A genius dead

porphy · 01-20-08, 08:40 AM

Fisher was one of the greatest, but it feels like he turned into some kind of myth, by himself and others, after withdrawing from the world champion match. It will be interesting to see if he has left unseen "chess material" to the world...
Many chess players are ebit excentric, as you say Skybird. One great player who took part in a funny episode was Mikail Tal. Quote below from http://www.starfireproject.com/chess/tal.html

"In the 1959 tournament, he even scored 4-0 against the young, but brilliant future World Champion, Bobby Fischer. Tal's style mesmerized the chess world, and GM Ragozin explained the reason best: "Tal does not move chess pieces by hand, he uses a magic wand".
Tal was so intimidating in those years that he made seasoned Grandmaster opponents shudder with fear. A case in point is a game played between GM Tal (as Black) and Hungarian GM Pal Benko (as White) at the Interzonal Tournament in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1959. This was the third cycle (the first two were played in Bled and Zagreb, respectively), and Benko was starting to think that Tal had been hypnotizing him due to his poor record against him so far. So Benko took with him sunglasses and wore them while at the chessboard. But Tal, who had heard of Benko's plan to wear sunglasses before the game started, borrowed enormous dark glasses from GM Petrosian. When Tal put on these ridiculously enormous glasses, not only did the spectators laugh, but other participants in the tournament did, as did the tournament controllers, and finally even Benko himself laughed. But unlike Tal, Benko did not remove his glasses until the 20th move when his position was hopeless."

01-20-08, 08:40 AM	#19
porphy Commodore Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Sweden Posts: 603 Downloads: 4 Uploads: 0	Fisher was one of the greatest, but it feels like he turned into some kind of myth, by himself and others, after withdrawing from the world champion match. It will be interesting to see if he has left unseen "chess material" to the world... Many chess players are ebit excentric, as you say Skybird. One great player who took part in a funny episode was Mikail Tal. Quote below from http://www.starfireproject.com/chess/tal.html "In the 1959 tournament, he even scored 4-0 against the young, but brilliant future World Champion, Bobby Fischer. Tal's style mesmerized the chess world, and GM Ragozin explained the reason best: "Tal does not move chess pieces by hand, he uses a magic wand". Tal was so intimidating in those years that he made seasoned Grandmaster opponents shudder with fear. A case in point is a game played between GM Tal (as Black) and Hungarian GM Pal Benko (as White) at the Interzonal Tournament in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1959. This was the third cycle (the first two were played in Bled and Zagreb, respectively), and Benko was starting to think that Tal had been hypnotizing him due to his poor record against him so far. So Benko took with him sunglasses and wore them while at the chessboard. But Tal, who had heard of Benko's plan to wear sunglasses before the game started, borrowed enormous dark glasses from GM Petrosian. When Tal put on these ridiculously enormous glasses, not only did the spectators laugh, but other participants in the tournament did, as did the tournament controllers, and finally even Benko himself laughed. But unlike Tal, Benko did not remove his glasses until the 20th move when his position was hopeless." __________________ "The only remedy for madness is the innocence of facts." O. Mirbeu "A paranoid is simply someone in possession of all the facts." W. B.