There is a common believe that "geniuses" are
prone to early death (including suicide), or
to "craziness". One would need solid statistics
to support such a view (first one would have to
decide who is and who is not a "genius", or one
would have to classify the geniuses and the
talented people on a scale from 10 to 100 say,
and then one would try to get a correlation).

While general dramatic statement about talented
people is hard to justify, some domains of
creative or cultural activity seem more prone
to the life drama than others. It seems to
me that mathematics, poetry and chess are among
them.

Let me note a certain difference between the
enthusiasts of mathematics and poetry on one
hand, and of chess on the other, when they
think and talk about their great heros. It will
be invariably the chess folks and hardly ever
the mathematical and poetic crowd, which makes
excuses for their stars and considers "What If"
scenarios... Those who are interested in
mathematics or poetry are much more concerned
with the results of the talented authors than
with comparing and ranking them, and guessing
at "What If".

It is only natural, because chess is a (mental)
sport after all. For this reason regular chess
players like to compare players even from
different epochs within 20 ELO points :-)
(I like to do it too--it's fun).

This kind of discussions do not stop at
comparing the results. People also tend to
consider the circumstances, the talent
(whatever it means), sometimes the elegance
of the games... but relatively rarely the
contribution to the progress of the chess thought.

Especially many "What If" questions arise
in the Fischer case. Let's indulge ourselves.


***********

Philidor was simply dominating the chess scene
During his entire adulthood. Also Bourdonnais
was clearly superior to everybody else for nearly
twenty years, but he was not as dominant as
Philidor. These were still the early years
for the modern Western chess--the Western chess
world was small and not too advanced. It was not
even the whole Europe yet but only the Western-
Southern Europe (Italy, Portugal and Spain), which
already was lagging behind France and England.

Once the central and Eastern Europe, followed
by America, joined the chess battle ground, the
things became more interesting and less clear.

Encounter the great German peers of Karl Ernst
Adolf Anderssen (e.g. von der Lassa) and we already
have our first chess "what if". What if they played
competitive chess more seriously, more intensively.

Digression: one of them did, Harrwitz. During the
Harrwitz-Lowenthal match one of Harrwitz supporters
"hired an organ-grinder to play outside the window,
knmowing this would upset Lowenthal more than
Harrwitz, and another, defying the non-smoking
rule, blew thick cigar smoke into Lowenthal's face."
("The Oxford...", 2nd edition, page 169).

Petroff's potential is another big question mark.

******

It's 4am, enough for yesterday,

Wlod

(Wlodzimierz Holsztynski) wrote in message . com...

There is a common believe that "geniuses" are

"belief" -- sorry.

prone to early death (including suicide), or
to "craziness". [...]

Wlod