The Chess of Bobby Fischer
Fischer's games are so
full of ideas, from opening adventures to the themes of composed
endings, that they are in themselves the best introduction to the
pleasures of the game. In the arduous path to chess mastery,
enjoyment is the surest driving force. In the words of Bobby
Fischer, "You can get good only if you love the game."
So much has been written
about Fischer as a personality that the general public, including
the chess fraternity, has been blinded to his chess. His games have
been analyzed over and over in the chess journals. He has published
three books himself, with varying degrees of help from other
authors. Yet his winning methods, his unique contributions to the
larger body of chess knowledge, and his rightful place in the
history of the game have been overshadowed by all the publicity.
A study of Fischer's 750
known clock games shows that he has no "chess secrets." He is alert
and accurate. He takes each game seriously, even when the outcome
may not have any effect on his tournament standing. He is persistent
and not easily discouraged. Such qualities are more a matter of
character than of talent. In this sense his real strength is as a
man, not as a player. How different is the image which the press has
seized upon in its search for the "angle" on the man!
Fischer must be
considered the most successful player the game has ever known. He
has lost about 10 percent of his games and drawn about 30 percent,
for a batting average of .750. It is true that Capablanca lost only
thirty-five games out of the seven hundred he played in a thirty-
year career. But Fischer has never been willing to concede the
restful draw, or to play to the score. And his competition over the
twenty-year career he has now enjoyed has been intense.
Among the Russians,
several still hold a plus score against him as a result of his early
games. On the other hand, he has lopsided margins against many fine
players: Reshevsky 9-4, Petrosian 8-4, Taimanov 7-0, Saidy 6-0,
Sherwin 7-0, Bisguier 13-1, and Larsen 10-2.
In trying to give an
adequate account of the massive body of Fischer's "works," I have
carefully combed all of his published games for what might be
interesting to the complete player. I have chosen the key positions
in his games that illustrate or relate to a wide variety of chess
stratagems, combinations, endgame subtleties, even chess problems
and studies. In this sense, this book is a horizontal rather than a
vertical view of the game. It is not merely about a player's games,
or about the middle game, or about combinations, but about chess.
The reader may start
almost anywhere without missing part of the plot. He can browse
without having to set up the pieces; but he is not surfeited with
diagrams at every other move. A basic skill the player must learn is
to analyze without "tickling the pieces," to visualize the
topography of future positions without having to see them anywhere
but in his mind's eye.
When Bobby Fischer lost
his historic Olympics game to Spassky (Siegen, 1970), the score
sheet recorded the event in more ways than one. As his game became
shaky, and finally deteriorated, Fischer's rough penmanship
collapsed into a drunken scrawl. At the "Resigns" line one could not
determine what move it was. Yet here again was Fischer uniqueness:
What other score sheet in all of chess history has merited any
attention at all?
The ability to replay a
game, move by move, nowadays often with clock recordings, has no
parallel in any other "spectator" sport. We have films of great
athletic events, instant replays of television presentations, and
excellent reportage of the local football or soccer matches. But no
aficionado can as easily dip into the history of his avocation as
the chess player.
When Fischer summed up
the contribution of America's finest player up to his time, Paul
Morphy, he startled the traditionalists. He called Morphy the most
accurate player of all time, although everyone had heard from the
analysts that Morphy either was the most brilliant (Sergeant), or
the best equipped in modem strategic ideas (Fine), or simply the
first man to understand the virtues of rapid development. This was
not an argument over whether a Joe Louis could beat a Jack Dempsey;
the scores were there for all to examine. Perhaps Morphy's
opposition was not as strong as twentieth-century opposition. But
when it was, it was not a matter of conjecture: the game could be
replayed at will.
The content recorded on
score sheets is so complete, so irrefutable, that it seems trivial
when an argument erupts over the algebraic versus the descriptive
notation. There is a certain parallel here between the metric versus
the "English" system of measurement. Symbolism can be refined for
efficiency, for ease of conversion, for space. Descriptive notation
is used in this book for the simple reason that it is currently the
most widely understood system in English publishing.
(There are excellent
reasons why algebraic notation works better for problems and
studies, where reference points to the starting positions of the
pieces seem particularly out of place. There are also good reasons
for resisting uniformity in this as in many other enterprises.)
Styles change, too, with
the times. Fifteenth-century manuscripts are cryptic and virtually
modern in their notation. In a more leisurely age, the early
nineteenth century, a score sheet was almost a scenario. A
correspondence game played in 1828 in England was recorded as
follows:
No. 1 Commences by
advancing King's Pawn to King's 4th square.
No. 1 The same.
As detailed as the
notation was, however, the first player succeeded in making a
mistake in the score on his fifth move. As the game went on into
1829, the first player began to let his feelings about the course of
the game creep into the score. In retaking after just losing the
exchange, he records:
No. 31 King murders
Queen's Knight.
Four moves later, he is
reduced to an abject Pawn move:
No. 35 Queen's
Bishop's Pawn crawls one square forward.
Fischer has been most
precise about keeping score, no matter what his handwriting at the
time. Contrary to popular opinion - which is generally synonymous
with newspaper accounts - Bobby is not litigious. He knows the rules
about repetitions of positions (which most players, even
grandmasters, often confuse with repetitions of moves). And he
doesn't argue about them, he uses them. He saved a crucial game
against Petrosian in the final Candidates match in 1971, and
probably two games in the World Championship match with Spassky,
1072, by alert reference to this rule. He was apologetic, even
embarrassed, with Petrosian in an improper offer of a draw at
Curacao, 1962. He has never been involved in a dispute over score
sheets and time control - probably because he is seldom in time
trouble.
As traditional as it may
seem, the English-speaking world has generally made one giant
concession to simplification, which this writer abhors. This is the
prevalent practice of abbreviating "Knight" with "N" - on the
presumption that "Kt" is either too long or too easily confused with
"K." No other language makes such a gauche assumption.
Robert E. Burger
Berkeley, California, 1975
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