Why do Americans like Bobby Fischer?

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AndyClifton

I said "house of cards," not "House of Lords."

MightyPaul

I admire the chessplayer and like to remember him the way he was back in '72 before his mental abberations became incredibly manifest.  His work ethic and devotion to preparation was fantastic.  You wouldn't have seen him in a coffee shop sipping on cappuchinos and wishing to become better.  You would have seen him playing through game after game after game from the informant, 64 or the Shakhmatti Bulletin absorbing information and novelties to spring on his rivals in competitions.  Bobby Fischer the man needed some real spiritual help.  Hopefully he gets it on his next incarnation. 

AndyClifton

Which leads to another question...I wonder what he came back as.

theoreticalboy
AndyClifton wrote:

I said "house of cards," not "House of Lords."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098825/

AndyClifton

Aha!  I thought you were gonna punch up this one...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093223/

chopwood

Everybody makes "feeble moves". Bobby, himself, with his famous Bxh2 move, lost with a move most amateurs wouldn't make. Yes, it's a game of nerves, but everyone makes mistakes. Fischer was better prepared, in spite of mistakes, and I don't buy the "will and confidence" theory.

chesspooljuly13

Bxh2, I believe, was proven to be a draw with best play by white, which wasn't the case.

I'd say the confidence a chess player has going into his game will impact what moves he chooses to make, and upsetting someone's equilibrium and denting his self confidence before a game will lead to overly cautious or feeble moves, as Spassky played in game 3. How we feel affects how we play. We're humans, not machines.

And, if anything, Bxh2 was an overly aggressive move, not a feeble move

AndyClifton

Overly aggressive can't be feeble?  Curiouser and curiouser...

chesspooljuly13

Don't think so. I equate a feeble move with excessive and unwarranted caution.

AndyClifton

Well, it can also simply mean "weak."  And I don't buy the argument that, if the move could be shown eventually to have drawn, it must've been alright.  Clearly he miscalculated to have gotten himself in that state (probably overlooking the Bd2 idea).

sisu

Fischer was the greatest, and a nice guy also.

AndyClifton

Unless you wore a yarmulke.

chesspooljuly13

The game was a draw before he played Bxh2; it's not like he was winning. The closest anyone got to an explanation for why he played that move was when someone asked Fischer if he played it to show Spassky that he (Fischer) could play anything against Spassky and still draw and Fischer reportedly replied, "Yeah, something like that." Fischer never said it was a blunder.

Worth noting that nearly every GM watching game 3 thought Fischer had gone crazy when he played ...Nh5 in the Modern Benoni. Turned out it was a much better move than anyone thought

chesspooljuly13

@andyclifton lol

chopwood

I have read the analysis on the Bxh2 move and the assessment of all the GM's present was that it lost the game. The fact that it was later (months) analyzed more positively can't work as a a defense, or " over the board" means nothing. It is clear that Fischer failed to calculate, and , much as I admire him as a chessplayer, had no plan going forward.

AndyClifton

Yeah, that's my take on it.  And presumably his oversight had to do with Spassky's Bd2.

chesspooljuly13

What happened between the end of game 1 and first move of game 3 is very interesting. To the point of a player's state of mind affecting how he plays, Spassky was playing so listlessly in the first half of the match, his handlers thought he'd been drugged.

AndyClifton

Yeah, he played like he was moving through molasses (some horrible stuff).  Maybe he was under the influence of whatever killed those flies. Smile

chesspooljuly13

The New York Times writer covering the match wrote that the flies had been killed by licking the poisoned pawn in the Sicilian Defense. Obviously a chess player with a sense of humor

chesspooljuly13

Spassky made a horrific blunder in one of those early games, almost as bad as Taimanov (sp?) losing his rook to Fischer by a fork in the candidates match.

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