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< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 68 OF 73 ·
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May-10-12
 | | SetNoEscapeOn: <KKDEREK>
That is also easy to explain :) |
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| May-10-12 | | Lambda: <false versions of history> They are true if you regard the champion as having no power to resign their title, and having to wait to offload it until they get beaten/fail to play their defence match at the required time. The concept of world champion is subject to interpretation. |
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| May-10-12 | | RookFile: Actually, Fischer was just being consistent. You either gave him his conditions or he didn't play. It's what he did his whole career. |
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| May-10-12 | | pedro123: Bearing in mind that 48 games were insufficient for either Karpov or Kasparov to reach the rather modest target of six wins, I suspect that Fischer's proposed terms would have hospitalised one or possibly both participants. |
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| May-10-12 | | Riverbeast: <I suspect that Fischer's proposed terms would have hospitalised one or possibly both participants> I could see it possibly hospitalizing one, but not both It would have been nothing like 1984...There would have been no short draws if Fischer was at the board |
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| May-10-12 | | pedro123: Thanks for the comment. You set me off on a quest. This is apparently the shortest Fischer draw, played, however, when he was young and playing a seasoned GM. First impressions are that he might be losing material. Fischer vs Benko, 1960 |
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| May-10-12 | | Petrosianic: <They are true if you regard the champion as having no power to resign their title,> And we had people who took that position. On another site I post at, there was a small but vocal contingent who believed that Kramnik didn't lose his title until the match with Anand. He was absolutely firm in arguing that the world title could NOT change hands in a tournament, but he had no real reason for asserting this. He couldn't show that Steinitz or anyone else in history had so much as claimed that. And the Kramnik example illustrates the problems with that idea. How can you say that someone is world champion when he himself claims that he isn't? The day after Mexico City, Kramnik altered his website to read "World Champion 2000-2007". He sniffed a bit about the merit of Anand's Mexico City win, but he never ever disputed it, never claimed he was the champion any more, always said that Anand was. And yet according to this guy, Kramnik was the champion in Berlin, even if he said he wasn't, just because he was "the last guy to win a world championship match". I sympathized with him a bit, I thought a tournament was a far from ideal way of deciding the title. But at the same time, doesn't a champion have the right to defend his title any way he wants, even if I don't like it? If someone defended in a 2 game match, and lost, I'd think he was an idiot, but you can't turn around and nullify the result. |
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| May-10-12 | | Petrosianic: <pedro123>: <Bearing in mind that 48 games were insufficient for either Karpov or Kasparov to reach the rather modest target of six wins, I suspect that Fischer's proposed terms would have hospitalised one or possibly both participants.> I don't know how much you know about the debate in those days, but the idea at the time was that the Pure Wins format would encourage fighting chess, because people would go after the needed wins as quickly as possible. Instead, it had the opposite result. Kasparov could NEVER have played for a long string of draws while down 4 points in a Best Of match. But in 1975, people like Charles Kalme were seriously arguing that a match with a 10 win requirement wouldn't take any longer than 23 games to finish because that's how long they lasted in the 19th century. |
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May-10-12
 | | keypusher: <RookFile: Actually, Fischer was just being consistent. You either gave him his conditions or he didn't play. It's what he did his whole career.> Horseshit. If that was true he never would have played the WC match in Iceland, which was Spassky's first choice and which he was bitterly opposed to. Fischer always made lots of demands everywhere he went, and he never got all of them. So he always had an excuse to walk away. But somehow he managed to finish quite a few events. And of course, he could have played in any number of events after 1972 getting every single condition he could dream up and then some. But he didn't, the 1992 farce excepted. |
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| May-10-12 | | Petrosianic: Oh, Rookfile knows better than that. He's just one of those guys like Riverbeast, who thinks that if you repeat an untruth often enough it gets tenure. I once gave them both a list of a half dozen big points that Fischer didn't get his way on, but played anyway. They just pretended not to hear. You won't get anywhere arguing with them, even with the facts on your side. I won't go over the whole list, but here's a big forgotten one. 1958 US Championship. They drew the pairings in secret. Fischer said that this was unfair, and that if they didn't re-draw them in public, that he wouldn't play. They said they'd do it that way in the future, but wouldn't re-draw them that year. Fischer backed down and played after promising he wouldn't. But that was different. In 1958 (and other times he gave in), he <wanted> to play, in 1975 he didn't. <And of course, he could have played in any number of events after 1972 getting every single condition he could dream up and then some. But he didn't, the 1992 farce excepted.> And he was probably afraid of exactly what happened in 1992. Winning the match, but looking bad doing it. Fear might possibly explain why he didn't play Karpov or Kasparov. But it does NOT explain why he backed out of the matches with Gligoric and Quinteros. |
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| May-10-12 | | Riverbeast: <He's just one of those guys like Riverbeast> Ooooooh!....Oooooooh!
In case you missed it, <Petrosianic>: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PjL... |
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| May-10-12 | | Riverbeast: For those who may have been 'hypnotized and mesmerized' by Natalie Merchant's angelic voice, and didn't catch all her lyrics She's actually as great a songwriter as she is a singer Here are the lyrics to her song 'Jealousy':
<Ooo, jealousy
Is she fine
So well bred
The perfect girl
A social deb
Is she the sort
You've always thought
Could make you
What you're not?
Ooo, jealousy
Is she bright so well read are there novels by her bed Is she the sort
You've always said
Could satisfy
Your head?
Ooo, my jealousy
Does she talk
The way I do
Is her voice reminding you
Of the promises
The little white lies too
Sometimes, tell me
While she's touching you
Just by mistake
Accidentally <do you say my name?>> |
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| May-10-12 | | KKDEREK: <Petrosianic: Oh, Rookfile knows better than that. He's just one of those guys like Riverbeast, who thinks that if you repeat an untruth often enough it gets tenure. I once gave them both a list of a half dozen big points that Fischer didn't get his way on, but played anyway. They just pretended not to hear.> +1 |
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| May-10-12 | | Lambda: <Petrosianic> I think the honest answer to that one would be "because it makes a better narrative that way". It helps that "who decides who the world champion is" has always been defined by popular perception. And people like a good narrative. Probably, the further back in history you go, the more you can get away with "filing the rough edges off it" (forgetting inconvenient details) to create a more easily digestible meal. |
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May-10-12
 | | Shams: Natalie Merchant is a great talent, but she sings too far back in her throat for my taste. Liz Phair's "Jealousy" is a superior track:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtRv... |
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| May-11-12 | | Riverbeast: <Shams> On this one we agree to disagree I think Natalie Merchant hits notes no human voice has ever sung...And no human ears have ever heard ;-) |
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| May-11-12 | | RookFile: <keypusher: If that was true he never would have played the WC match in Iceland, which was Spassky's first choice and which he was bitterly opposed to. > Fischer wasn't bitterly opposed to Iceland, it just wasn't his first choice. The large (for 1972) amount of money helped him decide to play, plus the fact that he could become champ. By the way, around this time, Fischer created his conditions for match play for when he would be champ, and let the chess world know about them. He said that he was going to make the Russians play under his conditions. That turned out to be wrong, of course - the Russians out maneuvered him in the political realm. |
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| May-11-12 | | RookFile: Fischer did better when Ed Edmondson managed stuff for him and he just focused on chess. That's what was missing from the Karpov negotiations. Here is a quote from Gligoric from his Fischer vs. Spassky 1972 book: <Gligoric: From a list of 17 offers, 8 possible venues were selected for serious consideration. Then came the first surprising move. The Soviet order of preference was limited to 4 places: 1. Reykjavik 2. Amsterdam, 3. Dortmund 4. Paris. The other 4 offers were rejected through the Soviet embassy in the Netherlands which proclaimed they were 'unacceptable to Spassky'. Now it was the turn of Fischer's manager, Ed Edmondson to make the appropriate move. Fischer himself, while in Amsterdam, uttered only three words to Dutch journalists - 'I don't know' when they asked him if he agred to play in the Netherlands. A single repetition on the American list of any one place on the Soviet list would mean a free hand for F.I.D.E president Dr. Euwe to appoint that place as the venue as the 'only possible choice by agreement of the two rivals.' But such an agreement might have reduced by half Fischer's income from the match for which he had been working all his life. After several hour's reflection, Edmondson's decision in the diplomatic game of hide and seek was infallible:
the cities of Southern Europe were certainly not on Spassky's list (that is two towns in Yugoslavia, 1. Belgrade 2. Sarajevo); nor would the two transatlantic cities be on the Soviet list (3. Buenos Aires 4. Montreal). Thus no city was on both lists. The first round of this particular match ended in a draw.... A new attempt at an agreement came when Edmondson visited Moscow but this did not bear fruit. Although Reykjavik was not a bad choice (125,000 dollars for the prize fund against 152,000 offered by Belgrade) Fischer, in New York, followed his sacred rule not to accept on principle his rival's suggestions... > |
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| May-11-12 | | RookFile: Of course, I hardly need to mention that when Slater doubled the Reykjavik prize fund, that removed the obstacles Fischer had to that site.... |
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| May-11-12 | | Riverbeast: Oh, stop 'repeating untruths' <RookFile> ;-) |
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| May-11-12 | | RookFile: Quite right, too. Guys like Gligoric are hardly qualified to write about Fischer. |
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| May-11-12 | | Troller: Come on guys, let's keep this page to rating inflation discussions. |
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May-11-12
 | | Joshka: <keypusher> <so he always had an excuse to walk away. But somehow he managed to finish quite a few events> Fischer himself said he only walked out on 2 events out of about 60. His complaints to officials about the lights, ect. really helped all the players, like Boris always stated, Bobby was our union stewart. The officials didn't like having any player speak out. <the1992 farce> Well he stuck to his principles, which netted him and Spassky a huge payday, which is more honorable work than what the Wall Street sharks manage to do on a daily basis. He suffered being persecuted in his own country, thrown in jail, and really, in the end of it all, gave his life for his "never give an inch" approach to his belief system. Heck, his goals during his last 15-18 years of his life were to be married, have kids, ect. he himself admitted "he failed at the game of life".....we have to be satisfied for what he gave to chess, as it ultimately was his own life. How much more can you expect of one man? |
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May-11-12
| | Joshka: <Rookfile> <It was so clear that Fischer wasn't going to play that he later made several trips to visit Karpov and try to work out acceptable conditions for a match> Excellent point indeed, that I have not seen brought to light before!!;-) |
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May-11-12
| | keypusher: <How much more can you expect of one man?> Two thousand more games, give or take. Matches with Karpov. You know, a normal career. <RookFile: Fischer did better when Ed Edmondson managed stuff for him and he just focused on chess. That's what was missing from the Karpov negotiations. Here is a quote from Gligoric from his Fischer vs. Spassky 1972 book:> If you haven't got a copy of Profile of a Prodigy, RookFile, I'm sure you can find one at the library. Look up Fischer's initial comments on Iceland. Anyway, that's just a detail. The main facts are very simple. (Or as you might say, try to focus.) Fischer often played despite not getting all his conditions fulfilled. He could have played in any event he wanted getting all the conditions he wanted at any time after winning the title. He and no one else is responsible for his own failure to play Karpov. He and no one else is responsible for his own retirement from chess. |
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< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 68 OF 73 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
In 1974, Fischer's challenger was decided: he was an emerging Russian chess superstar,
