The KGB influenced chess results by influencing chess players by monitoring them when they played abroad. That’s what KGB agents did for a living — monitor people. It was a part of the whole Soviet machine. This was all common knowledge, and the demand for a cite is frankly ridiculous. But here is one from The Independent:
The USSR took its chess very seriously. Potential champions were selected young and trained by grandmasters. They were expected not just to excel in the game, but to be model Soviet citizens, ambassadors for their country. At home, they were admired like rock stars. Abroad, they were carefully, protectively watched by the KGB.
Out of 88 chess grandmasters in the world, 33 were from the Soviet Union, and another large batch were from the satellite communist states of eastern Europe. Every world chess champion since 1937 had been a Soviet citizen.
Against this vast phalanx of chess champions, all the US had to offer was this strange loner who had dropped out of school in his teens.
What US grandmasters? Byrne? Bisguier? There was not a one that hadn’t been Fischer’s punching bag on his way to the top.
Is that what Wikipedia said? Fischer actually made 127 demands, 2 of which were not met including the 9-9 demand. FIDE was negotiating in the manner that an undersecretary negotiates. They could make no decisions without tacit Soviet approval. If they have Google where you are, look up what Kasparov has to say about FIDE and the Soviets.
Look up also what happened to him in 1984 when he was slated to play the darling Karpov. The whole match was postponed because “players were tired”. Kasparov denies that he was tired, and the notion that such a postponement of a prestigious internal match could have happened without direct Kremlin intervention is naive in its conception.
Your cite refers to the KGB watching their own players. I’m not sure how that translates into a disadvantage for American players. For that matter, I’m not entirely sure how the KGB monitoring American players necessarily translates into a disadvantage for American players.
Wait, the FIDE agreed to 125 out of 127 of Fischer’s demands, and this is evidence that the FIDE was biased against Fischer?
Cite for the 127 demands? Every place I’ve looked says 64.
I don’t know why you continue to ignore my arguments. You say that FIDE could not change the rules without Soviet approval, but the evidence says otherwise. FIDE changed the candidates matches to prevent Soviet draw collusion. Tell me, why would the Soviets allow this change? FIDE agreed to change the structure of the match to favor Fischer. Why would the Soviets allow this? Fischer should not have been eligible for the 72 championship match. If the Soviets were in control why wouldn’t they have prevented him from competing?
Don’t just come at me with snark. Address and respond to my arguments.
I agree that being unfit makes one a weaker player. However (as Malacandra has posted), Karpov had world-class results for years.
If Fischer wanted to ignore draws (fair enough), all he needed was to say “first to win 10 games wins the match”. He didn’t need the 9-9 clause, which caused him to lose a lot of international support.
Oh, and on a related topic:
I’d like to add that Fischer’s ‘60 memorable games’ is one of the most remarkable chess books ever published.
Although it’s likely that US GM Larry Evans actually took Fischer’s analysis and comments and put them into book form, the book is still full of amazing games, well-analysed and with little comments - “my opponent went suspiciously quiet, so I thought he had set a trap” - that really add to the atmosphere.
Also Fischer gave a few losses, which was unheard of at the time. (Players used to show only how wonderful they were…)
Fischer was undoubtedly (accidentally!) responsible for a massive world boom in chess, particularly in the US, when he played Spassky.
Although the quote would have been more factually accurate had it run:
“When I have White, I win because I am white;
When I have Black, I win because I am not playing Alekhine”
Frankly, you can take your “arguments” to Great Debates and your snark to the Pit. I’m no longer going to enjoin you here because it merely perpetuates the repeated slurs against this great player, and the trivialization of his career and struggles as people continue to quote anonymous contributors from Wikipedia while ignoring the comments from mainstream newspapers, Susan Polgar, Kasparov, and Karpov himself. Neither of us will convince the other of anything.
Again we agree. For me, it’s the narrative in the analysis. I like to know how a great player thinks. I wish more chess analysis was like that. In other books, the cold listing of move-branches becomes so boring after the first few games. And there’s always some uncommented move that really needs a comment. But not in this book. It’s just right.
I’m sorry that Liberal feels that Fischer is being traduced in this thread, especially if he feels I contributed to this; for myself, I set out my stall with my first post in the thread, when I expressed my admiration for Fischer’s chess, and I have reiterated this view once or twice. And it’s true that I’ve only cited Wikipedia here; it’s difficult to cut and paste from, say, The Oxford Companion To Chess, which I would hope was less likely to have been hijacked by pro-Karpov revisionists than Wikipedia might putatively have been, or from numerous other chess books I have read over the years.
Doubtless it would help if I could name-check a grandmaster or two whom I know personally and who endorse my position, but I don’t move in such exalted circles. I guess I have to proceed by reason and appeal to facts.
The simple fact of the matter is that Fischer’s intended victory conditions for the 1975 world championship were functionally equivalent to:
“The title shall go to whoever first wins ten games, draws not counting. However, Fischer shall receive a one-game start.”
My position that this is functionally equivalent to Fischer’s stated condition can be easily falsified by providing a scoreline that is a win under my suggested phrasing, and not a win under Fischer’s.
I believe my phrasing is less obfuscatory and makes the unfairness of Fischer’s conditions patently obvious, and nothing can make them fair; no appeals to pity for Fischer’s misunderstood genius and unworthy allies, no slippery-slope arguments alleging without proof that had this one demand been refused the Soviets would have played FIDE like a fiddle, no *ad hominem * about Karpov’s playing strength or style or physical weakness, no scaremongering about what the KGB could or could not do, no quibbling as to whether the record shows that Fischer tried to impose 64 conditions or the more reasonable 127, and certainly no complaining about the weakness of American chess generally compared to Russian. When the supposedly strongest player in the world is demanding a 1-0 lead before he will consent to sit down and defend his title, it ill behooves him or his adherents to deride the sportsmanship of the other side, and it is hardly character assassination to point this out.
Well, no, I didn’t mean to target you, Malacandra, or for that matter anyone in particular, but it is a longstanding tradition that threadshitting in tribute threads in Cafe Society is frowned upon. See here, for example. There’s nothing wrong with opening a separate thread to trash Fischer, but somehow it seems that some of us missed the punctuation in the thread title.
Oh, well, if I’d been wanting to trash Fischer, instead of arguing the toss about how he effectively disqualified himself from defending his world title, I’d maybe have started another thread. On the whole I tried to paint myself as generally pro-Fischer, especially considering the posters who were talking about him being a nutbar anti-Semite who wouldn’t be missed one little bit.
That’s why I said I didn’t mean you. I think you have argued fairly, and my disagreement with your arguments does not constitute any disrespect. I realize, for example, the logical implication of the 9-9 demand just as you explained it. But Fischer was taking no more than he had been willing to give, vis a vis the first game at Reykjavik.
I’m sorry there’s a bit of edge creeping into the thread, which has otherwise been very interesting.
For example, I was fascinated to learn (thanks to Liberal) that Karpov, Spassky and Kasparov all felt Fischer would have had an edge over Karpov in 1975.
Can I try to bring posters together?
KGB minders:
It’s certainly true that the Soviets kept a horribly repressive eye on their players. When Taimanov lost to Fischer 6-0, he was punished. :mad:
Taimanov: The sanctions from the Soviet government were severe. I was deprived of my civil rights, my salary was taken away from me. (All Soviet grandmasters received from their government a substantial salary). I was prohibited from travelling abroad and censored in the press. It was unthinkable to the authorities that a Soviet grandmaster could lose in such a way to an American, without a political explanation. I became the object of slander and was accused, among other things, of secretly reading the books of Solzhenitsin. I was banned from society for two years.
I remember when my club team played a Soviet team in the European Championship that they brought 8 incredibly strong players, a competent captain and an ‘interpreter’. The ‘interpreter’ spoke no English and obviously knew nothing about chess. (He also wore a trenchcoat :rolleyes: ). However no Soviet player could leave the playing hall without the interpreter’s permission.
This system put pressure on the Soviet players, but not really on their opponents, unless they had Soviet connections.
Indeed when Karpov played the defector Korchnoi, the Soviets threatened Korchnoi’s family.
Korchnoi’s wife and son were still in the Soviet Union. His son was promised to be released to join his father in exile if he gave up his passport. When he did so, he was promptly drafted into the Soviet army.
Korchnoi took the opportunity of the match to publicize the situation of his wife and son, drafting an open letter to the Soviet government to release them both.
Fischer rightly felt the Soviet players would work together against him in tournaments (they did ), but it wouldn’t have mattered much in a match.
1975 Fischer - Karpov match negotiations
Sadly I have recently disposed of my British Chess magazine collection (as part of my first anti-hoarding clean-out!), which included detailed reports of the 1975 FIDE negotiations. But from memory, there were several camps, ranging from the Soviet diehards, through various neutrals to Fischer supporters. The voting on each clause reflected this.
Nevertheless my memory is that the vote went in favour of draws not counting and first to 10 wins. The ‘9-9 meaning Fischer wins’ clause was rejected. These support me:
Fischer drew up a list of ten demands, chief among them the provisions that draws wouldn’t count, the first to ten victories wins, and if the score was tied 9—9 the champion would retain the crown. This means that the challenger needed two wins more than the reigning champion, because the narrowest possible win for him is 10—8. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) flatly refused at first, but eventually conceded the first two.
The tie clause was widely perceived as unfair and the majority of Grandmasters were against it. Robert Byrne described it as “absolutely stark naked cheating”, Bent Larsen called it “the first unethical thing Fischer has done.”
…
Fischer had broken his word to abolish the champion’s advantage, costing him credibility and adding to his reputation of unreliability
…
Fischer himself had called the tie clause unimportant and unlikely to be invoked, yet refused to play without it, despite having gotten the pure Wins format, which was supposed to be the important thing.
…
Fischer never made any attempt to sell his proposals, either to FIDE or the American Public. Demanded them, yes. Sold them, no. His attitude was essentially “Gimme, or I’m not playing”, but he never went to bat for the format and tried to explain why it was a good idea. Neither did he try to prove that the Pure Wins format could work in modern chess by actually playing the match.
…
Eventually FIDE agreed to all of Fischer’s demands except for the 9-9 Tie Clause. However, Fischer had refused to negotiate on any of his points
I really wish Fischer had played first to 10 wins - it would have been great.
I do wonder if he was feeling a reaction to having spent years ‘fighting an entire country’ and winning, achieving his ambition to be World Champion and then realising it was all effectively over. Eventually a younger challenger would beat him and he didn’t have any life outside chess.
There is no doubt that Fischer was one of the greatest chess players ever and he never did anything wrong at the board itself.
As I’ve said, he wrote a magnificent book (and I wish he’d done more!).
He popularised chess to an unprecedented level.
However he had difficulty dealing with people and organisers, and finished his life as a sad embittered man.
Blessed are the peacemakers, glee. I will concede that Fischer wasn’t a good salesman, and that he suffered from a severe lack of tact and social skills, and that these shortcomings proved harmful to him when he made his demands. I will also concede that my own position (and the position of our group at the time) was outside the mainstream. But I maintain the right to hold my position, however eccentric it may be, and would appreciate the respect of others who hold a different position. I do not deserve to be dismissed with tired metaphors about taking balls home and abandoning the discussion. Is that okay?
I think that is an apt, well-phrased assessment of Mr Fischer’s life.
Congrats to glee for finally letting this thread arrive at a peaceful conclusion.
I’d like to cite a non-chess, low-brow quote. From the Twilight Zone episode “Game Of Pool” spoken by Jonathan Winters as ‘Fats’ Brown “I’m a pool player. In all the world there’s probably not a more unimportant thing … but I am the best.”
Yes, it must be something to be the absolute best at anything in this world.
And for a moment, Bobby Fischer had that distinction.
R.I.P. Bobby
Bobbie became irrational. Can we blame him for his crazy pronouncements? Fischer said the U.S. got what it deserved with 9/11. He was whacko by then so it didn’t bother me.
But one of the top GOP preachers said God was punishing us with 9/11 because of our sinful ways. And he’s supposed to be sane.
At COSTCO today, I dropped off my Photog class assignment phots for printing, then got a book to read to while away the 15 minute wait time.
With this thread totally** out** of mind, the book I bought is “The Eight.” On the page just before the story begins, therre is a by Ben Franklin: Life is a kind of chess.
Above that is a Bobby Fischer quote: Chess is life.
), but it wouldn’t have mattered much in a match.