Interestingly, Short also performed well ahead of his rating in the Candidates Matches, beating Gelfand with +2 (ratings predicted +0.6 to Gelfand), Karpov with +2 (ratings predicted +2 to Karpov!), and Timman with +3 (ratings predicted +0.6 to Short). In the meantime, his tournament results were far less impressive, accounting for his low overall rating.

I assume the posting about an MI6 threat was a joke.

The fact that Short was rated 9 or whatever can be misleading. Ratings don't tell you everything.

Nigel Short was immensely talented but by his own admission spent much of his later teenage years lying in bed doing as little as possible. He "cruised" on that talent.

You can NOT relay just in talent, which I think is the case. Chess needs completly, totaly dedication and modern chess even more.

Only Capabablanca and Spassky, and even they two had to pay a price... for sleeping in a cloud.>

I understood that Capablanca (or his fans) liked to nurture this image of him being such a natural talent, but in the meantime he played lots and lots of chess when he was in New York on this 'job' for the Cuban government. If so, he practised more than most people know, no?

TOTAL dedication is right... at least according to one well known GM I met.

I spent about an hour at a local chess tournament here in the US talking with a high ranked GM (whose name I won't reveal for obvious reasons) who told the tale of his sharing a room with Kramnik during a tournament. He said that on most days of the tourney, he would arise at 8:00 a.m. to find that Kramnik had already been at his laptop studying opening prep for what was apparently a few hours (as evidenced by remains of breakfast scattered about). When he would return later on, often after 9:00 p.m., he would find that Vlad had spent the entire day (but for the games) in the hotel room (more dishes) and would continue to do so until nearly midnight... clicking away at the laptop. The next day the same pattern would repeat. On some "Rest days" he would never even set foot outside the room. He said the "cultural excursions" were viewed, by Kramnik, as a nuisance.

As to the openings, I would point you to this: Kasprov in the late 80's was a beast in the Be2 scheveningen/najdorf. Why this opening? because this was how Karpov was comfortable playing against the Najdorf. Notice how he almost always chose the move order 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6, and only on move 6 would he play ...e6. He avoided the Keres attack in this manner, which was Karpov's preffered 'must-win' weapon against the scheveningen.

Later, when his match with Shirov fell through, Kasparov did astonishingly well against the English attack, probably reasoning that this was going to be Shirov's choice.

As short played the 6.Bg5 lines in the najdorf, Kasparov for it well.

Spassky did give Fischer a problem against Bc4 in the 1972 match....so Fischer showed flexibility and switched away from it, in that particular case to 1. c4.

Karpov scored 0.5/5(!) with Black in his match with Short. Nigel's 1 e4 looked invincible against Karpov.

I think Nigel won two Worrall Attacks in the Ruy Lopez, one Caro-Kann, and one Sicilian which Karpov played in the last game in desperation.

Source: http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/kas...

Nathan Divinsky: Well, I was with Kasparov, I went to his mansion in Regents Park at the end of the match for lunch, and he had not been nailing Short as much as I thought he should have, because Short would ruin his pawn structure at the beginning, and we all thought he was dead lost and then Kasparov would accept a draw. Turns out that he had just had his wisdom teeth pulled, and his wife had just left him. So he wasn't really a hundred percent. But he still smashed Short up pretty bad. He's an arrogant guy but he has every right to be arrogant. What I can't stand is people who are arrogant who have no business being arrogant. He has a talent. He can crank up the engine a notch whenever he has to. He is just amazing.> http://www.chessbc.ca/nd.html