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Sep-09-13 | | parisattack: I've spent more time with GM Lombardy's book Understanding Chess: My System, My Games, My Life and highly recommend it. Whatever might be your take on his chronicle of various events, Fischer, etc - the games and analysis are quite excellent! I stand by my earlier evaluation that his play is similar to Leonid Stein - 'dynamodern' with both hypermodern and dynamic elements. As someone who has long speculated on what is the core chess skill/ability, I also found Lombardy's thoughts on 'eidetic imagery' fascinating. The book is a well produced, high quality paperback. A bit pricey, perhaps, but so it goes... |
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Dec-04-13
 | | Penguincw: Happy 76th birthday to the <POTD>: William James Lombardy. |
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Dec-04-13 | | parisattack: Happy Birthday, Bill.
I've very much enjoyed your book, studying your games, considering the eidetic imagery approach. P.S. thanks for the name. ;) |
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Aug-12-14
 | | HeMateMe: the Lombardy book cover:
<https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/...> |
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Dec-15-14 | | Caissanist: Updated link to the Spraggett article cited by <FSR>: https://kevinspraggettonchess.wordp... . Incidentally, although the Lombardy page is OK much of the other material on Spraggett's website is NSFW. Proceed with caution. |
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Apr-21-15
 | | offramp: He is obviously quite a character. I bet he knows some fantastic knock knock jokes. |
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Apr-21-15 | | zanzibar: Sorry - I messed up the line converting descriptive into algebraic, let me delete/repost: Has anybody here ever worked through Lombardy's analysis in <Modern Chess Opening Traps> with or without an engine? I know that the book came out in 1972, but still... only up to p22 and there are over half a dozen similar to this: (White to move)
 click for larger view11.Nb3
Quote: <Castles long does not provide escape: 11: O-O-O Bxd2+(?) 12.Bxd2 Qxd4> To think that Black has won a piece in the sub-variation is, er, symptomatically problematic. Actually finding the winning move after 11.O-O-O makes a good puzzle, I think. |
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Apr-21-15 | | zanzibar: The answer to the knock-knock joke is Unpinning, of course. |
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Apr-21-15
 | | offramp: GM Father William Lombarby: Knock! Knock!
Me: Who's there??
GM Monsignor ex-Father William Lombarby: Un.
Me: Un who?
Biochemist GM Monsignor ex-Father William Lombarby: Un-pinning!! [Laughter] |
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Apr-22-15 | | zanzibar: <offramp> see if you can unpin this... http://images-00.delcampe-static.ne... Not an easy task! |
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Apr-22-15 | | zanzibar: Hint - use the stuff all physicists love - symmetry. (Warning - hints can just be all the more confusing if you don't already know the answer - but remember, you started it, 3x's over) |
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Apr-22-15 | | MagnusVerMagnus: Great player, very underrated, never given credit for helping Fischer win the Title. Exceptional speed player from I have read. |
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Apr-22-15
 | | offramp: <Zanzibar>, that is a lovely stamp. Soldi looks like a European version of Shillings, i.e., solidi. The two headed eagle looks Polish, but it could be from lots of places in Danubia. Since I don't think Poles ever used shillings (except perhaps in Galicia), I'm gonna say this is from Austria, and from about 1870. That is a genuine, non-googled guess. |
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Apr-23-15 | | zanzibar: <offramp> Yes, as a young man I was always more partial to coins than stamps. But as a sometimes chess biographer I've come to appreciate stamps. I found the stamps when doing this google image search: https://www.google.com/search?q=lom... It's from Austria. I could have used this image instead: http://th06.deviantart.net/fs70/150... or this:
https://www.raremaps.com/maps/mediu...
And if I had done a straight-forward textual search I would have found this image instead: https://www.facebook.com/1626787571... But only the stamps had the mirror symmetry I was looking for... dbdb PS- Google translates "solidi" as "money", which is close enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidu... |
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Apr-23-15 | | zanzibar: And here's an oft-repeated story, from Don Schulz, relating an incident when he was Fischer's second in 1972. It's from <The Atlantic>, and we'll pick it up at the beginning of the paragraph: <Fischer's accomplishment cannot be overstated. A brash twenty-nine-year-old high school dropout, armed with little more than a pocket chess set and a dog-eared book documenting Spassky's important games, had single-handedly defeated the Soviet chess juggernaut. Spassky had a wealth of resources at his disposal to help him plot moves, including thirty-five grand masters back in the Soviet Union. Fischer, on the other hand, had two administrative seconds who served essentially as companions, and Bill Lombardy, a grand master, whose role was to help analyze games. However, Fischer did almost all the analysis himself—when he bothered to do anything. "After the games were adjourned, all the Soviets would go back to Spassky's hotel room to plan for the next position," recalls Don Schultz, one of the seconds. "Lombardy said to Fischer, 'That's a difficult position. Let's go back to the hotel and analyze it.' Fischer said, 'What do you mean, analyze? That guy's a fish. Let's go bowling.'" > http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine... (about 1/2 down) |
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Apr-23-15 | | zanzibar: And from Brady's <Endgame> is this note: <p176 "It's true that he works alone" Interview of William Lombardy by the author, July 15, 1972 Reykjavik, Iceland.> |
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May-22-15 | | TheFocus: <What has always impressed me most of the young Lombardy was his flair for clear strategic play. Different from how young players normally develop their styles (first tactical, then strategic, finally universal), Lombardy’s early play was profoundly positional. This especially was evident with how he handled the English Opening. I can think of no other player of his age having such mastery of this opening. Not Botvinnik, Karpov, not even Fischer. Even today, I enjoy playing over his games in this opening> - Kevin Spraggett. |
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May-22-15 | | TheFocus: <There cannot be two champions at the same time. Lombardy had the misfortune that while his extraordinary natural chess talent was enormous, he was not a genius like Bobby. Nor was his more cautious boa-constrictor style of play able to impress the fans like Bobby’s dynamic, more aggressive style of play. Perhaps more importantly, what little (private) financial support there existed in American chess at the time went to Fischer; Bill had to do everything on his own.> - Kevin Spraggett (on Bill Lombardy). |
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May-23-15 | | TheFocus: <Confidence wells up as one patiently works on beating players on one level before moving up to the next level. If a player moves up too fast, the mauling he takes from the tigers on the upper levels could easily destroy his confidence and worse, dim his pleasure at playing chess. And one further note. When one plays stronger players prematurely and consequently gets crushed by them, it will be very difficult for that player to forget the thrashing he received. Later, when he does become strong enough to cross swords with those very same players, he may not be able to overcome the fear rooted in his mind as a result of former beatings. He then continues to lose to those self same players, even though his current playing strength may be greater than theirs. One does not practice running a full mile until one has practiced the quarter-mile> - William Lombardy, Guide to Tournament Chess (p.115). |
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May-26-15 | | TheFocus: <A young player, specifically because he is so inexperienced, naturally fears an established master. Only the ambitious player becomes a solid master, and that by breaking that fear. How? By being prepared to play out every game. He must gamble on losing; there is no other way of winning. We all make mistakes. A determined player makes fewer, and those he does make are more often overlooked simply because of the pressure and tension he exerts on his rival!> - William Lombardy. |
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Jun-06-15
 | | offramp: <TheFocus: <What has always impressed me most of the young Lombardy was his flair for clear strategic play. Different from how young players normally develop their styles (first tactical, then strategic, finally universal), Lombardy’s early play was profoundly positional. This especially was evident with how he handled the English Opening. I can think of no other player of his age having such mastery of this opening. Not Botvinnik, Karpov, not even Fischer. Even today, I enjoy playing over his games in this opening> - Kevin Spraggett.> A very illuminating comment from GM Spraggett, whose opinions I always value. I had never heard of Lombardy's mastery of the English before. But here is a puzzle:
<I can think of no other player of his age having such mastery of this opening [the English]. Not Botvinnik, Karpov, not even Fischer.> Fischer? Which Fischer? The late GM Fischer of Chicago was not, as far as I remember, a player of the English as either white or black. |
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Jun-06-15 | | RookFile: I did a quick look, Bobby Fischer appears to have a record of +9 -1 = 8 in this database as black against the English. |
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Jun-06-15
 | | offramp: <RookFile: I did a quick look, Bobby Fischer appears to have a record of +9 -1 = 8 in this database as black against the English.> I also had a look; I searched for Fischer (from the drop-down list) and English (also from the drop-down list}. That gave +23 =13 -1. That is far far more than I remembered. The loss was B Wexler vs Fischer, 1960. So Spraggett, once again, was right! His sample size was large enough to make a meaningful comparison between Lombardy's English and Fischer's English. |
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Jul-21-15
 | | Retireborn: Does anybody have Lombardy's book (Understanding Chess) and know any more about game 114 vs Saevar Bjarnason? Chessbase says Bjarnason wasn't playing in the Westman Islands 1985 tournament, and the score (which begins 1.e4 e6. 2.Nf3 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.a3 Ba5) doesn't correspond to any of Lombardy's games from there (or indeed any Lombardy game I can find in Chessbase.) Obviously Lombardy's memory is at fault, but does anybody know when/where this game was played? |
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Jul-21-15 | | diceman: <RookFile: I did a quick look, Bobby Fischer appears to have a record of +9 -1 = 8 in this database as black against the English.> He also beat Spassky (1972) as white in an English. |
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