garry kasparov and anand.
Who had the best opening, middle game and endgame ever?
Sort:
Mar 19, 2013
0
#183
SmyslovFan wrote:
The change to the Botvinnik rule was grandfathered in. Botvinnik actually had the right to a return match against Petrosian, but declined to exercise that right. It was due to take effect after 1963.
The Botvinik rule was also in effect when Kasparov took the title from Karpov. Karpov got a rematch. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in effect during the Karpov-Kortchnoi matches as well.
TetsuoShima wrote:
i like botvinniks fighting spirit and non-whiny atitude.
He seemed pretty whiny to me in places (talking about not having played in 3 years re his match with Bronstein, for example).
Whiny? Did someone say Whiny?? I nominate Fischer for being the most-whiny WCH!
In defense of Botvinnik (never thought I'd write this, since I'm a Keres fan): not having played for 3 years is a serious problem if you're playing someone like Bronstein, who was a great improviser over the board. As the games tell, Bronstein ran rings around Botvinnik in many middle game positions.
Botvinnik is rightly renowned for being harsher in his self-criticism than most GM's would be against their worst enemy. Unfortunately, Fischer's disparaging comments from his wounded ego (especially in the light of THAT game, where Fischer left the board white as a ghost, with tears welling up in his eyes) are given too much attention. My impression of Botvinnik as a chess player, despite all the things I dislike about him as a person (i.e a stalinist without culture and refinement who would use the system to his own advantage when he could), is that he had tremendous courage and a very profound understanding of chess positions. His legacy in various opening schemes is tremendous. Whatever else he did, he always played fighting chess.
And--eventually--overcame his opponents. 
Chigosian50 wrote:
In defense of Botvinnik (never thought I'd write this, since I'm a Keres fan): not having played for 3 years is a serious problem if you're playing someone like Bronstein, who was a great improviser over the board. As the games tell, Bronstein ran rings around Botvinnik in many middle game positions.
Botvinnik is rightly renowned for being harsher in his self-criticism than most GM's would be against their worst enemy. Unfortunately, Fischer's disparaging comments from his wounded ego (especially in the light of THAT game, where Fischer left the board white as a ghost, with tears welling up in his eyes) are given too much attention. My impression of Botvinnik as a chess player, despite all the things I dislike about him as a person (i.e a stalinist without culture and refinement who would use the system to his own advantage when he could), is that he had tremendous courage and a very profound understanding of chess positions. His legacy in various opening schemes is tremendous. Whatever else he did, he always played fighting chess.
when did Fischer left the board ??
TetsuoShima wrote:
Chigosian50 wrote:
In defense of Botvinnik (never thought I'd write this, since I'm a Keres fan): not having played for 3 years is a serious problem if you're playing someone like Bronstein, who was a great improviser over the board. As the games tell, Bronstein ran rings around Botvinnik in many middle game positions.
Botvinnik is rightly renowned for being harsher in his self-criticism than most GM's would be against their worst enemy. Unfortunately, Fischer's disparaging comments from his wounded ego (especially in the light of THAT game, where Fischer left the board white as a ghost, with tears welling up in his eyes) are given too much attention. My impression of Botvinnik as a chess player, despite all the things I dislike about him as a person (i.e a stalinist without culture and refinement who would use the system to his own advantage when he could), is that he had tremendous courage and a very profound understanding of chess positions. His legacy in various opening schemes is tremendous. Whatever else he did, he always played fighting chess.
when did Fischer left the board ??
When realising it was now a dead draw. Look it up, it's very famous
Re: Disparaging comments....
Look up what Botvinnik said about Fischer after Fischer went through his matches with Taimanov and Larsen with 6-0 scores each. Even Kasparov thought Botvinnik went too far. Also worth noting that Fischer found "over the board" a resource that Botvinnik missed in his home analysis and won a pawn in the only game they played. Fischer was a difficult personality and it moved into more than that after he won the '72 championship, but his fellow GMs weren't saints either in how they behaved. And when Tal was hospitalized in the middle of a tournament, the only tournament player who visited him in the hospital was Fischer
Fischer was also only 19 when he played Botvinnik in their game so the fact he became white as a ghost and had tears welling up in his eyes could partly be attributed to his youth
I'm in the danger of becoming a notorious 'Fischer-basher' on this site, unfortunately, since I actually like his games. But I'm quite tired of people making excuses for his atrocious behaviour - in any other sport he would probably have been disqualified. Youth only becomes a valid excuse if you eventually grow up, something Fischer never did. Frank Brady's new book Endgame is a worse indictment of Fischer's lack of basic moral decency than anything I could ever say.
Between the pages of one of my chess books I have a photocopy of an old photograph: Fischer playing chess with Tal, in a hospital bed, after he'd withdrawn from Curacao with a very serious illness. He had his decent moments, I guess.
Mar 25, 2013
0
#194
Chigosian50 wrote:
I'm in the danger of becoming a notorious 'Fischer-basher' on this site, unfortunately, since I actually like his games. But I'm quite tired of people making excuses for his atrocious behaviour - in any other sport he would probably have been disqualified. Youth only becomes a valid excuse if you eventually grow up, something Fischer never did. Frank Brady's new book Endgame is a worse indictment of Fischer's lack of basic moral decency than anything I could ever say.
I was quite willing to excuse everything Fischer did. right up til Sept. 11th, 2001.
Good post, Chigosian50
When he was playing chess, Fischer's ire was directed at tournament organizers and officials regarding playing conditions - not at his opponents. In my opinion that started to change in the '72 WCC when he, again my opinion, realized he couldn't beat Spassky without gaining a psychological edge or "upsetting his equilibrium" in Fischer biographer Frank Brady's words. After he won the '72 championship his behavior did become increasingly bad.
No one is all black or all white; neither are they permanently one shade of black or white. That's all I'm saying. And Fischer's demand for better playing conditions and higher purses benefited ALL future chess players, as did the increased popularity of chess in America and other places due to the Cold War environment in which the '72 WCC was played
You are right about no one being entirely good or evil. The enigma of Fischer is that someone who played such beautiful chess could act the way he did. Maybe he was a very sick person? For a Jew to be anti-semitic takes some disassociation from reality. Still, I struggle to see his great joy over the radio on September the 11th as anything but evil!?!
One (early) example of Fischer's "bad behavior" was his refusal to continue his match with Reshevsky after the playing time had been bumped up to 11 a.m. to accommodate the organizer's desire to watch her husband perform in a concert. Fischer didn't want to play that early and the game was defaulted to Reshevsky.
The "bad behavior" in this example lies with the tournament organizer - not Fischer - for changing the conditions of the match on a whim. Unfortunately, the media completely disregarded the organizer's role in *creating* the problem and instead focused their criticism solely because he didn't want to play that early. Fischer was a notorious night owl and would study chess in the wee hours of the morning and not wake up til early afternoon
That's why I said his behavior became increasingly bad after the '72 WCC. I don't know anyone who excuses his behavior on 9/11.
But to judge the entirety of his behavior on his post-chess playing days seems highly unfair.
Anyone who's achieved a level of success and celebrity is going have their warts exposed to the public.
Nothing wrong with condemning bad behavior, but condemning the entirety of a person based off behavior that was not exhibited over the course of his/her life doesn't seem fair. Plus, you haven't walked a mile in his shoes
Spassky noted in his "rematch" with Fischer in the early '90s that Fischer's complaints about playing conditions in that match seemed to decline when Fischer was winning, which would lend support to the hypothesis that the complaints, at least later in his career, were designed, subconsciously or consciously, to get him in a fighting mood for the game and/or to upset his opponent's equilibrium. I think the same thing happened in the '72 match. Once Fischer was winning, his complaints decreased and his mood became better.
Only reason I think his behavior was designed to upset Spassky is because it was bad *before* the match started
Good point....what must Capablanca have been thinking....silly me