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| Sep-29-07 | | AlexandraThess: Unfortunately he couldn't contribute for the development and popularity of chess in Hellas. One of the hundreds of thousands post-war born greeks who were doomed to wander about the world. However, I hope that he will soon come back to the land of Gods and pay his tribute to Hellas. |
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| Nov-21-07 | | znprdx: Speaking of blitz? How about 1 minute games to mate with only Knight and Bishop? Biyasis vs. Suttles alternating for an hour or so in a West End coffehouse - of which I was co-proprietor (Eleven Seventy For Denman) Vancouver circa 1973. Now this is nostalgia! |
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| Nov-23-07 | | mack: <Biyasis vs. Suttles alternating for an hour or so in a West End coffehouse - of which I was co-proprietor (Eleven Seventy For Denman) Vancouver circa 1973.> Cor! I wanna hear more! |
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| Nov-23-07 | | Strongest Force: What's the big deal about Peter playing blitz with Bobby? I'll let y'all in on a little secret: Bobby was one of the two best playing blitz-players ever (Capablanca was the other) and Peter was probably the worst! It's more bizarre because these two GMs watched me play blitz for extended periods of time; its revealing: Peter would often compliment me for my play but Bobby never said anything: he probably didn't want to offend me! ;) |
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| Jun-17-08 | | RookFile: Wikipedia puts it this way:
<In the early 1980s, Fischer stayed for extended periods in the San Francisco-area home of his friend, the Canadian Grandmaster Peter Biyiasas. In 1981, the two played 17 five-minute games. Despite his layoff from competitive play, Fischer won all of them, according to Biyiasas, who lamented that he was never even able to reach an endgame.> |
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| Jun-17-08 | | Tessie Tura: <Peter commented that Fischer could "pack it" when it came to food.> This seems to have been the universal observation of anyone who had Fischer for a houseguest. <So what happened to him? Did he quite playing tournaments to spend time on a career?> A quote from the brief Shelby Lyman article on this incident that <Augalv> posted in the Fischer forum last week. <Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but Biyiasas, who was 30 years old when the games with Fischer occurred, stopped competing in major chess tournaments that year.> |
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Jun-18-08
 | | IMlday: Peter retired for reasons of physical health, specifically deteriorating eyesight. He knew it would happen well in advance so got lots of playing in while he could. I asked Ruth about feeding Bobby. She said the trick was to cook a lot of extra potatos. |
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| Jun-18-08 | | duchamp64: Anybody know where Peter lives now and what he is doing? |
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| Jun-18-08 | | Petrosianic: He lives across the street from me, and it LOOKS like he's taking a shower. Whoops, he just closed the drapes.
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| Jun-26-08 | | Caissanist: I believe that the games between Biyiasas and Fischer were one-minute games, not five-minute. The source that Wikipedia cites simply says "speed games". |
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Jan-02-09
 | | chancho: Incredibly Biyiasas first became an International Master by reading two books. Two books only! They were: Rook Endings By Grigory Levenfish and Vassily Smyslov. And My 60 Memorable Games by you know who. |
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Jan-02-09
| | IMlday: <chancho> he extra added ingredient was hundreds of 5-minute games with Duncan Suttles. |
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| Jan-18-09 | | Granny O Doul: Has anyone witnessed Fischer playing one-minute (or 5-1) with anybody? I don't think that his thing. |
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| Jul-12-14 | | Howard: Regarding Chancho's comment, that was mentioned in Inside Chess about twenty years ago---that is, Biyiasas reportedly studied only those two books on his way to becoming an IM. |
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| Nov-19-15 | | waustad: Happy 65th! Welcome to the club. |
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| Feb-24-21 | | Caissanist: The earliest source that I know of for the story of Biyiasas playing blitz with Fischer is Rene Chun's 2002 article for The Atlantic, <Bobby Fischer's Pathetic Endgame>, currently archived at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin... . In it, Chun writes the following:
<In 1981 the grand master Peter Biyiasas played seventeen straight games of speed chess against Fischer and lost every one. "He was too good," Biyiasas said at the time. "There was no use in playing him. It wasn't like I made this mistake or that mistake. It was like I was being gradually outplayed from the start. He wasn't taking any time to think. The most depressing thing about it is that I wasn't even getting out of the middle game to an endgame. I don't ever remember an endgame."> Chun doesn't give a primary source for these quotes. The only possible one that I know of is a 1983 article for the Los Angeles Times by Bella Stumbo, where she recounts Fischer's 1981 visit to Biyiasas and his wife Ruth Haring. Unfortunately the complete article is not apparently online, though a partial screenshot (without the above quotes) can be found at http://www.chessdryad.com/articles/... . |
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| May-12-21 | | Caissanist: Via Kevin Spraggett's blog, another semi-contemporary source for the Biyiasas-Fischer games is a 1984 article by Fred Waitzkin in The New Yorker:
<”Chess enthusiasts everywhere speculate about whether Bobby Fischer still plays chess and how he would do against the great Russian players.Californian Peter Biyiasis claims to be the only grandmaster to have played with Fischer in recent years. In August 1981 Fischer lived with Biyiasis and his wife Ruth Haring in their home in San Francisco, and the two grandmasters played well over 100 speed games. ”If anything Bobby has gotten better.” says Biyiasis. ”He is like a machine. There was a feeling of inevitability about these games. Fischer saw too much and too fast. While he played he made comments and joked, as if he were playing an amateur. We played more than 100 games and I never won one.” Even more impressive to Biyiasis was Fischer’s ability to analyze positions. ”We looked at Karpov and Kasparov games , and he would say ”But look at these blunders. Karpov could have drawn this game, but he lost it.”
They did not look like blunders to me, but when Fischer took the time to explain, I saw that he was right every time. There’s no doubt in my mind that Fischer is the best in the world.” > |
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May-12-21
 | | beatgiant: There's a US Candidate Master named Theodore Biyiasas. Given the rarity of the name in the US, I assume he's related to Peter. Does anyone know more details? |
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| May-12-21 | | savagerules: I met him at a tournament several years ago and he is his son and his mother was Ruth Haring Biyiasis. I asked him about his dad and he said his dad (Peter) had been blind (or maybe it was partially blind) for a number of years due to some ailment of some kind. |
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May-12-21
 | | perfidious: The sort of understanding displayed by Fischer, if the account related is correct, is frightening. |
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May-13-21
 | | HeMateMe: Not to nitpick, but Pete B's highest rating was 2514, a weak GM in the Fischer era. Of course Fischer was a monster talent, but still, he was rated at least 200 points higher than PB. I'm more impressed with things like Kasparov playing all five members of the Israeli olympiad team in a simul and beating all five of them. |
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May-13-21
| | perfidious: When I read such comments as 'weak GM', I am often unsure whether to laugh or throw something at the monitor; for very often those posting thus do not truly grasp how difficult it can be to get anywhere near that level. I faced a number of grandmasters in my playing days and can assure those who never have that they are one tough lot. When Fischer was 2785, after Buenos Aires, there was a rather large gap until one got to the second-ranked player (~2665), and if Biyiasas' peak rating was achieved at roughly the time he made GM, in 1978, he was no weakling--a player rated 2514 in those days, while no threat for the title, was quite competent. |
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May-13-21
 | | Tabanus: He was ranked about 150 in the world in 1981. Around 150 today we find e. g. Short, Kravtsiv and Ganguly with 2625. |
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| Sep-27-21 | | Bartleby: <Caissanist: The earliest source that I know of for the story of Biyiasas playing blitz with Fischer is Rene Chun's 2002 article for The Atlantic... Chun doesn't give a primary source for these quotes. The only possible one that I know of is a 1983 article for the Los Angeles Times by Bella Stumbo, where she recounts Fischer's 1981 visit to Biyiasas and his wife Ruth Haring.> There's another archived article, this time a 1985 piece in Sports Illustrated chronicling a first-person narrative of the journalist William Nack and his obsession with tracking down an elusive Bobby whom he has on good authority often haunts LA public libraries. It's a fairly long article, filled with a number of details and anecdotes about the number of peripheral figures in Bobby Fischer's life (sportswriter Dick Schaap, friend and chessplayer Ron Gross, promoter Lina Grumette, another friend and theoretician Bernard Zuckerman, his old tutor Jack Collins, personal trainer Harry Sneider, and others). It also includes the story about Fischer's stay with Biyiasas and his wife in San Francisco, and the marathon of 17 speed games in a row where Biyiasas was mercilessly drubbed (probably cribbed form the same sources as Rene Chun used). Anyway it's a pretty interesting read. Penned in 1985 so right smack in the middle of Bobby Fischer's "Wilderness Years" before he re-emerged in Bosnia to play his "exhibition" world championship re-match with Spassky in '92. Aside from Frank Brady's "Endgame" on Fischer that I own this article is the best free peak on the speculation and enigma of Fischer during the interim period of his post-Champion life. Also a bit of amusing drama at the end, when Nack thinks he's at last picked up on Fischer's trail after countless weeks of stakeouts. Link: https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/07/... |
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| Oct-02-21 | | Z truth 000000001: Bidmonfa has a photo of him, which <CG> clearly is lacking. Another one, perhaps my favorite, is here:
Chess Voice, v3 N10 (Jun-Jul 1977) p56
http://www.chessdryad.com/articles/... |
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