AKIBA RUBINSTEIN

July 24, 2010

Akiba Rubinstein

Akiba Rubinstein
Rubinstein around 1907/1908
Full name	Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein
Country	Poland
Born	12 December 1882 Stawiski, Poland
Died	15 March 1961 Antwerp, Belgium
Title	Grandmaster

This article uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.

Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein (12 December 1882, in Stawiski, Poland – 15 March 1961 in Antwerp, Belgium) was a famous Polish chess Grandmaster at the beginning of the 20th century. He was scheduled to play a match with Emanuel Lasker for the world championship in 1914, but it was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I.

Contents [hide] 1 Biography 2 Chess heritage 3 Notable chess games 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

[edit] Biography

He learned to play chess when he was 16.^[1] He trained with and played against the strong master Gersz Salwe in Łódź. Rubinstein was Jewish,^[2] and his family planned for him to become a rabbi. However, in 1903, after finishing fifth in a tournament in Kiev, Rubinstein decided to abandon his rabbinical studies and devote himself entirely to chess.

Between 1907 and 1912, Rubinstein established himself as one of the strongest players in the world. In 1907, he won the Karlovy Vary tournament and shared first at St. Petersburg. In 1912, he had a record string of wins, finishing first in five consecutive major tournaments: San Sebastian, Piešťany, Breslau (the German championship), Warsaw and Vilnius (although none of these events included Lasker or Capablanca).^[3] Some believe that he was better than world champion Emanuel Lasker at this time.^[4] Ratings from Chessmetrics support this conclusion, placing him as world #1 between mid 1912 and mid 1914.^[5] Reuben Fine, on the other hand, believed he was not quite as strong as Lasker, and was also eclipsed by José Raúl Capablanca after 1911.^[3]

At the time when it was common for the reigning world champion to handpick his challengers, Rubinstein was never given a chance to play Lasker for the world chess championship because he was unable to raise enough money to meet Lasker’s financial demands. In the 1909 St. Petersburg tournament, he had tied with Lasker and won his individual encounter with him.^[6] However, he had a poor showing at the St. Petersburg tournament in 1914, not placing in the top five. A match with Lasker was arranged for October 1914, but it never took place because of the outbreak of World War I.^[7]

After the war Rubinstein was still an elite grandmaster, but his results lacked their previous formidable consistency. Nevertheless, he won at Vienna in 1922, ahead of future world champion Alexander Alekhine, and was the leader of the Polish team that won the Chess Olympiad at Hamburg in 1930 with a superb record of thirteen wins and four draws. A year later he won an Olympic silver.

After 1932 he withdrew from tournament play, mostly because his schizophrenic tendencies^{[verification needed]} became prevalent; he was suffering from anthropophobia, a fear of people and society.^[8] Unlike other great grandmasters, he left behind no literary heritage, which may be attributed to his mental problems. He spent the last 29 years of his life suffering from severe mental illness, living at various times at home with his family and in a sanatorium. It is not clear how the Jewish grandmaster survived World War II in Nazi-occupied Belgium. One oft-related story is that the Nazis arrived one day to take him to the death camps, but he was so patently insane that they abandoned the attempt. However, there is no documentation to support this tale.^[9]

[edit] Chess heritage

He was one of the earliest chess players to take the endgame into account when choosing and playing the opening. He was exceptionally talented in the endgame, particularly in rook endings, where he broke new ground in knowledge. Jeremy Silman ranked him as one of the five best endgame players of all time, and a master of rook endgames.^[10]

He originated the Rubinstein System against the Tarrasch Defense variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined: 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 c5 3.c4 e6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.g3 Nf6 7.Bg2 (Rubinstein - Tarrasch, 1912). He is also credited with inventing the Meran Variation, which stems from the Queen’s Gambit Declined but reaches a position of the Queen’s Gambit Accepted with an extra move for Black.

Many opening variations are named for him. The “Rubinstein Attack” often refers to 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e3 0-0 6.Nf3 Nbd7 7.Qc2. The Rubinstein Variation of the French Defence arises after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 (or 3.Nd2) dxe4 4.Nxe4. Apart from 4.Qc2, the Rubinstein Variation of the Nimzo-Indian:^[11] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3. There are also the Rubinstein Variation of the Four Knights Game, which arises after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bb5 Nd4, and the Rubinstein Variation of the Symmetrical English, 1.c4 c5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.Bg2 Nc7, a complex system that is very popular at the grandmaster level.

The Rubinstein Trap, an opening trap in the Queen’s Gambit Declined that loses at least a pawn for Black, is named for him because he fell into it twice. One version of it runs 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 0-0 7.Nf3 Nbd7 8.Bd3 c6 10.0-0 Re8 11.Rc1 h6 12. Bf4 Nh5? 13. Nxd5! Now 13…cxd5?? is met by 14.Bc7, winning the queen, while 13…Nxf4 14.Nxf4 leaves White a pawn ahead.

The Rubinstein Memorial tournament in his honor has been held annually since 1963 in Polanica Zdrój, with a glittering list of top-flight winners.

[edit] Notable chess games

• George Rotlewi vs Akiba Rubinstein, Lodz 1907, Tarrasch Defense: Symmetrical Variation (D02), 0-1 A very impressive attacking combination; “perhaps the most magnificent combination of all time” (Carl Schlechter)
• Akiba Rubinstein vs Emanuel Lasker, St.Petersburg 1909, Queen’s Gambit Declined: Traditional Variation (D30), 1-0 This game ends in an interesting position where Lasker has no good moves (zugzwang).
• Akiba Rubinstein vs Karel Hromádka, Moravská Ostrava 1923, King’s Gambit: Declined. Classical Variation (C30), 1-0 A nice game full of tactics and hanging pieces. The former Czech champion Karel Hromádka fights well, but at the end Rubinstein prevails.
• Akiba Rubinstein vs Carl Schlechter. San Sebastian 1912, 1-0 Capablanca called this game “a monument of magnificent precision.” A quintessential Rubinstein game.

• Hermanis Mattison vs. Akiba Rubinstein, Carlsbad, 1929, (C68), 0-1 A famous rook and pawn ending that seemed “hopelessly drawn”, but was won by Rubinstein. The editor of the tournament book said that if this game had been played 300 years earlier, Rubinstein would have been burned at the stake for dealing with evil spirits.^[12]

JOSE RAUL CAPABLANCA

July 16, 2010

José Raúl Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca
Full name	José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera
Country	Cuba
Born	19 November 1888(1888-11-19) Havana, Cuba
Died	8 March 1942 (aged 53) New York City, New York United States
Title	Grandmaster
World Champion	1921-1927

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera (19 November 1888 – 8 March 1942) was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play.^[1][2] Due to his achievements in the chess world, mastery over the board and his relatively simple style of play he was nicknamed the “Human Chess Machine”.^[3][4]

Contents [hide] 1 Biography and career 1.1 Childhood 1.2 Early adult career 1.3 World title contender 1.4 During World War I 1.5 World Champion 1.6 Losing the title 1.7 Post-championship and partial retirement 1.8 Return to competitive chess 1.9 Final years 2 Assessment 2.1 Playing strength and style 2.2 Influence on the game 2.3 Personality 3 Capablanca chess 4 Notable chess games 5 Writings 6 Tournament results 7 Match results 8 See also 9 Notes 10 Further reading 11 External links

[edit] Biography and career

[edit] Childhood

José Raúl Capablanca, the second surviving son of a Spanish army officer,^[5] was born in Havana on November 19, 1888.^[6] According to Capablanca, he learned the rules of the game at the age of four by watching his father play, pointed out an illegal move by his father, and then beat his father twice. At the age of eight he was taken to Havana Chess Club, which had hosted many important contests, but on the advice of a doctor he was not allowed to play frequently. Between November and December 1901, he narrowly beat the Cuban Chess Champion, Juan Corzo, in a match.^[6][7][8] However in April 1902 he only came fourth out of six in the National Championship, losing both his games against Corzo.^[8] In 1905 Capablanca passed with ease the entrance examinations for Columbia University in New York City, where he wished to play for Columbia’s strong baseball team, and soon was selected as shortstop on the freshman team.^[7] In the same year he joined the Manhattan Chess Club, and was soon recognized as the club’s strongest player.^[6] He was particularly dominant in rapid chess, winning a tournament ahead of the reigning World Chess Champion, Emanuel Lasker, in 1906.^[6] In 1908 he left the university to concentrate on chess.^[6][7]

According to Columbia University, Capablanca enrolled at Columbia’s School of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry in September, 1910, to study chemical engineering.^[9] Later, his financial support was withdrawn because he preferred playing chess to studying engineering. He left Columbia after one semester to devote himself to chess full time.

[edit] Early adult career

Capablanca’s skill in rapid chess lent itself to simultaneous exhibitions, and his increasing reputation in these events led to a USA-wide tour in 1909.^[10] Playing 602 games in 27 cities, he scored 96.4% – a much higher percentage than those of, for example, Géza Maróczy’s 88% and Frank Marshall’s 86% in 1906. This performance gained him sponsorship for an exhibition match that year against Marshall, the US champion,^[11] who had won the 1904 Cambridge Springs tournament ahead of World Champion Emanuel Lasker and Dawid Janowski, and whom Chessmetrics ranks as one of the world’s top three players at his peak.^[12] Capablanca beat Marshall by 15–8 (8 wins, 1 loss, 14 draws) – a margin comparable to what Emanuel Lasker achieved against Marshall (8 wins, no losses, 7 draws) in winning his 1907 World Championship match. After the match, Capablanca said that he had never opened a book on chess openings.^[6][13] Following this match, Chessmetrics rates Capablanca the world’s third strongest player for most of the period from 1909 through 1912.^[14]

Capablanca won all seven games in the 1910 New York State Championship.^[15] After another gruelling series of simultaneous exhibitions,^[10] Capablanca placed second, with 9½ out of 12, in the 1911 National Tournament at New York, half a point behind Marshall, and half a point ahead of Charles Jaffe and Oscar Chajes.^[15][16] Marshall, invited to play in a tournament at San Sebastián, Spain, in 1911, insisted that Capablanca also be allowed to play.^[17]

According to David Hooper and Ken Whyld, San Sebastián 1911 was “one of the strongest five tournaments held up to that time”, as all the world’s leading players competed except the World Champion, Lasker.^[18][19] At the beginning of the tournament, Ossip Bernstein and Aron Nimzowitsch objected to Capablanca’s presence because he had not fulfilled the entry condition of winning at least third prize in two master tournaments.^[6] Capablanca won brilliantly against Bernstein in the very first round, more simply against Nimzowitsch,^[10] and astounded the chess world by taking first place, with a score of six wins, one loss and seven draws, ahead of Akiba Rubinstein, Milan Vidmar, Marshall, Carl Schlechter and Siegbert Tarrasch, et al.^[6] His loss, against Rubinstein, was one of the most brilliant achievements of the latter’s career.^[20] Some European critics grumbled that Capablanca’s style was rather cautious, though he conceded fewer draws than any of the next six finishers in the event. Capablanca was now recognized as a serious contender for the world championship.^[10]

[edit] World title contender

In 1911, Capablanca challenged Emanuel Lasker for the World Chess Championship. Lasker accepted his challenge while proposing seventeen conditions for the match. Capablanca objected to some of the conditions, which significantly favored Lasker, and the match did not take place.^[21][22]

In 1913, Capablanca won a tournament in New York with 11/13, half a point ahead of Marshall.^[15][23] Capablanca then finished second to Marshall in Capablanca’s hometown, Havana, scoring 10 out of 14, and losing one of their individual games.^[15][24] The 600 spectators naturally favored their native hero, but sportingly gave Marshall “thunderous applause”.^[24][25] In a further tournament in New York in 1913, at the Rice Chess Club, Capablanca won all thirteen games.^[10][15]

In September 1913, Capablanca secured a job in the Cuban Foreign Office,^[6] which made him financially secure for life.^[19] Hooper and Whyld write that, “He had no specific duties, but was expected to act as a kind of ambassador-at-large, a well-known figure who would put Cuba on the map wherever he travelled.”^[26] His first instructions were to go to Saint Petersburg – where he was due to play in a major tournament.^[10] On his way he gave simultaneous exhibitions in London, Paris and Berlin, where he also played two-game matches against Richard Teichmann and Jacques Mieses, winning all his games.^[6][10] After arriving in Saint Petersburg, he played similar matches against Alexander Alekhine, Eugene Znosko-Borovsky and Fyodor Duz-Chotimirsky, losing one game to Znosko-Borovsky and winning the rest.^[6]

The St. Petersburg 1914 chess tournament was the first in which Capablanca played World Champion Emanuel Lasker under normal tournament conditions.^[10] This event was arranged in an unusual way: after a preliminary single round-robin tournament involving eleven players, the top five were to play a second stage in double round-robin format, with scores from the preliminary tournament carried forward to the second contest.^[10] Capablanca placed first in the preliminary tournament, 1½ points ahead of Lasker, who was out of practice and made a shaky start. Despite a determined effort by Lasker, Capablanca still seemed on course for ultimate victory. However, in their second game of the final, Lasker reduced Capablanca to a helpless position and Capablanca was so shaken by this that he blundered away his next game to Siegbert Tarrasch.^[10] Lasker thus finished half a point ahead of Capablanca and 3½ ahead of Alekhine.^[6][27] Alekhine commented:

His real, incomparable gifts first began to make themselves known at the time of St. Petersburg, 1914, when I too came to know him personally. Neither before nor afterwards have I seen – and I cannot imagine as well – such a flabbergasting quickness of chess comprehension as that possessed by the Capablanca of that epoch. Enough to say that he gave all the St. Petersburg masters the odds of 5–1 in quick games – and won! With all this he was always good-humoured, the darling of the ladies, and enjoyed wonderful good health – really a dazzling appearance. That he came second to Lasker must be entirely ascribed to his youthful levity – he was already playing as well as Lasker.^[28]

After the breakdown of his attempt to negotiate a title match in 1911, Capablanca drafted rules for the conduct of future challenges, which were agreed by the other top players at the 1914 Saint Petersburg tournament, including Lasker, and approved at the Mannheim Congress later that year. The main points were: the champion must be prepared to defend his title once a year; the match should be won by the first player to win six or eight games, whichever the champion preferred; and the stake should be at least £1,000 (worth about £347,000 or $700,000 in 2006 terms^[29]).^[22]

[edit] During World War I

World War I began in midsummer 1914, bringing international chess to a virtual halt for more than four years.^[10] Capablanca won tournaments in New York in 1914, 1915, 1916 (with preliminary and final round-robin stages) and 1918, losing only one game in this sequence.^[30] In the 1918 event Frank James Marshall, playing Black against Capablanca, unleashed a complicated counter-attack, later known as the Marshall Attack, against the Ruy Lopez opening. It is often said that Marshall had kept this secret for use against Capablanca since his defeat in their 1909 match;^[31] however, Edward Winter discovered several games between 1910 and 1918 where Marshall passed up opportunities to use the Marshall Attack against Capablanca; and an 1893 game that used a similar line.^[32] This gambit is so complex that Garry Kasparov used to avoid it,^[33] and Marshall had the advantage of using a prepared variation. Nevertheless, Capablanca found a way through the complications and won.^[19] Capablanca was challenged to a match in 1919 by Borislav Kostić, who had come through the 1918 tournament undefeated to take second place. The match was to go to the first player to win eight games, but Kostić resigned the match after losing five straight games.^[6][34] Capablanca considered that he was at his strongest around this time.^[10][35]

[edit] World Champion

The Hastings Victory tournament of 1919 was the first international competition on Allied soil since 1914. The field was not strong,^[10] and Capablanca won with 10½ points out of 11, one point ahead of Kostić.^[30]

In January 1920, Emanuel Lasker and Capablanca signed an agreement to play a World Championship match in 1921, noting that Capablanca was not free to play in 1920. Because of the delay, Lasker insisted that if he resigned the title, then Capablanca should become World Champion. Lasker had previously included in his agreement before World War I to play Akiba Rubinstein for the title a similar clause that if he resigned the title, it should become Rubinstein’s.^[36] Lasker then resigned the title to Capablanca on June 27, 1920, saying, “You have earned the title not by the formality of a challenge, but by your brilliant mastery.” When Cuban enthusiasts raised $20,000 to fund the match provided it was played in Havana, Lasker agreed in August 1920 to play there, but insisted that he was the challenger as Capablanca was now the champion. Capablanca signed an agreement that accepted this point, and soon afterwards published a letter confirming it.^[36]

The match was played in March–April 1921; Lasker resigned it after just fourteen games, having lost four games and won none.^[36] Reuben Fine and Harry Golombek attributed the one-sided result to Lasker’s being in mysteriously poor form.^[30][37] Fred Reinfeld mentioned speculations that Havana’s humid climate weakened Lasker and that he was depressed about the outcome of World War I, especially as he had lost his life savings.^[10] On the other hand, Vladimir Kramnik thought that Lasker played quite well and the match was an “even and fascinating fight” until Lasker blundered in the last game. Kramnik explained that Capablanca was twenty years younger, a slightly stronger player, and had more recent competitive practice.^[38]

Edward Winter, after a lengthy summary of the facts, concludes that, “The press was dismissive of Lasker’s wish to confer the title on Capablanca, even questioning the legality of such an initiative, and in 1921 it regarded the Cuban as having become world champion by dint of defeating Lasker over the board.”^[36] Reference works invariably give Capablanca’s reign as titleholder as beginning in 1921, not 1920.^[39][40][41] The only challenger besides Capablanca to win the title without losing a game is Kramnik, in the Classical World Chess Championship 2000 against Garry Kasparov.^[42]

Capablanca won the London tournament of 1922 with 13 points from 15 games with no losses, ahead of Alexander Alekhine on 11½, Milan Vidmar (11), and Akiba Rubinstein (10½).^[43] During this event, Capablanca proposed the “London Rules” to regulate future World Championship negotiations: the first player to win six games would win the match; playing sessions would be limited to 5 hours; the time limit would be 40 moves in 2½ hours; the champion must defend his title within one year of receiving a challenge from a recognized master; the champion would decide the date of the match; the champion was not obliged to accept a challenge for a purse of less than US $10,000 (worth about $349,000 in 2006 terms^[44]); 20% of the purse was to be paid to the title holder and the remainder divided, 60% going to the winner of the match, and 40% to the loser; the highest purse bid must be accepted.^[45] Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubow, Géza Maróczy, Richard Reti, Rubinstein, Tartakower and Vidmar promptly signed them.^[46] Between 1921 and 1923 Alekhine, Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch all challenged Capablanca, but only Alekhine could raise the money, in 1927.^[47]

In 1922, Capablanca also gave a simultaneous exhibition in Cleveland against 103 opponents, the largest in history up to that time, winning 102 and drawing one - setting a record for the best winning percentage ever in a large simultaneous exhibition.^[48]

After beginning with four draws, followed by a loss,^[10] Capablanca placed second at the New York 1924 chess tournament with the score of 14/20 (+10 -1 =9), 1½ points behind Emanuel Lasker, and 2 ahead of third-placed Alekhine.^[43] Capablanca’s defeat at the hands of Richard Reti in the fifth round was his first in serious competition in eight years.^[15][49] He made another bad start at the Moscow 1925 chess tournament,^[10] and could only fight back to third place, two points behind Bogoljubow and ½ point behind Emanuel Lasker. Capablanca won at Lake Hopatcong, 1926 with 6 points out of 8, ahead of Abraham Kupchik (5) and Maroczy (4½).^[50]

A group of Argentinian businessmen, backed by a guarantee from the president of Argentina, promised the funds for a World Championship match between Capablanca and Alekhine in 1927.^[51] Since Nimzowitsch had challenged before Alekhine, Capablanca gave Nimzowitsch until January 1, 1927 to deposit a forfeit in order arrange a match.^[52] When this did not materialize, a Capablanca–Alekhine match was agreed, to begin in September 1927.^[53]

In the New York 1927 chess tournament, played from February 19 to March 23, 1927,^[54][55] six of the world’s strongest masters played a quadruple round robin, with the others being Alekhine, Rudolf Spielmann, Milan Vidmar, Nimzowitsch and Marshall,^[50] with Bogoljubow and Emanuel Lasker not present.^[19] Before the tournament, Capablanca wrote that he had “more experience but less power” than in 1911, that he had peaked in 1919 and that some of his competitors had become stronger in the meantime;^[10] however, he finished undefeated, winning the mini-matches with each of his rivals, 2½ points ahead of second-place Alekhine, and won the “best game” prize for a win over Spielmann.^[50]

In December 1921, shortly after becoming World Champion, Capablanca married Gloria Simoni Betancourt. They had a son, José Raúl Jr., in 1923 and a daughter, Gloria, in 1925.^[56] According to Capablanca’s second wife, Olga, his first marriage broke down fairly soon, and he and Gloria had affairs.^[57] Both his parents died during his reign, his father in 1923 and mother in 1926.^[56]

[edit] Losing the title

Since Capablanca had won the New York 1927 chess tournament overwhelmingly and had never lost a game to Alekhine, the Cuban was regarded by most pundits as the clear favorite in their World Chess Championship 1927 match.^[10] However, Alekhine won the match, played from September to November 1927 at Buenos Aires, by 6 wins, 3 losses, and 25 draws^[52] – the longest formal World Championship match until the contest in 1984-85 between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.^[58] Alekhine’s victory surprised almost the entire chess world.^[52] After Capablanca’s death, Alekhine expressed surprise at his own victory, since in 1927 he had not thought he was superior to Capablanca, and he suggested that Capablanca had been over-confident.^[28] Capablanca entered the match with no technical or physical preparation,^[6][10] while Alekhine got himself into good physical condition,^[59] and had thoroughly studied Capablanca’s play.^[60] According to Kasparov, Alekhine’s research uncovered many small inaccuracies, which occurred because Capablanca was unwilling to concentrate intensely.^[61] Vladimir Kramnik commented that this was the first contest in which Capablanca had no easy wins.^[38] Luděk Pachman suggested that Capablanca, who was unused to losing games or to any other type of setback, became depressed over his unnecessary loss of the eleventh game, a long, gruelling endgame, featuring errors by both players.^[62][63]

Immediately after winning the match, Alekhine announced that he was willing to give Capablanca a return match, on the same terms that Capablanca had required as champion – the challenger must provide a stake of US $10,000, of which more than half would go to the defending champion even if he was defeated.^[64] Alekhine had challenged Capablanca in the early 1920s but Alekhine could not raise the money until 1927.^[47] After Capablanca’s death, Alekhine wrote that Capablanca’s demand for a $10,000 stake was an attempt to avoid challenges.^[28] Negotiations dragged on for several years, often breaking down when agreement seemed in sight. Their relationship became bitter, and Alekhine demanded much higher appearance fees for tournaments in which Capablanca also played.^[59][65]

[edit] Post-championship and partial retirement

After losing the World Championship in late 1927, Capablanca played more often in tournaments, hoping to strengthen his claim for a rematch.^[66] From 1928 through 1931, he won six first prizes, also finishing second twice and one joint second.^[15] His competitors included rising stars such as Max Euwe and Isaac Kashdan,^[67][68] as well as players who had been established in the 1920s, but Capablanca and Alekhine never played in the same tournament during this period, and would next meet only at the Nottingham, 1936 tournament, after Alekhine had lost the world title to Euwe the preceding year.^[66][69][70] In late 1931, Capablanca also won a match (+2 -0 =8) against Euwe,^[15][70] whom Chessmetrics ranks sixth in the world at the time.^[71]

Despite these excellent results, Capablanca’s play showed signs of decline: his play slowed from the speed of his youth, with occasional time trouble;^[19] although he continued to produce many superb games, he also made some gross blunders.^[10][19][70] Chessmetrics nonetheless ranks Capablanca as the second strongest player in the world (after Alekhine) from his loss of the title through to autumn 1932, except for a brief appearance in the top place.^[14]

After winning an event at New York in 1931, he withdrew from serious chess,^[15] perhaps disheartened by his inability to secure a return match against Alekhine,^[70] and played only less serious games at the Manhattan Chess Club and simultaneous displays.^[72] On 6 December 1933, Capablanca won all 9 of his games in one of the club’s weekly rapid chess tournaments, finishing 2 points ahead of Samuel Reshevsky, Reuben Fine and Milton Hanauer.^[72]

[edit] Return to competitive chess

At first Capablanca did not divorce his first wife, as he had not intended to re-marry. Olga, Capablanca’s second wife, wrote that she met him in the late spring of 1934; by late October the pair were deeply in love, and Capablanca recovered his ambition to prove he was the world’s best player.^[57] In 1938 he divorced his first wife and then married Olga on October 20, 1938,^[57] about a month before the AVRO tournament.^[73]

Starting his comeback at the Hastings tournament of 1934–35, Capablanca finished fourth, although coming ahead of Mikhail Botvinnik and Andor Lilienthal.^[74] He placed second by ½ point in the Margate tournaments of 1935 and 1936. At Moscow in 1935 Capablanca finished fourth, 1 point behind the joint winners,^[74] while Emanuel Lasker’s third place at the age of 66 was hailed as “a biological miracle.”^[75] The following year, Capablanca won an even stronger tournament in Moscow, one point ahead of Botvinnik and 3½ ahead of Salo Flohr, who took third place;^[74] A month later, he shared first place with Botvinnik at Nottingham, with a score of (+5 -1 =8), losing only to Flohr; Alekhine placed sixth, only one point behind the joint winners.^[74] These tournaments of 1936 were the last two that Lasker played,^[76] and the only ones in which Capablanca finished ahead of Lasker, now 67.^[77] During these triumphs Capablanca began to suffer symptoms of high blood pressure.^[35] He tied for second place at Semmering in 1937, then could only finish seventh of the eight players at the 1938 AVRO tournament,^[78] an élite contest designed to select a challenger for Alekhine’s world title.^[79][80] Capablanca’s high blood pressure was not correctly diagnosed and treated until after the AVRO tournament, and caused him to lose his train of thought towards the end of playing sessions.^[35]

After winning at Paris in 1938 and placing second in a slightly stronger tournament at Margate in 1939, Capablanca played for Cuba in the 8th Chess Olympiad, held in Buenos Aires, and won the gold medal for the best performance on the top board.^[81] While Capablanca and Alekhine were both representing their countries in Buenos Aires, Capablanca made a final attempt to arrange a World Championship match. Alekhine declined, saying he was obliged to be available to defend his adopted homeland, France, as World War II had just broken out.^[82] Alekhine also sat out the match when the teams from Cuba and France faced each other in the Buenos Aires Olympiad, thus declining an opportunity to play Capablanca once more.

[edit] Final years

On 7 March 1942, Capablanca was observing a skittles game and chatting with friends at the Manhattan Chess Club in New York City, when he asked for help removing his coat, and collapsed shortly afterwards. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he died at 6 a.m. the next morning. The cause of death was given as “a cerebral haemorrhage provoked by hypertension“.^[83] Capablanca’s great rival Emanuel Lasker had died in the same hospital only a year earlier.^[84] Capablanca’s body was given a public funeral in Havana’s Colón Cemetery on March 15, 1942.^[83]

His bitter rival Alekhine wrote in a tribute to Capablanca:

… Capablanca was snatched from the chess world much too soon. With his death, we have lost a very great chess genius whose like we shall never see again.^[28]

Emanuel Lasker once said: “I have known many chess players, but only one chess genius: Capablanca.”

An annual Capablanca Memorial tournament has been held in Cuba, most often in Havana, since 1962.^[85]

[edit] Assessment

[edit] Playing strength and style

As an adult, Capablanca lost only 34 serious games.^[84] He was undefeated from February 10, 1916, when he lost to Oscar Chajes in the New York 1916 tournament, to March 21, 1924, when he lost to Richard Réti in the New York International tournament. During this streak, which included his 1921 World Championship match against Lasker, Capablanca played 63 games, winning 40 and drawing 23.^[49][86] In fact, only Marshall, Lasker, Alekhine and Rudolf Spielmann won two or more serious games from the mature Capablanca, though in each case, their overall lifetime scores were minus (Capablanca beat Marshall +20 -2 =28, Lasker +6 -2 =16, Alekhine +9 -7 =33), except for Spielmann who was level (+2 -2 =8).^{[citation needed]} Of top players, only Keres had a narrow plus score against him^{[citation needed]} (+1 -0 =5).^[87] Keres’ win was at the AVRO 1938 chess tournament, during which tournament Capablanca turned 50, while Keres was 22.^[88]

Statistical ranking systems place Capablanca high among the greatest players of all time. Nathan Divinsky and Raymond Keene’s book Warriors of the Mind (1989) ranks him fifth, behind Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Bobby Fischer and Mikhail Botvinnik – and immediately ahead of Emanuel Lasker.^[89] In his 1978 book The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present, Arpad Elo gave retrospective ratings to players based on their performance over the best five-year span of their career. He concluded that Capablanca was the strongest of those surveyed, with Lasker and Botvinnik sharing second place.^[90] Chessmetrics (2006) is rather sensitive to the length of the periods being compared, and ranks Capablanca between third and fourth strongest of all time for peak periods ranging in length from one to fifteen years.^[91] Its author, the statistician Jeff Sonas, concluded that Capablanca had more years in the top three than anyone except Lasker, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov – although Alexander Alekhine had more years in the top two positions.^[92] A 2006 study claimed to show that Capablanca was the most accurate of all the World Champions when compared with computer analysis of World Championship match games.^[93][94] However, this analysis was criticized for using a second-rank chess program, Crafty, modified to limit its calculations to six moves by each side, and for favoring players whose style matched that of the program.^[95]

Boris Spassky, World Champion from 1969 to 1972, considered Capablanca the best player of all time.^[96] Bobby Fischer, who held the title from 1972 to 1975, admired Capablanca’s “light touch” and ability to see the right move very quickly. Fischer reported that in the 1950s, older members of the Manhattan Chess Club spoke of Capablanca’s performances with awe.^[97]

Capablanca excelled in simple positions and endgames, and his positional judgment was outstanding, so much so that most attempts to attack him came to grief without any apparent defensive efforts on his part. However, he could play great tactical chess when necessary – most famously in the 1918 Manhattan Chess Club Championship tournament (in New York) where Marshall sprang a deeply-analyzed prepared variation on him, which he refuted while playing under the normal time limit (although ways have since been found to strengthen the Marshall Attack).^[19][98] He was also capable of using aggressive tactical play to drive home a positional advantage, provided he considered it safe and the most efficient way to win, for example against Spielmann in the 1927 New York tournament.^[99][100]

[edit] Influence on the game

Capablanca founded no school per se, but his style was very influential in the games of two world champions: Fischer and Anatoly Karpov. Botvinnik also wrote how much he learned from Capablanca, and pointed out that Alekhine had received much schooling from him in positional play, before their fight for the world title made them bitter enemies.

As a chess writer, Capablanca did not present large amounts of detailed analysis, instead focusing on the critical moments in a game. His writing style was plain and easy to understand.^[101] Botvinnik regarded Capablanca’s book Chess Fundamentals as the best chess book ever written.^[101] Capablanca in a lecture and in his book A Primer of Chess pointed out that while the bishop was usually stronger than the knight, queen and knight was usually better than queen and bishop, especially in endings — the bishop merely mimics the queen’s diagonal move, while the knight can immediately reach squares the queen cannot.^[102][103] Research is divided over Capablanca’s conclusion: in 2007, Glenn Flear found little difference,^[104] while in 1999, Larry Kaufman, analysing a large database of games, concluded that results very slightly favored queen plus knight.^[105] John Watson wrote in 1998 that an unusually large proportion of queen and knight versus queen and bishop endings are drawn, and that most decisive games are characterized by the winning side having one or more obvious advantages in that specific game.^[106]

[edit] Personality

Early in his chess career, Capablanca had received some criticism, mainly in Britain, for the allegedly conceited description of his accomplishments in his first book, My Chess Career. He therefore took the unprecedented step of including virtually all of his tournament and match defeats up to that time in Chess Fundamentals, together with an instructive group of his victories. Nevertheless his preface to the 1934 edition of Chess Fundamentals is confident that the “reader may therefore go over the contents of the book with the assurance that there is in it everything he needs.”^[101] However Julius du Mont wrote that he knew Capablanca well and could vouch that he was not conceited. In du Mont’s opinion critics should understand the difference between the merely gifted and the towering genius of Capablanca, and the contrast between the British tendency towards false modesty and the Latin and American tendency to say “I played this game as well as it could be played” if he honestly thought that it was correct.^[6] Fischer also admired this frankness.^[97] Du Mont also said that Capablanca was rather sensitive to criticism,^[6] and chess historian Edward Winter documented a number of examples of self-criticism in My Chess Career.^[101]

Despite his achievements Capablanca appeared more interested in baseball than in chess, which he described as “not a difficult game to learn and it is an enjoyable game to play.”^[107] His second wife, Olga, thought he resented the way in which chess had dominated his life, and wished he could have studied music or medicine.^[57]

[edit] Capablanca chess

In an interview in 1925 Capablanca denied reports that he thought chess had already currently reached its limit because it was easy for top players to obtain a draw. However he was concerned that the accelerating development of chess technique and opening knowledge might cause such stagnation in 50 years’ time. Hence he suggested the adoption of a 10×8 board with 2 extra pieces per side:

• a chancellor that moves as both a rook and a knight;
• an archbishop that moves as both a bishop and a knight. This piece would be able to deliver checkmate on its own, which none of the conventional pieces can do.

He thought this would prevent technical knowledge from becoming such a dominant factor, at least for a few centuries.^[109]

Capablanca and Edward Lasker experimented with 10×10 and 10×8 boards, using the same expanded set of pieces. They preferred the 8-rank version as it encouraged combat to start earlier, and their games typically lasted 20 to 25 moves.^[108] Contrary to the claims of some critics, Capablanca proposed this variant while he was world champion, not as sour grapes after losing his title.^[110]

Similar 10×8 variants had previously been described in 1617 by Pietro Carrera and in 1874 by Henry Bird, differing only in how the new pieces were placed in each side’s back row. Subsequent variants inspired by Capablanca’s experimentation have been proposed, including Grand chess (which uses a 10×10 board and has pawns on the third rank), Gothic Chess (which used to be patented), and Embassy Chess (the Grand chess setup on a 10×8 board).

[edit] Notable chess games

• Jose Raul Capablanca vs L Molina, Buenos Aires 1911, Queen’s Gambit Declined: Modern. Knight Defense (D52), 1-0 An impressive Greco’s sacrifice along with deceptive simplicity and effortless endgame.
• Jose Raul Capablanca vs Frank James Marshall, ch Manhattan CC, New York 1918, Spanish Game: Marshall Attack. Original Marshall Attack (C89), 1-0 One of the most famous games of Capablanca. It is on record that Marshall unveiled this attack after careful preparation. Perfect example of defending against an extremely aggressive attack.
• Jose Raul Capablanca vs Professor Marc Fonaroff, New York 1918, Spanish Game: Berlin Defense. Hedgehog Variation (C62), 1-0 A freaky ending with amazing accuracy.
• Emanuel Lasker vs Jose Raul Capablanca, Lasker-Capablanca World Championship Match, Havana 1921. Queen’s Gambit Declined: Orthodox Defense. Rubinstein Variation (D61), 0-1 A strategic masterpiece and instructive endgame which should be on everybody’s list. Capablanca out-playing the great Lasker in the endgame with simple and perfect maneuvering of pieces. A must-see game for chess endgame fans.
• Jose Raul Capablanca vs Savielly Tartakower, New York 1924, Dutch Defense, Horwitz Variation: General (A80), 1-0 A brilliant endgame from the natural genius. Dubbed as “Rook Before you Leap”. Demonstrates the exceptional endgame skills of Capablanca with flawless artistry.
• Jose Raul Capablanca vs Rudolf Spielmann, New York 1927, Queen’s Gambit Declined: Barmen Variation (D37), 1-0 A remarkable tactical game which earned the “Brilliancy Price” for Capablanca. This is a showcase of Capablanca’s tactical skills complementing positional supremacy.
• Jose Raul Capablanca vs Andor Lilienthal, Moscow 1936, Reti Opening: Anglo-Slav. Bogoljubow Variation (A12), 1-0 A perfect endgame and pawn play utilizing the space against material advantage.
• Ilia Abramovich Kan vs Jose Raul Capablanca, Moscow 1936, Vienna Game: Anderssen Defense (C25), 0-1 Another demonstration of Caplabanca’s endgame supremacy. This game seems a drawn game, but witness how Capablanca ekes out a win using his positional mastery.

[edit] Writings

• Havana 1913, by José Raúl Capablanca. This is the only tournament book he wrote. It was originally published in Spanish in 1913 in Havana. Edward Winter translated it into English, and it appeared as a British Chess Magazine reprint, Quarterly #18, in 1976.
• A Primer of Chess by José Raúl Capablanca (preface by Benjamin Anderson). Originally published in 1935. Republished in 2002 by Harvest Books, ISBN 0156028077.
• Chess Fundamentals by José Raúl Capablanca (Originally published in 1921. Republished by Everyman Chess, 1994, ISBN 1857440730. Revised and updated by Nick de Firmian in 2006, ISBN 0-8129-3681-7.)
• My Chess Career by José Raúl Capablanca (Originally published by Macmillan in 1921. Republished by Dover in 1966. Republished by Hardinge Simpole Limited, 2003, ISBN 1843820919.)
• The World’s Championship Chess Match between José Raul Capablanca and Dr. Emanuel Lasker, with an introduction, the scores of all the games annotated by the champion, together with statistical matter and the biographies of the two masters, 1921 by José Raul Capablanca. (Republished in 1977 by Dover, together with a book on the 1927 match with annotations by Frederick Yates and William Winter, as World’s Championship Matches, 1921 and 1927 by José Raúl Capablanca. ISBN 0486231895.)
• Last Lectures by José Raúl Capablanca (Simon and Schuster, January 1966, ASIN B0007DZW6W)

[edit] Tournament results

The following table gives Capablanca’s placings and scores in tournaments.^{[15][30][43][50][66][69][70][74][78][111]} The first “Score” column gives the number of points out of the total possible. In the second “Score” column, “+” indicates the number of won games, “−” the number of losses, and “=” the number of draws.

Date	Location	Place	Score		Notes
1910	New York State	1st	20/20	+20 −0 =0
1911	New York	2nd	9½/12	+8 −1 =3
	San Sebastián (Spain)	1st	9½/14	+6 −1 =7	Ahead of Akiba Rubinstein and Milan Vidmar (9), Frank James Marshall (8½)[111] and 11 other world-class players.[18] His only loss was to Rubinstein, and his win against Ossip Bernstein was awarded the brilliancy prize.[111]
1913	New York	1st	11/13	+10 −1 =2	Ahead of Marshall (10½), Charles Jaffe (9½) and Dawid Janowski (9)[111]
	Havana	2nd	10/14	+8 −2 =4	Behind Marshall (10½); ahead of Janowski (9) and five others.[111]
	New York	1st	13/13	+13 −0 =0	Ahead of Oldřich Duras
1914	St. Petersburg	2nd	13/18	+10 −2 =6	Behind Emanuel Lasker (13½); ahead of Alexander Alekhine (10), Siegbert Tarrasch (8½) and Marshall (8). This tournament had an unusual structure: there was a preliminary tournament in which eleven players played each other player once; the top five players then played a separate final tournament in which each player who made the “cut” played the other finalists twice; but their scores from the preliminary tournament were carried forward. Even the preliminary tournament would now be considered a “super-tournament”. Capablanca “won” the preliminary tournament by 1½ points without losing a game, but Lasker achieved a plus score against all his opponents in the final tournament and finished with a combined score ½ point ahead of Capablanca’s.[111]
1915	New York	1st	13/14	+12 −0 =2	Ahead of Marshall (12) and six others.[30]
1916	New York	1st	14/17	+12 −1 =4	Ahead of Janowski (11) and 11 others. The structure was similar to that of St. Petersburg 1914.[30]
1918	New York	1st	10½/12	+9 −0 =3	Ahead of Boris Kostić (9), Marshall (7), and four others
1919	Hastings	1st	10½/11	+10 −0 =1	Ahead of Kostić (9½), Sir George Thomas (7), Frederick Yates (7) and eight others[30]
1922	London	1st	13/15	+11 −0 =4	Ahead of Alekhine (11½), Vidmar (11), Rubinstein (10½), Efim Bogoljubow (9), and 11 other players, mostly very strong[43]
1924	New York	2nd	14½/20	+10 −1 =9	Behind Lasker (16); ahead of Alekhine (12), Marshall (11), Richard Réti (10½) and six others, mostly very strong[43]
1925	Moscow	3rd	13½/20	+9 −2 =9	Behind Bogojubow (15½) and Lasker (14); ahead of Marshall (12½) and a mixture of strong international players and rising Soviet players[50]
1926	Lake Hopatcong	1st	6/8	+4 −0 =4	Ahead of Abraham Kupchik (5), Géza Maróczy (4½), Marshall (3) and Edward Lasker (1½)[50]
1927	New York	1st	14/20	+8 −0 =12	Ahead of Alekhine (11½), Aron Nimzowitsch (10½), Vidmar (10), Rudolf Spielmann (8) and Marshall (6).[50]
1928	Berlin	1st	8½/12	+5 −0 =7	Ahead of Nimzowitsch (7), Spielmann (6½) and four other very strong players[66]
	Bad Kissingen	2nd	7/11	+4 −1 =6	Behind Bogojubow (8); ahead of Max Euwe (6½), Rubinstein (6½), Nimzowitsch (6) and seven other strong masters[66]
	Budapest	1st	7/9	+5 −0 =4	Ahead of Marshall (6), Hans Kmoch (5), Spielmann (5) and six others[66]
1929	Ramsgate	1st	5½/7	+4 −0 =3	Ahead of Vera Menchik (5), Rubinstein (5), and four others[69]
	Carlsbad	2nd=	14½/21	+10 −2 =9	Behind Nimzowitsch (15); tied with Spielmann; ahead of Rubinstein (13½) and 18 others, mostly very strong[69]
	Budapest	1st	10½/13	+8 −0 =5	Ahead of Rubinstein (9½), Savielly Tartakower (8) and 11 others[69]
	Barcelona	1st	13½/14	+13 −0 =1	Ahead of Tartakower (11½) and 13 others[69]
1929–30	Hastings	1st	6½/9	+4 -0 =5	[112]
1930–31	Hastings	2nd	6½/9	+5 −1 =3	Behind Euwe (7); ahead of eight others[70]
1931	New York	1st	10/11	+9 −0 =2	Ahead of Isaac Kashdan (8½) and 10 others[70]
1934–35	Hastings	4th	5½/9	+4 −2 =3	Behind Thomas, (6½), Euwe (6½) and Salo Flohr (6½); ahead Mikhail Botvinnik (5), Andor Lilienthal (5) and four others[74]
1935	Moscow	4th	12/19	+7 −2 =10	Behind Botvinnik (13), Flohr (13) and Lasker (12½); ahead of Spielmann (11) and 15 others, mainly Soviet players[74]
	Margate	2nd	7/9	+6 −1 =2	Behind Samuel Reshevsky (7½); ahead of eight others.[74]
1936	Margate	2nd	7/9	+5 −0 =4	Behind Flohr (7½); ahead of Gideon Ståhlberg and eight others.[74]
	Moscow	1st	13/18	+8 −0 =10	Ahead of Botvinnik (12), Flohr (9½), Lilienthal (9), Viacheslav Ragozin (8½), Lasker (8) and four others[74]
	Nottingham	1st=	10/14	+7 −1 =6	Tied with Botvinnik; ahead of Euwe (9½), Reuben Fine (9½), Reshevsky (9½), Alekhine (9), Flohr (8½), Lasker (8½) and seven other strong opponents[74]
1937	Semmering	3rd=	7½/14	+2 −1 =11	Behind Paul Keres (9), Fine (8); tied with Reshevsky; ahead of Flohr (7), Erich Eliskases (6), Ragozin (6) and Vladimirs Petrovs (5)[78]
1938	Paris	1st=	8/10	+6 −0 =4	Ahead of Nicolas Rossolimo (7½) and four others[78]
	AVRO tournament, at ten cities in the Netherlands	7th	6/14	+2 -4 =8	Behind Keres (8½), Fine (8½), Botvinnik (7½), Alekhine (7), Euwe (7) and Reshevsky (7); ahead of Flohr (4½)[78]
1939	Margate	2nd=	6½/9	+4 −0 =5	Behind Keres (7½); tied with Flohr; ahead of seven others[78]

At the 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires, Capablanca took the medal for best performance on a country’s first board.^[78]

[edit] Match results

Here are Capablanca’s results in matches.^[15] The first “Score” column gives the number of points on the total possible. In the second “Score” column, “+” indicates the number of won games, “−” the number of losses, and “=” the number of draws.

Date	Opponent	Result	Location	Score		Notes
1901	Juan Corzo	Won	Havana	7−6	+4 −3 =6	For the championship of Cuba; Corzo was the reigning champion.
1909	Frank James Marshall	Won	New York	15−8	+8 −1 =14
1919	Boris Kostić	Won	USA	5-0	+5 −0 =0
1921	Emanuel Lasker	Won	Havana	9−5	+4 −0 =10	For the World Chess Championship.
1927	Alexander Alekhine	Lost	Buenos Aires	15½−18½	+3 −6 =25	For the World Chess Championship.
1931	Max Euwe	Won	Netherlands	6−4	+2 −0 =8	Euwe became World Champion 1935–1937.[113]

GARRY KASPAROV

Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov
Country	Soviet Union Russia
Born	13 April 1963 (1963-04-13) (age 47) Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster
World Champion	1985–1993 (undisputed) 1993–2000 (Classical)
FIDE rating	2812
Peak rating	2851 (July 1999)

Garry Kimovich Kasparov (Russian: Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров, Russian pronunciation: [ˈɡarʲɪ ˈkʲiməvʲɪtɕ kɐˈsparəf]; born Garry Kimovich Weinstein, 13 April 1963) is a Russian (formerly Soviet) chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, and political activist, whom many consider the greatest chess player of all time.^[1]

Kasparov became the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at the age of 22.^[2] He held the official FIDE world title until 1993, when a dispute with FIDE led him to set up a rival organization, the Professional Chess Association. He continued to hold the “Classical” World Chess Championship until his defeat by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000. He is also widely known for being the first world chess champion to lose a match to a computer, when he lost to Deep Blue in 1997.

Kasparov’s ratings achievements include being rated world #1 according to Elo rating almost continuously from 1986 until his retirement in 2005 and holding the all-time highest rating of 2851.^[3] He was the world number-one ranked player for 255 months, by far the most of all-time and nearly three times as long as his closest rival, Anatoly Karpov. He also holds records for consecutive tournament victories and Chess Oscars.

From 1984 to 1990, Kasparov was a member of the Central Committee of Komsomol and a CPSU member.

Kasparov announced his retirement from professional chess on 10 March 2005, to devote his time to politics and writing. He formed the United Civil Front movement, and joined as a member of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the administration of Vladimir Putin. He was a candidate for the 2008 Russian presidential race, but later withdrew. Widely regarded in the West as a symbol of opposition to Putin, Kasparov’s support in Russia is low.^[4][5]

He coached Magnus Carlsen from March 2009 through March 2010.^[6][7]

Contents [hide] 1 Early career 2 Toward the top 3 1984 World Championship 4 World Champion 5 Break with and ejection from FIDE 6 Losing the title and aftermath 7 Retirement from chess 7.1 Post-retirement chess 8 Politics 9 Chess ratings achievements 10 Olympiads and other major team events 11 Other records 12 Books and other writings 12.1 Early writings 12.2 My Great Predecessors series 12.3 Modern Chess series 12.4 Other post-retirement writing 13 Chess against computers 13.1 Deep Thought, 1989 13.2 Deep Blue, 1996 13.3 Deep Blue, 1997 13.4 Deep Junior, 2003 13.5 X3D Fritz, 2003 14 Notable chess games 15 Other 16 Books 17 See also 18 Notes 19 References 20 Further reading 21 External links

[edit] Early career

Garry Kasparov was born Garry Weinstein (Russian: Гарри Вайнштейн) in Baku,^[8] Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Union; now Azerbaijan, to an Armenian mother and Jewish father.^[9] He first began the serious study of chess after he came across a chess problem set up by his parents and proposed a solution.^[10] His father died of leukemia when he was seven years old.^[11] At the age of twelve, he adopted his mother’s Armenian surname, Gasparyan, modifying it to a more Russified version, Kasparov.^[12]

From age 7, Kasparov attended the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku and, at 10 began training at Mikhail Botvinnik’s chess school under noted coach Vladimir Makogonov. Makogonov helped develop Kasparov’s positional skills and taught him to play the Caro-Kann Defence and the Tartakower System of the Queen’s Gambit Declined.^[13] Kasparov won the Soviet Junior Championship in Tbilisi in 1976, scoring 7 points of 9, at age 13. He repeated the feat the following year, winning with a score of 8½ of 9. He was being trained by Alexander Shakarov during this time.

In 1978, Kasparov participated in the Sokolsky Memorial tournament in Minsk. He had been invited as an exception but took first place and became a chess master. Kasparov has repeatedly said that this event was a turning point in his life, and that it convinced him to choose chess as his career. “I will remember the Sokolsky Memorial as long as I live,” he wrote. He has also said that after the victory, he thought he had a very good shot at the World Championship.^[14]

He first qualified for the Soviet Chess Championship at age 15 in 1978, the youngest ever player at that level. He won the 64-player Swiss system tournament at Daugavpils over tiebreak from Igor V. Ivanov, to capture the sole qualifying place.

Kasparov rose quickly through the FIDE (World Chess Federation) rankings. Starting with an oversight by the Russian Chess Federation, he participated in a Grandmaster tournament in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina (then part of Yugoslavia), in 1979 while still unrated (the federation thought it was a junior tournament). He won this high-class tournament, emerging with a provisional rating of 2595, enough to catapult him to the top group of chess players (at the time, number 15 in the World^[15]). The next year, 1980, he won the World Junior Chess Championship in Dortmund, West Germany. Later that year, he made his debut as second reserve for the Soviet Union at the Chess Olympiad at La Valletta, Malta, and became a Grandmaster.

[edit] Toward the top

As a teenager, Kasparov twice tied for first place in the USSR Chess Championship, in 1980–81 and 1981–82. His first win in a superclass-level international tournament was scored at Bugojno, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1982. He earned a place in the 1982 Moscow Interzonal tournament, which he won, to qualify for the Candidates Tournament.^[16] At age 19, he was the youngest Candidate since Bobby Fischer, who was 15 when he qualified in 1958. At this stage, he was already the #2-rated player in the world, trailing only World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov on the January 1983 list.

Kasparov’s first (quarter-final) Candidates match was against Alexander Beliavsky, whom he defeated 6–3 (four wins, one loss).^[17] Politics threatened Kasparov’s semi-final against Viktor Korchnoi, which was scheduled to be played in Pasadena, California. Korchnoi had defected from the Soviet Union in 1976, and was at that time the strongest active non-Soviet player. Various political maneuvers prevented Kasparov from playing Korchnoi, and Kasparov forfeited the match. This was resolved by Korchnoi allowing the match to be replayed in London, along with the previously scheduled match between Vasily Smyslov and Zoltan Ribli. The Kasparov-Korchnoi match was put together on short notice by Raymond Keene. Kasparov lost the first game but won the match 7–4 (four wins, one loss).

In January 1984, Kasparov became the number-one ranked player in the world, with a FIDE rating of 2710. He became the youngest ever world number-one, a record that lasted 12 years until being broken by Vladimir Kramnik in January 1996; the record is currently held by his pupil, Magnus Carlsen.

Later in 1984, he won the Candidates’ final 8½–4½ (four wins, no losses) against the resurgent former world champion Vasily Smyslov, at Vilnius, thus qualifying to play Anatoly Karpov for the World Championship. That year he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as a member of which he was elected to the Central Committee of Komsomol in 1987.

[edit] 1984 World Championship

The World Chess Championship 1984 match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov had many ups and downs, and a very controversial finish. Karpov started in very good form, and after nine games Kasparov was down 4–0 in a “first to six wins” match. Fellow players predicted he would be whitewashed 6–0 within 18 games.^[18]

In a strange period, there followed a series of 17 successive draws, some relatively short, and others drawn in unsettled positions. He lost game 27, then fought back with another series of draws until game 32, his first-ever win against the World Champion. Another 15 successive draws followed, through game 46; the previous record length for a world title match had been 34 games, the match of Jose Raul Capablanca vs. Alexander Alekhine in 1927.

Kasparov won games 47 and 48 to bring the scores to 5–3 in Karpov’s favour. Then the match was ended without result by Florencio Campomanes, the President of Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), and a new match was announced to start a few months later. The termination was controversial, as both players stated that they preferred the match to continue. Announcing his decision at a press conference, Campomanes cited the health of the players, which had been strained by the length of the match.

The match became the first, and so far only, world championship match to be abandoned without result. Kasparov’s relations with Campomanes and FIDE were greatly strained, and the feud between them eventually came to a head in 1993 with Kasparov’s complete break-away from FIDE.

[edit] World Champion

The second Karpov-Kasparov match in 1985 was organized in Moscow as the best of 24 games where the first player to win 12½ points would claim the World Champion title. The scores from the terminated match would not carry over. But in the event of a 12–12 draw, the title would remain with Karpov. On 9 November 1985, Kasparov secured the title by a score of 13–11, winning the 24th game with Black, using a Sicilian defence. He was 22 years old at the time, making him the youngest ever World Champion, and breaking the record held by Mikhail Tal for over 20 years. Kasparov’s win as Black in the 16th game has been recognized as one of the all-time masterpieces in chess history.

As part of the arrangements following the aborted 1984 match, Karpov had been granted (in the event of his defeat) a right to rematch. Another match took place in 1986, hosted jointly in London and Leningrad, with each city hosting 12 games. At one point in the match, Kasparov opened a three-point lead and looked well on his way to a decisive match victory. But Karpov fought back by winning three consecutive games to level the score late in the match. At this point, Kasparov dismissed one of his seconds, Grandmaster Evgeny Vladimirov, accusing him of selling his opening preparation to the Karpov team (as described in Kasparov’s autobiography Unlimited Challenge, chapter Stab in the Back). Kasparov scored one more win and kept his title by a final score of 12½–11½.

A fourth match for the world title took place in 1987 in Seville, as Karpov had qualified through the Candidates’ Matches to again become the official challenger. This match was very close, with neither player holding more than a one-point lead at any time during the contest. Kasparov was down one full point at the time of the final game, and needed a win to draw the match and retain his title. A long tense game ensued in which Karpov blundered away a pawn just before the first time control, and Kasparov eventually won a long ending. Kasparov retained his title as the match was drawn by a score of 12–12. (All this meant that Kasparov had played Karpov four times in the period 1984–1987, a statistic unprecedented in chess. Matches organised by FIDE had taken place every three years since 1948, and only Botvinnik had a right to a rematch before Karpov.)

A fifth match between Kasparov and Karpov was held in New York and Lyon in 1990, with each city hosting 12 games. Again, the result was a close one with Kasparov winning by a margin of 12½–11½. In their five world championship matches, Kasparov had 21 wins, 19 losses, and 104 draws in 144 games.

[edit] Break with and ejection from FIDE

With the World Champion title in hand, Kasparov began fighting against FIDE — as Bobby Fischer had done 20 years earlier but this time from within FIDE. Beginning in 1986, he created the Grandmasters Association (GMA), an organization to represent professional chess players and give them more say in FIDE’s activities. Kasparov assumed a leadership role. GMA’s major achievement was in organizing a series of six World Cup tournaments for the world’s top players. A somewhat uneasy relationship developed with FIDE, and a sort of truce was brokered by Bessel Kok, a Dutch businessman.

This stand-off lasted until 1993, by which time a new challenger had qualified through the Candidates cycle for Kasparov’s next World Championship defense: Nigel Short, a British Grandmaster who had defeated Karpov in a qualifying match, and then Jan Timman in the finals held in early 1993. After a confusing and compressed bidding process produced lower financial estimates than expected,^[19] the world champion and his challenger decided to play outside FIDE’s jurisdiction, under another organization created by Kasparov called the Professional Chess Association (PCA). This is where a great fracture in the lineage of World Champions began.

In an interview in 2007, Kasparov would call the break with FIDE the worst mistake of his career, as it hurt the game in the long run.^[20]

Kasparov and Short were ejected from FIDE, and played their well-sponsored match in London. Kasparov won convincingly by a score of 12½–7½. The match considerably raised the profile of chess in the UK, with an unprecedented level of coverage on Channel 4. Meanwhile, FIDE organized a World Championship match between Jan Timman (the defeated Candidates finalist) and former World Champion Karpov (a defeated Candidates semifinalist), which Karpov won.

There were now two World Champions: PCA champion Kasparov, and FIDE champion Karpov. The title would remain split for 13 years.

Kasparov defended his title in a 1995 match against Viswanathan Anand at the World Trade Center in New York City. Kasparov won the match by four wins to one, with thirteen draws. It was the last World Championship to be held under the auspices of the PCA, which collapsed when Intel, one of its major backers, withdrew its sponsorship in retaliation for Kasparov’s choice to play a 1996 match against Deep Blue, which augmented the profile of IBM, one of Intel’s chief rivals.^[21]

Kasparov tried to organize another World Championship match, under another organization, the World Chess Association (WCA) with Linares organizer Luis Rentero. Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik played a candidates match to decide the challenger, which Shirov won in a surprising upset. But when Rentero admitted that the funds required and promised had never materialized, the WCA collapsed.

This left Kasparov stranded, and yet another organization stepped in — BrainGames.com, headed by Raymond Keene. No match against Shirov was arranged, and talks with Anand collapsed, so a match was instead arranged against Kramnik.

[edit] Losing the title and aftermath

The Kasparov-Kramnik match took place in London during the latter half of 2000. Kramnik had been a student of Kasparov’s at the legendary Botvinnik/Kasparov chess school in Russia, and had served on Kasparov’s team for the 1995 match against Viswanathan Anand.

The better-prepared Kramnik won Game 2 against Kasparov’s Grünfeld Defence and achieved winning positions in Games 4 and 6. Kasparov made a critical error in Game 10 with the Nimzo-Indian Defence, which Kramnik exploited to win in 25 moves. As White, Kasparov could not crack the passive but solid Berlin Defence in the Ruy Lopez, and Kramnik successfully drew all his games as Black. Kramnik won the match 8½–6½, and for the first time in 15 years Kasparov had no world championship title. He became the first player to lose a world championship match without winning a game since Emanuel Lasker lost to Capablanca in 1921.

After losing the title, Kasparov won a series of major tournaments, and remained the top rated player in the world, ahead of both Kramnik and the FIDE World Champions. In 2001 he refused an invitation to the 2002 Dortmund Candidates Tournament for the Classical title, claiming his results had earned him a rematch with Kramnik.^[22]

Kasparov and Karpov played a four game match with rapid time controls over two days in December 2002 in New York City. Karpov surprised the experts and emerged victoriously, winning two games and drawing one.^[23]

Due to Kasparov’s continuing strong results, and status as world #1 in much of the public eye, he was included in the so-called “Prague Agreement”, masterminded by Yasser Seirawan and intended to reunite the two World Championships. Kasparov was to play a match against the FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov in September 2003. But this match was called off after Ponomariov refused to sign his contract for it without reservation. In its place, there were plans for a match against Rustam Kasimdzhanov, winner of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004, to be held in January 2005 in the United Arab Emirates. These also fell through due to lack of funding. Plans to hold the match in Turkey instead came too late. Kasparov announced in January 2005 that he was tired of waiting for FIDE to organize a match and so had decided to stop all efforts to regain the World Championship title.

[edit] Retirement from chess

After winning the prestigious Linares tournament for the ninth time, Kasparov announced on 10 March 2005, that he would retire from serious competitive chess. He cited as the reason a lack of personal goals in the chess world (he commented when winning the Russian championship in 2004 that it had been the last major title he had never won outright) and expressed frustration at the failure to reunify the world championship.

Kasparov said he may play in some rapid chess events for fun, but intends to spend more time on his books, including both the My Great Predecessors series (see below) and a work on the links between decision-making in chess and in other areas of life, and will continue to involve himself in Russian politics, which he views as “headed down the wrong path.”

Kasparov has been married three times: to Masha, with whom he had a daughter before divorcing; to Yulia, with whom he had a son before their 2005 divorce; and to Daria, with whom he also has a child.^[24][25]

[edit] Post-retirement chess

On 22 August 2006, in his first public chess games since his retirement, Kasparov played in the Lichthof Chess Champions Tournament, a blitz event played at the time control of 5 minutes per side and 3 second increments per move. Kasparov tied for first with Anatoly Karpov, scoring 4½/6.^[26]

Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov played a 12-game match from 21–24 September 2009, in Valencia, Spain. It consisted of four rapid (or semi rapid) games, in which Kasparov won 3–1 and eight blitz games, in which Kasparov also won 6–2, winning the match with total result 9–3. The event took place exactly 25 years after the two players’ legendary encounter at World Chess Championship 1984.^[27]

Kasparov has been coaching Magnus Carlsen since March 2009, in secret until September 2009.^[28] Under Kasparov’s tutelage, Carlsen in October 2009 became the youngest ever to achieve a FIDE rating higher than 2800, and has risen from world number four to world number one; their arrangement will have Kasparov remain as coach at least through 2010.^[6]

In March 2010 it was announced that Carlsen had split from Kasparov and would no longer be using him as a trainer,^[29] although this was put into different context by Carlsen himself in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel stating that they would remain in contact and that he would continue to attend training sessions with Kasparov.^[30]

In May 2010 it was revealed that Kasparov had aided Viswanathan Anand in preparation for the World Chess Championship 2010 against challenger Veselin Topalov. Anand won the match 6½–5½ to retain the title.^[31]

Also in May 2010 he played 30 games simultaneously, winning each one, against players at Tel-Aviv University in Israel.^[32]

[edit] Politics

Kasparov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1984 and in 1987 was elected to the Central Committee of Komsomol. But in 1990 he left the party and in May took part in the creation of the Democratic Party of Russia. In 1991, Kasparov received the Keeper of the Flame award from the Center for Security Policy (a US think tank) for his contributions “to the defence of the United States and American values around the world”.^{[25][33][34][35][36]} Kasparov was in June 1993 involved with the creation of the “Choice of Russia” bloc of parties and in 1996 took part in the election campaign of Boris Yeltsin. In 2001 he voiced his support for the Russian television channel NTV.^[8]

In April 2007, it was asserted^[37] that Kasparov was a board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security Policy,^[33] a “non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security”.^[34] Kasparov confirmed this and added that he was removed shortly after he became aware of it. He noted that he did not know about the membership and suggested he was included in the board by an accident because he received the 1991 Keeper of the Flame award from this organization.^[35][36] But Kasparov maintained his association with the leadership by giving speeches at think tanks such as the Hoover Institution.^[25]

After his retirement from chess in 2005, Kasparov turned to politics and created the United Civil Front, a social movement whose main goal is to “work to preserve electoral democracy in Russia.”^[38] He has vowed to “restore democracy” to Russia by toppling the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, of whom he is an outspoken critic.^[39][40][41]

Kasparov was instrumental in setting up The Other Russia, a coalition which opposes Putin’s government. The Other Russia has been boycotted by the leaders of Russia’s mainstream opposition parties, Yabloko and Union of Right Forces as they are concerned about its inclusion of radical nationalist and left-wing groups such as the National Bolshevik Party and former members of the Rodina party including Viktor Gerashchenko, a potential presidential candidate. But regional branches of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces have opted to take part in the coalition. Kasparov says that leaders of these parties are controlled by the Kremlin,^[42] despite the fact they are both strongly opposed to the president’s policies.

On 10 April 2005, Kasparov was in Moscow at a promotional event when he was struck over the head with a chessboard he had just signed. The assailant was reported to have said “I admired you as a chess player, but you gave that up for politics” immediately before the attack.^[43] Kasparov has been the subject of a number of other episodes since.^[44][45]

Kasparov helped organize the Saint Petersburg Dissenters’ March on 3 March 2007 and The March of the Dissenters on 24 March 2007, both involving several thousand people rallying against Putin and Saint Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko’s policies.^[46][47] On 14 April, he was briefly arrested by the Moscow police while heading for a demonstration, following warnings by the prosecution office on the eve of the march, stating that anyone participating risked being detained. He was held for some 10 hours and then fined and released.^[48]

He was summoned by FSB for questioning, allegedly for violations of Russian anti-extremism laws.^[49] This law was previously applied for the conviction of Boris Stomakhin.^[50][51]

Speaking about Kasparov, former KGB general Oleg Kalugin in 2007 remarked: “I do not talk in details—people who knew them are all dead now because they were vocal, they were open. I am quiet. There is only one man who is vocal and he may be in trouble: [former] world chess champion [Garry] Kasparov. He has been very outspoken in his attacks on Putin and I believe that he is probably next on the list.”^[52]

On 30 September 2007, Kasparov entered the Russian Presidential race, receiving 379 of 498 votes at a congress held in Moscow by The Other Russia.^[53]

In October 2007, Kasparov announced his intention of standing for the Russian presidency as the candidate of the “Other Russia” coalition and vowed to fight for a “democratic and just Russia”. Later that month he traveled to the United States, where he appeared on several popular television programs, which were hosted by Stephen Colbert, Wolf Blitzer, Bill Maher, and Chris Matthews.

On 24 November 2007, Kasparov and other protesters were detained by police at an Other Russia rally in Moscow. This followed an attempt by about 100 protesters to break through police lines and march on the electoral commission, which had barred Other Russia candidates from parliamentary elections.^[54] He was subsequently charged with resisting arrest and organising an unauthorized protest and given a jail sentence of five days. He was released from jail on 29 November.^[55] Putin spoke briefly about the incident in an interview with Time Magazine later that year, saying: “Why did Mr. Kasparov, when arrested, speak out in English rather than Russian? When a politician works the crowd of other nations rather than the Russian nation, it tells you something.”^[56]

On 12 December 2007, Kasparov announced that he had to withdraw his presidential candidacy due to inability to rent a meeting hall where at least 500 of his supporters could assemble to endorse his candidacy, as is legally required. With the deadline expiring on that date, he claimed it was impossible for him to run. Kasparov’s spokeswoman accused the government of using pressure to deter anyone from renting a hall for the gathering and said that the electoral commission had rejected a proposal that separate smaller gatherings be held at the same time instead of one large gathering at a meeting hall.^[57]

Kasparov is among the 34 first signatories and a key organiser of the online anti-Putin campaign “Putin must go“, started on 10 March 2010.

[edit] Chess ratings achievements

• Kasparov holds the record for the longest time as the #1 rated player.
• Kasparov had the highest Elo rating in the world continuously from 1986 to 2005. However, Vladimir Kramnik did equal him in the January 1996 FIDE ratings list.^[58] He was also briefly ejected from the list following his split from FIDE in 1993, but during that time he headed the rating list of the rival PCA. At the time of his retirement, he was still ranked #1 in the world, with a rating of 2812. His rating has fallen inactive since the January 2006 rating list.^[59]
• In January 1990 Kasparov achieved the (then) highest FIDE rating ever, passing 2800 and breaking Bobby Fischer’s old record of 2785. He has held the record for the highest rating ever achieved, ever since (as of 2009). On the July 1999 and January 2000 FIDE rating lists Kasparov reached a 2851 Elo rating, the highest rating ever achieved.^[60]

• According to the unofficial Chessmetrics calculations, Kasparov was the highest rated player in the world continuously from February 1985 until October 2004.^[61] He also holds the highest all-time average rating over a 2 (2877) to 20 (2856) year period and is second to only Bobby Fischer’s (2881 vs 2879) over a one-year period.

[edit] Olympiads and other major team events

Kasparov played in a total of eight Chess Olympiads. He represented the Soviet Union four times and Russia four times, following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In his 1980 Olympiad debut, he became, at age 17, the youngest player to represent the Soviet Union or Russia at that level, a record which was broken by Vladimir Kramnik in 1992. In 82 games, he has scored (+50 =29 -3), for 78.7% and won a total of 19 medals, including team gold medals all eight times he competed. For the 1994 Moscow Olympiad, he had a significant organizational role, in helping to put together the event on short notice, after Thessaloniki canceled its offer to host, a few weeks before the scheduled dates. Kasparov’s detailed Olympiad record, from,^[62] follows.

• Valletta 1980, USSR 2nd reserve, 9½/12 (+8 =3 -1), team gold, board bronze;
• Lucerne 1982, USSR 2nd board, 8½/11 (+6 =5 -0), team gold, board bronze;
• Dubai 1986, USSR 1st board, 8v/11 (+7 =3 -1), team gold, board gold, performance gold;
• Thessaloniki 1988, USSR 1st board, 8½/10 (+7 =3 -0), team gold, board gold, performance gold;
• Manila 1992, Russia board 1, 8½/10 (+7 =3 -0), team gold, board gold, performance silver;
• Moscow 1994, Russia board 1, 6½/10 (+4 =5 -1), team gold;
• Yerevan 1996, Russia board 1, 7/9 (+5 =4 -0), team gold, board gold, performance silver;
• Bled 2002, Russia board 1, 7½/9 (+6 =3 -0), team gold, board gold.

Kasparov made his international teams debut for the USSR at age 16 in the 1980 European Team Championship and played for Russia in the 1992 edition of that championship. He won a total of five medals. His detailed Euroteams record, from,^[63] follows.

• Skara 1980, USSR 2nd reserve, 5½/6 (+5 =1 -0), team gold, board gold;
• Debrecen 1992, Russia board 1, 6/8 (+4 =4 -0), team gold, board gold, performance silver.

Kasparov also represented the USSR once in Youth Olympiad competition, but the detailed data is incomplete at http://www.olimpbase.org/1981k/1981in.html; the site http://www.chessmetrics.com, the Garry Kasparov player file, has his individual score from that event.

• Graz 1981, USSR board 1, 9/10 (+8 =2 -0), team gold.

[edit] Other records

Kasparov holds the record for most consecutive professional tournament victories, placing first or equal first in 15 individual tournaments from 1981 to 1990.^{[citation needed]} The streak was broken by Vasily Ivanchuk at Linares 1991, where Kasparov placed 2nd, half a point behind him. The details of this record winning streak follow:^[16]

• Frunze 1981, USSR Championship, 12½/17, tie for 1st;
• Bugojno 1982, 9½/13, 1st;
• Moscow 1982, Interzonal, 10/13, 1st;
• Niksic 1983, 11/14, 1st;
• Brussels OHRA 1986, 7½/10, 1st;
• Brussels 1987, 8½/11, tie for 1st;
• Amsterdam Optiebeurs 1988, 9/12, 1st;
• Belfort (World Cup) 1988, 11½/15, 1st;
• Moscow 1988, USSR Championship, 11½/17, tie for 1st;
• Reykjavik (World Cup) 1988, 11/17, 1st;
• Barcelona (World Cup) 1989, 11/16, tie for 1st;
• Skelleftea (World Cup) 1989, 9½/15, tie for 1st;
• Tilburg 1989, 12/14, 1st;
• Belgrade (Investbank) 1989, 9½/11, 1st;
• Linares 1990, 8/11, 1st.

Kasparov won the Chess Oscar a record eleven times.

[edit] Books and other writings

[edit] Early writings

Kasparov has written a number of books on chess. He published a somewhat controversial^[64] autobiography when still in his early 20s, originally titled Child of Change, later retitled Unlimited Challenge. This book was subsequently updated several times after he became World Champion. Its content is mainly literary, with a small chess component of key unannotated games. He published an annotated games collection in 1985: Fighting Chess: My Games and Career^[65] and this book has also been updated several times in further editions. He also wrote a book annotating the games from his World Chess Championship 1985 victory, World Chess Championship Match: Moscow, 1985.

He has annotated his own games extensively for the Yugoslav Chess Informant series and for other chess publications. In 1982, he co-authored Batsford Chess Openings with British Grandmaster Raymond Keene and this book was an enormous seller. It was updated into a second edition in 1989. He also co-authored two opening books with his trainer Alexander Nikitin in the 1980s for British publisher Batsford — on the Classical Variation of the Caro-Kann Defence and on the Scheveningen Variation of the Sicilian Defence. Kasparov has also contributed extensively to the five-volume openings series Encyclopedia of Chess Openings.

In 2000, Kasparov co-authored Kasparov Against the World: The Story of the Greatest Online Challenge^[66] with grandmaster Daniel King. The 202-page book analyzes the 1999 Kasparov versus the World game, and holds the record for the longest analysis devoted to a single chess game.^[67]

[edit] My Great Predecessors series

In 2003, the first volume of his five-volume work Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors was published. This volume, which deals with the world chess champions Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, and some of their strong contemporaries, has received lavish praise from some reviewers (including Nigel Short), while attracting criticism from others for historical inaccuracies and analysis of games directly copied from unattributed sources. Through suggestions on the book’s website, most of these shortcomings were corrected in following editions and translations. Despite this, the first volume won the British Chess Federation’s Book of the Year award in 2003. Volume two, covering Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov and Mikhail Tal appeared later in 2003. Volume three, covering Tigran Petrosian and Boris Spassky appeared in early 2004. In December 2004, Kasparov released volume four, which covers Samuel Reshevsky, Miguel Najdorf, and Bent Larsen (none of these three were World Champions), but focuses primarily on Bobby Fischer. The fifth volume, devoted to the chess careers of World Champion Anatoly Karpov and challenger Viktor Korchnoi, was published in March 2006.

[edit] Modern Chess series

His book Revolution in the 70s (published in March 2007) covers “the openings revolution of the 1970s–1980s” and is the first book in a new series called “Modern Chess Series”, which intends to cover his matches with Karpov and selected games. The book “Revolution in the 70s” concerns the revolution in opening theory that was witnessed in that decade. Such systems as the controversial (at the time) “Hedgehog” opening plan of passively developing the pieces no further than the first three ranks are examined in great detail. Kasparov also analyzes some of the most notable games played in that period. In a section at the end of the book, top opening theoreticians provide their own “take” on the progress made in opening theory in the 1980s.

[edit] Other post-retirement writing

In 2007 he wrote How Life Imitates Chess, an examination of the parallels between decision-making in chess and in the business world.

In 2008 Kasparov published a sympathetic obituary for Bobby Fischer, writing “I am often asked if I ever met or played Bobby Fischer. The answer is no, I never had that opportunity. But even though he saw me as a member of the evil chess establishment that he felt had robbed and cheated him, I am sorry I never had a chance to thank him personally for what he did for our sport.”^[68]

He is the chief advisor for the book publisher Everyman Chess.

Kasparov works closely with Mig Greengard and his comments can often be found on Greengard’s blog.

[edit] Chess against computers

[edit] Deep Thought, 1989

Kasparov defeated the chess computer Deep Thought in both games of a two-game match in 1989 (Hsu 2002:105–16).

[edit] Deep Blue, 1996

In February 1996, IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue defeated Kasparov in one game using normal time controls, in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1. But Kasparov recovered well, gaining three wins and two draws and easily winning the match.

[edit] Deep Blue, 1997

In May 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3½–2½ in a highly publicised six-game match. The match was even after five games but Kasparov was crushed in Game 6. This was the first time a computer had ever defeated a world champion in match play. A documentary film was made about this famous match-up entitled Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.

Kasparov claimed that several factors weighed against him in this match. In particular, he was denied access to Deep Blue’s recent games, in contrast to the computer’s team that could study hundreds of Kasparov’s.

After the loss Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine’s moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players, in contravention of the rules, intervened. IBM denied that it cheated, saying the only human intervention occurred between games. The rules provided for the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in the computer’s play revealed during the course of the match. Kasparov requested printouts of the machine’s log files but IBM refused, although the company later published the logs on the Internet.^[69] Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM declined and retired Deep Blue, which has been viewed by Kasparov as covering up evidence of tampering during the game.

Kasparov’s loss to Deep Blue inspired the creation of a new game called Arimaa.

[edit] Deep Junior, 2003

In January 2003, he engaged in a six game classical time control match with a $1 million prize fund which was billed as the FIDE “Man vs. Machine” World Championship, against Deep Junior.^[70] The engine evaluated three million positions per second.^[71] After one win each and three draws, it was all up to the final game. After reaching a decent position Kasparov offered a draw, which was soon accepted by the Deep Junior team. Asked why he offered the draw, Kasparov said he feared making a blunder.^[72] Originally planned as an annual event, the match was not repeated.

[edit] X3D Fritz, 2003

In November 2003, he engaged in a four-game match against the computer program X3D Fritz, using a virtual board, 3D glasses and a speech recognition system. After two draws and one win apiece, the X3D Man-Machine match ended in a draw. Kasparov received $175,000 for the result and took home the golden trophy. Kasparov continued to criticize the blunder in the second game that cost him a crucial point. He felt that he had outplayed the machine overall and played well. “I only made one mistake but unfortunately that one mistake lost the game.”^[73]

[edit] Notable chess games

• Garry Kasparov vs Lajos Portisch, Niksic 1983 · Queen’s Indian Defense: Kasparov-Petrosian Variation. Petrosian Attack (E12),1-0 Beast from Baku hunting his prey.
• Anatoli Karpov vs Garry Kasparov, Karpov-Kasparov World Championship Match 1985·Sicilian Defense: Paulsen Variation. Gary Gambit (B44), 0-1 An extremely brilliant and creative masterpiece from Kasparov dubbed as “The Brisbane Bombshell”.
• Garry Kasparov vs Vladimir Kramnik, It (cat.19) 1994 · Sicilian Defense: Lasker-Pelikan. Sveshnikov Variation Chelyabinsk Variation (B33), 1-0 A gladiator ride from Kasparov.
• Garry Kasparov vs Viswanathan Anand,Kasparov-Anand World Championship Match 1995 · Spanish Game: Open Variations. Karpov Gambit (C80),1-0 A world champion to future champion a drop of Garry Kasparov toxine.
• Garry Kasparov vs Veselin Topalov, It (cat.17), Wijk aan Zee (Netherlands) 1999 · Pirc Defense: General (B06),1-0 One of the most famous games of Kasparov’s account. Widely known as “Kasparov’s Immortal”. According to sources this is the most memorable game to Kasparov.
• Garry Kasparov vs X3D Fritz (Computer), Man-Machine World Chess Championship 2003 · Semi-Slav Defense: Accelerated Meran Variation (D45),1-0 Taming the silicon beast. Highlighted game from Man Vs Machine contest.

Illygana (contd)

The Inner Court had among its members, the following: 

 

Andolphus, whom I proudly called friend, lively and entertaining, though exaggerated in his attachment to experimental necromancy. 

Oshimantos, who loved the martial arts and games of strategy. 

Cirenna, beloved student of Lady Hanarian, though young but very competent.

Kennerides, who loved to sing and entertain us, a master of  the divinatory arts

Mereyan, who was a caring and cheerful friend, a master of alchemy.

And some whom I shall include in the next volume…………

 

(From the Book of Shadows of Illygana, Queensguard Commander, Lemuria)

BOBBY FISCHER

Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer
Full name	Robert James Fischer
Country	United States Iceland
Born	March 9, 1943(1943-03-09) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died	January 17, 2008 (aged 64) Reykjavík, Iceland
Title	Grandmaster
World Champion	1972–1975
Peak rating	2785 (July 1972)

Robert James “Bobby” Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess player and the eleventh World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time.

Widely considered a “chess legend”,^[1] at age 13 Fischer played and won a “brilliancy” that became known as the Game of the Century. Starting at age 14, he played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a point. At 15½, he became both the youngest Grandmaster and the youngest Candidate for the World Championship up until that time. He won the 1963–64 US championship 11–0, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. In the early 1970s he became the most dominant player in modern history—winning the 1970 Interzonal by a record 3½-point margin and winning 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps in the Candidates Matches. According to research by Jeff Sonas, in 1971 Fischer had separated himself from the rest of the world by a larger margin of playing skill than any player since the 1870s.^[2] He became the first official World Chess Federation (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) (FIDE) number one rated chessplayer in July 1971, and his 54 total months at number one is the third longest of all-time.

In 1972, he wrested the World Championship from Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland that was widely publicized as a Cold War battle. In 1975, Fischer did not defend his title when he could not come to agreement with FIDE over the conditions for the match. He became more reclusive and played no more competitive chess until 1992, when he won a rematch against Spassky. The competition was held in Yugoslavia, which was then under a strict United Nations embargo.^[3][4][5] This led to a conflict with the US government, and he never returned to his native country.

In his later years, Fischer lived in Hungary, Germany, the Philippines, and Japan. During this time he made increasingly anti-American and anti-Semitic statements, despite his Jewish ancestry. After his U.S. passport was revoked over the Yugoslavia sanctions issue, he was detained by Japanese authorities for nine months in 2004 and 2005 under threat of deportation. In February 2005, Iceland granted him right of residence as a “stateless” alien and issued him a passport.^[6] When Japan refused to release him to Iceland with that status, Iceland’s parliament voted in March 2005 to give him full citizenship.^[7] The Japanese authorities then released him to that country, where he lived until his death in 2008.^[8]

Contents [hide] 1 Early years 2 Young champion 3 U.S. Championships 4 Olympiads 5 Grandmaster, Candidate 6 1960–62, Candidates setback 7 Involvement with the Worldwide Church of God 8 Semi-retirement in the mid-1960s 9 World Champion 9.1 Road to the world championship 9.2 World Championship Match 9.3 Forfeiture of title 10 Sudden obscurity 11 1992 Spassky rematch 12 Life as an émigré 12.1 Anti-Jewish statements 12.2 Anti-American and anti-Israel statements 12.3 Detention in Japan 12.4 Asylum in Iceland 13 Death, estate dispute, and exhumation 14 Contributions to chess 14.1 Opening theory 14.2 Endgame 14.3 Fischer clock 14.4 Fischer Random Chess 14.5 Legacy 15 In popular culture 16 Writings 16.1 Under Fischer’s name 17 Tournament and match summary 17.1 Tournaments 17.2 Matches 17.3 Team events 18 Notable games 19 See also 20 Notes 21 References 22 Further reading 23 External links

[edit] Early years

Bobby Fischer was born at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on March 9, 1943.^[9] His birth certificate listed his father as Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist. His mother, Regina Wender Fischer, was an American citizen of Polish Jewish descent,^[10] born in Switzerland and raised in St. Louis, Missouri.^[9] She later became a teacher, a registered nurse, and a physician.^[11] The couple married in 1933 in Moscow, USSR, where Regina was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute. They divorced in 1945 when Bobby was two years old, and he grew up with his mother and older sister, Joan. In 1948, the family moved to Mobile, Arizona, where Regina taught in an elementary school. The following year they moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse.

A 2002 article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inquirer argued that Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish physicist, was Fischer’s biological father.^[12][13][14] The article quoted an FBI report which stated that Regina Fischer returned to the United States in 1939, while Hans-Gerhardt Fischer never entered the United States, having been refused admission by US immigration officials because of alleged Communist sympathies.^[12][15][16] Regina and Nemenyi were reported to have had an affair in 1942, and he made monthly child support payments to her, paying for Fischer’s schooling until his death in 1952.^[17] Fischer later told the chess player Zita Rajcsanyi that Nemenyi would sometimes show up at his Brooklyn apartment and take him on outings.^[14]

In May 1949, the six-year-old Fischer and his sister learned how to play chess using the instructions from a chess set bought at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment.^[18][19] When the family vacationed at Patchogue, Long Island that summer, Bobby found a book of old chess games, and studied it intensely.^[20] On November 14, 1950, his mother sent a postcard to the Brooklyn Eagle, seeking to place an ad inquiring whether other children of Bobby’s age might be interested in playing him. The paper rejected her ad because no one could figure out how to classify it, but forwarded her inquiry to Hermann Helms, the “Dean of American Chess”, who told her that master Max Pavey would be giving a simultaneous exhibition on January 17, 1951.^[21][22] Fischer played in the exhibition, losing in 15 minutes. One of the spectators was Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn Chess Club, who introduced him to the club and began teaching him.^[23][24] In the summer of 1955, Fischer joined the Manhattan Chess Club, the strongest in the country.^[25]

In June 1956, Fischer began attending the “Hawthorne Chess Club”, which was actually master John W. Collins‘ home. Collins had coached some of the country’s leading players, including Robert and Donald Byrne and William Lombardy. Fischer played thousands of blitz and offhand games with Collins and other strong players, began studying the books in Collins’ large chess library, and ate almost as many dinners at Collins’ home as his own.^[27][28][29] Future grandmaster Arnold Denker was also a mentor to young Bobby, often taking him to watch the New York Rangers play hockey at Madison Square Garden. Denker wrote that Bobby enjoyed those treats and never forgot them; the two became lifelong friends.^[30] Fischer was also involved with the Log Cabin Chess Club of Orange, New Jersey, which in March 1956 took him on a tour to Cuba, where he gave a 12-board simultaneous exhibition at Havana’s Capablanca Chess Club, winning 10 and drawing 2.^[31][32]

Fischer attended Erasmus Hall High School at the same time as Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond.^[33][34] In 1959, its student council awarded him a gold medal for his chess achievements.^[35][36] The same year, Fischer dropped out of high school at age 16,^[37][38] later explaining to Ralph Ginzburg, “You don’t learn anything in school. It’s just a waste of time.”^[39]

When Fischer was 16, his mother moved out of their apartment to pursue medical training. Her friend Joan Rodker, who had met Regina when the two were “idealistic communists” living in Moscow in the 1930s, believes that Fischer resented his mother for being mostly absent as a mother, a communist activist and an admirer of the Soviet Union, and that this led to his hatred for the Soviet Union. In letters to Rodker, Fischer’s mother states her desire to pursue her own “obsession” of training in medicine and writes that her son would have to live in their Brooklyn apartment without her: “It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he is probably happier that way.”^[40] The apartment was on the edge of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which had one of the highest homicide and general crime rates in New York.^[41] Despite the alienation from her son, Regina in 1960 staged a 5-hour protest in front of the White House (see photo) urging President Eisenhower to send an American team to the chess olympics.^[26]

[edit] Young champion

On the tenth national rating list of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), published on May 20, 1956, Fischer’s rating was a modest 1726,^[42] over 900 points below top-rated Samuel Reshevsky (2663).^[43] Fischer’s first real success was winning the United States Junior Chess Championship in July 1956. He scored 8½/10 at Philadelphia to become the youngest-ever junior champion at age 13,^[44] a record that still stands. In the 1956 U.S. Open Chess Championship at Oklahoma City, Fischer scored 8½/12 to tie for 4th–8th places, with Arthur Bisguier winning.^[45] In the first Canadian Open Chess Championship at Montreal 1956, he scored 7/10 to tie for 8–12th places, with Larry Evans winning.^[46]

Fischer accepted an invitation to play in the Third Lessing J. Rosenwald Trophy Tournament at New York 1956, a premier tournament limited to the 12 players considered the best in the country.^[47] In that elite company, the 13-year-old Fischer could only score 4½/11, tying for 8th–9th place.^[48] However, he won the first brilliancy prize for his game against Donald Byrne.^[47] Hans Kmoch christened it “The Game of the Century“, writing, “The following game, a stunning masterpiece of combination play performed by a boy of 13 against a formidable opponent, matches the finest on record in the history of chess prodigies.”^[49]

In 1957, Fischer played a two-game match against former World Champion Max Euwe at New York, losing ½–1½.^[50][51] On the United States Chess Federation’s eleventh national rating list, published on May 5, 1957, Fischer was rated 2231, a master – over 500 points higher than his rating a year before.^[52] This made him at that time the country’s youngest master ever.^[53] In July, Fischer successfully defended his US Junior title, scoring 8½/9 at San Francisco.^[54] In August, he played in the U.S. Open Chess Championship at Cleveland, scoring 10/12 and winning on tie-breaking points over Arthur Bisguier,^[55][56] making Fischer the youngest U.S. Open Champion ever.^[57] He next won the New Jersey Open Championship, scoring 6½/7.^[58] Fischer then defeated the young Filipino Master Rodolfo Tan Cardoso 6–2 in a match in New York.^[59][60]

Based on Fischer’s rating, the USCF invited him to play in the 1957–58 U.S. Championship.^[61] The tournament included such luminaries as four-time champion Reshevsky, defending champion Bisguier, and William Lombardy, who in August had won the World Junior Championship with the only perfect score (11–0) in its history.^[62][63] Fischer was expected to score around 50%.^[64][65] He scored eight wins and five draws to win the tournament with 10½/13, a point ahead of Reshevsky.^[66] Still two months shy of his 15th birthday, he became the youngest US champion in history^[67] – a record that still stands.^[68] Since the championship that year was also the U.S. Zonal Championship, Fischer’s victory earned him the International Master title.^[69][70]

[edit] U.S. Championships

Fischer played in eight United States Chess Championships, each held in New York City, winning every one.^[71][72] His margin of victory was always at least one point.^[73]

His scores were:

• 1957–58: 10½/13
• 1958–59: 8½/11
• 1959–60: 9/11
• 1960–61: 9/11
• 1962–63: 8/11
• 1963–64: 11/11
• 1965–66: 8½/11
• 1966–67: 9½/11.^[71][74]

Fischer missed the 1961–62 championship, and there was no 1964–65 event.^[75] His total score was 74/90 (61 wins, 26 draws, 3 losses), with only three losses (to Edmar Mednis, Samuel Reshevsky, and Robert Byrne).^[76]

His 11–0 win in the 1963–64 championship is the only perfect score in the history of the tournament,^[77][78] and one of about ten perfect scores in high-level chess tournaments ever.^[79][80][81] David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld called it “the most remarkable achievement of this kind.”^[79]

[edit] Olympiads

Fischer refused to play in the 1958 Munich Olympiad when his demand that he, as the reigning U.S. Champion, play first board ahead of Samuel Reshevsky was turned down.^[82] However, he represented the United States on top board with great distinction at four Olympiads:

Olympiad	Individual result	US team result
Leipzig 1960	13/18 (Bronze)	Silver
Varna 1962	11/17 (Eighth)	Fourth
Havana 1966	15/17 (Silver)	Silver
Siegen 1970	10/13 (Silver)	Fourth

Fischer’s overall total was +40, =18, −7, for 49/65 or 75.4%.^[83][84] In 1966, he narrowly missed the individual gold medal, scoring 88.23% to World Champion Tigran Petrosian’s 88.46%. Fischer played four more games than Petrosian, faced stiffer opposition, and would have won the gold if he had accepted Florin Gheorghiu’s draw offer in the penultimate round rather than declining it and suffering his only loss.^[85]

Fischer had planned to play for the United States at the 1968 Lugano Olympiad, but backed out when he saw the poor playing conditions.^[86][87]

[edit] Grandmaster, Candidate

Fischer’s victory in the US Championship qualified him to participate in the 1958 Portorož Interzonal, the next step toward challenging the World Champion.^[60] The top six finishers in the Interzonal would qualify for the Candidates Tournament.^[88] Prior to the Interzonal, he played two short training matches in Yugoslavia. He drew both games against Dragoljub Janošević. Then he defeated Milan Matulović in Belgrade by 2½–1½.^[89]

Most observers doubted that a 15-year-old with no international experience could finish among the six qualifiers at the Interzonal, but Fischer told journalist Miro Radoicic, “I can draw with the grandmasters, and there are half-a-dozen patzers in the tournament I reckon to beat.”^[90] Despite some bumps in the road, Fischer succeeded in his plan: after a strong finish, he ended up with 12/20 (+6=12–2) to tie for 5th–6th.^[91] The Soviet grandmaster Yuri Averbakh observed, “In the struggle at the board this youth, almost still a child, showed himself to be a fully-fledged fighter, demonstrating amazing composure, precise calculation and devilish resourcefulness.”^[92] Fischer became the youngest person ever to qualify for the Candidates. He also became the youngest Grandmaster in history at 15 years and 6 months. This record stood until 1991 when it was broken by Judit Polgár.^[93]

Before the Candidates’ tournament, Fischer competed in the 1958–59 US Championship (winning with 8½/11) and then in international tournaments at Mar del Plata, Santiago, and Zürich. He played unevenly in the two South American tournaments. At Mar del Plata he finished tied for third with Borislav Ivkov, half a point behind tournament winners Ludek Pachman and Miguel Najdorf. At Santiago, he tied for fourth through sixth places, behind Ivkov, Pachman, and Herman Pilnik. He did better at the strong Zurich event, finishing a point behind world-champion-to-be Mikhail Tal and half a point behind Svetozar Gligorić.^[94][95]

Until late 1959, Fischer “had dressed atrociously for a champion, appearing at the most august and distinguished national and international events in sweaters and corduroys”.^[96] A director of the Manhattan Chess Club had once banned Fischer for not being “properly accoutered”, forcing Denker to intercede to get him reinstated.^[97] Now, encouraged by Pal Benko to dress more sharply, Fischer “began buying suits from all over the world, hand-tailored and made to order”.^[98][99] He boasted to journalist Ralph Ginzburg in 1961 that he had 17 suits, all hand-tailored, and that his shirts and shoes were also handmade.^[100]

At the age of 16, Fischer finished a creditable equal fifth out of eight, the top non-Soviet player, at the Candidates Tournament held in Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1959. He scored 12½/28 but was outclassed by tournament winner Tal, who won all four of their individual games.^[101]

[edit] 1960–62, Candidates setback

In 1960, Fischer tied for first place with the young Soviet star Boris Spassky at the strong Mar del Plata tournament in Argentina, with the two well ahead of the rest of the field, scoring 13½/15.^[102] Fischer lost only to Spassky, and this was the start of their relationship, which began on a friendly basis and stayed that way, in spite of Fischer’s troubles on the board against him.^[103]

Fischer struggled in the later Buenos Aires tournament, finishing with 8½/19 (won by Viktor Korchnoi and Samuel Reshevsky on 13/19).^[104] This was the only real failure of Fischer’s competitive career.^[105] According to Larry Evans, Fischer’s first sexual experience was with a girl to whom Evans introduced him during the tournament.^[106][107] Pal Benko says that Fischer did horribly in the tournament “because he got caught up in women and sex. … Afterwards, Fischer said he’d never mix women and chess together, and kept the promise.”^[108] Fischer concluded 1960 by winning a small tournament in Reykjavik with 4½/5,^[109] and defeating Klaus Darga in an exhibition game in West Berlin.^[110]

In 1961, Fischer started a 16-game match with Reshevsky, split between New York and Los Angeles. Despite Fischer’s meteoric rise, the veteran Reshevsky, 32 years Fischer’s senior, was considered the favorite, since he had far more match experience and had never lost a set match.^[111] After 11 games and a tie score (two wins apiece with seven draws), the match ended prematurely due to a scheduling dispute between Fischer and match organizer and sponsor Jacqueline Piatigorsky.^[112] Reshevsky was declared the winner of the match, and received the winner’s share.^[113]

Fischer was second behind former World Champion Tal at Bled 1961, which had a super-class field. He defeated Tal head-to-head for the first time, scored 3½/4 against the Soviet contingent, and finished as the only unbeaten player, with 13½/19.^[114]

In the next World Championship cycle, Fischer won the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal by 2½ points, scoring an undefeated 17½/22.^[115] He was the first non-Soviet player to win an Interzonal since FIDE instituted the tournament in 1948.^[116] Fischer’s decisive victory made him one of the favorites for the Candidates Tournament in Curaçao, which began soon afterwards.^[117][118] He finished fourth out of eight with 14/27, the best result by a non-Soviet player but well behind Tigran Petrosian (17½/27), Efim Geller, and Paul Keres (both 17/27).^[119] Tal fell very ill during the tournament, and had to withdraw before completion. Fischer, a friend of Tal, was the only player who visited him in the hospital.^[120]

Following his failure in the 1962 Candidates (at which five of the eight players were from the Soviet Union), Fischer asserted in an August 1962 article in Sports Illustrated magazine, entitled The Russians Have Fixed World Chess, that three of the Soviet players (Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, and Efim Geller) had a pre-arranged agreement to draw their games against each other in order to save energy and to concentrate on playing against Fischer, and that a fourth, Viktor Korchnoi, had been forced to deliberately lose games to ensure that a Soviet player won the tournament. It is generally thought that the former accusation is correct, but not the latter.^[121][122] (This is discussed further in the World Chess Championship 1963 article.) Fischer also stated that he would never again participate in a Candidates’ tournament, since the format, combined with the alleged collusion, made it impossible for a non-Soviet player to win. Following Fischer’s article, FIDE in late 1962 voted a radical reform of the playoff system, replacing the Candidates’ tournament with a format of one-on-one knockout matches; this was the format that Fischer dominated in 1971.^[123][124]

Fischer defeated Bent Larsen in a summer 1962 exhibition game in Copenhagen for Danish TV. He also defeated Bogdan Śliwa in a team match against Poland at Warsaw later that year.^[125]

In the 1962–63 U.S. Championship, Fischer had a close call. In the first round he lost to Edmar Mednis, his first loss ever in a U.S. Championship. Bisguier was in excellent form, and Fischer caught up to him only at the end. Tied at 7–3, the two met in the last round for the championship. Bisguier stood well but blundered, handing Fischer his fifth consecutive U.S. championship.^[126]

[edit] Involvement with the Worldwide Church of God

In an interview in the January 1962 issue of Harper’s, Fischer was quoted as saying, “I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree.”^[127][128] Nonetheless, Fischer said in 1962 that he had “personal problems” and began to listen to various radio ministers in a search for answers.^{[citation needed]} This is how he first came to listen to The World Tomorrow radio program with Herbert W. Armstrong and his son Garner Ted Armstrong.^{[citation needed]} The Armstrongs’ denomination, The Worldwide Church of God (then under its original name, the Radio Church of God), predicted an imminent apocalypse.^{[citation needed]} In late 1963, Fischer began tithing to the church.^{[citation needed]} According to Fischer, he lived a bifurcated life, with a rational chess component and an enthusiastic religious component.^{[citation needed]} Fischer gave the Worldwide Church of God $61,200 of his 1972 world championship prize money.^{[citation needed]} However, 1972 was a disastrous year for the church, as prophecies by Herbert W. Armstrong were unfulfilled, and the church was rocked by revelations of a series of sex scandals involving Garner Ted Armstrong.^[129] Fischer, who felt betrayed and swindled by the Worldwide Church of God, left the church and publicly denounced it.^[130]

[edit] Semi-retirement in the mid-1960s

Fischer declined an invitation to play in the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Los Angeles, which had a world-class field. His decision was probably influenced by ill will over the aborted 1961 match against Reshevsky.^[131] Instead, he played in the Western Open in Bay City, Michigan, which he won with 7½/8.^[132] In August–September 1963, he won another minor event, the New York State Championship at Poughkeepsie, with 7/7, his first perfect score.^[133][134]

The 1963–64 U.S. Championship was expected to be exciting, particularly since Fischer had only narrowly won it the previous year. It was, but not as expected. “One by one Fischer mowed down the opposition as he cut an 11–0 swathe through the field, to demonstrate convincingly to the opposition that he was now in a class by himself.”^[131] This stunning result brought Fischer more fame than any chessplayer had ever known, including a profile in Life magazine.^[135] Sports Illustrated diagrammed each of the 11 games in its article, “The Amazing Victory Streak of Bobby Fischer”.^[136]

Fischer decided not to participate in the Amsterdam Interzonal in 1964, thus taking himself out of the 1966 World Championship cycle.^[137] He held to this decision even when FIDE changed the format of the eight-player Candidates Tournament from a round-robin to a series of knockout matches, which eliminated the possibility of collusion.^[135] He instead embarked on a tour of the United States and Canada from February through May, playing a simultaneous exhibition and giving a lecture in each of more than 40 cities.^[138] His 94% winning percentage over more than 2000 games is one of the best ever achieved.^[139] Fischer also declined an invitation to play for the United States in the 1964 Olympiad.^[140]

Fischer wanted to play in the Capablanca Memorial Tournament, Havana 1965, but the State Department refused to endorse his passport as valid for visiting Cuba.^[141] Fischer instead proposed, and the tournament officials and players accepted, a unique arrangement: Fischer played his moves from a room at the Marshall Chess Club, which were then transmitted by teletype to Cuba.^{[142][143][144]} Luděk Pachman observed that Fischer “was handicapped by the longer playing session resulting from the time wasted in transmitting the moves, and that is one reason why he lost to three of his chief rivals”.^[145] The tournament was an “ordeal” for Fischer, who had to endure eight-hour and sometimes even twelve-hour playing sessions.^[146] Despite this handicap, he tied for second through fourth places, with 15/21, behind former World Champion Vasily Smyslov, whom he defeated in their individual game.^[145] The tournament received extensive media coverage.^[147][148]

Fischer began 1966 by winning the U.S. Championship for the seventh time despite losing to Robert Byrne and Reshevsky in the eighth and ninth rounds.^[149][150] He also reconciled with Mrs. Piatigorsky, accepting an invitation to the very strong second Piatigorsky Cup tournament in Santa Monica. Fischer began disastrously and after eight rounds was tied for last with 3/8. He then staged “the most sensational comeback in the history of grandmaster chess”, scoring 7/8 in the next eight rounds. At the end, World Championship finalist Boris Spassky edged him out by a half point, scoring 11½/18 to Fischer’s 11.^[151] Now aged 23, Fischer would win every match or tournament he completed for the rest of his life.^[152]

In 1967, Fischer won the US Championship for the eighth and final time, ceding only three draws.^[153][154] In March–April and August–September, he won strong tournaments at Monte Carlo (7/9) and Skopje (13½/17).^[155][156] In the Philippines he played a series of nine exhibition games against master opponents, winning eight and drawing one.^[157]

In the next World Championship cycle, at the 1967 Sousse Interzonal, Fischer scored a phenomenal 8½ points in the first 10 games. His observance of the Worldwide Church of God’s seventh-day Sabbath was honored by the organizers, but deprived Fischer of several rest days, which led to a scheduling dispute. Fischer forfeited two games in protest and later withdrew, eliminating himself from the 1969 World Championship cycle.^[123]

In 1968, Fischer won tournaments at Netanya (11½/13) and Vinkovci (11/13) by large margins.^[158] He stopped playing for the next 18 months, except for a win against Anthony Saidy in a New York Metropolitan League team match.^[159][160]

[edit] World Champion

In 1970, Fischer began a new effort to become World Champion. His dramatic march toward the title made him a household name and made chess front-page news for a time. Chess statistician Jeff Sonas observes that “for about a year, Bobby Fischer dominated his contemporaries to an extent never seen before or since”.^[161] He won the title in 1972, but forfeited it three years later.

[edit] Road to the world championship

The 1969 US Championship was also a zonal qualifier, with the top three finishers advancing to the Interzonal. Fischer, however, had sat out the US Championship because of disagreements about the tournament’s format and prize fund. Benko, one of the three qualifiers, agreed to give up his spot in the Interzonal in order to give Fischer another shot at the world championship.^{[162][163][164]}

Before the Interzonal, in March and April 1970, the world’s best players competed in the USSR vs. Rest of the World match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, often referred to as “the Match of the Century.” Fischer allowed Bent Larsen of Denmark to play first board for the Rest of the World team in light of Larsen’s recent outstanding tournament results, even though Fischer had the higher Elo rating.^[159][165] The USSR team eked out a 20½–19½ victory, but on second board Fischer beat Tigran Petrosian, whom Boris Spassky had dethroned as world champion the previous year, 3–1, winning the first two games and drawing the last two.^[166]

After the USSR versus the Rest of the World Match, the unofficial World Championship of Lightning Chess (5-minute games) was held at Herceg Novi. Petrosian and Tal were considered the favorites,^[167] but Fischer overwhelmed the super-class field with 19/22 (+17=4–1), far ahead of Tal (14½), Korchnoi (14), Petrosian (13½), Bronstein (13), etc.^[167][168] Fischer lost only one game, to Korchnoi, who was also the only player to achieve an even score against him in the double round robin tournament.^[169][170] Fischer “crushed such blitz kings as Tal, Petrosian and Smyslov by a clean score”.^[171] Tal marveled that, “During the entire tournament he didn’t leave a single pawn en prise!”, while the other players “blundered knights and bishops galore”.^[171][172]

In April–May 1970, Fischer won easily at Rovinj/Zagreb with 13/17 (+10=6–1), finishing two points ahead of a field that included such leading players as Gligorić, Hort, Korchnoi, Smyslov, and Petrosian.^[173][174] In July–August, he crushed the mostly grandmaster field at Buenos Aires, scoring 15/17 (+13=4) and winning by 3½ points.^[175] In Siegen right after the Olympiad, he defeated Ulf Andersson in an exhibition game for the Swedish newspaper Expressen.^[176] Fischer had taken his game to a new level.^[177]

The Interzonal was held in Palma de Mallorca in November and December 1970. Fischer won it with a remarkable 18½–4½ score (+15=7–1), far ahead of Larsen, Efim Geller, and Robert Hübner, who tied for second at 15–8.^[178] Fischer’s 3½-point margin set a new record for an Interzonal, beating Alexander Kotov’s 3-point margin at Saltsjöbaden 1952.^[179] Fischer finished the tournament with seven consecutive wins (including a final-round walkover against Oscar Panno).^[180] Setting aside the Sousse Interzonal (which Fischer withdrew from while leading), Fischer’s victory gave him a string of eight consecutive first prizes in tournaments.^[162]

Fischer continued his domination in the 1971 Candidates matches. First, he beat Mark Taimanov of the USSR at Vancouver by 6–0.^[181] “The record books showed that the only comparable achievement to the 6–0 score against Taimanov was Wilhelm Steinitz’s 7–0 win against Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1876 in an era of more primitive defensive technique.”^[182]

Less than two months later, he astounded the chess world by beating Larsen in their Denver match by the same score.^{[183][184][185]} Just a year before, Larsen had played first board for the Rest of the World team ahead of Fischer, and had handed Fischer his only loss at the Interzonal. Garry Kasparov later wrote that no world champion had ever shown a superiority over his rivals comparable to Fischer’s “incredible” 12–0 score in the two matches.^[186] Chess statistician Sonas concludes that this victory gave Fischer the “highest single-match performance rating ever”.^[187]

In August 1971, Fischer won a strong lightning event at the Manhattan Chess Club with a “preposterous” score of 21½/22.^[168]

Only former World Champion Petrosian, Fischer’s final opponent in the Candidates matches, was able to offer resistance in their match, played at Buenos Aires. Petrosian played a strong theoretical novelty in the first game, gaining the advantage, but Fischer played resourcefully and eventually won the game after Petrosian faltered.^{[188][189][190]} This gave Fischer an extraordinary run of 20 consecutive wins against the world’s top players (in the Interzonal and Candidates matches), a winning streak topped only by Steinitz’s 25 straight wins in 1873–82.^[191] Petrosian won decisively in the second game, finally snapping Fischer’s streak.^[192] After three consecutive draws, Fischer swept the next four games to win the match 6½–2½ (+5=3–1).^[193] The final match victory allowed Fischer to challenge World Champion Boris Spassky, whom he had never beaten (+0=2–3).^[194] Fischer appeared on the cover of Life.^[195]

Fischer’s amazing results gave him a far higher rating than any player in history up until that time.^[196] On the July 1972 FIDE rating list, his Elo rating of 2785 was 125 points ahead of Spassky, the second-highest rated player (2660).^[197][198]

[edit] World Championship Match

Fischer’s career-long stubbornness about match and tournament conditions was again seen in the run-up to his match with Spassky. Of the possible sites, Fischer’s first choice was Belgrade, Yugoslavia, while Spassky’s was Reykjavik, Iceland.^[199] For a time it appeared that the dispute would be resolved by splitting the match between the two locations, but that arrangement fell through.^[200] After that issue was resolved, Fischer refused to appear in Iceland until the prize fund was increased. London financier Jim Slater donated an additional US$125,000 to the prize fund, bringing it to an unprecedented $250,000 ($1,267,825.63 in 2009^[201]), and Fischer finally agreed to play.^[202]

The match took place in Reykjavík from July through September 1972.^[203] Fischer lost the first two games in strange fashion: the first when he played a risky pawn-grab in a drawn endgame, the second by forfeit when he refused to play the game in a dispute over playing conditions.^[204] Fischer would likely have forfeited the entire match, but Spassky, not wanting to win by default, yielded to Fischer’s demands to move the next game to a back room, away from the cameras whose presence had upset Fischer.^[205][206] After that game, the match was moved back to the stage and proceeded without further serious incident. Fischer won seven of the next 19 games, losing only one and drawing eleven, to win the match 12½–8½ and become the 11th World Chess Champion.^[203]

The Cold War trappings made the match a media sensation.^[207] It was called “The Match of the Century”,^{[208][209][210]} and received front-page media coverage in the United States and around the world.^[211][212] Fischer’s win was an American victory in a field that Soviet players had dominated for the past quarter-century — players closely identified with, and subsidized by, the Soviet state.^[213][214] Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman calls Fischer’s victory “the story of a lonely hero who overcomes an entire empire”.^[215][216]

Fischer became an instant celebrity. Upon his return to New York, a Bobby Fischer Day was held, and he was cheered by thousands of fans, a unique display in American chess.^[217] He was offered numerous product endorsement offers worth “at least $5 million” (all of which he declined)^[218] and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.^[219] With American Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz, he also appeared on a Bob Hope TV special.^[220] Membership in the United States Chess Federation doubled in 1972^[221] and peaked in 1974; in American chess, these years are commonly referred to as the “Fischer Boom.” Fischer also won the ‘Chess Oscar‘ award for 1970, 1971, and 1972. This award, started in 1967, is determined through votes from chess media and leading players.

[edit] Forfeiture of title

Fischer was scheduled to defend his title in 1975. Anatoly Karpov eventually emerged as his challenger, having defeated Spassky in an earlier Candidates match.^[222] Fischer, who had played no competitive games since his World Championship match with Spassky, laid out a proposal for the match in September 1973, in consultation with a FIDE official, Fred Cramer. He made three principal demands:

1. The match should continue until one player wins 10 games, without counting the draws.
2. There is no limit to the total number of games played.
3. In case of a 9–9 score, champion (Fischer) retains his title and the prize fund is split equally.^[223]

A FIDE Congress was held in 1974 during the Nice Olympiad. The delegates voted in favor of Fischer’s 10-win proposal, but rejected his other two proposals, and limited the number of games in the match to 36.^[224] In response to FIDE’s ruling, Fischer sent a cable to Euwe on June 27, 1974:

As I made clear in my telegram to the FIDE delegates, the match conditions I proposed were non-negotiable. Mr. Cramer informs me that the rules of the winner being the first player to win ten games, draws not counting, unlimited number of games and if nine wins to nine match is drawn with champion regaining title and prize fund split equally were rejected by the FIDE delegates. By so doing FIDE has decided against my participating in the 1975 world chess championship. I therefore resign my FIDE world chess champion title. Sincerely, Bobby Fischer.^[225][226]

The delegates responded by reaffirming their prior decisions, but did not accept Fischer’s resignation and requested that he reconsider.^[227] Many observers considered Fischer’s requested 9–9 clause unfair because it would require the challenger to win by at least two games (10–8).^[228][229]

In a letter to Larry Evans, published in Chess Life in November 1974, Fischer claimed the usual system (24 games with the first player to get 12½ points winning, or the champion retaining his title in the event of a 12–12 tie) encouraged the player in the lead to draw games, which he regarded as bad for chess. Not counting draws would be “an accurate test of who is the world’s best player.”^[230] Former U.S. Champion Arnold Denker, who was in contact with Fischer during the negotiations with FIDE, claimed that Fischer wanted a long match to be able to play himself into shape after a three-year layoff.^[231]

Due to the continued efforts of US Chess Association officials,^[232] a special FIDE Congress was held in March 1975 in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands in which it was accepted that the match should be of unlimited duration, but the 9–9 clause was once again rejected, by a narrow margin of 35 votes to 32.^[233] FIDE set a deadline of April 1, 1975, for Fischer and Karpov to confirm their participation in the match. No reply was received from Fischer by April 3 and Karpov officially became World Champion by default.^[234] In his 1991 autobiography, Karpov expressed profound regret that the match did not take place, and claimed that the lost opportunity to challenge Fischer held back his own chess development. Karpov met with Fischer several times after 1975, in friendly but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to arrange a match.^[235]

[edit] Sudden obscurity

After the World Championship in 1972, Fischer virtually retired from chess: he did not play a competitive game in public for nearly 20 years.^[236] In 1977, he played three games in Cambridge against the MIT Greenblatt computer program, winning all of them.^[237]

On May 26, 1981, a police patrolman arrested Fischer while he was walking in Pasadena, saying that he matched the description of a man who had just committed a bank robbery in that area.^[238] Fischer stated that he was slightly injured during the arrest.^[239] He was then held for two days and — according to Fischer — was subjected to assault and various other types of serious mistreatment during that time.^[240] He was then released on $1000 bail^[241] and the matter was later dropped.^{[citation needed]} After being released, Fischer published a 14-page pamphlet detailing his alleged experiences and saying that his arrest had been “a frame up and set up.”^{[242][243][244][245]}

In the early 1980s, Fischer stayed for extended periods in the San Francisco-area home of a friend, the Canadian Grandmaster Peter Biyiasas. In 1981, the two played 17 five-minute games. Despite his layoff from competitive play, Fischer won all of them, according to Biyiasas, who lamented that he was never even able to reach an endgame.^[244][245]

[edit] 1992 Spassky rematch

After twenty years, Fischer emerged from isolation to play Spassky (then tied for 96th–102nd on the FIDE rating list) to a “Revenge Match of the 20th century” in 1992. This match took place in Sveti Stefan and Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, in spite of a United Nations embargo that included sanctions on sporting events. Fischer demanded that the organizers bill the match as “The World Chess Championship”, although Garry Kasparov was the recognized FIDE World Champion. Fischer insisted he was still the true world chess champion, and that for all the games in the FIDE-sanctioned World Championship matches, involving Karpov, Korchnoi and Kasparov, the outcomes had been pre-arranged.^[246] The purse for Fischer’s re-match with Spassky was US$5,000,000, with $3.35 million of that to go to the winner.^[247]

Fischer won the match, 10 wins to 5 losses, with 15 draws.^[248] Many grandmasters observing the match said that Fischer was past his prime.^{[citation needed]} Kasparov reportedly said, “Bobby is playing OK, nothing more. Maybe his strength is 2600 or 2650. It wouldn’t be close between us.”^[249] Fischer never played any competitive games afterwards.^[250]

Fischer and Spassky gave a total of ten press conferences during the match.^[251] Yasser Seirawan wrote, “After September 23 [1992], I threw most of what I’d ever read about Bobby out of my head. Sheer garbage. Bobby is the most misunderstood, misquoted celebrity walking the face of the earth.”^[252][253] Seirawan wrote that Fischer is not camera shy, “smiles and laughs easily”, and “is a wholly enjoyable conversationalist. A fine wit, he is a very funny man”.^[254]

The U.S. Department of the Treasury had warned Fischer beforehand that his participation was illegal as it violated President George H. W. Bush’s Executive Order 12810^[255] that implemented United Nations sanctions against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia.^[256] In front of the international press, Fischer was filmed spitting on the U.S. order forbidding him to play. Following the match, the Department obtained an arrest warrant for him. Fischer remained wanted by the United States government for the rest of his life and never returned to the United States.

[edit] Life as an émigré

After the match with Spassky in 1992, Fischer again slid into relative obscurity. Now a fugitive from the American legal system, he intensified his vitriolic rhetoric against the U.S. For some of these years Fischer lived in Budapest, Hungary, allegedly having a relationship with young Hungarian chess master Zita Rajcsányi.^[257][258] He claimed to find standard chess stale and he played chess variants such as Chess960 blitz games. He visited with the Polgár family in Budapest and analyzed many games with Judit, Zsuzsa, and Zsófia Polgár.^[259][260]

From 2000 to 2002, Fischer lived in Baguio City in the Philippines.^[261] He resided in the same compound as the Filipino grandmaster Eugenio Torre, a close friend who acted as his second during his matches with Spassky.^[261] Torre introduced Fischer to a 22-year-old woman named Marilyn Young.^[262] On May 21, 2001 Marilyn Young gave birth to a daughter named Jinky Young.^[263][264] Her mother claimed that Jinky was Fischer’s daughter, citing as evidence Jinky’s birth and baptismal certificates, photographs, a transaction record dated December 4, 2007 of a bank remittance by Fischer to Jinky, and Jinky’s DNA through her blood samples.^{[263][265][266]} On the other hand, Magnús Skúlason, a friend of Fischer’s, said that he was certain that Fischer was not the girl’s father.^[267]

On August 17, 2010 it was reported that a DNA test revealed that Jinky Young is actually not the daughter of Bobby Fischer.^[268][269]

[edit] Anti-Jewish statements

Fischer, whose mother was Jewish,^{[12][13][14][128]} made occasional hostile comments toward Jews from at least the early 1960s.^[128][270] In 1961, he “made his first public statements despising Jews.”^[271] Jan Hein Donner wrote that at the time of Bled 1961, “He idolized Hitler and read everything about him that he could lay his hands on. He also championed a brand of antisemitism that could only be thought up by a mind completely cut off from reality.”^[105] Donner writes that he took Fischer to a war museum, which “left a great impression, since he is not an evil person, and afterwards he was more restrained in his remarks—to me, at least”.^[105]

From the 1980s and thereafter, however, Fischer’s comments about Jews were a major theme of his public and private remarks.^[272] He denied the Holocaust and announced his desire to make “expos[ing] the Jews for the criminals they are […] the murderers they are” his lifework, and argued that the United States is “a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards.”^[273]

In 1984, Fischer denied being a Jew in a letter to the Encyclopedia Judaica, insisting that they remove his name and accusing them of “fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew […] to promote your religion”.^[274] Although it was reported that Fischer as a teenager acknowledged that his mother was Jewish,^[128] Fischer was later reported to have denied his Jewish ancestry.^[14]

In the last years of his life, Fischer’s primary means of communicating with the public was via sometimes-outrageous radio interviews. He participated in at least 34 such broadcasts between 1999 and 2006, mostly with radio stations in the Philippines, but also with stations in Hungary, Iceland, Colombia, and Russia. In 1999, he gave a call-in interview to a radio station in Budapest, Hungary, during which he described himself as the “victim of an international Jewish conspiracy.” In another radio interview, Fischer said that it became clear to him in 1977, after reading The Secret World Government by Count Cherep-Spiridovich, that Jewish agencies were targeting him.^[275] Fischer’s sudden re-emergence was apparently triggered when some of his belongings, which had been stored in a Pasadena, California storage unit, were sold by the landlord who claimed it was in response to nonpayment of rent.^[276] In 2005, some of Fischer’s belongings were auctioned on eBay. In 2006, Fischer claimed that his belongings in the storage unit were worth millions.^[277][278]

Fischer’s library contained anti-Semitic and white supremacist literature such as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and The White Man’s Bible and Nature’s Eternal Religion by Ben Klassen, founder of the Church of the Creator.^[279][280] A notebook written by Fischer is filled with sentiments such as “8/24/99 Death to the Jews. Just kill the Motherfuckers!” and “12/13/99 It’s time to start randomly killing Jews.”^[281]

[edit] Anti-American and anti-Israel statements

A little after Midnight on September 12, Philippines local time (four hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.), Fischer was interviewed live by Pablo Mercado on the Baguio City station of the Bombo Radyo network. Fischer commented on U.S and Israeli foreign policy, saying “I applaud the act. Look nobody gets.. no one.. that the US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years.”^{[282][283][284]} He also said “All the crimes the US is committing all over the world … This just shows, what goes around, that comes around even to the United States.”^[282][283] After calling for U.S. President George W. Bush’s death, Fischer then repeats this phrase, saying “I say death to President Bush! I say death to the United States! Fuck the United States! Fuck the Jews! […] They are the worst liars and bastards. Now what goes around comes around. They’re getting it back, finally. Praise God […] This is a wonderful day. Fuck the United States. Cry, you crybabies! Whine, you bastards! Now your time is coming.”^[282] Fischer also recalls the movie Seven Days in May and said he hopes for a military coup d’état in the US, “hoping […] the country will be taken over by the military, they’ll close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews, execute hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders, and you know, apologize to the Arabs, kill off all the Jews over there in the bandit state, you know, of Israel. I’m hoping for a totally new world.”

On October 28, 2001, Fischer’s right to membership in the United States Chess Federation was canceled by a unanimous 7–0 vote of the USCF’s Policy Board.^[285]

Fischer drafted a letter to Osama bin Laden, which began:^[286][287]

Dear Mr. Osama bin Laden allow me to introduce myself. I am Bobby Fischer, the World Chess Champion. First of all you should know that I share your hatred of the murderous bandit state of “Israel” and its chief backer the Jew-controlled U.S.A. also know [sic] as the “Jewnited States” or “Israel West.” We also have something else in common: We are both fugitives from the U.S. “justice” system.

After Fischer’s death, chess columnist Shelby Lyman, who in 1972 had hosted the PBS broadcast of that year’s Championship, said that “the anti-American stuff is explained by the fact that … he spent the rest of his life [after the match in Yugoslavia] fleeing the US, because he was afraid of being extradited“.^[288] In Bobby Fischer: The Wandering King, authors IM Hans Böhm and Kees Jongkind write that Fischer’s radio broadcasts show that he was “out of his mind … a victim of his own mental illness”.^[289]

[edit] Detention in Japan

Fischer lived for a time in Japan.^[290] On July 13, 2004, acting in response to a letter from U.S. officials, he was arrested by Japanese immigration authorities at Narita International Airport near Tokyo for allegedly using a revoked US passport while trying to board a Japan Airlines flight to Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Philippines.^[291] He sustained bruises, cuts and a broken tooth during the arrest.^[292] At the time, Fischer had a passport, originally issued in 1997 and updated in 2003 to add more pages, that according to U.S. officials had been revoked in November 2003 (due to his outstanding arrest warrant for Yugoslavia sanctions violation).^[291] Fischer said that he believed that it was legally still valid.^[293] The authorities held Fischer at a custody center for 16 days before transferring him to another facility. Fischer claimed that his cell was windowless and he had not seen the light of day during that period, and that the staff had ignored his complaints about constant tobacco smoke in his cell.^[292]

Tokyo-based Canadian journalist and consultant John Bosnitch set up the “Committee to Free Bobby Fischer” after meeting Fischer at Narita Airport and offering to assist him.^[294] Bosnitch was subsequently allowed to participate as a friend of the court by an Immigration Bureau panel handling Fischer’s case.^{[citation needed]} He then worked to block the Japanese Immigration Bureau’s efforts to deport Fischer to the United States and coordinated the legal and public relations campaign to free Fischer until his eventual release.^{[citation needed]} A month later, it was reported that Fischer and Miyoko Watai, the President of the Japanese Chess Association, with whom he had reportedly been living since 2000, wanted to become legally married.^[291] (However, he was also reported to have been living in the Philippines with Marilyn Young during the same period.^[261]) Fischer also applied for German citizenship on the grounds that his father was German.^[295] Fischer stated that he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship, and appealed to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell to help him do so.^[296][297] Japan’s Justice Minister rejected Fischer’s appeal that he be allowed to remain in the country and ordered him deported.^[298]

[edit] Asylum in Iceland

Seeking ways to evade deportation to the United States, Fischer wrote a letter to the government of Iceland in early January 2005 and asked for Icelandic citizenship. Sympathetic to Fischer’s plight, but reluctant to grant him the full benefits of citizenship, Icelandic authorities granted him an alien’s passport. When this proved insufficient for the Japanese authorities, the Althing agreed unanimously to grant Fischer full citizenship in late March for humanitarian reasons, as they felt he was being unjustly treated by the US and Japanese governments,^[299] and also in recognition of his 1972 match, which had “put Iceland on the map”.^[300] The US government filed charges of tax evasion against Fischer in an effort to prevent him from traveling to Iceland.^{[citation needed]}

Shortly before his departure to Iceland, on March 23, 2005, Fischer and Bosnitch appeared briefly on the BBC World Service, via a telephone link to the Tokyo airport. Bosnitch stated that Fischer would never play traditional chess again. Fischer denounced President Bush as a criminal and Japan as a puppet of the United States. He also stated that he would appeal his case to the US Supreme Court and said that he would not return to the US while Bush was in power.^{[citation needed]}

Upon his arrival in Reykjavík, Fischer was welcomed by a crowd and gave a news conference.^[301][302] He lived a reclusive life in Iceland, avoiding entrepreneurs and others who approached him with various proposals.^[303]

On December 10, 2006, Fischer telephoned an Icelandic television station and pointed out a winning combination, missed by the players and commentators, in a chess game that had been televised live in Iceland.^[304]

Fischer moved into an apartment in the same building as his closest friend and spokesman, Garðar Sverrisson, whose wife Kristín Þórarinsdóttir, a nurse, later looked after him as a terminally ill patient. Garðar’s two children, especially his son, were very close to Fischer. Fischer also developed a friendship with Magnús Skúlason, a psychiatrist and chess player who later recalled long discussions with Fischer about a wide variety of subjects.^[305]

[edit] Death, estate dispute, and exhumation

On January 17, 2008, Fischer died from degenerative renal failure in a Reykjavik hospital.^{[306][307][308]} Magnús Skúlason reported his last words as “Nothing is as healing as the human touch.”^[305][309] On January 21, he was buried in the small Christian cemetery of Laugardælir church, outside the town of Selfoss, 60 km south-east of Reykjavík, after a Catholic funeral presided over by Fr. Jakob Rolland of the diocese of Reykjavik. In accordance with Fischer’s wishes, no one else was present except Miyoko Watai, Garðar Sverrisson, and Garðar’s family.^[310][311]

Fischer’s estate was estimated at 140 million ISK (about GBP 1 million or US$ 2 million) and it quickly became the object of a legal battle involving claims from four parties: Fischer’s apparent Japanese wife Miyoko Watai, his alleged Philippine daughter Jinky Young and her mother Marilyn Young, his two American nephews Alexander and Nicholas Targ and their father Russell Targ, and the American government (claiming unpaid taxes).^{[267][305][312][313][314]}

According to a press release issued by Samuel Estimo, an attorney representing Jinky Young, the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled in December 2009 that Watai’s claim of marriage to Fischer was invalidated because of her failure to present the original of their alleged marriage certificate.^[315]

On June 16, 2010, Iceland’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of a petition on behalf of Jinky Young to have Bobby Fischer’s remains exhumed.^[316][317] This was performed on July 5, 2010 in the presence of a doctor, a priest and other officials. A DNA sample was taken and Fischer’s body was then reburied.^[318] On August 17, 2010, the Court announced that the DNA sample had determined that Fischer was not the father of Jinky Young.^[268][269]

[edit] Contributions to chess

This section uses algebraic chess notation to describe chess moves.

[edit] Opening theory

Fischer was renowned for his deep opening preparation and made numerous contributions to chess opening theory.^[319] He was one of the foremost experts on the Ruy Lopez.^[320] A line of the Exchange Variation (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.0-0) is sometimes called the “Fischer Variation” after he successfully resurrected it at the 1966 Havana Olympiad.^[321][322] Fischer’s lifetime score in tournament and match games with 5.0-0 was six wins, three draws, and no losses (83.3%).^[323]

He was a recognized expert in the Black side of the Najdorf Sicilian and the King’s Indian Defense.^[324] He used the Grünfeld Defence and Neo-Grünfeld Defence to win his celebrated games against Donald and Robert Byrne, and played a theoretical novelty in the Grünfeld against reigning World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, refuting Botvinnik’s prior published analysis.^[325][326] In the Nimzo-Indian Defense, the line beginning with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 Ba6 was named for him.^{[327][328][329]}

Fischer established the viability of the so-called Poisoned Pawn Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6). This bold queen sortie, snatching a pawn at the expense of development, had been considered dubious,^{[330][331][332]} but Fischer succeeded in proving its soundness.^[333] Out of ten tournament and match games as Black in the Poisoned Pawn, Fischer won five, drew four, and lost only one, the 11th game of his 1972 match against Spassky.^[334] Following Fischer’s use, the Poisoned Pawn became a respected line played by many of the world’s leading players.^[335]

On the White side of the Sicilian, Fischer made advances to the theory of the line beginning 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 (or e6) 6.Bc4,^[333][336] which has sometimes been named for him.^[337] In 1961, prompted by a loss the year before to Spassky,^[338] Fischer wrote an article entitled “A Bust to the King’s Gambit” for the first issue of the American Chess Quarterly, in which he stated, “In my opinion, the King’s Gambit is busted. It loses by force.”^[339] Fischer recommended 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6,^[340] which has since become known as the Fischer Defense to the King’s Gambit.^{[341][342][343]} Surprisingly, Fischer later played the King’s Gambit as White in three tournament games (preferring 3.Bc4 to 3.Nf3), winning them all.^[344]

[edit] Endgame

Fischer had excellent endgame technique.^[345] International Master Jeremy Silman listed him as one of the five best endgame players, along with Emanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein, José Capablanca, and Vasily Smyslov. Silman called him a “master of bishop endings”.^[346]

The endgame of a rook, bishop, and pawns against a rook, knight, and pawns has sometimes been called the “Fischer Endgame” because of three instructive wins by Fischer (with the bishop) in 1970 and 1971 over Mark Taimanov.^[347][348] One of the games was in the 1970 Interzonal and the other two were in their 1971 quarter-final candidates match.

[edit] Fischer clock

In 1988, Fischer filed for U.S. Patent 4,884,255 for a new type of digital chess clock. Fischer’s clock gave each player a fixed period of time at the start of the game and then added a small increment after each completed move. The Fischer clock soon became standard in most major chess tournaments. The patent expired in November 2001 because of overdue maintenance fees.

[edit] Fischer Random Chess

On June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fischer announced and advocated a variant of chess called Fischer Random Chess, also known as Chess960, that is intended to allow players to contest games based on their understanding of chess rather than their ability to memorize opening variations.

Fischer Random was designed to remove the importance of opening book memorization. Fischer complained in a 2006 phoned-in call with a television interviewer that because of the progress in memorization of opening books, talented celebrity players from long ago, if brought back from the dead to play today, would no longer be competitive. “Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca“, he said, merely because of opening-book memorization, which Fischer disdained. “Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and prearrangement. It’s a terrible game now. Very uncreative.”^[349] Fischer heavily disparaged chess as it was currently being played at the highest levels.^[350]

[edit] Legacy

Kasparov calls Fischer “perhaps the most mythologically shrouded figure in chess”.^[351] Some leading players and some of his biographers have ranked him as the greatest player who ever lived.^[352] Other writers have said that he was arguably the greatest player ever, without reaching a definitive conclusion.^[353] Leonard Barden wrote, “Most experts place him the second or third best ever, behind Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov.”^[354] Brian Carney opined in the Wall Street Journal that Fischer’s victory over Spassky in 1972 left him nothing to prove, except that perhaps someone could someday beat him, and he was not interested in the risk of losing. Fischer’s refusal to recognize peers also allowed his paranoia to flower: “The world championship he won…validated his view of himself as a chess player, but it also insulated him from the humanizing influences of the world around him. He descended into what can only be considered a kind of madness.”^[355]

Fischer was a charter inductee into the United States Chess Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C. in 1985. After routing Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian in 1971, Fischer achieved a then-record Elo rating of 2785.^[197][198] He was rated so far ahead of Spassky and everyone else that he lost five rating points^{[citation needed]} by beating Spassky 12½–7½ in played games, dropping him to a 2780 rating.^[198]

Although international ratings were only introduced in 1970, Chessmetrics.com has used modern algorithms to rank performances retrospectively and uniformly throughout chess history. According to the Chessmetrics calculation, Fischer’s peak rating was 2895 in October 1971. His one-year peak average was 2881, in 1971, the highest of all time. His three-year peak average was 2867, from January 1971 to December 1973—the second highest ever, just behind Garry Kasparov. Chessmetrics ranked Fischer as the #1 player in the world for a total of 109 different months, running (not consecutively) from February 1964 until July 1974.^[356]

Fischer’s great rival Mikhail Tal praised him as “the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens.”^[357] American Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier, who won his first tournament game against Fischer, drew his second, and lost the remaining 13, wrote “Robert James Fischer is one of the few people in any sphere of endeavour who has been accorded the accolade of being called a legend in his own time.”^[358]

Kasparov wrote that Fischer “became the detonator of an avalanche of new chess ideas, a revolutionary whose revolution is still in progress.”^[359] In January 2009, reigning world champion Viswanathan Anand described him as “the greatest chess player who ever lived. He was a very special person, and I was fortunate to meet him two years ago.”^[360] Serbian Grandmaster Ljubomir Ljubojević called Fischer, “A man without frontiers. He didn’t divide the East and the West, he brought them together in their admiration of him.”^[361]

German Grandmaster Karsten Müller wrote:^[362]

Fischer, who had taken the highest crown almost singlehandedly from the mighty, almost invincible Soviet chess empire, shook the whole world, not only the chess world, to its core. He started a chess boom not only in the United States and in the Western hemisphere, but worldwide. Teaching chess or playing chess as a career had truly become a respectable profession. After Bobby, the game was simply not the same.

St. Louis philanthropist Rex A. Sinquefield offered a $64,000 Fischer Memorial Prize for any player who could win all nine games at the 2009 US Chess Championship. By the fifth day of the championship, all 24 participants became ineligible for the prize, having drawn or lost at least one game.^[363]

[edit] In popular culture

• The musical Chess, with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, tells the story of two chess champions, referred to only as “The American” and “The Russian”. The musical is loosely based on the 1972 world championship match between Fischer and Spassky.^[364] In later versions of the show, “The American” is named “Freddie Trumper” and “The Russian” is “Anatoly Sergieveski”.^[365]
• During the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match, the Soviet bard Vladimir Vysotsky wrote an ironic two-song cycle “Honor of the Chess Crown”. The first song is about a rank-and-file Soviet worker’s preparation for the match with Fischer; the second is about the game. Many expressions from the songs have become catchphrases in Russian culture.^[366]
• The 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer uses Fischer’s name in the title even though it is actually about the life of Joshua Waitzkin.^[367] Outside of the United States, it was released as Innocent Moves.^[368] The title refers to the search for Fischer’s successor after his disappearance from competitive chess (or about searching for talent like Fischer’s in the author’s brilliant chess-playing son). In the book on which the film is based, the narrator/author actually looks for Fischer for a brief period and imagines what he would say to him if found. In an unpublished 1997 manuscript, Fischer complained that he had not “received one thin dime for the totally exploitative Paramount Pictures ‘rip-off’ full-length feature film”.^[369]
• Bobby Fischer is mentioned in Milan Kundera’s novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

[edit] Writings

• Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1959). ISBN 0-923891-46-3. An early collection of 34 lightly-annotated games including the famous “Game of the Century” against Donald Byrne.
• “A Bust to the King’s Gambit” (American Chess Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer 1961), pp. 3–9).
• “The Russians Have Fixed World Chess” (Sports Illustrated magazine, August 1962). This is the controversial article in which Fischer asserted that the Soviet players in the 1962 Curaçao Candidates’ tournament had colluded with one another.
• “‘The Ten Greatest Masters in History” (Chessworld, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January–February 1964), pp. 56–61). A famous article, in which Fischer named Paul Morphy, Howard Staunton, Wilhelm Steinitz, Siegbert Tarrasch, Mikhail Chigorin, Alexander Alekhine, José Raúl Capablanca, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, and Samuel Reshevsky as the best players of all time. He modestly omitted himself, and controversially did not include World Champions Emanuel Lasker and Mikhail Botvinnik.^[370]
• “Checkmate” column from 1966 to 1969 in Boys’ Life.
• My 60 Memorable Games (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969, and Faber and Faber, London, 1969; Batsford 2008 (algebraic notation)). “A classic of painstaking and objective analysis that modestly includes three of his losses”.^[371]
• I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse! (1982) pamphlet.

[edit] Under Fischer’s name

There have been numerous books, in many languages, that list Fischer as the author or as endorsing the book.^[372] One of these is the 1972 book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess with Donn Mosenfelder and Stuart Margulies.^[373] The book uses programmed learning to help beginners learn how to see elementary chess combinations. Although Fischer allowed his name to be used, he had little involvement with the writing of the book.^[374]

[edit] Tournament and match summary

[edit] Tournaments

Tournament record^[375]

Year	Tournament	Location	Wins	Draws	Losses	Ranking
1955	US Junior Championship	Lincoln	2	6	2	10–20
1956	US Amateur Championship	New Jersey	3	2	1	21
1956	US Junior Championship	Philadelphia	8	1	1	1
1956	US Open	Oklahoma City	5	7	0	4–8
1956	Canadian Open	Montreal	6	2	2	8–12
1956	Rosenwald Trophy	NYC	2	5	4	8–10
1956	Eastern States Open	Washington, DC	4	2	0	2–4
1956	Manhattan Club Championship, semifinals	NYC	2	1	2	4
1957	Log Cabin Open	West Orange	4	0	2	6
1957	Log Cabin 50–50	West Orange	3	2	2	unknown
1957	New Western Open	Milwaukee	5	2	1	6–12
1957	US Junior Open Championship	San Francisco	8	1	0	1
1957	US Open	Cleveland	8	4	0	1
1957	New Jersey State Open	East Orange	6	1	0	1
1957	North Central Open	Milwaukee	4	2	1	5–11
1957	US Championship	New York	8	5	0	1
1958	Interzonal	Portoroz	6	12	2	5–6
1958	US Championship	New York	6	5	0	1
1959	Mar del Plata		8	4	1	3–4
1959	Santiago		7	1	4	4–7
1959	Zurich		8	5	2	3–4
1959	Candidates	Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade	8	9	11	5–6
1959	US Championship	New York	7	4	0	1
1960	Mar del Plata		13	1	1	1–2
1960	Buenos Ares		3	11	5	13–16
1960	Reykjavík		3	1	0	1
1960	US Championship	New York	7	4	0	1
1961	Bled		8	11	0	2
1962	Interzonal	Stockholm	13	9	0	1
1962	Candidates	Curaçao	8	12	7	4
1962	US Championship	New York	6	4	1	1
1963	Western Open	Bay City	7	1	0	1
1963	New York State Open	Poughkeepsie	7	0	0	1
1963	US Championship	New York	11	0	0	1
1965	Capablanca Memorial	Havana	12	6	3	2–4
1965	US Championship	New York	8	1	2	1
1966	Piatigorsky Cup	Santa Monica	7	8	3	2
1966	US Championship	New York	8	3	0	1
1967	Monaco		6	2	1	1
1967	Skopje		11	3	2	1
1967	Interzonal	Sousse	7	3	0	withdrew
1968	Netanya		10	3	0	1
1968	Vinkovci		9	4	0	1
1970	Rovinj/Zagreb		10	6	1	1
1970	Buenos Ares		13	4	0	1
1970	Interzonal	Palma de Mallorca	15[376]	7	1	1

[edit] Matches

Match record^[377][378]

Year	Opponent	Location	Tournament	Wins	Draws	Losses	result
1957	Max Euwe	New York	match	0	1	1	lost
1957	Rodolfo Tan Cardoso	New York	match	5	1	1	won
1958	Dragoljub Janošević	Belgrade	training match	0	2	0	tied
1958	Milan Matulović	Belgrade	match	2	1	1	won
1961	Samuel Reshevsky	New York & Los Angles	match	2	7	2	unfinished
1971	Mark Taimanov	Vancouver	Candidates	6	0	0	won
1971	Bent Larsen	Denver	Candidates	6	0	0	won
1971	Tigran Petrosian	Buenos Aires	Candidates	5	3	1	won
1972	Boris Spassky	Reykjavík	World Championship	7	11	3[379]	won
1992	Boris Spassky	Sveti Stefan & Belgrade	match	10	15	5	won

[edit] Team events

Team events^[375]

Year	Event	Location	Wins	Draws	Losses	Opponent	Board	Individual ranking	team ranking
1960	14th Olympiad	Leipzig	10	6	2	various	1	3	2
1962	15th Olympiad	Varna	8	6	3	various	1	8	4
1966	17th Olympiad	Havana	14	2	1	various	1	2	2
1970	USSR vs World	Belgrade	2	2	0	Tigran Petrosian	2	won individual match	team lost
1970	19th Olympiad	Siegen	8	4	1	various	1	2	4

[edit] Notable games

• “The Game of the Century” – an external link: Donald Byrne-Fischer, New York 1956, Grünfeld, 5.Bf4 (D92), 0-1 Just 13 years old, Bobby played in a bold combinational style.
• Robert Byrne-Fischer, 1963–64 US Championship, Neo-Grünfeld 0-1 annotated From an almost symmetrical position, Fischer as Black beats a strong grandmaster in just 21 moves – “a game that was immediately recognized as an all-time classic”.^[380]
• Fischer-Tigran Petrosian, Buenos Aires Candidates Final 1971, 7th match game, Sicilian Defense: Kan. Modern Variation (B42), 1-0 Even Petrosian, the master of defense, was not able to bear the pressure of Fischer’s rooks.
• Fischer-Boris Spassky, World Championship 1972, 6th match game, Queen’s Gambit Declined, Tartakower (D59), 1-0 One of the most beautiful and most important games of the match.

YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE LYRICS

July 15, 2010

So many nights, I’d sit by my window,

Waiting for someone to sing me his song.

So many dreams, I kept deep inside me,

Alone in the dark, now you’ve come along.

And you light up my life,

You give me hope, to carry on.

You light up my days

And fill my nights with song.

Rollin’ at sea, adrift on the waters

Could it be finally, I’m turning for home

Finally a chance to say, “Hey, I Love You”

Never again to be all alone.

And you light up my life,

You give me hope, to carry on.

You light up my days

And fill my nights with song.

You, You light up my life

You give me hope to carry on

You light up my days

And fill my nights with song

It can’t be wrong, when it feels so right

Cause you, you light up my life.

IN MY DREAMS LYRICS (REO SPEEDWAGON)

Dedicated to the Co-Founder of the Court of Mages, Lemuria

 

There was a time some time ago

When every sunrise meant a sunny day, oh a sunny day

But now when the morning light shines in

It only disturbs the dreamland where I lay, oh where I lay

I used to thank the lord when I’d wake

For life and love and the golden sky above me

But now I pray the stars will go on shinin’, you see in my dreams you love me

Daybreak is a joyful time

Just listen to the songbird harmonies, oh the harmonies

But I wish the dawn would never come

I wish there was silence in the trees, oh the trees

If only I could stay asleep, at least I could pretend you’re thinkin’ of me

‘Cause nighttime is the one time I am happy, you see in my dreams

Chorus:
We climb and climb and at the top we fly

Let the world go on below us, we are lost in time

And I don’t know really what it means

All I know is that you love me, in my dreams

(Solo)

I keep hopin’ one day I’ll awaken, and somehow she’ll be lying by my side

And as I wonder if the dawn is really breakin’

She touches me and suddenly I’m alive

chorus repeats 2x

Oho, in my dreams.

 

 

Walking in the Air Lyrics (by Celtic Woman)

Intro: Walking in the air, floating the sky…
Floating in the air…

We’re walking in the air
We’re floating in the moonlit sky
The people far below are sleeping as we fly

We’re holding very tight
I’m riding in the midnight blue
I’m finding I can fly so high above with you

Far across the world
The villages go by like trees
The rivers and the hills
The forest and the streams

Children gaze open mouth
Taken by surprise
Nobody down below believes their eyes

We’re surfing in the air
We’re swimming in the frozen sky
We’re drifting over icy
mountains floating by

Suddenly swooping low on an ocean deep
Arousing of a mighty monster from its sleep

We’re walking in the air
We’re dancing in the midnight sky
And everyone who sees us greets us as we fly.

Prologue to the Summoning

Let the riddle of the dance of the lines

Reveal her presence at the Summoning Light!

 

Let the riddle of the dance of the lines

Reveal her presence at the Summoning Light!!

 

Let the riddle of the dance of the lines

Reveal her presence at the Summoning Light!!!

 

May the Light of Anam Cara find the direction.

(The sister who is to arrive must stretch her hand.)

May the combined energies of the Soulfriends Philppines be the beacon at the altar.

So mote it be!

So mote it be!!

So mote it be!!!

To the Co Founder, The Court of Mages, Lemuria

TO FLY IN THE WINGS OF DESTINY

 

BY QZP

 

I watch the setting of the summer sun

Followed by the moon’s silvery light

And in the dance of a thousand stars

The coming of night to dim starlight.

 

Now back in my warren I seek

The Lines of Destiny scrolled in the heavens

The verses that give peace and hope

From ethereal dimensions of harmonious abode.

 

I traverse, to seek the Portals of Destiny

The  gifts that come from the pages of eternity

When moonlight skies give way to morning shine

And the dark of dawn to the light of the morning sun.

 

Fortune to one who seeks to commune

Within the calm of the nurturing waters

The enable code which gives the strength 

and courage to fight the unravelling codices. 

 

The inspiring realms of the Higher Octaves

Respond only to the purest of hearts

Let the riddle of the dance of the lines

Reveal Her presence at the Summoning Light!

 

(Grandmaster Lapis Lazuli

We all know that the Summoning of the Twin last occured at the Fall of Lemuria….

Kindly inform the Hall, I am contemplating that astounding ritual. 

It might shock the Council, but I am almost at that point.)

 

 

Broken Windows

One broken window

If no one cares,

Then more broken windows.

The Prayer Lyrics

I pray you’ll be our eyes
And watch us where we go
And help us to be wise
In times when we don’t know

Let this be our prayer
As we go our way
Lead us to a place
Guide us with your grace
To a place where we’ll be safe
La luce che to dai

I pray we’ll find your light
Nel cuore restero
And hold it in our hearts
A ricordarchi che
When stars go out each night
L’eterna stella sei
Nella mia preghiera
Let this be our prayer
Quanta fede c’e
When shadows fill our day
Lead us to a place
Guide us with your grace

Give us faith so we’ll be safe.
Sognamo un mondo senza piu violenza

Un mondo di giustizia e di speranza
Ognuno dia la mano al suo vicino
Simbolo di pace e di fraternita

La forza che ci dai
We ask that life be kind
E’il desiderio che
And watch us from above
Ognuno trovi amore
We hope each soul will find
Intorno e dentro a se
Another soul to love

Let this be our prayer
Let this be our prayer
Just like every child
Just like every child

Needs to find a place,
Guide us with your grace
Give us faith so we’ll be safe
E la fede che
Hai acceso in noi
Sento che ci salvera.