However, after 84...Rc5?, Nalimov shows that White can draw by 85.Ke4, 85.Kg4, or 85.Qg8.

Even if 84...Rc3! had been played, it would not be easy to force the win. In the game, Matthai obtained two more winning positions, but he could only draw.

A few moves later, Fischer erred with 87.Ke4?, (87.Kg4, 87.Qh7, 87.Qg6, or 87.Qg8 are the drawing moves). Matthai then missed the only winning move, 87...Rh3! (wins in 33).

At move 89, Fischer missed the drawing 89.Kd4, or 89.Kc4. This time, Matthai found the winning 89...Rh3!, but on his next move he missed the only winning move, 90...Rc3!.

I think these tablebase positions show how completely clueless we are about such rare endgame positions.

Playing around a bit

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is a draw at any rate, whereas here

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black to move wins in 24 moves, starting with <1...Rf3>

Of this game, Brady says:

<After the game was drawn, he wondered if there was anything he'd overlooked. There was just something about the position, an echo of an idea distinctly heard. Could he have established a won game, even at the point just before it was drawn?

That night, in a deep but restless sleep, a dream came to him and the position appeared over and over again - seemingly hundreds of times. Just befoer waking, the solution came to Bobby as a kind of apparition. There WAS a win there!

Bobby woke and sat bolt upright. "I've got it!" he said aloud, not knowing that anyone else was in the room. [text deleted] "I knew I should have won!" he fairly screamed.>

As far as I can tell, this story is complete fantasy. I don't see anything remotely approaching a win for White anywhere near the end of this game. Brady does list a source, but it's a clipping from an "Unidentified Newspaper" (!), dated January 1958 (a year and a half after the game was played).

I find it hard to believe that all of what Brady said was in the newspaper article ("deep but restless sleep", "fairly screamed", "bounced barefooted into the living room"). It sounds like his details are largely concocted. And even if by chance, Fischer did claim in a newspaper article that he had a win at the end of this game, it seems disingenuous of Brady not to point out that the claim is completely false.

You have to take almost everything Brady says with a grain of salt. After all, he said in the preface that some things in the book <Endgame> are not true, basically admitting, "Yeah, I made some of this up."

Please see the following in <Endgame>.

page. ix: <I ask forgiveness for my occasional speculations in this book, but Fischer's motivations beg to be understood; and when conjecture is used, I inform the reader of my doing so. To vivify Bobby's extraordinary life I sometimes use the techniques of the novelist: elaboration of setting, magnification of detail, fragments of detail, and revelation of interior states. But always my use of these devices is based on my research, recollection, and study of the man.>

But, when you first read <Endgame>, you are fascinated. The second read-through, you think, "Yeah... right, Frank."

Fischer chose instead the dubious 23 b4 preparing to sac the exchange the next move.

The obvious 23 Qh2 allows the Black King to escape to Kd7 via 23...Kf7 at the cost of a pawn.

Not seeing a clear win in this line Fischer may have missed he could freeze Black's King in the corner by controlling the e file, and Black has no counter play.

For example, the best illustration of the power of 23 Qe1 over 23 Qh2 is in the line

I still hold on to the hope that Fischer squirreled away some notes on his games that will someday come to light, but it does not appear likely