The Battle of the Legends
The Hungarian legend Lajos Portisch will play a match against former World Champion Boris Spassky in Heviz, Hungary. The match will take place from April 13 to 15, 2007. It will be a 6-game rapid match with the time control of 20 minutes +5 sec increment)
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
There used to be another Hungarian legend called Zoltan Ribli. How is he doing ?
And another Hungarian legend
G. Sax, right?
Spassky will win!
I take Portisch.
I dunno about this. I can sort of buy Portisch as a legend, but I’m not sure about Ribli and Sax. Are we using the word to be synonymous with Grandmaster, or does it mean something else? Is Geza Fuster a legend? How about Istvan Bilek?
Portisch rose to the height of being a WCChampion candidate. I dunno about the others.
Glad to learn that Spassky is still okay and well enuf to play chess. I thought Spassky had suffered some kind of stroke in 2006?
GeneM
I’m glad to see Boris has recovered enough from his stroke to play again. I’ll take him over Portisch; here’s hoping he plays a King’s Gambit! 🙂
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Portisch rose to the height of being a WCChampion candidate. I dunno about the others.
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Portisch was not only a candidate, he was a perennial Candidate. He was in the Candidates at least 7 or 8 times. And he was specifically famous for short tiebreaks. On no less than 4 occasions, he finished an Interzonal tied for a spot in the Candidates, and qualified from a short playoff match. He never failed to qualify from one of these playoffs. Yeah, I’d consider him a legend. Sax and Ribli, though they both made the Candidates at least once, don’t really seem to have the same legendary qualities as Portisch.
Hope they really have a go at each other. Surely Boris wants revenge for what happened in their 1980 match.
I’d rather see Bobby Fischer play again