Chess

An absurd debate has broken out in the pages of Chess Monthly over a new edition of Bobby Fischer's Sixty Memorable Games brought out by Batsfords. Fischer himself started the row, with a half-hour diatribe against Batsfords at a press conference in Argentina. His complaints concerned changes made to the text where, according to Fischer, "they tried to make me look stupid".

Most of the 570 changes are minor stylistic alterations. One is a correction to the final moves of a game that was wrong in the first edition, but what seems really to have riled Fischer is an alteration to some analysis in which the critical new variation ends in a position in which both kings are in check. Batsfords explain feebly that their editor and typesetter each assumed that the other had checked it properly. It's all great fun, but hardly worth nine pages of a 60-page magazine. It is good, however, to hear that the great Bobby, now 53, still believes that people are out to get him.

Batsfords, of course, ought not to have tampered with Fischer's matchless prose style, but we can put that decision down to a lack of feeling for the finer points of language rather than malevolence.

To end on a happier note, here's a piece of vintage Fischer. Just as Gligoric seems within sight of a draw, his game is destroyed by the final move. 35...Kxf6 36.Bxg5+ or 35...Qxf6 36.Nh5+ lose Black's queen.

White: Bobby Fischer

Black: Svetozar Gligoric

Rovinj-Zagreb 1970

1 e4 e5 19 Be3 Bd7

2 Nf3 Nc6 20 a5 Nc8

3 Bb5 a6 21 Qd2 Nh7

4 Ba4 Nf6 22 Kh2 Be7

5 0-0 Be7 23 Nf5 Bg5

6 Re1 b5 24 Nxg5 hxg5

7 Bb3 d6 25 g4 g6

8 c3 0-0 26 Ng3 f6

9 h3 h6 27 Rh1 Rf8

10 d4 Re8 28 Kg2 Rf7

11 Nbd2 Bf8 29 f3 Nf8

12 Nf1 Bb7 30 h4 gxh4

13 Ng3 Na5 31 Rxh4 Rh7

14 Bc2 Nc4 32 Rah1 Rxh4

15 b3 Nb6 33 Rxh4 g5

16 a4 c5 34 Rh6 Kg7

17 d5 c4 35 Rxf6 resigns

18 b4 Bc8

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