Not all of them, but I spotted short videos on Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, and Anand; also on Judit Polgar (technically not a women's world champion, but the female player for a very long time) and Hou Yifan on the distaff side. And also, on himself!
Reader Comments (2)
I find his analysis interesting. However, I think he really underestimates Fischer's genius. Fischer had all the talent of Kasparov, but lacked the formal training and the computer assistance available to Garry. Even lacking those tools Fischer reaches the Candidates tournament at 15 years old and ties for 5th out of 8.
There is no doubt that Fischer's psychological problems overwhelmed him after winning the championship. But his impact on the game was second to none.
[DM: Possibly, but I think all of these points are just as well known to Carlsen as they are to those of us who precede the computer era. One problem is that it's not easy to define "talent". Carlsen seems to mean something like "originality", and while giving Fischer a 7 might be a tad low, he was not universally seen as an especially creative/original player even in his day. (See the scouting reports on his chess given in "The Russians vs. Fischer".) Accurate, forceful, and knowledgeable: absolutely. But in irrational positions he often went astray, while Spassky commented that he didn't always grasp the critical moment of a game. Where something was known, he would play like a machine (a metaphor often used to describe Fischer's play), but where things were less clear he was far from dominant. Kasparov, by contrast, not only learned everything that could be learned, but even in his early teens he could find powerful ideas that were unexpected even by strong grandmasters.]
And I think it's very possible to exaggerate the lack of Fischer's formal training: yes, he didn't have a formal coach after his earliest years in the game, but Collins and others gave him a very strong foundation, and he worked and analyzed with lots of strong players in his early years. That he was playing constantly in one of the three strongest chess cities (only Moscow and Leningrad were comparable) on the planet shouldn't be ignored. He also had access to Soviet chess literature. Fischer didn't exactly spring onto the world scene after being rescued from a deserted island in the middle of the ocean.
Re: Kasparov, ChessBase came into existence around the time when he became champion, and he didn't have access to it right away. (And the databases were pretty meager early on, while the engines were very weak until the mid-90s, and only at world championship level on PC shortly before Kasparov retired from the game. Kasparov made brilliant use of computers as they became available, but he was already the world champion and thus not the product of the computer age. Even Anand and Kramnik, whose careers developed as computer technology started to develop, had already achieved their full strength or something very close to it before engines were their superiors. One more thought: ChessBase + engines are democratizing factors. Information and the benefits of analysis engines are available even to beginners, where before it took a good deal of time and some wealth and/or connections to have access to the best materials, to say nothing of coaches. To reach the top of the pile at the moment is far more impressive than it was in Fischer's day - also because so many more people are playing. To say all this isn't to diminish Fischer, who is still on the short list of the greatest players of all time.]
Dennis your points are well taken. I of course know of Mr. Collins and his contributions to Fischer's progress. However, when I talk about the formal training Fischer did not have access to, I am thinking of the Soviets rigorous system of finding and training talent beginning at a very early age. A system that was producing dozens of GM's when the USA barely had a dozen. A good example of this was the significant impact the Soviet chess emigrates had on American chess beginning in the late 1970's. In the 1930's we had several world class chess players who were serious contenders for the world championship, By the 1950's and 1960's we had players who could contend with the best, but except for Fischer never were considered a real threat to the Soviets dominance.