Bobby Fischer--The Greatest? PDF
Preview Bobby Fischer--The Greatest?
BOBBY FISCHER- THE GREATEST? By Dr. Max Euwe STERLING PUBLISHING CO., INC. new YORK Copyright © 1979 by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Two Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 Copyright © 1976 by G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., London Manufactured in the United States of America AH rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 78-66270 Sterling ISBN 0-8069-4950-3 Trade 4951-1 Library CONTENTS Acknowledgments page vi Preface vii Bibliography viii Introduction ix 1 I Capablanca and Fischer II Alekhine and Fischer 60 III Lasker and Fischer 134 IV Fischer and the Living World Champions 171 1 Fischer and Euwe 171 2 Fischer and Botvinnik 172 3 Fischer and Smyslov 174 4 Fischer and Tal 181 5 Fischer and Petrosian 188 6 Fischer and Spassky 194 Epilogue 200 Index 201 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful to Mr Steve Wygle of Columbus, Ohio, for his careful reading of the entire manuscript, for his checking of the accuracy of the scores of the games, and for his valuable suggestions on the organization of the material. I wish to thank my friend and collaborator, Dr Walter Meiden, of the Ohio State University, for his suggestions on presentation and style. M. Euwe PREFACE Fischer's amazing results have staggered the entire chess world. Has Cai'ssa ever had such a hero ? Such a sequence of brilliant successes has seldom occurred in chess history. Between the interzonal tournament in Palma de Mallorca in 1970 and the famous world championship in Reykjavik in 1972, chess fans have witnessed an uninterrupted series of glorious feats by a single player, and the question has arisen: 'Is not Fischer the greatest chess player of all time?' That question has induced me to write this book. On a numerical basis, comparisons between contemporary performances and those of long ago are hardly possible, although in the Introduction to this work such an attempt has been made, based on the highly respected and universally accepted rating methods developed by Professor Elo. However, the question certainly cannot be answered in this way alone. Therefore, I have tried to illustrate certain aspects of Fischer's style and compare them with similar aspects of play of the three most recently deceased world champions. Such comparisons can never be complete. The repertory of favourite openings is changing all the time, the strength of top players varies at different times, and consequently the resistance which the respective world champions had to overcome has not always been the same. Still, I hope that in this book I give an impression of the strength of certain previous world champions in relation to Fischer's capacities. It is not possible yet to make any serious comparisons between Fischer and Karpov, who inherited his title in 1975. Comparisons may be possible soon when Fischer will resume tournament play, or when Karpov has been champion sufficiently long for a proper estimate of his true stature to be made. For these reasons no mention of Karpov is made in this book. The games of world champions are universally known and, for the most part, thoroughly analysed, usually by more than one master. So the main task was to select and present the games I considered Vlll FISCHER most characteristic of the style of Fischer and his predecessors. Only in a few cases have I been able to mention the names of the original author of a given analysis. In general, the analyses by different masters are similar, and it is often impossible to know who first published a given analysis. BIBLIOGRAPHY In the preparation of this book, I have consulted the following works: Dr S. Tarrasch, Die modeme Schachpartie Weltgeschichte des Schachs, Band 11: Lasker Weltgeschichte des Schachs, Band 14: Capablanca Dr M. Euwe and Lod. Prins, Het Schaakfenomeen Capablanca Dr A. Alekhine, My Best Games of Chess 1924-1937 A. Kotov, Schachmatnije rasledie A. Aljechin Dr A. Alekhine and Dr M. Euwe, Aljechin-Euwe 1935 R. G. Wade and K. J. O'Connell, The Games of Robert Fischer R. Fischer, My Sixty Memorable Games H. Kramer and S. H. Postma, Das Schachphanomen Robert Fischer R. Byrne, Both Sides of the Chessboard Dr M. Euwe and J. Timman, De tweekamp Spasski-Fischer 1972 Dr M. Euwe and Dr W. Meiden, Master vs. Master INTRODUCTION One often hears the question: 'Is Fischer the best chess player of all time?' This question is asked because it is natural to wish to compare Fischer with those great players of the past whom he never could have met over the chess board. Any comparisons of Fischer with the present-day grandmasters he has frequently played would certainly be in his favour, not only by reason of the results but also because of the quality of these games. In this present work we confine our comparison to former world champions. It is much more interesting to compare Fischer with Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine than with some of the living ex- world champions who have played with Fischer over the board. Although we devote a chapter to such games, we thus deal mainly with those ex-world champions with whom Fischer had no chance to play. A possible comparison between Botvinnik and Fischer has to be considered more closely. It is a pity that Fischer and Botvinnik met only once over the board. Botvinnik had already retired from practical chess by the time Fischer had reached his full strength. There are arguments for making a comparison of Botvinnik and Fischer in the same way as of the deceased world champions and Fischer, but I prefer to be consistent and restrict the application of the indirect method of comparison only to Capablanca, Alekhine and Lasker. If we made a special case for Botvinnik, why not for Smyslov, who certainly played with Fischer only after he had passed his zenith? And what about Petrosian? There can never be an absolute comparison between the relative strengths of Fischer and his deceased predecessors, because chess has so many different elements: a player may excel in some while remaining weak in others. We distinguish between various abilities such as combinative power, strategic skill, consistency in handling a given position, all-round capability and so on. All previous champions have excelled in some particular aspect. For instance, Capablanca was a great strategist in the middle game and end game. This does not mean that he was not good at combinative play, but that strategy and positional play were his special fields. A question we might pose would be: 'Who is the greatest positional xi xii FISCHER player of all time—Capablanca or Fischer?' Similarly we might ask: 'Who is the greatest combinative player of all time—Alekhine or Fischer?' And 'Who is the greatest all-round player of all time— Lasker or Fischer?' I have not included Steinitz in this review, for I number him among the scientific players. Steinitz handled the game according to principles which he had logically deduced from the rules valid for attack and defence in general. I do not think that it makes sense to compare Steinitz and Fischer in this respect. In the first place Fischer is a practical player, and he would never—as Steinitz did— put up with a difficult position for the sole purpose of proving the correctness of his theory. Another player left out of consideration is Paul Morphy, the greatest star of all time, who lived and played before the establish- ment of the world championship. The most brilliant of Morphy's games are characterized by the exploitation of the clear miscon- ceptions of his opponents. Clear, seen with our eyes, but Morphy's great contribution lay in the fact that he discovered these as mis- conceptions and in this way became the teacher of all later genera- tions. It can be seen that it is impossible to say whether Fischer is the greatest champion of all time. One would have to sum up all factors and evaluate them in order to reach a comparison and a valid conclusion, yet these factors are not quantifiable. We can only quantify results, and these are just what are lacking when comparing Fischer with his non-living predecessors. Recently, a method has been developed which enables us to rate any player, living or dead, according to the results of the games and which makes possible a comparison of any player with any other —a feat which, up to now, appeared impossible. I have in mind the rating system invented and expanded during the past ten years by Arpad Elo, professor of physics at the University of Milwaukee. Many attempts have been made to measure the performances of chess players in such a way that we can compare the strength of any two players, irrespective of whether they have participated in the same contests and even of whether they have ever met at all. The most important system is Professor Elo's, which has been adopted by the World Chess Federation. A rating system seeks to evaluate performances on some scale so that players may be listed in the probable order of their strength. Professor Elo has developed his system by statistical method, based on the normal distribution of performances. This means that the theory starts from the assumption that the strength of a player is a
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