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On Mar 5, 2:30 pm, "Chess One" wrote:

Chessville: In your interview from 2002 with Joel Lautier you said about
your famous 1971 Candidate's match with Bobby Fischer "The terrible
feeling
that I was playing against a machine which never made any mistake
shattered
my resistance."

In 1971, there remained several players who had not yet been
demoted to the status of "rabbit" when playing GM Fischer,
although GM Taimanov may not have been among them. One
such player was GM Kortchnoi, who had a decent record, and
others, I believe, were GMs Geller, Keres, and Botvinnik. On
top of this, there remained the fact that reigning world champ
Boris Spassky had never lost even a single game!

Of course. this is some measure of Fischer's own conditioning. Can you
imagine facing all these guys, all on your ownsome? How can ordinary players
really appreciate that?

So, to
suggest that in 1971 GM Fischer was regarded as an unbeatable
machine is a bit of an exaggeration,

it is a bit of a missaprehension of what Taimanov wrote since you introduce
your own term 'unbeatable' which is not Taimanov's sense - in fact, when we
chose to write about his match vs Fischer as his own choice of annotating a
lost game, he expressed a sort-of voodoo quality about the game [this is
also maintained in his public writing]

later - maybe 2 months after publishing I wrote him and asked if, in his
opinion the position he reached [ and the Qh3 !?!? ] was the most complex
every achieved in the C20th?

I think he was modest about it, OTOH, he did not contradict my statement -
and even after 25 years - all through the Kasparov period, Garry never
solved it, neither did any super-computer.

this was something of note from MT - who is absolutely no fantascist on any
subject - straight as a die, though we used a translator, sometimes resorted
to our only common language, Latin!

or at any rate can only be
applied to the feeling of the commentator himself, and other
also-rans. Also, it should be noted that GM Tainanov was
downed *before* the 6-0 thrashing of GM Larsen, which, when
added to the spanking of GM Taimanov, changed the feelings
of the general public on this matter.

Even though I never saw much of the text appear in the pages
of the Western press, the frequent references to Soviet
propaganda pieces made it clear that there had appeared
in their press, articles which made a point of showing up GM
Fischer's weaknesses. In fact, a book by David Levy took
pains in putting things into better perspective, repudiating
silly claims to the effect that GM Fischer was any sort of
perfect "chess machine". Of course, such objectivity was not
exactly welcomed in the USA, nor has its popularity gained
much ground since then.

And notably, Levy forget that chess is a performance art, rather than a
pundit's paradise. There you are, sitting opposite him, [or as Tal says,
Kasparov or even more so, Tal] and tick tick tick, what are you going to do,
smart arse? ROFL

Of course Fischer was anything but perfect. And Tal even less than that in
terms of analytics - What Tal said about this was that anyone could beast
his combinations the next day, or the next week or month.

And this is the real test of Greats, since you don't have that sort of time,
you got average 3 minutes.

The truth is that even in the realm of computers, where the
USA shone the brightest, our best-of-the-best product was
given to errors. At "x" million, or billion, or trillion calculations
per minute, Deeper Blue was still subject to occasional fits of
idiocy, not unlike its human creators. The fantasy of an
opponent incapable of error remains exactly that: a fantasy,
an illusion.

So is the apprehension of this text from Taimanov. If you are a coach potato
you will know naturally know more about NFL athletes than they know about
themselves, no? Since what else you gotta do but shoot off your mouth, or
more modestly, appreciation the performance aspect of what this people do.

Rather typically, people are similarly idiotic about the military, and what
it takes. Or mountain climbing, or even cooking.

But I think Taimanov is no dummy about emotional factors, and really has a
very qualified view of their effect on peoples spirituality, not unlike his
fellow Petersburger Dostoyevski, or America's Miller.

It is only those who don't play, don't know.

Phil Innes

-- help bot