Tigran Petrosian

When I asked my dad who was his favorite chess player, i excpected to an answer like bobby fischer, or garry kasparov. The answer was tigran petrosian. I never heard of this player till yesterday, and i was very surprised when i heard the answer. I looked for his games on youtube, there are really few games, but from his games you can learn how brilliant chess player he was, probably better than spassky, karpov exedora. Anyway, i would like to know why isn't he known, and why most people only heard of him and not really know his chess games and his brilliancy?

well here on chess.com i watched like 5 games of him.

5 is not like the 2000 games of bobby fischer, or garry kasparov, and i think he is not less good than them.

Well mainly because he is usually characterized as defensive player and many people hear this and automatically think "boring", not true as many know. Ofcourse since hes time was shared with some of the greatest like bobby people usually remember the best of great games and esspecially since bobbys style was easy to relate to and in everyone of hes games you learned something. You have to be pretty advanced in order to understand and fully appreciate petrosijans games, all the restrictions, propholacis, emphasizing defence, security and solidity above all else, thats petrosijan. I think many who are familiar with chess too know petrosijan but the dont really like him or appreciate his style of play because of reasons mentioned above, thats why he is easilly forgotten.

Yes and lost it to spassky and never regaind it. He has been sad to be the hardest player ever to win alltough id say he is tied to that with capablanca. In my mind petrosijan is somevhere in the top 20 of all lists same as bobby, kasparov, capablanca, morphy, carlsen, etc but thats just my opinion and overall on those lists i think he would be somewhere closer to 20 than even 10 and people like attacking players and great dynamic ideas petrosijan didnt usually meat those criterias.

weird i always thought petrosian was playing to make it more static. not joking. i mean i only watched a few games but i had that impression

To me petrosian always strove to control, i mean he was strong, even Fischer once considered him the strongest at his time i think.

Petrosian is known as a chess player, but few people like his style, that's why he's not so famous. He's there but he has few followers. But he's for sure one of the important players that has influenced the game. Among people who aren't very much interested in chess he's not so popular however, but I guess that's the case with other sports and activities too - to be well-known one would need additional things to become interesting to the general public, for example Bobby Fischer as a challenger to the Soviet chess school in the time of the cold war, Kasparov as not only a great player but also as a public and political figure, as a participant in human vs. computer games, etc. For Petrosian it's not so easy to generate interest, but I guess other great players like Capablanca, Morphy, Alekhine etc. are not much more known.

anyway i miswrote, i ment fischer said that he considered him the strongest of the soviets not the stronger then himself.

I slightly disagree Glex, i think for Fischers playing style alone he could generate interest. I find his idea of rook to f6 against Benko really pretty, aslo he sometimes makes moves that look so beginner like but are still so pretty in its deepness. Thats so pretty when i would see a lower rated player make that move i would never assume its a good move but when i look at Fischers move and look at the explanation and see the awfully deep plan and how strong that innocent looking move is, im amazed.

Ofc i dont like all Fischers games, and most of the spanish games are way too complex for me to really judge. But honestly hands down I think FIscher had  of the prettiest style.

Yes, but such subtleties in move choice reasoning can be appreciated only by a chess fan who has interest in studying the game, and one would in such case probably know about Fischer, Petrosian and other chess players. If someone watches a chess game without being much interested in chess however, what he/she would notice are usually things that aren't so closely related to chess mechanics, for example which player is more agressive, who plays moves that the commentator says are new or strong/strange (no matter of their real quality however), what's the background story of the game and the competitors, what do they do out of chess, etc, so a players who has something of that is more likely to become famous. For example, I think many people who don't like chess may have heard that world chess N1 Magnus Carlsen has been a model for G-Star and that's why they would know his name.

Petrosian is probably the most obscure WCC out there, except maybe Euwe.

While he had certain games that were highly entertaining, most of his games were boring beyond belief. And I mean boring.

If you sat behind your pawns and waited for him to come at you, you would be waiting a long, long time. Believe me, some GM's tried this. Nearly all his wins came from his opponents misplaying their attacks.

It was his approach to chess. his greatest strength was his ability to sniff out an opponents possible attack, 40 moves before it happened, and prevent it. For those who can appreciate that sort of thing, that's fine. But I have always found studying his games to be the chess equivalent of a root canal. And I consider myself a positional player.

Petrosian has been known to open with the double fianchetto with white. 1.g3, 2.b3. His plan was to sit back, and make sure he had no weaknesses whatsoever. players who attacked him found thier peices stuck in quicksand. Or, just occasionally, they were on the recieving end of a brilliant counter-attack.

To be fair, he was perhaps one of the best endgame players ever. Certainly worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Karpov, or Smyslov.

i heard petrosians wife was very interesting person but maybe that is just an urban myth

Oh, I thought this thread was about Petrosian. It seems I was mistaken. Tetsuo has turned it into another 'Who loves Fischer the most' thread'

On topic, I think Petrosian had a pretty good style of play. Not as exciting as people like to see but hey, it works. It seems to be a slow, grinding sort of style where he is happy to make it as difficult as possible for his opponent and wait for mistakes. (From the dozen or so of his games that I have watched. I'm far from an authority on him so I could be wrong)

The thing is, unless you appreciate chess for what it is, I could see how a lot of people might find that boring. The exciting, attacking players often draw in people who wouldn't normally care for watching chess too much. Players like Petrosian, who seem to play quietly but get the job done, could easily be over looked.

It happens in all Sports though. Klitschko (who, off topic, is also not a bad chess player. He's played a few big names like Karjakin, Kasparov and Kramnik, though not GM strength himself, he's pretty good. For anyone who cares) is not an exciting boxer to watch. He will jab from a distance until you can't fight back any more. No showboating, no big flurries...just get in, do the job slowly and go home with his belts.

Football is the same. Germany were always given a hard time for their solid, no frills style. They got the job done though.

People generally want to see 3rd round knockouts and Messi scoring 3 goeals a game. It's in our nature. The skill involved in these solid, slow, grinding teams, athletes, chess players etc is often overlooked.

Which brings us to our to the obvious question. If people do not appreciate these "grinding competitors", are those players really good for their respective sport?

yawn

Fair point.

I would say that they probably are good for the sport though. It depends on your viewpoint but I think it probably gets people behind the underdog a bit. People want to see some exciting, fast paced, attacking player / team / fighter come along and knock them off the top spot so they have an exciting champion to follow.

Everyone gets behind an exciting team like Brazil, fighter like Ali, player like Carlsen. It leads to the majority of the fanbase rooting for one person who is already on top.

In the case of a slow, 'boring' player or team, people start getting behind the challengers. They want to see them beaten.To see someone get through the brick wall. It probably leads to more tension at the top, more investment from the fans, more anticipation.

Just my opinion. I have seen it in sports like Boxing. Not sure if the same is true of Chess.

Psychology is a big factor in chess that is true but i think petrosijan showed amazing skill in his style and thats something... He was good theres no denying it and i do find his games exciting just go watch his and fischers game from youtube with petrosijan vs fischer killegar chess channell and tell me the game where they both end up with 2 queens and last 15 moves or so is introduced wit "as usual petrosijan  finds the best defensive move" and "as usual fischer finds the most aggressive and attacking move" if you dont think thats exciting then you dont know chess...

Lol The 4 Queens. I loved that game!

I just found it 2 nights ago, too. Very good game.

I admit, as long as you cherry-pick the best 1% of games, Petrosian has some doozies.

But it's those other 99% that....OMG

Some quotes I found on Petrosian in Wikipedia:

A number of illustrative metaphors have been used to describe Petrosian's style of play. Harold C. Schonberg said that "playing him was like trying to put handcuffs on an eel. There was nothing to grip."^[23] He has been described as a centipede lurking in the dark,^[23] a tiger looking for the opportunity to pounce, a python who slowly squeezes his victims to death,^[4] and as a crocodile who waits for hours to make a decisive strike.^[29]Boris Spassky, who would succeed Petrosian as World Chess Champion, described his style of play as such: "Petrosian reminds me of a hedgehog. Just when you think you have caught him, he puts out his quills."^[4]

Petrosian's style of play, although highly successful for avoiding defeats, was criticized as being dull. Chess enthusiasts saw his "ultraconservative" style as an unwelcome contrast to the popular image of Soviet chess as "daring" and "indomitable".^[30] Fellow Soviet chess grandmaster and personal friend Mikhail Tal described Petrosian as "cowardly", out of frustration that this eminent tactician so rarely showed the chessworld what he was capable of. His 1971 Candidates Tournament match with Viktor Korchnoi featured so many monotonous draws that the Russian press began to complain. However, Svetozar Gligorić described Petrosian as being "very impressive in his incomparable ability to foresee danger on the board and to avoid any risk of defeat."^[23] Petrosian responded to his criticisms by saying "They say my games should be more 'interesting'. I could be more 'interesting'—and also lose."^[4] Petrosian was, in the words of future World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, "the first defender with a capital D".^[31]

One other interesting trivia point: when Fischer was on his famous 19-game winning streak en route to challenging Boris Spassky, that streak was broken by Tigran Petrosian.

This was the classic Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object match.