I don't think the Soviets were 'stunned' as Fischer learnt many of his ideas studying Shakmaty, and it is the kind of move Botvinnik would play. The trouble with evaluating players is one always finds exceptions and counter exceptions.

Once I set up a position at my Club. This game involved a great attack, with an intricate series of sacrifices leading to win. The winner had to calculate 20 moves and some lines. Which great or famous player was it who made this brilliant combination and attack?

Someone guessed the answer only by suggesting someone "unlikely". Tal was suggested, and various other famous players.

But indeed, it was Petrosian.

And it is interesting to play Botvinnik's games. In his commentaries he very often criticises his own moves. He was in many ways a practical player, and often quite ingenious over the board. To that effect Fischer does to, or he includes games which are often not 'clear' so in his 40 Memorable Games two I recall -- one against Fischer and a great game by both Petrosian and Fischer were draws. A lot can be learnt from Fischer's endings and some of his attacks but I feel his repertoire was too restricted. Petrosian and others had success against him using the Caro-Kan, French etc and should have stuck to those and avoided his 'preferences' for open Sicilians (although in the early US Champs he played the KI Attack which Petrosian played also. Spassky was not as strong as Karpov who was younger than Fischer and Spassky so he could well have won in 1974 but they both agreed the terms for the match were not good.

Carlsen doesn't know himself. After all, what is chess? It has never been resolved. Tal is the exception of the GM who likes silence and long concentration (all the time) -- he said he liked the noise of audiences, the applause, whereas Fischer, who he got on with very well, he said, liked silence and good conditions.

But Tal was generous, when he lost to Botvinnik in the return match (which is really and exciting match and worth playing over, it is clear that Bot had learnt from 1960), he said: "He played well, like a young man."

In this the truth has been rediscovered that all human chess players including Carlsen make mistakes. This match has been disappointing for Carlsen. He hasn't played that well. He has played "so-so" and Nepo blundered in game 9. Not sure if the Petrov was in Rd 8 I think it was was due to a blunder, the whole game just looked bizarre by both players...But he would like to win with a flourish -- or by some really great game or games and have some great struggles in between.

The matches are too short, and I think adjournments should be brought back. It meant that the break enabled recovery. And players need to be able to draw at any time if they aggree.

USER <<RICHARD TAYLOR>>

is an iconic BOBBY HATER on here ...

Just sayin

https://en.chessbase.com/post/world...

Carlsen-Nepo 10:Carlsen on thé brink of Victory:

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/ca...

Carlsen in cruise control with a three-point lead:

https://kasparovchess.com/articles/...

FIDE World Championship 2021:A change in mindset?:

lol lol lol >

But you have a naive view of chess and chess players. It isn't even a question of who is "best". People play better at different times in their lives.

Re Fischer, no, don't hate him. Fischer fascinates me, I have been studying his games from time to time since his first book which came out in the 60s, re the US Champs and his games in the Olympiad. Then I lost interest in chess.

He was younger than most of the Soviets when he went to Moscow etc and got on well with Tal. More recently I have read a number of books on Fischer, also watched the movies. I see him as, yes, a great player. But his capacity, like that of Carlsen's, was enhanced by an enormous study including the Soviets.

The point is -- he was an American in a (mostly anti-Communist) society (his mother was a left-wing if not a Communist activist) -- he was of Jewish extraction and really didn't ever know his own father and so on. His real father was not named Fischer by the way.

But his games. I went through all the games of the World Championship and learnt a lot, as then (1978) I was new back to chess and I tried to figure out what I would play.

Then later I studied all the Candidate matches etc he played. (By the way a reasonable annotated book -- without too much analysis) of his collected games would be good to see).

I found his methods in the endgames very useful -- but there is an anecdote of him playing Taimanov, when he was in a difficult ending, and managed to play the correct saving moves very rapidly. Taimanov asked how he knew the method. It, the method, he had found in Shakmaty. Taimanov was surprised and impressed.

He was, despite his attacks which were good if relatively standard (in most cases), mostly a classicist, admiring Capablanca. Even his Poisoned Pawn var of the Najdorf has a strategical purpose. To balance position by material but also to weaken White's dark squares.

But Fischer was not highly educated and his naivety and his 'psychosis' or whatever was troubling him led him to respond in arbitrary ways. Part of that is people picking things out of what he said, snippets.

Certainly he played some great games like Rubinstein and Keres, but he wasn't really able to describe what he was doing in the way Emmanuel Lasker could.

But he did understand positions and endings of course. But after 1972, after agreeing with Karpov the terms were not good enough, he left chess, walking off muttering, shaking, into the dark, fading, becoming more and more excited and paranoid -- even expounding his insane anti-Semitism to the Polgars who are Jewish, and later slowly deteriorating like Alekhine who, very inebriated, deeply upset that the Nazis had lost the war, and obsessed with fat women -- threw himself dramatically & and ridiculously to his death from a hotel in that curious and bizarre nation of Portugal....Like Fischer all had come to an end except for bizarre voices and and his obsessions....and like Alekhine, Fischer faded from Chess, except to play some dubious games with Spassky who told us: "I love Fischer." when we asked his opinion of Fischer (at a simul in Auckland in 1988). But Spassky....well he is another kettle of Fisch...

No, Harry, your love or the rather old fashioned Beetles etc and being a Liverpudlian and inveterate boozer doesn't qualify you to discuss chess in the way such as I and the Cognoscenti are able to....Nor Philosophy and other deep matters....

With rugby being NZ's religion, I'm surprised its cathedral is so small.

Of course, being a religion nowadays doesn't mean many people follow it. Maybe the All Blacks are more honoured away than at home.

If one has to calculate on the basis of how many Tests per year at what annual cost, maybe religion isn't the right word anyway. Apologies if I got swept away in inappropriate support for the NZ rugby ethos.

No disrespect - just wondering why.>

As was said Eden Park is in Auckland. I don't really follow rugby, I watch the occasional game, or I used to watch sports but here it is mostly not free to air as it used to be. I rarely watch television or even listen to the radio.

So I am not a "true Kiwi"! The thing about Eden Park is that it is virtually right next to the Auckland Chess Centre which was more important to me up to 2021, as I played there at the Club as a member and also played in the NZ Seniors. This year we played on line. No rating points. The first online "standard" time chess tournament I had played in. It was interesting.

But on certain days if a chess fanatic cant get his car off the road the car gets towed -- if there is a rugby match on. That used to be the deal.

Bw Dion>