Fischer vs. Kasparov

It's got to be Kasparov, PUc_7 mentions Fischer's terrific will to win and his intimidating presence but the same has been said about Kasparov. I hate to disagree with a NM but be fair Reb, Spassky and Petrosian were seasoned ex World Champions when they played Kasparov whereas he was just a very young man learning his way at the top level he struggled against them the same way Fischer struggled against Botnivick and Reshevsky (excuse my spelling) For me what puts Kasparov ahead of Bobby is he was the number one player for about 20 years and defended his title time and time again. Bobby was only clearly best 1970-72, 1960-65 Tal beat him like a red headed stepchild and 1965-70 Spassky had a won 3 drew 2 lost 0 record against him (have not checked these dates but they are about right) So my vote goes to Gary, but both are terrific players and along with Capa the best three of all time. Can you believe that guy did not get the joke about Capa using computers (see earlier posts) 

Fischer died a while ago...January of last year.

 Fischer played Botvinnik once,and the latter got out of jail courtesy of the massive Soviet GM team behind him..so this hardly counts as "struggled"...Fischer was the best in the world and untouchable from 65' onwards...the gap grew bigger and bigger...sure Tal tought him a lesson, but that was in 59' when Fischer was still a boy.....By 62' he'd mastered Tal...

My point is tho, Gazza has had an enormous advantage in both being able to use Fischer, and also use the net and silicon technology...Fischer with access to all this would win.....No question..

 dead or alive is irrelevent lol...Just as with Capa,or Morphy, the games live forever....John lennon is dead, so is Beethoven.....

 Sonas is obviously an idiot. Fischer's obliteration of all the "great" players in his path to taking the crown can not be disregarded in the manner Sonas choses to do.-SIX

Kasparov plays like a machine.. fischer plays with his heart and imagination fischer loves to break book lines so I think that kasparov gonna crush like a program bug when he faces fischer !

if you ask a boy of today he gonna say Kasparov.. if you ask a GM like kasparov himself he gonna say  BOBBY FISCHER ! 

Debatable but Kasparov for me

Wow...Fischer or Kasparov? They were both great. Tie.

Hmm, Fischer worked really hard and was the best for maybe 3-4-5 years?  Kasparov worked at least as hard if not more so and was the best for 20 years?  I wonder who would be more proficient

Yeah I know just being silly, too hard to compare as with any chess titans... in a 100 game match they'd probably have at least 80 draws heh.

Bobby Fischer!

I agree with this.  However I'm not sure how much you can separate his "crazy" from his phenomenal ability.  You may want to say what about pure chess ability, but my point is it's the whole package -- his talent and illness went hand in hand.  If you could cure Fischer's mind and leave all his chess talent then yeah, I'd bet on Fischer for every match.

Otherwise it's a bit hard to say.  Kasparov is incredibly competitive, Spassky moved back stage, I imagine Kasparov would not babby Fischer.  Also you can't rule out Kasparov as a great player himself, he also had hard work, memory, etc.

 Heh, ok, good point

So, now we are explaining Kasparov's success through use of electronic resources for preparation ? Surely they were available to his opponents too ? Next, let's explain Fischer's success by the fact that he had access to opening books and that he had a chessboard at home.

Okay, onwards to next nonsense.

I had someone else's comment in mind when I was replying. But I don't think that we know that Fischer would be better prepared than someone else who was also extremely well re-known for opening preparation, as you seem to imply. Also, Kasparov became world's champion before electronics was sufficiently advanced to have that significant a role. (There was no chess program that could play anywhere near the world champion's level in the early 1980s, no Internet databases etc.)

Actually, there is an anecdote when he lost a game against Lautier and complained later that he could not remember the critical point (somewhere around move 16 or 17) in the analysis of the line that he had done five years earlier.

Kasparov himself said his memory wasn't photographic (how good it is though I don't know), Fishcer certainly had a photographic memory if anecdotes about him are true.  So it seems like the huge online databases of today would certainly give him an edge as far as opening theory.

This makes me wonder how good someone like Capablanca was -- to come from a nation that didn't have a strong chess playing infrastructure to become world champion is almost ludicrous pre-internet era.

Not sure if we can claim that Fischer had photographic memory.

According to this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2243089,00.html

"During Leipzig I also gave the top grandmasters memory tests for the BBC programme, with revealing results. Tal, prompted with some obscure game, rattled off the opening and the occasion, and when it was his own game, gave me a resume of the pre-game banter and the post-mortem analysis. Fischer's memory, by contrast, was excellent only for his own wins."

There's the stuff though about him reciting all 20 some blitz games he played after the tournament was over, something like 1000 half moves.  Or how in Iceland, without knowing how to speak it, repeated some sentences perfectly later for a native speaker to translate for him because he didn't know what it meant -- stuff like that, so I'm not sure what to make of this account, I wonder if Bobby was just pretending to not remember his losses, or something like this.