Searching for Bobby Fischer

December 25, 2018 1:56 PM

20-year-old Bobby Fischer created a chess masterpiece in only 21 moves against Robert Eugene Byrne, an International Master, at the 1963/1964 United States Chess Championship. In this brilliancy, Fischer demonstrates how to inject multiple imbalances into a highly symmetrical position, how to properly highlight these differences to benefit oneself, and how to accurately assess the true value of the pieces as they rest on the board.

Bonus: The "Game of the century", October 17, 1956

posted by growabrain (20 comments total)

Why wouldn't White do 25: Re2? He'd have lost his queen, but it would have messed up the mate.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:49 PM on December 25, 2018

He could, but he'd be way down material (R+N to Q+P) and must have felt it was hopeless.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 3:41 PM on December 25, 2018

Why wouldn't White do 25: Re2? He'd have lost his queen, but it would have messed up the mate.

Black does not need to capture whites queen to checkmate.

24: Rxe1 Bxd4, black captures whites knight on d4 using his bishop. The whole point of this move is to pin whites queen. That's it. Blacks bishop will not capture whites queen, because black mates white by moving Queen to g2 in the next move. 25: Re2, so what if the rook is there? 25: Re2 Qg2#. Whites queen can't move because it was pinned in front of the white king on move 24. And blacks queen on g2 can't be removed by the king because it's defended by blacks other bishop on b7.

Am I missing something?
posted by honor the agreement at 4:07 PM on December 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, you're right.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 4:32 PM on December 25, 2018

i'm pretty terrible at chess, although i do enjoy futzing around with it, but i've been watching jerry from chessnetwork play for a few years now and i think he's a great streamer, all around: really good-natured and informative. and as someone who mainly plays 3-min blitz games on their phone, i find his online tourney vids pretty fun and exciting. this video of his jovial disbelieving reaction to getting suckered into a 4-move mate is a favorite. thanks for the post!
posted by rotten at 4:55 PM on December 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

Byrne wrote the NYT chess column for many years
posted by thelonius at 5:10 PM on December 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

What do the chess language stuff mean? I know that “Re2” means rook to e2, but what is the hash sign in Qg2# mean (which I can’t help but read as “g2 sharp” because I’m use to reading chord notations), and what is the “x” in Rxe1?
posted by gucci mane at 6:20 PM on December 25, 2018

hash (octothorpe?) means mate. x is "captures on [edit: excepting en passant captures, it seems]"
posted by Earthtopus at 6:29 PM on December 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Hopefully this isn’t a derail but speaking of interesting games I’ve really been enjoying Daniel King’s breakdowns of the recently published AlphaZero/Stockfish games. (I’m not comparing AlphaZero to Fischer)
posted by not_the_water at 7:03 PM on December 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

You also see sometimes see a variant with "R:c3" instead of "Rxc3". I think Russian chess literature uses that.
And, when pawns take pawns, the "x" is usually omitted: so, a game that begins 1 e4 e5 2 d4 would be notated 2......ed, if Black captures the White queen pawn. I do not know why this is so. Check is a "+" sign. Sometimes you see "++": a double check, when a piece moves away from blocking a piece in line with the King, and also gives check: very often this is a fatal blow.
posted by thelonius at 7:04 PM on December 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm far from an expert but ! and ? in game notations were notable to me as they indicated good or questionable moves. It helped me notice when turning points happened that I would have otherwise struggled to grok.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:06 AM on December 26, 2018

@thelonius While it's true that the shorthand for pawns ("ed" instead of exd4) is an accepted alternative, the most common way you will see it is the latter, whether in chess books, PGN files, online play, videos etc. I take in a lot of chess information like articles, puzzles or following tournaments online, and it's pretty rare to see the shorthand format. I imagine there are quite a few newer players who aren't familiar with the abbreviated style.
posted by TreeHugger at 8:16 AM on December 26, 2018

I guess "exd4" style may be more common, yes. It really does not seem like much of an advantage to have an exception to it, either.
posted by thelonius at 10:07 AM on December 26, 2018

My favorite chess game is Steinmetz vs. von Bardeleben. Steinmetz plays a half-dozen moves one step away from his own checkmate while his queen is there for the taking. Von Bardeleben is said to have stormed out of the room due to checkmate in 9 moves.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:59 AM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've always been a fan of Anderssen's queen sacrifices.

I’ve really been enjoying Daniel King’s breakdowns of the recently published AlphaZero/Stockfish games.
See previously.

When I was using algebraic, I would always write ed instead of exd4. Why write more than is necessary?
I was under the impression that dense books like ECO would omit the 'x' for pawn captures, but the images I see online mostly have the 'x', and I'm not home to check my own ECO's. They would be older editions.
(I've gone back to English notation in the past dozen years, at least in part as a protest against the attempts to get rid of Descriptive)
posted by MtDewd at 12:13 PM on December 26, 2018

Sometimes you see "++": a double check, when a piece moves away from blocking a piece in line with the King, and also gives check: very often this is a fatal blow.

Don't people sometimes write ++ for checkmate, too? Not a fan of that one but I've seen it.

Also of course O-O and O-O-O are castling, which is a fun bit of notation.
posted by atoxyl at 12:35 PM on December 26, 2018

I've always seen ++ as checkmate.
Sometimes double check is mate, but I've never seen a special notation for double check, or any reason to have one.
(Actually, I don't even see a need for '+' outside of ambiguous moves in Descriptive. In algebraic notation, checks and checkmates should be obvious)
posted by MtDewd at 1:31 PM on December 26, 2018

Wikipedia:

"In chess notation, it [double check] is almost always represented the same way as a single check ("+"), but is sometimes symbolized by "++" (however, "++" is also sometimes used to denote checkmate[3])."
posted by thelonius at 2:01 PM on December 26, 2018

so my initial explanation was ?! I suppose
posted by thelonius at 2:59 PM on December 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

(I’m not comparing AlphaZero to Fischer)

Yeah, hopefully they didn't train AlphaZero on Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I watched this last night, and then was like - what was the reason I think Fischer was a bastard again - and read his wiki bio (sorry it's slight derail, but)... Yeah, wow... Now I know why.

Brilliant player, which just shows, you can be smart in many ways, but still be an asshole/socially ignorant or straight up evil.

I used to be pretty decent at chess as a kid (like 1st/2nd grade), but then just lost my attention span somehow and now I suck because I don't have patience. Sad, that. Watching this made me download a chess app though, maybe I should MAKE the time to focus.
posted by symbioid at 11:14 AM on December 27, 2018