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Chessville
Advertise to Single insert:
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The rest is history. Fischer won the First Prize at the Interzonal and beat Taimanov (6-0!), Larsen (6-0 again!) and Petrosian (6.5-3.5) in the Candidates’ Matches. Soon after he won the World Championship after beating Spassky in what was billed as The Match of The Century. The rise of his young opponent Huebner was less spectacular. He won the Second Prize at the same Interzonal and became a World Championship candidate. He lost a narrow match to the vastly more experienced Petrosian and bowed out of the cycle. In the subsequent decade he became a renowned tournament and match player crossing swords with the likes of such players as Smyslov, Korchnoi, Portisch and Timman. But in the end Huebner, with his scholarly bent of mind and philosophical outlook, chose not to be a chess professional. He became a papyrologist and followed a distinguished academic career.
Although Huebner is prominently mentioned as the author of this CD, his role here is limited to writing a summary of Fischer's style and and work on various positions from My 60 Memorable Games. It is noteworthy that Kasparov has also made use of Huebner's path-breaking analysis in this CD for his authoritative work on Fischer, My Great Predecessors Part IV. However, Huebner's general conclusions on Fischer's play tend to be philosophical abstractions and do not have intrinsic merit. The main part of the CD is a database containing 956 games and 44 texts. The latter carry brief tournament and match reports. Ideally speaking, every game in this CD should have detailed annotations. Here, however, only 462 out of 956 games carry annotations of any length. Some of the games contain only wordless notes and a few carry very brief comment with just one or two short variations. In all fairness it should be stated that most World Championship and Candidates' Matches are annotated at great length citing several sources. Here the mass of comment from various authorities can be quite confusing and contradictory. (See the game Fischer-Larsen, 1971 below.) Then there are both well-known and unknown games without any annotations. They deserve to be seen, studied and appreciated. (See the game Tringov-Fischer, 1965 below.) Last but not the least, there has been a revival of interest in Fischer in recent years on account of Andrew Soltis' work Bobby Fischer Rediscovered and Garry Kasparov's work, Fischer, My Great Predecessors Part IV. Both books abound in analytical discoveries and they tend to reverse a number of time-honoured conclusions reached on Fischer's games. As these books were published only after the release of the ChessBase CD, it is necessary for the discerning player to take note of their findings as well. The multimedia section contains seven short video clips with footage of Fischer's appearance in the following events:
1) Yugoslavia 1958 (0:38min) The videos may be old, with many images faded and blurred. But some of the footage is memorable stuff. The clip on psychology is less than a minute, with a famous one-liner: ''No. I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.'' The image of 16-year-old Fischer playing against Tal is a study in contrast. Bobby's innocence and total absorption in the game are endearing. The opposite is the supremely confident Tal, darting a good-humored glance at his opponent and making a move with a wonderful smile lighting up his face. Incidentally, this game, which was played in the Interzonal, ended in a draw. The footage from the World Championship Match has Fischer blundering away his bishop in the first game. It also shows a tense and grim Boris Spassky. The World Champion appears to be the underdog, and the irony of the situation is not missed on the viewer. Now for the games:
Georgi Tringov - Robert James Fischer
A superb example of defence and counterattack. Unfortunately, this game appears without notes in the CD. The following encounter took place in dramatic circumstances. Larsen had won a string of international tournaments before Fischer returned to the arena. Although he was placed second in the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal, he had the satisfaction of beating Fischer (his only loss) in their individual encounter. A year before the Candidates' Match Larsen had proudly declared,
Here is what happened:
Robert James Ficher-Bent Larsen
Robert James Fischer - Robert Huebner [Notes are excerpted from Huebner's annotations on the CD.]
The language and word format in this CD present quite a few problems. In some games remarks in German words have not been translated at all. In other places names are routinely misspelled. The annotations first need a revamp in terms of language alone. As for analysis, it is pretty straightforward when it is taken from one source. However, when it is derived from several sources no attempt is made to sift the grain from the chaff. In complex games like Fischer-Larsen 1971 presented above, there is a profusion of variations with conflicting evaluation and it can only bewilder the viewer. These games require some explanatory prose followed by key variations at critical moments. Besides, there is a wealth of biographical material on Fischer in contemporary sources and they have not been availed of here as yet.
In my view ChessBase should get its act together
and come up with a revised edition.
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The Chessville
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November 9, 1970. Play at the Interzonal, Palma de Mallorca has just begun.
The tournament hall is abuzz with excitement. Robert James Fischer, the
American champion, has once again staked his claim at the World Championship
cycle. After his resounding defeat of Petrosian in the Match of the
Century (3:1) and victories at the Rovinj –Zagreb and Buenos Aires
events ahead of the Soviet GMs, there has been no looking back for Fischer.
His first round opponent is a slim bespectacled player, Robert Huebner from
Cologne, West Germany. His shy and serious demeanor betrays no sign of
being intimidated by his formidable rival. The game takes a dramatic
course, with Fischer blundering away a piece in the later middle game. It
is drawn only after a dynamically balanced position is reached..JPG)
