This is how close chess can turn you from a champ to a chump, from a zero to hero in just one move.

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Here Black rolled the dice and castled (17...0-0). And why not, '...if you don't have a dream, how you ever gonna have a dream come true.'

If 18.Qxd7 Rd8 and if that had happened parallels would have been made with Anand losing in 6 moves, Kramnik getting mated in one and Fischer's 29...Bxh2 in Game one 1972.

It reminded me of a game I used a while back to show how dangerous it is to have ideas at the chessboard. (Let the other guy have the ideas, he is human, it's bound to be wrong.)

Arond - Dekay, Chicago Open 1996. (White to play and have an idea - theme Qxd7.)

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14.Bxh7+ Kxh7 15.Qd3+ Kg8 16.Qxd7 Job done.

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Black played 16...Rad8 0-1.

Hi FSR,

<The Dean Arond game?> I'm not sure where I got it from, I have a database full of games I can use when stuck for an instructive example. I like to use unknown games rather than dip into the pool of well known same old games which you see time and time again.

Looks like sometime I may have been looking for Classic Bishops Sacs on h7 and 0-1 under 20 moves - a sure sign the sac was mis-timed and I stumbled upon it in my Mega-Base.

But I did use it sometime ago to show the kids the dangers of not looking just that one move deeper. It's how I remembered it.

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Hi pajaste,

100% agree! it makes it a proper world championship, in theory Shaun was only 26 games away from a W.C. match with Carlsen.

12 games in World Cup to get to the final, (win one draw one), win the 14 round candidates. (win 4 draw 10 should do it.)

Should Ding get to the World Championship Shaun can tell his grand kids it all started with him!

I've told many times how I was one of the boys in the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup tournament who moved the pieces on a projection machine so that the audience could see what moves the players made. Needless to say one of our responsibilities was to do this as unobtrusively as possible. And there are several posters on this site who will attest to what I say below (well, most of it, anyway).

Fischer was at the time certainly considered to be one of the world's best players, although not heads and shoulders above everyone else. For example, in the first unofficial rating list prepared by Dr. Elo in 1967, he was co-ranked #1 with Spassky with a rating of 2670, 10 rating points above Petrosian and 20 rating points above Tal and Botvinnik. And at that time the ratings were rounded to the nearest 10 points, so the differences could have been less.

Fischer had a bad start in the tournament. After the 8th round (out of 18) he was tied for last with Donner, 2½ points behind Spassky. Around this time (I don't remember the exact game) I was assigned to move the pieces on the projection machine. After I moved the pieces I always sat perfectly still.

Suddenly Fischer, while deciding on his best move, raised his head, pointed a finger at me, and snapped "YOU! BE QUIET!". So I snapped back "I AM QUIET!". He lowered his head and continued playing his game. This I think was an example of Fischer's selective "fine hearing".

Well, in the second half of the tournament Fischer went on a winning streak. He won 5 out of 7 games with 2 draws to score 8 points and catch Spassky for the lead, although Spassky eventually won the tournament by ½ point with a last round win over Donner. I like to think that Fischer began to play like that because he wanted to show me what he was made of.

After that tournament Fischer won tournament after tournament and match after match in decisive fashion, culminating in his decisive win in his match against Spassky in 1972 to win the WCC. Then, feeling that he had shown me what he was made of, he retired from chess. :-)

A nice story to tell my grandkids if I had any, that Fischer's path to the WCC title began with me and might even had been because of me. :-)

Of course, things could have gone the other way. Fischer could have become so annoyed with my snapping back at me that he could have walked out of the 2nd Piatigorsky cup tournament right then and there, and never played another chess game again. And the <chessgames.com>'s Fischer page would probably not have 5527 pages of posts. But then, what would have become of <harrylime>? Who knows? Without Fischer mania to distract him, he might have cured cancer or he could have become Prime Minister, and Brexit would never have been contemplated.

Hi AylerKupp,

Fischer told you to 'be quiet' and you of course answered back.

Nobody here is surprised. :)

You need to post a picture of yourself from back then, if you look Jewish you may have started the ball rolling on the other Fischer matter that was dear to his heart.

The 'if there was no Fischer' scenario.

A lot of us would not be playing chess or posting here. (would this chess site exist? ) Chess would still be in the dark ages regarding media interest and prize money.

Harry would have ended up of some web site about old film stars proclaiming Charlie Chaplin was the greatest. (I'd be shouting for Laurel and Hardy).

I don't know if I looked Jewish back then. Exactly what does a Jewish young man look like? You tell us.

If there was no Fischer scenario then many of us might not be posting here. Would that really be such a bad thing? Think about it.

I don't know if this chess site would exist if Fischer had not existed but considering that Fischer effectively retired from chess in 1972 and this site was not established until 2001, when technology allowed it to happen and then largely through the efforts of Daniel Freeman, who was only 5 years old when Fischer effectively retired. So I don't think that Fischer had a substantial influence in the creation of this chess site, an almost 40-year calendar difference makes it difficult to establish a definite cause and effect relationship.

I don't know if chess would still be in the "dark ages" regarding media interest and prize money. The prize fund for the 1972 WCC match between Fischer and Spassky was US $250,000 thanks to the generosity of James Slater who contributed US $125,000 to the prize fund. 5/8 (US $156,250 went to Fischer and 3/8 (US $93,750) went to Spassky. Had Slater not contributed his US $125,000 the match might never have taken place, so perhaps the credit for raising the WCC contestants prize money should really go to Slater and not Fischer.

Per Bill Wall (http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/a...), in 1987 the prize fund for the world chess championship between Karpov and Kasparov in Seville, Spain was 2,280,000 Swiss francs. With the Swiss Franc to US Dollar exchange rate in 1987 of approximately 1.969:1 this represented about US $1,158,036. Both Karpov and Kasparov got a mere 137,000 Swiss francs each, or about US $69,584 each. The rest of the prize fund apparently went to the Soviet Sports Committee. It doesn't seem to me that much progress was made in player's earnings between 1972 and 1987, although that was primarily due to the Soviet system and both Karpov and Kasparov, like Spassky and Petrosian, were amply compensated by the Soviet government for their accomplishments in other ways.

The real progress in player earnings began in 1990 with the 5th Karpov vs. Kasparov match; a US $3M prize fund with US $1.875M going to the winner and US $1.125M going to the loser, perhaps not coincidentally soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Again, a long way between 1972 and 1990. So consider that this probably had far more to do with the interest in a 5th and likely closely contested match (as it was) between two players who IMO were each better than Fischer, certainly for a much longer period of time. Or maybe it was Kasparov's popularity, even though many did not like him and were likely rooting against him. Also consider that after Kasparov lost the title to Kramnik in 2000, the prize fund for the Kramnik vs. Leko WCC match in 2004 had shrunk to US $1.2M, less than half of what it was just 10 years earlier.

So I think that Fischer's influence in the large increase of the prize funds in WCC matches is greatly overstated. Besides, the push to increase the pay for top-level chess players started with Lasker, many decades before Fischer was born.