It's just human brains. Sometimes a player may have a stroke of genius and think on a higher level than normal, sometimes he may just miss something. But more abstract than that, maybe if he had eaten one more bite of scrambled eggs that morning then some quantum stuff might gone a different way in his synapses to have him make a decision go one way instead of a slightly different way.

If two gentlemen played a game, then had their memory of that game erased, would they play it the same again?

Actually it was pretty brutal.
"I'm Jeremy Schaap, my father was Dick Schapp, your good friend from long ago."
"Right, but he was a ****ing Jew who backstabbed me and called me crazy."
"You're not doing too good a job of proving him wrong."

i know. whatever affliction struck him seemed to onset in his early 30s

really. his punishment for attending this match seems soo trite.

sorry. i could not let this go. this from the man who doesn't know what an "overs" button is in poker.

With what frequency do you expect a player to sweep through the candidates matches with a score of 18.5-2.5, facing a top 20, a top 10, and a former world champion? His rating peak took 18 years to be eclipsed, and only due to rating inflation.

Nobody's disputing that Kasparov is a better player, are they?

Just to expound on this, here is the 1972 FIDE top rating list:

1 Fischer Robert James.............. USA 2785
2 Spassky, Boris.................... URS 2660
3-4 Petrosian, Tigran................. URS 2645
Polugaevsky, Lev.................. URS 2645
5-6 Kortchnoi, Viktor................. URS 2640
Portisch, Lajos................... HUN 2640

Note that it is 125 points from Fischer down to 2nd place. Larsen, who he beat 6-0 was 4th on the 1971 list (dropping susbstantially, undoubtedly due to the 6-0 loss to Fischer!). Petrosian, who he beat 6.5-2.5 was 3rd on this list. Taimanov was, according to ChessBase, ranked #9 in the world at the time of his match with Fischer.

So, to compare, assume that a player came along who, in the current climate, played 4 matches:

Match 1: vs Ivanchuk 6-0
Match 2: vs Morozevich 6-0
Match 3: vs Kramnik 6.5-2.5
Match 4: vs Anand 12.5-7.5

I postulate that such a result is about as likely as winning through the NFL playoffs 70-0.

To emphasize, while Fischer was eradicating Larsen, Korchnoi and Petrosian were playing in the other semifinal. According to Korchnoi (who admittedly is not always the most reliable source when it comes to such things), Russian officials asked them who they thought had the better chance. Korchnoi said it was irrelevant, that neither of them had any hope. Petrosian expressed more optimism and "magically" won their semi final match in the last game.

That movie was about a young chess prodigy, not Bobby Fischer.

It's amazing that any player can have a 50% chance of beating another top five player in an individual game.

I would guess the chances of one player in the top 10 beating another player in the top 10 to be more like 20% at the maximum. Top level tournaments often see draw rates in the 60% range, so if you account for about an even number of wins by each side, 20% should be the right number.

So, consider Fischer won 13 straight games where he was about 20% to win. Odds are in the billion to one range. Even if you give him 33% chance to win, its still in the million to one range.

This is dead on to my point.


If there is a large gap in ability, then these types of things wouldnt really matter. The better player wins. But if we are assuming players of very very very similar ability at chess, the outside influences, so numerous as to be essentially uncountable, that determine how a particular player thinks on any given day become more important.

It's pretty accurate actually.

On Phillipine radio immediately after Sept 11.

It is interesting to compare what are arguably Fischer's three greatest displays of chess prowess: (1) the 11-0 result in the US Championship in 1963-64; (2) the utter destruction of Taimanov and Larsen by 6-0 scores in the candidates matches leading up to the World Championship match with Spassky: and (3) the demolition he did on Spassky after spotting him the first two games in a 24-game match.

The 11-0 result in the US Championship, while both unprecedented and astonishing, was against a lineup of players that included only three that could be considered world class GMs, Benko, Evans and Reshevsky, and Reshevsky in particular was well past his prime. Bisguier was technically a GM but was perhaps one of the weakest GM in the world, while Addison, Mednis and others were not even GMs.

In the Candidates matches of 1971 he won 13 straight games against three top GMs, Taimanov, Larsen and Game 1 against Petrosian. He went on to beat Petrosian 6.5-2.5, losing one game. I would unhesitantly call this his greatest sustained performance except for the fact that Taimanov and Larsen began to press too hard in desperation after falling behind. Still most players in Fischer's position would have been content to play for draws after getting a two or three game lead. Fischer of course always played to win.

Fischer was obviously nervous before the match with Spassky. Everything in his life lead up to this moment and he was going crazy with fear (yes, he could lose) and with fighting all the demons in his soul. Maybe Fischer did not have actual voices in his head like the mathematician John Nash; nonetheless the schizophrenic paranoia symptoms were apparent. He lost the first two games, Game Two by forfeit, Game One by what might appear to be an amateur's blunder (taking the h-pawn and getting his bishop trapped), but what was really a try for an endgame brilliancy that contained a rare Fischer miscalculation. But then he won the third game and in essence outplayed the World Champion in wins by the lopsided score of 7-1 to win the match handily, 12.5-8.5.

To me the last was Fischer's greatest display of chess mastery

Lol, what a quote, but how true. I've actually found my old book Fischer Goes To War (sic) regarding the Spassky match and I am going to try and find the film. The more I read about the guy the bigger the loss seems to the chess world. I think to excel in a sport way beyond normal levels you need to be a little crazy!

I hope that piece of **** died slowly and painfully.

he was ****ing crazy.
why so much anger towards dead crazy chess prodigy

Lots of people are ****ing crazy. I have friends who are really ****ing crazy. The difference between them and Bobby Fischer is that they don't spout misguided vitriol about Jews at every opportunity.

Any friend that you have who has the degree of mental problems that Fischer had should be under very serious psychiatric care, if not institutionalized.

Well that is completely besides the point, but I have a friend that just got out of an institution because he went off his meds and assaulted/ran away from the cops. Now he's on heavy, heavy sedatives and essentially acts like a zombie. And yet he still doesn't spew anti-semetic remarks at every turn. Although I guess he would have full license to do so, according to posters on this forum, since apparently mentally ill people have no accountability for their actions. Sick.

You're actually defending your above statement????! He wasn't crazy like "girl, you so crazy!" He was almost certainly a paranoid schizophrenic. Bobby Fischer is at least 1/2 Jewish himself (his mom, the only parent he had growing up, was Jewish). Many believe his father was also Jewish. Now I've worked with a number of schizophrenics and blaming them for the **** they say while not on the proper meds is the most asinine, ridiculous thing ever. He was bat**** insane and should have been helped instead of ostracized. **** you constable for being such a dumbass little bitch.

lol. Your hero is a terrible person, deal with it.

Let me make sure I understand this right. Fischer had a disease that's inherent in his DNA. He had no choice in the matter. You really believe it's okay for you to talk **** about someone for something imbedded in their DNA? That's pretty damn funny, since that's the behavior you're mocking Fischer for.

If you truly don't believe that Fischer's problem was a real psych illness that he had little to no control over, then you either don't know enough about Fischer or you don't know anything about mental illness. I strongly suspect choice "C. both of the above" to be the correct answer here. Take your trolling elsewhere.

Some people have argued that Fischer was better. More tend to argue that Kasparov was better. It's almost impossible to say. Kasparov's and Fischer's styles were extremely similar. Kasparov essentially built upon Fischer's work so his chess for sure is more advanced. If they had been born in reverse order would Kasparov had been as good as Fischer or Fischer as good as Kasparov? Nobody knows. Obviously Kasparov was able to play a complete career too, which could be an argument either way really . I've seen similar arguments over whether Kramnik or Karpov is better and other than personal feelings, it's damn near impossible to say.