship with the only perfect score (11–0) in its history. Fischer was expected to score around 50%. Bisguier predicted that Fischer would "finish slightly over the center mark". He scored eight wins and five draws to win the tournament with 10½/13, a point ahead of Reshevsky. Still two months shy of his 15th birthday, he became the youngest U.S. Champion in history—a record that still stands. Since the championship that year was also the U.S. Zonal Championship, Fischer's victory earned him the International Master title. Grandmaster, candidate, author Fischer's victory in the U.S. Championship sent his rating up to 2626, landing him second (in the United States) only to Reshevsky (2713), and qualified him to participate in the 1958 Portorož Interzonal, the next step toward challenging the World Champion. Bobby had wanted to go to Moscow for a long time, and, at his pleading, Regina Fischer requested he be invited. "In 1957, Regina wrote directly to the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, requesting an invitation for her son to participate in the World Youth and Student Festival. The reply—affirmative—came too late for him to go." Regina did not have the money to pay the air fare to send Bobby to Europe to play, but the following year, Fischer was invited onto the game show I've Got a Secret, where, thanks to Regina's efforts, the producers of the show arranged two round-trip tickets to Russia. Once in Russia, Fischer was invited by the Soviet Union to come to Moscow. "The Soviet Union had agreed to invite Bobby to Moscow, and generously pay all expenses for him and his sister..." International Master Lev Abramov served as Fischer and Joan's guide to Moscow. Upon arrival, Fischer immediately demanded that he be taken to the Moscow Central Chess Club. Upon arriving, Fischer played speed chess with "two young Soviet masters": Evgeni Vasiukov and Alexander Nikitin. Fischer won every game. "Back in 1958, in the Central Chess Club, [grandmaster] Vladimir Alatortsev saw a tall, angular 15-year-old youth, who in blitz games, crushed almost everyone who crossed his path... Alatortsev was no exception, losing all three games... On arriving home, Vladimir said in admiration to his wife: 'This is the future world champion!'" Fischer demanded that he play against then reigning World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. When he was told that this was not possible, Fischer asked to play Keres. "Finally, Tigran Petrosian was, on a semi-official basis, summoned to the club..." where he played speed games with Fischer, winning the majority. "When Bobby discovered that he wasn't going to play any formal games... he went into a not-so-silent rage." Fischer said he was fed up "with these Russian pigs", which angered the Soviets who saw Fischer as their honored guest. It was then that the Yugoslavian chess officials phoned Regina and offered to take in Fischer and his sister as early guests to the Interzonal Tournament. The officials arranged for training matches for Fischer. Fischer left Moscow, touched down in Yugoslavia, and played two short training matches against masters Dragoljub Janošević and Milan Matulović. Fischer drew both games against Janošević, and then defeated Matulović in Belgrade by 2½–1½. The top six finishers in the Interzonal would qualify for the Candidates Tournament. Most observers doubted that a 15-year-old with no international experience could finish among the six qualifiers at the Interzonal, but Fischer told journalist Miro Radoicic, "I can draw with the grandmasters, and there are half-a-dozen patzers in the tournament I reckon to beat." Despite some bumps in the road, and a problematic start, Fischer succeeded in his plan: after a strong finish, he ended up with 12/20 (+6−2=12) to tie for 5th–6th. The Soviet grandmaster Yuri Averbakh observed, "In the struggle at the board this youth, almost still a child, showed himself to be a full-fledged fighter, demonstrating amazing composure, precise calculation and devilish resourcefulness." Bronstein said of Fischer: "We had breakfast, lunch and dinner. And like that for a whole month... It was interesting for me to observe Fischer, but for a long time I couldn't understand why this 15-year-old boy played chess so well." Fischer became the youngest person ever to qualify for the Candidates. He also became the youngest grandmaster in history at 15 years and 6 months. This record stood until 1991 when it was broken by Judit Polgár. "By then everyone knew we had a genius on our hands." Before the Candidates' tournament, Fischer competed in the 1958–59 U.S. Championship (winning with 8½/11) and then in international tournaments at Mar del Plata, Santiago, and Zürich. He played unevenly in the two South American tournaments. At the strong Mar del Plata event, he finished tied for third with Borislav Ivkov, half a point behind tournament winners Ludek Pachman and Miguel Najdorf; this confirmed his status as a grandmaster. At Santiago, he tied for 4th–6th places, behind Ivkov, Pachman, and Herman Pilnik. Fischer did better at the very strong Zürich International Tournament, finishing a point behind future World Champion Mikhail Tal and half a point behind Svetozar Gligorić. Tal recalled an encounter typical of Fischer's uncompromising style: "In his game with the oldest competitor, the Hungarian grandmaster Gedeon Barcza, Fischer had no advantage, but, not wishing to let his opponent go in peace, played on to the 103rd move. The game was adjourned three times and the contestants used up two score sheets, but even when there were only the kings left on the board, Fischer made two more moves! Draw! Stunned by such a fanatical onslaught, Barcza could barely get up from his chair, but Bobby nonchalantly suggested: 'Let's have a look at the game from the beginning...' Barcza then began pleading: 'Look, I have a wife and children. Who's going to support them in the event of my untimely death!'" Although Fischer had ended his formal education at age 16, he subsequently taught himself several foreign languages, to gain access to foreign chess periodicals. According to Latvian chess master Alexander Koblencs, even he and Tal could not match the commitment that Fischer had made to chess. Recalling a conversation from the tournament: "'Tell me, Bobby,' Tal continued, 'what do you think of the playing style of Larissa Volpert?' 'She's too cautious. But you have another girl, Dmitrieva. Her games do appeal to me!' Here we were left literally open-mouthed in astonishment. Misha and I have looked at thousands of games, but it never even occurred to us to study the games of our women players. How could we find the time for this?! Yet Bobby, it turns out, had found the time!" Until late 1959, Fischer "had dressed atrociously for a champion, appearing at the most august and distinguished national and international events in sweaters and corduroys". A director of the Manhattan Chess Club had once banned Fischer for not being "properly accoutered", forcing Denker to intercede to get him reinstated. Now, encouraged by Pal Benko to dress more smartly, Fischer "began buying suits from all over the world, hand-tailored and made to order". He boasted to journalist Ralph Ginzburg in 1961 that he had 17 suits, all hand-tailored, and that his shirts and shoes were also handmade. At the age of 16, Fischer finished a creditable equal fifth out of eight, the top non-Soviet player, at the Candidates Tournament held in Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1959. He scored 12½/28 but was outclassed by tournament winner Tal, who won all four of their individual games. Fischer published his first book of collected games at age 16, in 1959, entitled Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess, and published by Simon & Schuster. Drops out of school Fischer attended Erasmus Hall High School at the same time as Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond.In 1959, its student council awarded him a gold medal for his chess achievements. The same year, Fischer dropped out of high school when he turned age 16, the earliest he could legally do so. He later explained to Ralph Ginzburg, "You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time." When Fischer was 16, his mother moved out of their apartment to pursue medical training. Her friend Joan Rodker, who had met Regina when the two were "idealistic communists" living in Moscow in the 1930s, believes that Fischer resented his mother for being mostly absent as a mother, a communist activist and an admirer of the Soviet Union, and that this led to his hatred for the Soviet Union. In letters to Rodker, Fischer's mother states her desire to pursue her own "obsession" of training in medicine and writes that her son would have to live in their Brooklyn apartment without her: "It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he is probably happier that way." The apartment was on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood that had one of the highest homicide and general crime rates in New York City. Despite the alienation from her son, Regina in 1960 staged a five-hour protest in front of the White House urging President Dwight Eisenhower to send an American team to that year's chess Olympiad (set for Leipzig, East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain), and to help support the team financially. U.S. Championships Fischer played in eight U.S. Chess Championships, each held in New York City, winning every one. His margin of victory was always at least one point. His results were: U.S. Champ.ScorePlaceMarginPercentageAge 1957–195810½/13 (+8−0=5)First1 point81%14 1958–19598½/11 (+6−0=5)First1 point77%15 1959–19609/11 (+7−0=4)First1 point82%16 1960–19619/11 (+7−0=4)First2 points82%17 1962–19638/11 (+6−1=4)First1 point73%19 1963–196411/11 (+11−0=0)First2½ points100%20 19658½/11 (+8−2=1)First1 point77%22 1966–19679½/11 (+8−0=3)First2 points86%23 Fischer missed the 1961–62 Championship (he was preparing for the upcoming Interzonal), and there was no 1964–65 event. His total score was 74/90 (61 wins, 26 draws, 3 losses), with the only losses being to Edmar Mednis in the 1962–63 event, and in consecutive rounds to Samuel Reshevsky, and Robert Byrne in the 1965–66 championship. For his career, he achieved 82.2 percent in the U.S. Championship.

01 “When you see a good move, look for a better one” (Emanuel Lasker) 02 “Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty” (Dominic Lawson) 03 “The Pin is mightier than the sword” (Fred Reinfeld) 04 “We cannot resist the fascination of sacrifice, since a passion for sacrifices is part of a Chessplayer’s nature” (Rudolf Spielman) 05 “All I want to do, ever, is just play Chess” (Bobby Fischer) 06 “A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror” (Wilhelm Steinitz) 07 “The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature and the player on the other side is hidden from us” (Thomas Huxley) 08 “Adequate compensation for a sacrifice is having a sound combination leading to a winning position; adequate compensation for a blunder is having your opponent snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” (Bruce A. Moon) 09“Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation” (Max Euwe) 10“I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves” (Bobby Fischer) 11“Modern Chess is too much concerned with things like Pawn structure. Forget it, Checkmate ends the game” (Nigel Short) 12“Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events” (Benjamin Franklin) 13“Even the laziest King flees wildly in the face of a double check!” (Aaron Nimzowitsch) 14“Combinations have always been the most intriguing aspect of Chess. The masters look for them, the public applauds them, the critics praise them. It is because combinations are possible that Chess is more than a lifeless mathematical exercise. They are the poetry of the game; they are to Chess what melody is to music. They represent the triumph of mind over matter” (Reuben Fine) 15“I give 98 percent of my mental energy to Chess” Others give only 2 percent (Bobby Fischer) 16“Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders” (Savielly Tartakower) 17“Chess is no whit inferior to the violin, and we have a large number of professional violinists” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 18“Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack” (Wilhelm Steinitz) 19“The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake” (Savielly Tartakover) 20“Your body has to be in top condition. Your Chess deteriorates as your body does. You can’t separate body from mind” (Bobby Fischer) 21“Of Chess it has been said that life is not long enough for it, but that is the fault of life, not Chess” (William Ewart Napier) 22“I have added these principles to the law: get the Knights into action before both Bishops are developed” (Emanuel Lasker) 23“Life is like a game of Chess, changing with each move” (Chinese proverb) 24“You cannot play at Chess if you are kind-hearted” (French Proverb) 25“Its just you and your opponent at the board and you’re trying to prove something” (Bobby Fischer) 26“It is the aim of the modern school, not to treat every position according to one general law, but according to the principle inherent in the position” (Richard Reti) 27“The Pawns are the soul of the game” (Francois Andre Danican Philidor) 28“In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else, for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame” (Jose Raul Capablanca) 29“Without error there can be no brilliancy” (Emanuel Lasker) 30“Chess is like war on a board” (Bobby Fischer) 31“Chess is played with the mind and not with the hands!” (Renaud and Kahn) 32“Chess is mental torture” (Garry Kasparov) 33“Many have become Chess Masters, no one has become the Master of Chess” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 34“The most important feature of the Chess position is the activity of the pieces. This is absolutely fundamental in all phases of the game: Opening, Middlegame and especially Endgame. The primary constraint on a piece’s activity is the Pawn structure” (Michael Stean) 35“You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances” (Bobby Fischer) 36“Could we look into the head of a Chess player, we should see there a whole world of feelings, images, ideas, emotion and passion” (Alfred Binet) 37“Openings teach you openings. Endgames teach you chess!” (Stephan Gerzadowicz) 38“My style is somewhere between that of Tal and Petrosian” (Reshevsky) 39“Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine” (Spielmann) 40“That’s what Chess is all about. One day you give your opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one” (Bobby Fischer) 41“Some part of a mistake is always correct” (Savielly Tartakover) 42“Methodical thinking is of more use in Chess than inspiration” (C. J. S. Purdy) 43“When in doubt... play Chess!” (Tevis) 44“Who is your opponent tonight, tonight I am playing against the Black pieces” (Akiba Rubinstein) 45“I like the moment when I break a man’s ego” (Bobby Fischer) 46“Excellence at Chess is one mark of a scheming mind” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) 47“A bad day of Chess is better than any good day at work” (Anonymous) 48“Chess is the art of analysis” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 49“The mistakes are there, waiting to be made” (Savielly Tartakower) 50“There are tough players and nice guys, and I’m a tough player” (Bobby Fischer) 51“After black’s reply to 1.e4 with 1..e5, leaves him always trying to get into the game” (Howard Staunton) 52“A player surprised is half beaten” (Proverb) 53“A passed Pawn increases in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes” (Capablanca) 54“The essence of Chess is thinking about what Chess is” (David Bronstein) 55“I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it” (Bobby Fischer) 56“Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life” (Edward Morgan Foster) 57“Half the variations which are calculated in a tournament game turn out to be completely superfluous. Unfortunately, no one knows in advance which half” (Jan Tinman) 58“Chess is as much a mystery as women” (Purdy) 59“Good positions don’t win games, good moves do” (Gerald Abrahams) 60“If I win a tournament, I win it by myself. I do the playing. Nobody helps me” (Bobby Fischer) 61“What would Chess be without silly mistakes?” (Kurt Richter) 62“Before the endgame, the Gods have placed the middle game” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 63“Chess was Capablanca’s mother tongue” (Reti) 64“Alekhine is a poet who creates a work of art out of something that would hardly inspire another man to send home a picture post card” (Max Euwe) 65“Don’t even mention losing to me. I can’t stand to think of it” (Bobby Fischer) 66“During a Chess competition a Chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk” (Alexander Alekhine) 67“No one ever won a game by resigning” (Saviely Tartakower) 68“The defensive power of a pinned piece is only imaginary” (Aaron Nimzovich) 69“When the Chess game is over, the Pawn and the King go back to the same box” (Irish saying) 70“A strong memory, concentration, imagination, and a strong will is required to become a great Chess player” (Bobby Fischer) 71“Every Chess master was once a beginner” (Chernev) 72“One doesn’t have to play well, it’s enough to play better than your opponent” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 73“Chess is above all, a fight!” (Emanuel Lasker) 74“Discovered check is the dive bomber of the Chessboard” (Reuben Fine) 75“I know people who have all the will in the world, but still can’t play good Chess” (Bobby Fischer) 76“A Chess game is a dialogue, a conversation between a player and his opponent. Each move by the opponent may contain threats or be a blunder, but a player cannot defend against threats or take advantage of blunders if he does not first ask himself: What is my opponent planning after each move?” (Bruce A. Moon) 77“The hardest game to win is a won game” (Emanuel Lasker) 78“The most powerful weapon in Chess is to have the next move” (David Bronstein) 79“He who fears an isolated Queen’s Pawn should give up Chess” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 80“Different people feel differently about resigning” (Bobby Fischer) 81“Chess is not like life... it has rules!” (Mark Pasternak) 82“Why must I lose to this idiot?” (Aron Nimzovich) 83“It’s always better to sacrifice your opponent’s men” (Savielly Tartakover) 84“To avoid losing a piece, many a person has lost the game” (Savielly Tartakover) 85“All that matters on the Chessboard is good moves” (Bobby Fischer) 86“Help your pieces so they can help you” (Paul Morphy) 87“In a gambit you give up a Pawn for the sake of getting a lost game” (Samuel Standige Boden) 88“It is not enough to be a good player... you must also play well” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 89“A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it” (Wilhelm Steinitz) 90“Tactics flow from a superior position” (Bobby Fischer) 91“Later, I began to succeed in decisive games. Perhaps because I realized a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but also my opponent” (Mikhail Tal) 92“Chess is life” (Bobby Fischer) 93“Chess is a beautiful mistress” (Bent Larsen) 94“Some sacrifices are sound; the rest are mine” (Mikhail Tal) 95 “Best by test: 1. e4” (Bobby Fischer) 96“A bad plan is better than none at all” (Frank Marshall) 97 “Chess books should be used as we use glasses: to assist the sight, although some players make use of them as if they thought they conferred sight” (Jose Raul Capablanca) 98“There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine” (Mikhail Tal) 99 “Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all” (Bobby Fischer) 100“My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don’t take these things into consideration” (Bobby Fischer) 101“The combination player thinks forward; he starts from the given position, and tries the forceful moves in his mind” (Emanuel Lasker) 102 “A Chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second when you believe you have an advantage, and the third... when you know you’re going to lose!” (Savielly Tartakower) 103 “Chess demands total concentration” (Bobby Fischer) 104 “Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make people happy” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 105 “All my games are real” (Bobby Fischer) 106 “Chess is everything: art, science and sport” (Anatoly Karpov) 107 “Chess is the art which expresses the science of logic” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 108 “Not all artists are Chess players, but all Chess players are artists” (Marcel Duchamp) 109 “Chess is imagination” (David Bronstein) 110 “I’m not afraid of Spassky. The world knows I’m the best” You don’t need a match to prove it (Bobby Fischer) 111 “If cunning alone were needed to excel, women” would be the best Chess players (Albin) 112 “Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don’t have this when you play a computer. I can’t confuse it” (Judith Polgar) 113 “On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long” (Emanuel Lasker) 114 “Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponents mind” (Bobby Fischer) 115 “The passed Pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient” (Aaron Nimzovich) 116 “Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer” (Albert Einstein) 117 “Human affairs are like a Chess game: only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players” (Hung Tzu Ch’eng) 118 “The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made” (Savielly Tartakover) 119 “Via the squares on the chessboard, the Indians explain the movement of time and the age, the higher influences which control the world and the ties which link Chess with the human soul” (Al-Masudi) 120 “It is no time to be playing Chess when the house is on fire” (Italian Proverb) 121 “You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what Chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether its really a good idea and whether there are other better ideas” (Stanley Kubrick) 122 “Daring ideas are like Chess men moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) 123 “Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest ’warmth’ which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be” (Vladimir Nabokov) 124 “For surely of all the drugs in the world, Chess must be the most permanently pleasurable” (Assiac) 125 “A thorough understanding of the typical mating continuations makes the most complicated sacrificial combinations leading up to them not only not difficult, but almost a matter of course” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 126 “Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity” (Vladimir Nabokov) 127 “Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world Chess Championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility” (Richard Dawkings) 128 “The boy (then a 12 year old boy named Anatoly Karpov) doesn’t have a clue about Chess, and there’s no future at all for him in this profession” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 129 “As one by one I mowed them down, my superiority soon became apparent” (Jose Capablanca) 130 “Though most people love to look at the games of the great attacking masters, some of the most successful players in history have been the quiet positional players. They slowly grind you down by taking away your space, tying up your pieces, and leaving you with virtually nothing to do!” (Yasser Seirawan) 131 “Chess is ruthless: you’ve got to be prepared to kill people (Nigel Short) 132 “There must have been a time when men were demigods, or they could not have invented Chess” (Gustav Schenk) 133 “Chess is really ninety nine percent calculation” (Soltis) 134 “Chess is the gymnasium of the mind” (Blaise Pascal) 135 “The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess” (Benjamin Franklin) 136 “Winning isn’t everything... but losing is nothing” (Mednis) 137 “Only sissies Castle” (Rob Sillars) 138 “Look at Garry Kasparov. After he loses, invariably he wins the next game. He just kills the next guy. That’s something that we have to learn to be able to do” (Maurice Ashley) 139 “There just isn’t enough televised Chess ” (David Letterman) 140 “Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the Chess player, not the Chess piece” (Ralph Charell) 141 “Chess is a terrible game. If you have no center, your opponent has a freer position. If you do have a center, then you really have something to worry about!” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 142 “Any material change in a position must come about by mate, a capture, or a Pawn promotion” (Purdy) 143 “We don’t really know how the game was invented, though there are suspicions. As soon as we discover the culprits, we’ll let you know” (Bruce Pandolfini) 144 “The battle for the ultimate truth will never be won. And that’s why Chess is so fascinating” (Hans Kmoch) 145 “Chess makes man wiser and clear-sighted” (Vladimir Putin) 146 “I am still a victim of Chess. It has all the beauty of art and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position” (Marcel Duchamp) 147 “Blessed be the memory of him who gave the world this immortal game” (A. G. Gardiner) 148 “In the perfect Chess combination as in a first-rate short story, the whole plot and counter-plot should lead up to a striking finale, the interest not being allayed until the very last moment” (Yates and Winter) 149 “Castle early and often” (Rob Sillars) 150 “I believe that Chess possesses a magic that is also a help in advanced age. A rheumatic knee is forgotten during a game of Chess and other events can seem quite unimportant in comparison with a catastrophe on the chessboard” (Vlastimil Hort) 151 “Chess is a more highly symbolic game, but the aggressions are therefore even more frankly represented in the play. It probably began as a war game; that is, the representation of a miniature battle between the forces of two kingdoms” (Karl Meninger) 152 “No Chess Grandmaster is normal; they only differ in the extent of their madness” (Viktor Korchnoi) 153 “Chess is 99 percent tactics” (Teichmann) 154 “I’d rather have a Pawn than a finger” (Reuben Fine) 155 “Chess mastery essentially consists of analyzing” Chess positions accurately (Mikhail Botvinnik) 156 “If your opponent cannot do anything active, then don’t rush the position; instead you should let him sit there, suffer, and beg you for a draw” (Jeremy Silman) 157 “The Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem” (Marcel Duchamp) 158 “Examine moves that smite! A good eye for smites is far more important than a knowledge of strategical principles” (Purdy) 159 “Chess is like life” (Boris Spassky) 160 “If your opponent offers you a draw, try to work out why he thinks he’s worse off” (Nigel Short) 161 “Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you’re in trouble” (Stanley Kubrick) 162 “Let the perfectionist play postal” (Yasser Seirawan) 163 “If Chess is a science, it’s a most inexact one. If Chess is an art, it is too exacting to be seen as one. If Chess is a sport, it’s too esoteric. If Chess is a game, it’s too demanding to be just a game. If Chess is a mistress, she’s a demanding one. If Chess is a passion, it’s a rewarding one. If Chess is life, it’s a sad one” (Unknown) 164 “Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time” (George Bernard Shaw) 165 “You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one” (Mikhail Tal) 166 “I feel as if I were a piece in a game of Chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved” (Soren Kierkegaard) 167 “When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don’t worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen’s side” (Gary Kasparov) 168 “Man is a frivolous, a specious creature, and like a Chess player, cares more for the process of attaining his goal than for the goal itself” (Dostoyevsky) 169 “When asked, -How is that you pick better moves than your opponents?, I responded: I’m very glad you asked me that, because, as it happens, there is a very simple answer. I think up my own moves, and I make my opponent think up his” (Alexander Alekhine) 170 “Mistrust is the most necessary characteristic of the Chess player” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 171 “What is the object of playing a gambit opening?... To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 172 “Pawns: they are the soul of this game, they alone form the attack and defense” (Philidor) 173 “Chess is above all, a fight!” (Emanuel Lasker) 174 “In Chess, at least, the brave inherit the earth” (Edmar Mednis) 175 “There are two classes of men; those who are content to yield to circumstances and who play whist; those who aim to control circumstances, and who play Chess” (Mortimer Collins) 176 “The tactician must know what to do whenever something needs doing; the strategist must know what to do when nothing needs doing” (Savielly Tartakover) 177 “When you are lonely, when you feel yourself an alien in the world, play Chess. This will raise your spirits and be your counselor in war” (Aristotle) 178 All Chess players should have a hobby” (Savielly Tartakower) 179 “I played Chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes only he always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently” (Mark Twain) 180 “The tactician knows what to do when there is something to do; whereas the strategian knows what to do when there is nothing to do” (Gerald Abrahams) 181 “In Chess, just as in life, today’s bliss may be tomorrow’s poison” (Assaic) 182 “You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player” (Jose Raul Capablanca) 183 “The way he plays Chess demonstrates a man’s whole nature” (Stanley Ellin) 184 “You can only get good at Chess if you love the game” (Bobby Fischer) 185 “A man that will take back a move at Chess will pick a pocket” (Richard Fenton) 186 “Whoever sees no other aim in the game than that of giving checkmate to one’s opponent will never become a good Chess player” (Euwe) 187 “In blitz, the Knight is stronger than the Bishop” (Vlastimil Hort) 188 “Chess is a fighting game which is purely intellectual and includes chance” (Richard Reti) 189 “Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe” (Hindu proverb) 190 “Pawn endings are to Chess what putting is to golf” (Cecil Purdy) 191 “Chess opens and enriches your mind” (Saudin Robovic) 192 “The isolated Pawn casts gloom over the entire chessboard” (Aaron Nimzovich) 193 “For me, Chess is life and every game is like a new life. Every Chess player gets to live many lives in one lifetime” (Eduard Gufeld) 194 “Chess is a terrific way for kids to build self image and self esteem” (Saudin Robovic) 195 “If a ruler does not understand Chess, how can he rule over a kingdom?” (King Khusros II) 196 “Chess is a cold bath for the mind” (Sir John Simon) 197 “Becoming successful at Chess allows you to discover your own personality. That’s what I want for the kids I teach” (Saudin Robovic) 198 “Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game” (Wilhelm Steinitz) 199 “You are for me the Queen on d8 and I am the Pawn on d7!! ” (GM Eduard Gufeld) 200 “By playing at Chess then, we may learn: First: Foresight... Second: Circumspection... Third: Caution... And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favorable chance, and that of persevering in the secrets of resources” (Benjamin Franklin) 201 “I prefer to lose a really good game than to win a bad one” (David Levy) 202 “Capture of the adverse King is the ultimate but not the first object of the game” (William Steinitz) 203 “When I have White, I win because I am white; When I have Black, I win because I am Bogolyubov” (Bogolyubov) 204 “Every Pawn is a potential Queen” (James Mason) 205 “Chess is in its essence a game, in its form an art, and in its execution a science” (Baron Tassilo) 206 “No price is too great for the scalp of the enemy King” (Koblentz) 207 “In life, as in Chess, ones own Pawns block ones way. A mans very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him” (Charles Buxton) 208 “Chess is a part of culture and if a culture is declining then Chess too will decline” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 209 “A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound but leaves your opponent dazed and confused” (Rudolph Spielmann) 210 “Chess, like any creative activity, can exist only through the combined efforts of those who have creative talent, and those who have the ability to organize their creative work” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 211 “One bad move nullifies forty good ones (Horowitz) 212 “Place the contents of the Chess box in a hat, shake them up vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two feet, and you get the style of Steinitz” (H. E. Bird) 213 “I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings” (Wilhelm Steinitz) 214 “Pawns are born free, yet they are everywhere in chains” (Rick Kennedy) 215 “It is not a move, even the best move that you must seek, but a realizable plan” (Eugene Znosko-Borovsky) 216 “Those who say they understand Chess, understand nothing” (Robert Hubner) 217 “Good offense and good defense both begin with good development” (Bruce A. Moon) 218 “Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of Chess, always relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call Chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which people are always having to solve in everyday life” (Garry Kasparov) 219 “A good player is always lucky” (Jose Raul Capablanca) 220 “The sign of a great Master is his ability to win a won game quickly and painlessly” (Irving Chernev) 221 “One of these modest little moves may be more embarrassing to your opponent than the biggest threat” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 222 “Live, lose, and learn, by observing your opponent how to win” (Amber Steenbock) 223 “The older I grow, the more I value Pawns” (Keres) 224 “Everything is in a state of flux, and this includes the world of Chess” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 225 “The beauty of a move lies not in its’ appearance but in the thought behind it” (Aaron Nimzovich) 226 “My God, Bobby Fischer plays so simply” (Alexei Suetin) 227 “You need not play well - just help your opponent to play badly” (Genrikh Chepukaitis) 228 “It is difficult to play against Einstein’s theory --on his first loss to Fischer” (Mikhail Tal) 229 “The only thing Chess players have in common is Chess” (Lodewijk Prins) 230 “Bobby just drops the pieces and they fall on the right squares” (Miguel Najdorf) 231 “We must make sure that Chess will not be like a dead language, very interesting, but for a very small group” (Sytze Faber) 232 “The passion for playing Chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world” (H.G. Wells) 233 “Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money” (Benjamin Franklin) 234 “The enormous mental resilience, without which no Chess player can exist, was so much taken up by Chess that he could never free his mind of this game” (Albert Einstein) 235 “Nowadays, when you’re not a grandmaster at 14, you can forget about it” (Anand Viswanathan) 236 “Do you realize Fischer almost never has any bad pieces? He exchanges them, and the bad pieces remain with his opponents” (Yuri Balashov) 237 “It is always better to sacrifice your opponent’s men” (Savielly Tartakower) 238 “In Chess, as it is played by masters, chance is practically eliminated” (Emanuel Lasker) 239 “You know you’re going to lose. Even when I was ahead I knew I was going to lose --on playing against Fischer” (Andrew Soltis) 240 “I won’t play with you anymore. You have insulted my friend --when an opponent cursed himself for a blunder” (Miguel Najdorf) 241 “You know, comrade Pachman, I don’t enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play Chess like you” (Che Guevara) 242 “It began to feel as though you were playing against Chess itself --on playing against Robert Fischer” (Walter Shipman) 243 “Checkers is for tramps” (Paul Morphy) 244 “When you play Bobby, it is not a question if you win or lose. It is a question if you survive” (Boris Spassky) 245 “When you absolutely don’t know what to do anymore, it is time to panic” (John van der Wiel) 246 “We like to think” (Gary Kasparov) 247 “Dazzling combinations are for the many, shifting wood is for the few” (Georg Kieninger) 248 “In complicated positions, Bobby Fischer hardly had to be afraid of anybody” (Paul Keres) 249 “It was clear to me that the vulnerable point of the American Grandmaster (Bobby Fischer) was in double-edged, hanging, irrational positions, where he often failed to find a win even in a won position” (Efim Geller) 250 “I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I will play it. But totally won positions, I cannot stand them” (Hein Donner) 251 “In Fischer’s hands, a slight theoretical advantage is as good a being a Queen ahead” (Isaac Kashdan) 252 “I still hope to kill Fischer” (Boris Spassky) 253 “Is Bobby Fischer quite sane?” (Salo Flohr) 254 “Robert Fischer is a law unto himself” (Larry Evans) 255 “Fischer is under obligation to nobody” (Joseph Platz) 256 “Bobby Fischer’s current state of mind is indeed a tragedy. One of the worlds greatest Chess players - the pride and sorrow of American Chess” (Frank Brady) 257 “Fischer is an American Chess tragedy on par with Morphy and Pillsbury” (Mig Greengard) 258 “Nonsense was the last thing Fischer was interested in, as far as Chess was concerned” (Elie Agur) 259 “Fischer is the strongest player in the world. In fact, the strongest player who ever lived” (Larry Evans) 260 “If you aren’t afraid of Spassky, then I have removed the element of money” (Jim Slater) 261 “I guess a certain amount of temperament is expected of Chess geniuses” (Ron Gross) 262 “Fischer sacrificed virtually everything most of us weakies (to use his term) value, respect, and cherish, for the sake of an artful, often beautiful board game, for the ambivalent privilege of being its greatest master” (Paul Kollar) 263 “Fischer Chess play was always razor-sharp, rational and brilliant. One of the best ever” (Dave Regis) 264 “Fischer wanted to give the Russians a taste of their own medicine” (Larry Evans) 265 “With or without the title, Bobby Fischer was unquestionably the greatest player of his time” (Burt Hochberg) 266 “Fischer is completely natural. He plays no roles. He’s like a child. Very, very simple” (Zita Rajcsanyi) 267 “Spassky will not be psyched out by Fischer” (Mike Goodall) 268 “Already at 15 years of age he was a Grandmaster, a record at that time, and his battle to reach the top was the background for all the major Chess events of the 1960” (Tim Harding) 269 “Fischer, who may or may not be mad as a hatter, has every right to be horrified” (Jeremy Silman) 270 “When I asked Fischer why he had not played a certain move in our game, he replied: ‘Well, you laughed when I wrote it down!’” (Mikhail Tal) 271 “I look one move ahead... the best!” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 272 “Fischer prefers to enter Chess history alone” (Miguel Najdorf) 273 “Bobby is the most misunderstood, misquoted celebrity walking the face of this earth” (Yasser Seirawan) 274 “When you don’t know what to play, wait for an idea to come into your opponent’s mind. You may be sure that idea will be wrong” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 275 “There is no remorse like the remorse of Chess” (H. G. Wells) 276 “By this measure (on the gap between Fischer & his contemporaries), I consider him the greatest world champion” (Garry Kasparov) 277 “By the beauty of his games, the clarity of his play, and the brilliance of his ideas, Fischer made himself an artist of the same stature as Brahms, Rembrandt, and Shakespeare” (David Levy) 278 “Chess is a terrible game. If you have no center, your opponent has a freer position. If you do have a center, then you really have something to worry about!” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 279 “Many Chess players were surprised when after the game, Fischer quietly explained: ’I had already analyzed this possibility’ in a position which I thought was not possible to foresee from the opening (Mikhail Tal) 280 “Suddenly it was obvious to me in my analysis I had missed what Fischer had found with the greatest of ease at the board” (Mikhail Botvinnik) 281 “The King is a fighting piece. Use it!” (Wilhelm Steinitz) 282 “A thorough understanding of the typical mating continuations makes the most complicated sacrificial combinations leading up to them not only not difficult, but almost a matter of course” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 283 “Bobby Fischer is the greatest Chess genius of all time!” (Alexander Kotov) 284 “The laws of Chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not” (Emanuel Lasker) 285 “First-class players lose to second-class players because second-class players sometimes play a first-class game” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 286 “Bobby is the finest Chess player this country ever produced. His memory for the moves, his brilliance in dreaming up combinations, and his fierce determination to win are uncanny (John Collins) 287 “After a bad opening, there is hope for the middle game. After a bad middle game, there is hope for the endgame. But once you are in the endgame, the moment of truth has arrived” (Edmar Mednis) 288 “Weak points or holes in the opponent’s position must be occupied by pieces not Pawns” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 289 “There is only one thing Fischer does in Chess without pleasure: to lose!” (Boris Spassky) 290 “Bobby Fischer is the greatest Chess player who has ever lived” (Ken Smith) 291 “Up to this point White has been following well-known analysis. But now he makes a fatal error: he begins to use his own head” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 292 “Fischer was a master of clarity and a king of artful positioning. His opponents would see where he was going but were powerless to stop him” (Bruce Pandolfini) 293 “No other master has such a terrific will to win. At the board he radiates danger, and even the strongest opponents tend to freeze, like rabbits when they smell a panther. Even his weaknesses are dangerous. As white, his opening game is predictable - you can make plans against it - but so strong that your plans almost never work. In the middle game his precision and invention are fabulous, and in the end game you simply cannot beat him” (Anonymous German Expert) 294 “White lost because he failed to remember the right continuation and had to think up the moves himself” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 295 “Not only will I predict his triumph over Botvinnik, but I’ll go further and say that he’ll probably be the greatest Chess player that ever lived” (John Collins) 296 “I consider Fischer to be one of the greatest opening experts ever” (Keith Hayward) 297 “I like to say that Bobby Fischer was the greatest player ever. But what made Fischer a genius was his ability to blend an American freshness and pragmatism with Russian ideas about strategy” (Bruce Pandolfini) 298 “At this time Fischer is simply a level above all the best Chessplayers in the world” (John Jacobs) 299 “I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of Chess” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 300 “There’s never before been a Chess player with such a thorough knowledge of the intricacies of the game and such an absolutely indomitable will to win. I think Bobby is the greatest player that ever lived” (Lisa Lane) 301 “He who takes the Queen’s Knight’s Pawn will sleep in the streets (Anonymous) 302 “I had a toothache during the first game. In the second game I had a headache. In the third game it was an attack of rheumatism. In the fourth game, I wasn’t feeling well. And in the fifth game? Well, must one have to win every game?” (Siegbert Tarrasch) 303 “The stomach is an essential part of the Chess master (Bent Larsen) 304 “We must make sure that Chess will not be like a dead language, very interesting, but for a very small group” (Sytze Faber) 305 “I’m not a materialistic person, in that, I don’t suffer the lack or loss of money. The absence of worldly goods I don’t look back on. For Chess is a way I can be as materialistic as I want without having to sell my soul ” (Jamie Walter Adams) 306 “These are not pieces, they are men! For any man to walk into the line of fire will be one less man in your army to fight for you. Value every troop and use him wisely, throw him not to the dogs as he is there to serve his King ” (Jamie Walter Adams) 307 “Chess isn’t a game of speed, it is a game of speech through actions” (Matthew Selman)

Place the contents of the chess box in a hat, shake them up vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two feet - and you get the style of Steinitz. – Henry Bird I am fully and entirely concentrated on the board. I never even consider my opponent's personality. So far as I am concerned, my opponent might as well be an abstraction or an automaton. – Wilhelm Steinitz I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone's hand off if he puts it in my mouth. – Wilhelm Steinitz I play my king all over the board. I make him fight! – Wilhelm Steinitz I have never in my life played the French Defense, which is the dullest of all openings. – Wilhelm Steinitz He always sought completely original lines and didn't mind getting into cramped quarters if he thought that his position was essentially sound. – Bobby Fischer (on Steinitz) This little man has taught us all to play chess. – Adolf Schwarz (speaking of Steinitz) A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror. – Wilhelm Steinitz I shall accord to myself the honor of inscribing myself as an applicant for the American citizenship which according to law I can obtain only after five years residence in this country. And I shall yield to no one of my future countrymen in patriotism. I consider America now my real home. – Wilhelm Steinitz (in 1886) Fame, I have already. Now I need the money. – Wilhelm Steinitz No great player blundered oftener than I done. I was champion of the world for twenty-eight years because I was twenty years ahead of my time. I played on certain principles, which neither Zukertort nor anyone else of his time understood. The players of today, such as Lasker, Tarrasch, Pillsbury, Schlechter and others have adopted my principles, and as is only natural, they have improved upon what I began, and that is the whole secret of the matter. – Wilhelm Steinitz He had the reputation of being a brilliant but unsteady and untried combinational player, eminently suitable for the classification 'romantic'. – Harry Golombek (on Steinitz as a young player) I would rather die in America than live in England. I would rather lose a match in America than win one in England. I have come to the conclusion that I neither mean to die soon or to lose the match! – Wilhelm Steinitz He completely changed the game as it was played by Blackburne, Anderssen, Morphy and the other romantic heroes, and most likely he was the foundation upon which all modern chess has been built, but that did not prevent him from being the most unpopular chess player who ever lived. He had a grudge against the world, and the world returned it. – Harold Schonberg (on Steinitz) He is the so-called father of the modern school of chess; before him, the King was considered a weak piece and players set out to attack the King directly. Steinitz claimed that the King was well able to take care of itself, and ought not to be attacked until one had some other positional advantage. He understood more about the use of squares than Morphy and contributed a great deal more to chess theory. – Bobby Fischer The greatest development after age 21 was shown by Steinitz, who increased his rating by more than a full class interval. Steinitz was the deep student and fierce competitor to the end of his career. – Arpad Elo Wilhelm Steinitz was the first man to appreciate the inherent logic behind the game of chess. – William Hartston In my opinion the match with Steinitz does not have the great importance that they themselves attribute to it. For Steinitz has grown old, and the old Steinitz is no longer the Steinitz of old. – Siegbert Tarrasch (on the Lasker - Steinitz world championship match of 1894) If Steinitz continually took pains to discover combinations, the success or failure of his diligent search could not be explained by him as due to chance. Hence, he concluded that some characteristic, a quality of the given position, must exist that would indicate the success or the failure of the search before it was actually undertaken. – Emanuel Lasker This was undoubtably a chess genius, one of the greatest who has ever lived. And, which I respect in him most, he rated chess highly as an art. The struggle with him forced me to endure both minutes of intense pleasure , and periods of despondency. - Mikhail Chigorin I am not a chess historian - I myself am a piece of chess history, which no one can avoid. I will not write about myself, but I am sure that someone will write... - William Steinitz Chess is not for the faint-hearted; it absorbs a person entirely. To get to the bottom of this game, he has to give himself up into slavery. Chess is difficult, it demands work, serious reflection and zealous research. Only honest, impartial criticism leads to the goal. Unfortunately many regard the critic as an enemy, instead of seeing in him a guide to the thruth... - William Steinitz Steinitz was a thinker worthy of a seat in the halls of a university. A player, as the world believed he was, he was not; his studious temperament made that impossible; and thus he was conquered by a player and in the end little valued by the world, he died. - Emanuel Lasker It was Steinitz who was the first to establish the basic principles of general chess strategy. He was a pioneer and one of the most profound researchers into the thruth of the game, which was hidden from his contemporaries. - Jose Raul Capablanca That which Steinitz gave to the theoretical aspect of the game when he was at his best is very remote to all out home-bred chess philosophers, but with his views on Morphy, whom he tries to discredit completely, it is of course impossible to agree. - Alexander Alekhine Steinitz's book knowledge ddin't compare with Morphy's, and - where Morphy was usually content to play a book line in the opening - Steinitz was always looking for some completely original line. He understood more about the use of squares than did Morphy, and contributed a great deal more to chess theory. - Robert Fischer The significance of Steinitz's teaching is that he showed that in principle chess has a strictly-defined, logical nature. - Tigran Petrosian His teaching became a turning point in chess history: it was from Steinitz that the era of modern chess began. The contribution of the first world champion to its development is comparable with the great scientific discoveries of the 19th century. - Garry Kasparov Believing religiously in the defensive properties of his cramped, but unweakened positions, Steinitz considered it his duty to refute gambits and he would often deliberately provoke an attack against his king. - Garry Kasparov He developed complete strategic trends in the opening and the middlegame, based on his theory of accumulating small advantages. A classic example of such an innovation is his 'Steinitz Variation' in the French Defence. - Garry Kasparov Steinitz was the first to realise that chess, despite being a complicated game, obeys some common principles. Up to his time chess players understood only individual themes. - Vladimir Kramnik Steinitz was strong in practice. He had deep thoughts and imaginative ideas. For instance, he stated that the king was a strong piece, able to defend itself. This idea is really imaginative and even true in some cases but it is not a part of the classical basis of the game. - Vladimir Kramnik

Wilhelm Steinitz Country Kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Austrian Empire Born May 17, 1836 Prague, Bohemia; then part of the Austrian Empire Died August 12, 1900 (aged 64) New York City, United States World Champion 1886–94 (undisputed) Earlier dates are debated by commentators Wilhelm (later William) Steinitz (May 17, 1836 – August 12, 1900) was an Austrian and later American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier. Steinitz lost his title to Emanuel Lasker in 1894 and also lost a rematch in 1896–97. Statistical rating systems give Steinitz a rather low ranking among world champions, mainly because he took several long breaks from competitive play. However, an analysis based on one of these rating systems shows that he was one of the most dominant players in the history of the game. Steinitz was unbeaten in over 25 years of match play. Although Steinitz became "world number one" by winning in the all-out attacking style that was common in the 1860s, he unveiled in 1873 a new positional style of play and demonstrated that it was superior to the previous style. His new style was controversial and some even branded it as "cowardly", but many of Steinitz's games showed that it could also set up attacks as ferocious as those of the old school. Steinitz was also a prolific writer on chess, and defended his new ideas vigorously. The debate was so bitter and sometimes abusive that it became known as the "Ink War". By the early 1890s, Steinitz's approach was widely accepted, and the next generation of top players acknowledged their debt to him, most notably his successor as world champion, Emanuel Lasker. As a result of the "Ink War", traditional accounts of Steinitz's character depict him as ill-tempered and aggressive; but more recent research shows that he had long and friendly relationships with some players and chess organizations. Most notably from 1888 to 1889 he co-operated with the American Chess Congress in a project to define rules governing the conduct of future world championships. Steinitz was unskilled at managing money and lived in poverty all his life. Life and chess career Early stages Steinitz was born on May 17, 1836 in the Jewish ghetto of Prague (now capital of the Czech Republic; then in Bohemia, a part of the Austrian Empire). The last of a hardware retailer's thirteen sons, he learned to play chess at age 12. He began playing serious chess in his twenties, after leaving Prague to study mathematics in Vienna at the Vienna Polytechnic. He improved rapidly in the late 1850s, progressing from third place in the 1859 Vienna championship to first in 1861 with a score of 30/31. In this period he was nicknamed "the Austrian Morphy". Steinitz in 1866 Steinitz was then sent to represent Austria in the London 1862 chess tournament. He placed sixth, but his win over Augustus Mongredien was awarded the tournament's brilliancy prize. He immediately challenged the fifth-placed contestant, the Italian player Serafino Dubois, to a match, which Steinitz won (five wins, one draw, three losses). This encouraged him to turn professional, and he took up residence in London. In 1862–63 Steinitz scored a crushing win in a match with Joseph Henry Blackburne, who went on to be one of the world's top ten for 20 years but had only started playing chess two years earlier. Steinitz then beat most of the leading UK-resident players in matches: Frederic Deacon, Augustus Mongredien, Green, and Robey. This charge up the rankings had a price: in March 1863 Steinitz apologized in a letter to Ignác Kolisch for not repaying a loan, because while Steinitz had been beating Blackburne, Daniel Harrwitz had "taken over" all of Steinitz's clients at the London chess club, who had been Steinitz's main source of income. Adolf Anderssen was recognized as the world's top player until 1866, when Steinitz won a match against him. These successes established Steinitz as one of the world's top players, and he was able to arrange a match in 1866 in London against Adolf Anderssen, who was regarded as the world's strongest active player because he had won the 1851 and 1862 London International Tournaments and his one superior, Paul Morphy, had retired from competitive chess. Steinitz won with eight wins and six losses (there were no draws), but it was a hard fight; after 12 games the scores were level at 6–6, then Steinitz won the last two games. As a result of this win Steinitz was generally regarded as the world's best player. The prize money for this match was £100 to the winner (Steinitz) and £20 for the loser (Anderssen). The winner's prize was a large sum by the standards of the times, equivalent to about £57,500 in 2007's money. Steinitz won every serious match he played from 1862 until 1892 inclusive, sometimes by wide margins. In the years following his victory over Anderssen he beat Henry Bird in 1866 (seven wins, five losses, five draws) and comfortably beat Johannes Zukertort in 1872 (seven wins, four draws, one loss; Zukertort had proved himself one of the elite by beating Anderssen by a large margin in 1871). But it took longer for him to reach the top in tournament play. In the next few years he took: third place at Paris 1867 behind Ignatz Kolisch and Simon Winawer; and second places at Dundee (1868; Gustav Neumann won), and Baden-Baden 1870 chess tournament; behind Anderssen but ahead of Blackburne, Louis Paulsen and other strong players. His first victory in a strong tournament was London 1872, ahead of Blackburne and Zukertort; and the first tournament in which Steinitz finished ahead of Anderssen was Vienna 1873, when Anderssen was 55 years old. Dominance and controversies All of Steinitz's successes up to 1872 inclusive were achieved in the attack-at-all-costs "Romantic" style exemplified by Anderssen. But in the Vienna 1873 chess tournament Steinitz unveiled a new "positional" style of play which was to become the basis of modern chess. He tied for first place with Blackburne, ahead of Anderssen, Samuel Rosenthal, Paulsen and Henry Bird, and won the play-off against Blackburne. Steinitz made a shaky start but won his last 14 games in the main tournament (including 2–0 results over Paulsen, Anderssen, and Blackburne) plus the 2 play-off games – this was the start of a 25-game winning streak in serious competition. Between 1873 and 1882 Steinitz played no tournaments and only one match (a 7–0 win against Blackburne in 1876). His other games during this period were in simultaneous and blindfold exhibitions, which contributed an important part of a professional chess-player's income in those days (for example in 1887 Blackburne was paid 9 guineas for two simultaneous exhibitions and a blindfold exhibition hosted by the Teesside Chess Association; this was equivalent to about £4,800 at 2007 values). Instead Steinitz concentrated on his work as a chess journalist, notably for The Field, which was Britain's leading sports magazine. Some of Steinitz's commentaries aroused heated debates, notably from Zukertort and Leopold Hoffer in The Chess Monthly (which they founded in 1879). This "Ink War" escalated sharply in 1881, when Steinitz mercilessly criticized Hoffer's annotations of games in the 1881 Berlin Congress (won by Blackburne ahead of Zukertort). Steinitz was eager to settle the analytical debates by a second match against Zukertort, whose unwillingness to play provoked scornful comments from Steinitz. In mid-1882 James Mason, a consistently strong player, challenged Steinitz to a match, and accused Steinitz of cowardice when Steinitz insisted the issue with Zukertort should be settled first. Steinitz responded by inviting Mason to name a sufficiently high stake for a match, at least £150 per player (equivalent to about £73,000 in 2007's money), but Mason was unwilling to stake more than £100. Mason later agreed to play a match with Zukertort for a stake of £100 per player, but soon "postponed" that match, "circumstances having arisen that make it highly inconvenient for me to proceed ..." Steinitz's rival and bitter enemy Johannes Zukertort lost matches to him in 1872 and 1886. The second match made Steinitz the undisputed world champion. Steinitz's long lay-off caused some commentators to suggest that Zukertort, who had scored some notable tournament victories, should be regarded as the world chess champion. Steinitz returned to serious competitive chess in the Vienna 1882 chess tournament, which has been described as the strongest chess tournament of all time at that point. Despite a shaky start he took equal first place with Szymon Winawer, ahead of James Mason, Zukertort, George Henry Mackenzie, Blackburne, Berthold Englisch, Paulsen and Mikhail Chigorin, and drew the play-off match. While Steinitz was playing in Vienna and sending weekly reports on the tournament to The Field, there was a plot against him back in England. Just after the end of the tournament The Field published a xenophobic article that praised the efforts of the English players and those of English origin in Vienna but disparaged the victory of Steinitz and Winawer. Steinitz stopped working for The Field and was replaced by Hoffer, a close friend of Zukertort and a bitter enemy of Steinitz. Steinitz visited the USA, mainly the Philadelphia area, from December 1882 to May 1883. He was given an enthusiastic reception, played several exhibitions, many casual games, a match for stakes of £50 with a wealthy amateur, and slightly more serious matches with two New World professionals, Sellman and the Cuban champion Celso Golmayo Zúpide – the match with Golmayo was abandoned when Steinitz was leading (eight wins, one draw, one loss). His hosts even arranged a visit to New Orleans, where Paul Morphy lived. Later in 1883 Steinitz took second place in the extremely strong London 1883 chess tournament behind Zukertort, who made a brilliant start, faded at the end but finished 3 points ahead. Steinitz finished 2½ points ahead of the third-placed competitor, Blackburne. Zukertort's victory again led some commentators to suggest that Zukertort should be regarded as the world chess champion, while others said the issue could only be resolved by a match between Steinitz and Zukertort. In 1883, shortly after the London tournament, Steinitz decided to leave England and moved to New York, where he lived for the rest of his life. This did not end the "Ink War": his enemies persuaded some of the American press to publish anti-Steinitz articles, and in 1885 Steinitz founded the International Chess Magazine, which he edited until 1895. In his magazine he chronicled the lengthy negotiations for a match with Zukertort. He also managed to find supporters in other sections of the American press including Turf, Field and Farm and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, both of which reported Steinitz's offer to forgo all fees, expenses or share in the stake and make the match "a benefit performance, solely for Mr Zukertort's pecuniary profit". Eventually it was agreed that in 1886 Steinitz and Zukertort would play a match in New York, St. Louis and New Orleans, and that the victor would be the player who first won 10 games. At Steinitz's insistence the contract said it would be "for the Championship of the World". After the five games played in New York, Zukertort led by 4–1, but in the end Steinitz won decisively by 12½–7½ (ten wins, five draws, five losses). Though not yet officially an American citizen, Steinitz wanted the United States flag to be placed next to him during the match. He became a U.S. citizen on November 23, 1888, having resided for five years in New York, and changed his first name from Wilhelm to William. In 1887 the American Chess Congress started work on drawing up regulations for the future conduct of world championship contests. Steinitz actively supported this endeavor, as he thought he was becoming too old to remain world champion – he wrote in his own magazine "I know I am not fit to be the champion, and I am not likely to bear that title for ever". In 1888 Havana Chess Club offered to sponsor a match between Steinitz and whomever he would select as a worthy opponent. Steinitz nominated the Russian Mikhail Chigorin, on the condition that the invitation should not be presented as a challenge from him. There is some doubt about whether this was intended to be a match for the world championship: both Steinitz's letters and the publicity material just before the match conspicuously avoided the phrase. The proposed match was to have a maximum of 20 games, and Steinitz had said that fixed-length matches were unsuitable for world championship contests because the first player to take the lead could then play for draws; and Steinitz was at the same time supporting the American Chess Congress' world championship project. Whatever the status of the match, it was played in Havana in January to February 1889 and won by Steinitz (ten wins, one draw, six losses). The American Chess Congress' final proposal was that the winner of a tournament to be held in New York in 1889 should be regarded as world champion for the time being, but must be prepared to face a challenge from the second- or third-placed competitor within a month. Steinitz wrote that he would not play in the tournament and would not challenge the winner unless the second and third placed competitors failed to do so. The tournament was duly played, but the outcome was not quite as planned: Mikhail Chigorin and Max Weiss tied for first place; their play-off resulted in four draws and Weiss wanted to get back to his work for the Rothschild Bank. However, the third prize-winner Isidore Gunsberg was prepared to play Chigorin for the title. The match was played in Havana in 1890 and ended in a 9-9 tie. The American Chess Congress's experiment was not repeated and Steinitz's last three matches were private arrangements between the players. In 1891 the Saint Petersburg Chess Society and the Havana Chess Club offered to organize another Steinitz–Chigorin match for the world championship. Steinitz played against Chigorin in Havana in 1892 and won narrowly (ten wins, five draws, eight losses). This was his last successful match win. Final years of career Emanuel Lasker was playing Steinitz for the World Chess Championship, New York 1894 Around this time Steinitz publicly spoke of retiring, but changed his mind when Emanuel Lasker challenged him. Initially Lasker wanted to play for $5,000 a side and a match was agreed at stakes of $3,000 a side, but Steinitz agreed to a series of reductions when Lasker found it difficult to raise the money, and the final figure was $2,000 each, which was less than for some of Steinitz's earlier matches (the final combined stake of $4,000 would be worth about $495,500 at 2007 values). Although this was publicly praised as an act of sportsmanship on Steinitz's part, Steinitz may have desperately needed the money. The match was played in 1894, at venues in New York, Philadelphia and Montreal. Steinitz had previously declared he would win without doubt, so it came as a shock when Lasker won the first game. Steinitz responded by winning the second, and was able to maintain the balance until the sixth. However, Lasker won all the games from the seventh to the 11th, and Steinitz asked for a one-week rest. When the match resumed, Steinitz looked in better shape and won the 13th and 14th games. Lasker struck back in the 15th and 16th, and Steinitz was unable to compensate for his losses in the middle of the match. Hence Lasker won with ten wins, five losses and four draws. Some commentators thought Steinitz's habit of playing "experimental" moves in serious competition was a major factor in his downfall. After losing the title, Steinitz played in tournaments more frequently than he had previously: he won at New York 1894 and was fifth at Hastings 1895 (winning the first brilliancy prize for his game with Curt von Bardeleben); at Saint Petersburg 1895, a four-players round-robin event with Lasker, Chigorin and Pillsbury, he took second place. Later his results began to decline: 6th in Nuremberg 1896, 5th in Cologne 1898, 10th in London 1899. In early 1896 Steinitz defeated the Russian Emanuel Schiffers in a match (winning 6 games, drawing 1, losing 4). In November, 1896 to January, 1897 Steinitz played a return match with Lasker in Moscow but won only 2 games, drawing 5, and losing 10. This was the last world chess championship match for eleven years. Shortly after the match, Steinitz had a mental breakdown and was confined for 40 days in a Moscow sanatorium, where he played chess with the inmates. The beginning of Steinitz's reign Joseph Blackburne. Steinitz beat him 7–0 in 1876, but George Alcock MacDonnell hailed Blackburne as "World Champion" for his win in the 1881 Berlin Tournament. Main article: Development of the World Chess Championship There is a long-running debate among chess writers about whether Steinitz's reign as World Chess Champion began in 1866, when he beat Anderssen, or in 1886, when he beat Zukertort. In April 1894 the British Chess Magazine described Steinitz as holding "the chess championship of the world for 28 years". However, there is no evidence that he claimed the title for himself in 1866, although in the 1880s he claimed to have been the champion since his win over Anderssen. It has been suggested that Steinitz could not make such a claim while Paul Morphy was alive. Morphy had defeated Anderssen by a far wider margin, 8–3, in 1858, but retired from chess competition soon after he returned to the USA in 1859, and died in 1884. The 1886 Steinitz–Zukertort match was the first that was explicitly described as being for the World Championship, but Howard Staunton and Paul Morphy had been unofficially described as "World Chess Champion" around the middle of the 19th century. In fact one of the organizers of the 1851 London International tournament had said the contest was for "the baton of the World's Chess Champion", and in mid-1840s Ludwig Bledow wrote a letter to Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa suggesting they should organize a world championship tournament in Germany. Some commentators described Steinitz as "the champion" in the years following his 1872 match victory against Zukertort. In the late 1870s and early 1880s some regarded Steinitz as the champion and others supported Johannes Zukertort, and the 1886 match was not regarded as creating the title of World Champion but as resolving conflicting claims to the title. On the other hand George Alcock MacDonnell hailed Joseph Blackburne as "World Champion" for his win in the 1881 Berlin Tournament, George Henry Mackenzie as having "won the Chess Championship of the World" in 1887, and Isidore Gunsberg as "among the champions of the world" following his win at "Bradford Place" in 1888. However, Steinitz regarded G.A. MacDonnell as "one of my bitterest and most untruthful persecutors". Personal life Steinitz married a lady named Caroline (born 1846) in the 1860s, and their only daughter Flora was born in 1867. Flora died in 1888 at the age of 21, and Caroline died in 1892. He married his second wife a few years later and had two children by her. However, in 1897 he dedicated a pamphlet to the memory of his first wife and their daughter. In February 1897 the New York Times prematurely reported his death in a New York mental asylum.[44] Some authors claim that he contracted syphilis, which may have been a cause of the mental breakdowns he suffered in his last years. In the months prior to his death, he spent some time in institutions as a result of his failing mental health. His chess activities had not yielded any great financial rewards, and he died a pauper in the Manhattan State Hospital (Ward island) of a heart attack on August 12, 1900. Steinitz is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn, New York. His second wife and their two young children were still alive at his death. Lasker, who took the championship from Steinitz, wrote, "I who vanquished him must see to it that his great achievement, his theories should find justice, and I must avenge the wrongs he suffered." Writings A Literary Steinitz Gambit Steinitz was the main chess correspondent of the The Field (in London) from 1872 to 1882, and used this to present his ideas about chess strategy. In 1885 he founded the International Chess Magazine in New York and edited it until 1891. In addition to game commentaries and blow-by-blow accounts of the negotiations leading to his 1886 match with Johann Zukertort and of the American Chess Congress' world championship project, he wrote a long series of articles about Paul Morphy, who had died in 1884. He wrote the book of the 1889 New York tournament, in which he commented on all the games, and in 1889 he published a textbook, The Modern Chess Instructor. Steinitz also allegedly wrote a pamphlet entitled Capital, Labor, and Charity while confined at River Crest Sanitarium in New York during the final months of his life. Assessment Plaque in honor of Wilhelm Steinitz, in Prague's Josefov district The book of the Hastings 1895 chess tournament, written collectively by the players, described Steinitz as follows: Mr. Steinitz stands high as a theoretician and as a writer; he has a powerful pen, and when he chooses can use expressive English. He evidently strives to be fair to friends and foes alike, but appears sometimes to fail to see that after all he is much like many others in this respect. Possessed of a fine intellect, and extremely fond of the game, he is apt to lose sight of all other considerations, people and business alike. Chess is his very life and soul, the one thing for which he lives. Influence on the game Steinitz's play up to and including 1872 was similar to that of his contemporaries: sharp, aggressive, and full of sacrificial play. This was the style in which he became "world number one" by beating Adolf Anderssen in 1866 and confirmed his position by beating Zukertort in 1872 and winning the 1872 London International tournament (Zukertort had claimed the rank of number two by beating Anderssen in 1871). In 1873, however, Steinitz's play suddenly changed, giving priority to what is now called the positional elements in chess: pawn structure, space, outposts for knights, the advantage of the two bishops, etc. Although Steinitz often accepted unnecessarily difficult defensive positions in order to demonstrate the superiority of his theories, he also showed that his methods could provide a platform for crushing attacks. Steinitz's successor as world champion, Emanuel Lasker, summed up the new style as: "In the beginning of the game ignore the search for combinations, abstain from violent moves, aim for small advantages, accumulate them, and only after having attained these ends search for the combination – and then with all the power of will and intellect, because then the combination must exist, however deeply hidden." Although Steinitz's play changed abruptly, he said had been thinking along such lines for some years: "Some of the games which I saw Paulsen play during the London Congress of 1862 gave a still stronger start to the modification of my own opinions, which has since developed, and I began to recognize that Chess genius is not confined to the more or less deep and brilliant finishing strokes after the original balance of power and position has been overthrown, but that it also requires the exercise of still more extraordinary powers, though perhaps of a different kind to maintain that balance or respectively to disturb it at the proper time in one's own favor." During his nine-year layoff from tournament play (1873–82) and later in his career, Steinitz used his chess writings to present his theories – while in the UK he wrote for The Field; in 1885 after moving to New York he founded the "International Chess Magazine", of which he was the chief editor; and in 1889 he edited the book of the great New York 1889 tournament (won by Mikhail Chigorin and Max Weiss), in which he did not compete as the tournament was designed to produce his successor as World Champion. Many other writers found his new approach incomprehensible, boring or even cowardly; for example Adolf Anderssen said, "Kolisch is a highwayman and points the pistol at your breast. Steinitz is a pick-pocket, he steals a pawn and wins a game with it." But when he contested the first World Championship match in 1886 against Johannes Zukertort, it became evident that Steinitz was playing on another level. Although Zukertort was at least Steinitz's equal in spectacular attacking play, Steinitz often outmaneuvered him fairly simply by the use of positional principles. By the time of his match in 1890–91 against Gunsberg, some commentators showed an understanding of and appreciation for Steinitz's theories. Shortly before the 1894 match with Emanuel Lasker even the New York Times, which had earlier published attacks on his play and character, paid tribute to his playing record, the importance of his theories, and his sportsmanship in agreeing to the most difficult match of his career despite his previous intention of retiring. By the end of his career Steinitz was more highly esteemed as a theoretician than as a player. The comments about him in the book of the Hastings 1895 chess tournament focus on his theories and writings, and Emanuel Lasker was more explicit: "He was a thinker worthy of a seat in the halls of a University. A player, as the world believed he was, he was not; his studious temperament made that impossible; and thus he was conquered by a player ..." As a result of his play and writings Steinitz, along with Paul Morphy, is considered by many chess commentators to be the founder of modern chess. Vladimir Kramnik emphasizes Steinitz's importance as a pioneer in the field of chess theory: "Steinitz was the first to realise that chess, despite being a complicated game, obeys some common principles. ... But as often happens the first time is just a try. ... I can't say he was the founder of a chess theory. He was an experimenter and pointed out that chess obeys laws that should be considered." Statistical rating systems are unkind to Steinitz. "Warriors of the Mind" gives him a ranking of 47th, below several obscure Soviet grandmasters; Chessmetrics places him only 15th on its all-time list. Chessmetrics penalizes players who play infrequently; opportunities for competitive chess were infrequent in Steinitz's best years, and Steinitz had a few long absences from competitive play (1873–76, 1876–82, 1883–86, 1886–89). However, in 2005 Chessmetrics' author, Jeff Sonas, wrote an article which examined various ways of comparing the strength of "world number one" players, using data provided by Chessmetrics, and found that: Steinitz was further ahead of his contemporaries in the 1870s than Bobby Fischer was in his peak period (1970–72); that Steinitz had the third-highest total number of years as the world's top player, behind Emanuel Lasker and Garry Kasparov; and that Steinitz placed 7th in a comparison of how long players were ranked in the world's top three. Between his victory over Anderssen (1866) and his loss to Emanuel Lasker (1894), Steinitz won all his "normal" matches, sometimes by wide margins; and his worst tournament performance in that 28-year period was third place in Paris (1867). (He also lost two handicap matches and a match by telegraph in 1890 against Mikhail Chigorin, where Chigorin was allowed to choose the openings in both games and won both.) Initially Steinitz played in the all-out attacking style of contemporaries like Anderssen, and then changed to the positional style with which he dominated competitive chess in the 1870s and 1880s. Max Euwe wrote, "Steinitz aimed at positions with clear-cut features, to which his theory was best applicable." However, he retained his capacity for brilliant attacks right to the end of his career; for example in the 1895 Hastings tournament (when he was 59) he beat von Bardeleben in a spectacular game in which in the closing stages Steinitz deliberately exposed all his pieces to attack simultaneously (except his king, of course). His most significant weaknesses were his habits of playing "experimental" moves and getting into unnecessarily difficult defensive positions in top-class competitive games. Personality "Traditional" accounts of Steinitz describe him as having a sharp tongue and violent temper, perhaps partly because of his short stature (barely five feet) and congenital lameness. He admitted that "Like the Duke of Parma, I always hold the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other", and under severe provocation he could become abusive in published articles. He was aware of his own tendencies and said early in his career, "Nothing would induce me to take charge of a chess column ...Because I should be so fair in dispensing blame as well as praise that I should be sure to give offence and make enemies." When he embarked on chess journalism, his brutally frank review of Wormald's "The Chess Openings" in 1875 proved him right on both counts. However, his personal correspondence, his own articles and some third-party articles show that he had long and friendly relationships with many people and groups in the chess world, including Ignác Kolisch (one of his earliest sponsors), Mikhail Chigorin, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, Bernhard Horwitz, Amos Burn and the Cuban and Russian chess communities. He even co-operated with the American Chess Congress in its project to regulate future contests for the world title that he had earned. Steinitz strove to be objective in his writings about chess competitions and games, for example he attributed to sheer bad luck a poor tournament score by Henry Edward Bird, whom he considered no friend of his, and was generous in his praise of great play by even his bitter enemies. He could poke fun at some of his own rhetoric, for example "I remarked that I would rather die in America than live in England. ... I added that I would rather lose a match in America than win one in England. But after having carefully considered the subject in all its bearings, I have come to the conclusion that I neither mean to die yet nor to lose the match." At a joint simultaneous display in Russia around the time of the 1895–96 Saint Petersburg tournament, Emanuel Lasker and Steinitz formed an impromptu comedy double act. Although he had a strong sense of honour about repaying debts, Steinitz was poor at managing his finances: he let a competitor "poach" many of his clients in 1862–63, offered to play the 1886 world title match against Johannes Zukertort for free, and died in poverty in 1900, leaving his widow to survive by running a small shop. What Steinitz and other champions said about Steinitz Place the contents of the chess box in a hat, shake them up vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two feet - and you get the style of Steinitz. – Henry Bird I am fully and entirely concentrated on the board. I never even consider my opponent's personality. So far as I am concerned, my opponent might as well be an abstraction or an automaton. – Wilhelm Steinitz I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone's hand off if he puts it in my mouth. – Wilhelm Steinitz I play my king all over the board. I make him fight! – Wilhelm Steinitz I have never in my life played the French Defense, which is the dullest of all openings. – Wilhelm Steinitz He always sought completely original lines and didn't mind getting into cramped quarters if he thought that his position was essentially sound. – Bobby Fischer (on Steinitz) This little man has taught us all to play chess. – Adolf Schwarz (speaking of Steinitz) A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror. – Wilhelm Steinitz I shall accord to myself the honor of inscribing myself as an applicant for the American citizenship which according to law I can obtain only after five years residence in this country. And I shall yield to no one of my future countrymen in patriotism. I consider America now my real home. – Wilhelm Steinitz (in 1886) Fame, I have already. Now I need the money. – Wilhelm Steinitz No great player blundered oftener than I done. I was champion of the world for twenty-eight years because I was twenty years ahead of my time. I played on certain principles, which neither Zukertort nor anyone else of his time understood. The players of today, such as Lasker, Tarrasch, Pillsbury, Schlechter and others have adopted my principles, and as is only natural, they have improved upon what I began, and that is the whole secret of the matter. – Wilhelm Steinitz He had the reputation of being a brilliant but unsteady and untried combinational player, eminently suitable for the classification 'romantic'. – Harry Golombek (on Steinitz as a young player) I would rather die in America than live in England. I would rather lose a match in America than win one in England. I have come to the conclusion that I neither mean to die soon or to lose the match! – Wilhelm Steinitz He completely changed the game as it was played by Blackburne, Anderssen, Morphy and the other romantic heroes, and most likely he was the foundation upon which all modern chess has been built, but that did not prevent him from being the most unpopular chess player who ever lived. He had a grudge against the world, and the world returned it. – Harold Schonberg (on Steinitz) He is the so-called father of the modern school of chess; before him, the King was considered a weak piece and players set out to attack the King directly. Steinitz claimed that the King was well able to take care of itself, and ought not to be attacked until one had some other positional advantage. He understood more about the use of squares than Morphy and contributed a great deal more to chess theory. – Bobby Fischer The greatest development after age 21 was shown by Steinitz, who increased his rating by more than a full class interval. Steinitz was the deep student and fierce competitor to the end of his career. – Arpad Elo Wilhelm Steinitz was the first man to appreciate the inherent logic behind the game of chess. – William Hartston In my opinion the match with Steinitz does not have the great importance that they themselves attribute to it. For Steinitz has grown old, and the old Steinitz is no longer the Steinitz of old. – Siegbert Tarrasch (on the Lasker - Steinitz world championship match of 1894) If Steinitz continually took pains to discover combinations, the success or failure of his diligent search could not be explained by him as due to chance. Hence, he concluded that some characteristic, a quality of the given position, must exist that would indicate the success or the failure of the search before it was actually undertaken. – Emanuel Lasker This was undoubtably a chess genius, one of the greatest who has ever lived. And, which I respect in him most, he rated chess highly as an art. The struggle with him forced me to endure both minutes of intense pleasure , and periods of despondency. - Mikhail Chigorin I am not a chess historian - I myself am a piece of chess history, which no one can avoid. I will not write about myself, but I am sure that someone will write... - William Steinitz Chess is not for the faint-hearted; it absorbs a person entirely. To get to the bottom of this game, he has to give himself up into slavery. Chess is difficult, it demands work, serious reflection and zealous research. Only honest, impartial criticism leads to the goal. Unfortunately many regard the critic as an enemy, instead of seeing in him a guide to the thruth... - William Steinitz Steinitz was a thinker worthy of a seat in the halls of a university. A player, as the world believed he was, he was not; his studious temperament made that impossible; and thus he was conquered by a player and in the end little valued by the world, he died. - Emanuel Lasker It was Steinitz who was the first to establish the basic principles of general chess strategy. He was a pioneer and one of the most profound researchers into the thruth of the game, which was hidden from his contemporaries. - Jose Raul Capablanca That which Steinitz gave to the theoretical aspect of the game when he was at his best is very remote to all out home-bred chess philosophers, but with his views on Morphy, whom he tries to discredit completely, it is of course impossible to agree. - Alexander Alekhine Steinitz's book knowledge ddin't compare with Morphy's, and - where Morphy was usually content to play a book line in the opening - Steinitz was always looking for some completely original line. He understood more about the use of squares than did Morphy, and contributed a great deal more to chess theory. - Robert Fischer The significance of Steinitz's teaching is that he showed that in principle chess has a strictly-defined, logical nature. - Tigran Petrosian His teaching became a turning point in chess history: it was from Steinitz that the era of modern chess began. The contribution of the first world champion to its development is comparable with the great scientific discoveries of the 19th century. - Garry Kasparov Believing religiously in the defensive properties of his cramped, but unweakened positions, Steinitz considered it his duty to refute gambits and he would often deliberately provoke an attack against his king. - Garry Kasparov He developed complete strategic trends in the opening and the middlegame, based on his theory of accumulating small advantages. A classic example of such an innovation is his 'Steinitz Variation' in the French Defence. - Garry Kasparov Steinitz was the first to realise that chess, despite being a complicated game, obeys some common principles. Up to his time chess players understood only individual themes. - Vladimir Kramnik Steinitz was strong in practice. He had deep thoughts and imaginative ideas. For instance, he stated that the king was a strong piece, able to defend itself. This idea is really imaginative and even true in some cases but it is not a part of the classical basis of the game. - Vladimir Kramnik Notable games Wilhelm Steinitz vs Augustus Mongredien, London 1862 Awarded the brilliancy prize at the 1862 London International Tournament. Adolf Anderssen vs Wilhelm Steinitz; 13th match game, London 1866 Emanuel Lasker regarded this well-prepared attack as a precursor of the positional approach that Steinitz later advocated. Johannes Zukertort vs Wilhelm Steinitz, WCH (9th game of the match) 1886, Queen's Gambit Declined: Vienna. Quiet Variation (D37), 0–1 Steinitz exchanges his powerful centre to create two weak hanging pawns on White's queenside and creates strong pressure against them. Zukertort eventually tries to slug his way out of trouble, but Steinitz wins with a sharp counter-attack. Wilhelm Steinitz vs Mikhail Chigorin, Havana WCH 1892 (2nd game of the match), Ruy Lopez, 1–0 Steinitz weakens Chigorin's pawns, gains superior mobility then forces a pawn promotion with the aid of a little combination. Wilhelm Steinitz vs Mikhail Chigorin, Havana WCH 1892 (4th game of the match), Spanish Game: General (C65), 1–0 Positional preparation creates the opportunity for a swift attack leading to mate on the 29th move. Wilhelm Steinitz vs Curt von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895, Italian Game: Classical Variation. Greco Gambit Traditional Line (C54), 1–0 A great attacking combination in the old 1860s style. After White's 22nd move, all the White pieces are en prise but Black is lost. The game won the first brilliancy prize of the tournament.