From Times Online
January 18, 2008
Raymond Keene: Bobby Fischer was ‘pride and sorrow of chess’
Raymond Keene, a grandmaster and chess correspondent for The Times, says Bobby Fischer will be remembered as the enduring hero and villain of the chess world
The greatest?
“At his best he was the greatest the world has ever seen. He was certainly the greatest chess player up to that point in history. He would have dominated chess until Garry Kasparov.”
Tenacious
“He wouldn’t give his opponents any mercy. He would seize on any small opportunity and push and push it until there was nothing left. He wouldn’t just beat his opponents he would crush them.”
Here is the full story.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Keene is right. Bobby is unique.
Unique?? Then how come Keene has to crib the name “Pride and Sorrow of Chess” from Paul Morphy? At least come up with something original, for goodness sakes.
How can Keene be right about something he never said? The word “unique” does not appear in that article.
Bobby is Keene. Right is unique.
Bobby Fischer is the Greatest Chess player of all time. Period.
He did it all on his own. Kaspy had tons of help from other players and the computer. Same with Karpov.
NO COMPARISON.
Magnus is now the best but he has the computer to help him learn so fast. Bobby worked out the postions all on his own. It took a massive human effort to work it out like he did.
He was a genius that is incredible.
Now that computers have gotten so good and are so easy to obtain he will remain the best ever. Computer help is unbelieveable to the new people. But if you ever tried to learn chess without a computer and books and opening theory you will be amazed how difficult it reall is.
Morphy was the Pride and Sorrow of Chess but Fischer and Morphy had similar chess careers in some way.
Lemme tell you, if there’s anybody who can be right about something they never said, it’s Raymond Keene!
“Bobby Fischer is the Greatest Chess player of all time. Period.”
Fischer is the “greatest”, and Kasparov is the strongest. Period.
MayanKing said…
Morphy was the Pride and Sorrow of Chess but Fischer and Morphy had similar chess careers in some way.
In other words, NOT unique.
Nobody else, but Fischer “wiped off” the best of his contemporaries on the way to the world championship.
Imagine a series, like:
Kramnik-Radjabov 6:0
Kramnik-Topalov 6:0
Kramnik-Ivancsuk 6.5:2.5
Then 12.5:8.5 against Anand, out of which one would be a forfeit against Kramnik.
In the times of zillion draws, it is impossible to even imagine such series. Yet, that’s how Fischer won the world championship.
Yes, while I am far from being a chess expert, I honestly think Fischer was the best, ever.
The Benedict Arnold of Chess would be a better moniker for Fischer. In the end, he betrayed the game, and tried to destroy it with talk about how it was all played out and all GM games were pre-arranged, et cetera. If he couldn’t be the best any more, he didn’t want the game going on without him.
It’s great to know that Keene implies that Fischer would have beaten Karpov.
Fischer was probably the best of the pre-computer era. Since the advent of computer databases and computer analysis, the game has changed – now even ‘average’ GMs can risk very tricky complicated lines of play because they don’t have to trust their own judgment and analysis – they have Fritz, Rybka, Shredder, etc. Also they don’t have to pore through old copies of Informant and assemble notebooks and game clippings to create dossiers on their opponents and their tendencies – it is all there in Chessbase.
In addition to his talent and willingness to work he believed in judgment based on concrete analysis – if the variations and lines were good, the position was good. Of coure like all champions he had a tremendous will to win.
He’ll be forever remembered for that fantastic run 1969-1972 and for leaving the US chess scene hanging. Had he deign to be more of a chess populist and less the chess god, US chess and perhaps chess outside of then USSR would have been greatly popularized.
>>Yes, while I am far from being a chess expert, I honestly think Fischer was the best, ever.
>>
You’re confusing “Best” with “Most Dominant.”
But when it comes to dominance, the hands down winner was Philidor, easily the best player in the world for a full 50 years (1745-1795). No one will ever do that again.