On Mar 27, 2:47 am, "Freelancer71" wrote:

Can anyone explain how/why Fischer lost is bishop in the first game of his
match against Spassky in 1972?
The fact that a bishop capturing the h2 or a2 pawn and getting trapped after
g3 or b3 is trivial. Everyone knows that. Did he really think he had chances
after sacrificing the bishop for two (or three?) pawns?


In that particular position, it was far from
"trivial".

First of all, Black could advance his h-pawn
and exchange it (or possibly even promote it)
in an effort to free the Bishop.

Secondly, in order to finish the job, White
had to not only combat the h-pawn's advance,
but also he had to see that in all lines his
King and Bishop would work together to
cover all the various escape-routes.

Generally, speaking, Boris Spassky's move
(K-d3) is the sort of move which separates
the world champions from the also-rans. You
can find very similar things in the play of all
the world champions at their respective
peaks. In fact, the victim in this game, GM
Fischer, wrote about one in his MSMG book;
he noted that in some boring position, Tigran
Petrosian -- then world champion -- played
N(f3)-d1, heading for d3; the d3 square was
(just barely) closer to the center of the
board than f3, hence, a minute improvement
in the Knight's position was effected. Most
players would not even consider trying to
"improve" the positioning of such a piece,
which looked pretty darn good sitting on f3.

In addition to the two pawns, Black also
gained several(?) tempos with which to
centralize his King-- which was well back.

The error seems to have been a simple
miscalculation-- missing White's Bishop
retreat at the very end-- B-d2. This reminds
me of so many comments regarding world
champion Alekhine; it was noted that many
of his combinations had a "killer move" at
the tail end, which is ever so easy to
overlook. Instead of playing routinely as
in a famous Larry Evans quote ("Here, nine
out of ten grandmasters would have..."), the
world champion actually calculated what
would happen if Black were to grab to h-
pawn, and correctly concluded it would
give Black indigestion.


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